“How can you . . .”
“Because it’s been happening a lot lately. Others have been talking. Sister, no one wishes you any evil. Everyone here has the highest regard for you. I was just trying to help. There is no disgrace in retiring. I’ve suggested only one of many contributions you could make if you didn’t have the pressure of this active life to weigh you down. All of us just want to help.”
“Then get out of my way. Stay out of my way. I am not going to retire. Things will be much clearer for all of you who ‘just want to help’ if you will only understand one simple fact: I am not going to retire!”
“Sister, as I understand it, you have no choice.”
“This is between Eileen and me. The rest of you stay out of it! Do you hear? Eileen may have the administration on her side. But I’ve got a tad more experience. I am not going to retire!”
She rose unsteadily and turned to leave. Abruptly, she turned back. Koesler thought it was as much to give herself time to regain her balance as it was to ask her final question. “Who is it who’s going to surgery tomorrow?”
“Mrs. Alva Crawford . . . 2214-A.”
“I’ll see her tonight!”
The implication clearly was that he was to stay out of her business entirely.
Koesler sipped at his lukewarm coffee. He had not anticipated the response he had triggered from Rosamunda. He shook his head sadly at the futility of it. There was no way she could stave off an inevitable retirement. She might, as she claimed, have a tad more experience. But Eileen, as her superior and with the rules on her side, held all the cards.
There was no doubting Rosamunda’s determination. But what could even that degree of determination do? How far would Rosamunda be willing to go in her battle to stay active? In her war with Eileen? As he drained the now tepid coffee, Koesler began to wonder about that. How far would Rosamunda go to stop Eileen? He did not like to consider the perimeter of those possibilities.
* * *
Seated at another table in the refectory was Bruce Whitaker. He had carefully selected this table because it was adjacent to the table where two specific doctors were eating lunch. These doctors were select because they were conducting a study among the hospital patients. A study in which Whitaker was intensely interested.
A very recent addition to Whitaker’s table was Ethel Laidlaw. This to Whitaker was the source of both positive and negative vectors. He was, of course, happy to see and be with Ethel. At the same time, it was most important that he be able to pay close attention to what these doctors were talking about. And of course Ethel would want to talk. Whitaker did not command the language to tell Ethel to be quiet. All in all, he felt, it was going to be a challenge to listen to both the doctors and Ethel.
“I’ve been thinking,” Ethel began, “about your offer to help with my problem . . . you know, with Sister Eileen. I don’t really think you have to go out of your way to help with this. I mean, there are other ways.”
Ethel was holding a cup of very hot coffee near her mouth, absently blowing over its surface, attempting to cool it. But she was paying little attention to it. The cup had tipped over so slightly and the coffee began dripping ever so slowly into Ethel’s lap. The old water torture with caffeine overtones.
“I think I may have a plan that would surprise you,” Ethel continued. “It’s just kind of hard to talk about it, especially with you. I don’t understand it all that well myself. It’s something that’s going on in my head. Like maybe there are two persons there. One of them is the usual bonehead me. The other one seems much more clever. I guess I just don’t know how to explain it very well . . . do you know what I’m talking about, Bruce?”
“What?”
Ethel began, again, to explain her conundrum, trying to find clearer language. All the while, Whitaker tried to catch the doctors’ conversation.
“Are there really that many people in here with pneumonia, do you think?” said one doctor.
“Oh, yeah,” said the other. “At least enough for the study. Don’t need that many.”
“What’re you using?”
“One group gets penicillin, the other tobrimycin.”
“What are the protocol numbers?”
“Ouch!” Ethel cried.
“Not now!” Whitaker warned.
“Whaddya mean, ‘not now’?” Ethel almost shouted. “I burned myself with coffee. It’s scalding. Look! It’s been dripping in my lap. It hurts! Whaddya mean, ‘not now’!”
“Sorry, Ethel.” Whitaker strained to hear the doctors. Fortunately, the doctor who was to respond with the protocol numbers had taken a bite of food and was chewing. And fortunately, his social code did not countenance talking with a full mouth.
Thus, Ethel was well done complaining about the burn, the stain, and Whitaker’s failure to offer solace when the doctor replied.
“Odds and evens. Odds get tobrimycin. Evens get penicillin.”
“Sounds good to me. Got your ass well covered?”
“God, I hope so. We’ve checked out the stickers as carefully as possible.”
“Check out the crew, too?”
“Yeah. Pretty good, at least for this place. There shouldn’t be any slipups.”
“’samatter, you don’t believe in Murphy’s Law?”
“Oh, yeah, I believe in it like hell. I just think we’re gonna get through this study in one piece.”
“Well, good luck. Lemme know how it goes.”
“Sure. Right.”
The two doctors picked up their trays with the used crockery, deposited them, and left the cafeteria.
Whitaker hoped against hope that he could remember what he had just overheard. He would have a difficult enough time carrying out his plan even if he had all this information accurately recorded. It would be doomed if but one detail were incorrect.
But he would get it right this time and he would confound his colleagues back at Van’s Can. They thought he couldn’t do it. But with the help of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, by God, he would!
The most crucial bit of information he had just learned was the protocol numbers. As it happened, it was the easiest to forget. He would jot the numbers on his paper napkin. And, he was pleased to submit, for this very necessity he had planned ahead. He removed a number two pencil from his breast pocket and pressed the point to the napkin. The point broke.
“Quick, Ethel, do you have a pen or a pencil?”
“What is this with a pen when I’ve been burned half to death?”
“Please, Ethel, I’ve got to write something down. It’s an emergency.”
“Oh, all right already.” She offered him her pen. It was a fountain pen. One seldom saw such an instrument in these days of throwaway plastic ball-points.
Frequently fountain pens tend to leak. Ethel’s did.
When Whitaker finished, the figures were barely legible. The rest of the napkin was saturated with blue ink.
Ethel had watched the process with interest. “Here,” she said, offering her napkin. “Wipe your fingers.”
He accepted her napkin and wiped vigorously. It didn’t do much good. It never did, not since his days in parochial school, when, over the months, ink had gradually become the finish for his desk and chair.
“What’s with that?” Ethel asked. “‘Odd tobrimycin, even penicillin’ . . . what does that mean?”
“It’s just a project I’ve got to do. It’s not important.”
“But you said it was an emergency.”
Whitaker despaired of ever getting his hands clean with a paper napkin. He crushed it into a ball and dropped it on the table. Whence Ethel retrieved it and began dabbing at her coffee-stained white skirt, thus dying it a light blue. The blue ink dabs, together with the brown coffee stains, gave her uniform the appearance of a painful bruise.