Nurse Amy appeared as soon as Pike had left. “Mrs. Lewis is here,” she said. “She has Danny with her. Someone bounced a rock off him. She is frothing mad.”
Danny, who by all odds could be classified as the meanest kid in town, had a goose egg on his head. The rock had broken the skin and there was some blood, but an X-ray showed no fracture.
“Just wait,” his mother raged, “until I get my hands on the kid who threw that rock. Here Danny was doing nothing, just walking down the street …”
She went on and on, but Benton got her quieted down and the two of them finally left.
After that came Mary Hansen, with her arthritis; Ben Lindsay, in for a post-coronary check; Betty Davidson, with a sore throat; Joe Adams, with a lame back; Jenny Duncan, who was going to have twins and was twittery about it.
The last patient of the day was Burt Curtis, an insurance man.
“Goddamn it, Doc,” he said, “I feel all beat out. Sure, a man expects to be tired after a long day’s work, but I get tired in the middle of the morning. By ten o’clock, I am all pooped out.”
“It’s sitting at that desk,” said Benton, kidding him, “lifting all those heavy pencils.”
“I know, I know. You don’t have to rub it in. I’ve never done an honest day’s work in all my life. Selling insurance isn’t something you can classify as labor. The funny thing is that I feel as if I were building roads. Muscles get sore and achy.”
“Hungry, too?” Benton asked.
“Funny you should say that. I’m hungry all the time. Keep stuffing my gut. A lot of snacking. Never used to do that. Three squares were all I needed.”
“Even-tempered, I suppose.”
“What the hell, Doc! I come in to tell you I get tired and you ask about my temper.”
“Well, are you? Even-tempered, I mean.”
“Hell, no. I’m all out of sorts. No patience. Let one little thing go wrong and I start storming. No way for a businessman to act. Keep on like that, and you get a reputation. Adele says I get harder to live with every day.”
“How about your weight?”
“Seems to me I’m getting heavier.” Curtis patted his gut. “Had to let out my belt one notch.”
“We’ll get you on the scales and see,” said Benton. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do: run some tests. Nothing fancy or expensive. We could do them here.”
“You got something in mind, Doc? Something wrong with me. Something really wrong.”
Benton shook his head. “Nothing at all. But I can’t even make a guess until I see some tests. Blood sugar. Things like that.”
“If you say so, Doc,” said Curtis.
“Don’t worry about it, Burt. But when a man comes in and says he’s all tired out and gaining weight and getting downright mean, I have to look into it. That’s my job. That’s how I make my living and keep my patients well.”
“Nothing serious, then?”
“Probably nothing much. Just some little thing that once we know about it, we can get it straightened out. Now, about those tests. When can you come in?”
“Tuesday be all right? Monday I’ll be busy.”
“Tuesday is just fine,” Benton said. “Now get over on those scales.”
When Burt had gone, Benton walked out into the empty waiting room. “I guess that’s it for the day,” he said to Amy. “Why don’t you go home?”
Back in his office, he sat down at his desk and began filling in Burt Curtis’ record. Tiredness, intermittent and persistent hunger, gaining weight, sore muscles, irritability—all the symptoms Abbott had talked about that very afternoon. And then there was Herb Anderson as well. From what Helen had said, his condition seemed much the same as Burt’s. Both of them and Ted Brown, too.
What the hell, he wondered, could be going on? Abbott had said “epidemic.” But did three people in one little town add up to an epidemic? He knew, however, that once he had gone through his records, he would probably find others.
The office was quiet. Amy had left and he was quite alone.
From some distance off came the wild and frantic snarling of a racing motorcycle. Young Taylor, more than likely, he thought. Someday the damn fool kid would break his neck. Twice he’s needed patching up, and if he kept on there’d likely come a day when patching up would be superfluous—although, Benton told himself, that was no concern of his, or should be no concern of his. But the terrible thing about it was that he found himself concerned.
He was, he realized, concerned with everyone, too concerned with everyone in this silly little town. By what mysterious process, he wondered, did a man through the years manage to take an entire town to heart, shift its burdens to his back? Did the same thing happen to other aging doctors in other little towns?
He pushed Burt’s record to one side and laid the pen beside it.
He gazed about the room, shifting his glance from one object to another as if he were seeing them for the first time and trying to fix them in his memory. They had been there all the time, but for the first time he was noticing them, becoming acquainted with this environment in which he had lived and functioned through the years. Too busy, he thought, too busy and concerned to have ever looked at them before. The framed diploma, hung proudly on the wall so many years ago and now becoming fly-specked; the fading and worn carpeting (some day, by God, when he found the money, he’d have new carpeting put in!); the battered scales shoved against the wall; the sink and basin; the cabinet where he kept all the samples sent out by pharmaceutical houses to be given patients (and there were many of them) who could not afford prescription drugs. Not the kind of office, he thought, that a big-city doctor would have, but the kind he had—a combination of office, examination room, treatment room—the hallmark of the family doctor always strapped for funds, hesitant to send out bills that would embarrass patients he knew were short of cash, trying to treat people who should go to specialists but who could not afford their fees.
He was getting old, he told himself—not too old yet, but getting there. There were lines upon his face and gray showing in his hair. There would come a time, perhaps, when he would have to take in a younger doctor who, hopefully, could carry on the practice when he would have to retire. But he shrank from doing so. He was jealous, he knew, of his position as the town’s one doctor, even though he knew it was most unlikely the town would accept anyone that he brought in. Not for a long, long time would they accept anyone but him. Patients would refuse to see the new man, waiting for Old Doc. It would take years before he could shift any appreciable percentage of his patient load.
Over in Spring Valley, Dr. Herman Smith had a son who was in internship and who soon would join his father. Slowly, over the years, young Doc Smith would phase out old Doc Smith, father followed by the son, and there would be no hassle. Oh, some hassle, surely, but none that would be noticed. That, Benton told himself, was the ideal method of succession. But he and Harriet had never had a son—only the one daughter. He had hoped, for a time, he recalled, that April might want to be a doctor. But that would have posed problems, too, for it would be unlikely the town would accept a woman doctor. The problem, however, had never arisen, for April, it turned out, had been big on music and there was no stopping her. Not that he had ever wanted to. If music was what she wanted, then it would be music. She was in Vienna now. Christ, these kids! he thought. The world belongs to them. Off to London, Paris, Vienna, and God knows where else, with no thought that it was extraordinary. In his youth, he recalled, it had been a big adventure to get a hundred miles from home. And, come to think of it, even now he seldom got more than a hundred miles from town. He stuck close to his work.