She grinned at him, and Charlie writhed inwardly. Because she was who she was, he didn’t dare say.
There was pent-up anger in him as he walked into the blowing rain, head bent low to keep it out of his face. Damn the brat—
With vision limited to a few yards of sidewalk directly ahead of him, Charlie probably wouldn’t have seen the teamster and the horse if he hadn’t heard the cracks that sounded like pistol shots.
He looked up, and saw. In the middle of the street, maybe fifty feet ahead of Charlie and the Pest and moving toward them, came an overloaded wagon. It was drawn by an aged, desponded horse, a horse so old and bony that the slow walk by which it progressed seemed to be its speediest possible rate of movement.
But the teamster obviously didn’t think so. He was a big, ugly man with an unshaven, swarthy face. He was standing up, swinging his heavy whip for another blow. It came down, and the old horse quivered under it and seemed to sway between the shafts.
The whip lifted again.
And Charlie yelled “Hey, there!” and started toward the wagon.
He wasn’t certain yet just what he was going to do about it if the brute beating the other brute refused to stop. But it was going to be something. Seeing an animal mistreated was something Charlie Wills just couldn’t stand. And wouldn’t stand.
He yelled “Hey!” again, because the teamster didn’t seem to have heard him the first time, and he started forward at a trot, along the curb.
The teamster heard that second yell, and he might have heard the first. Because he turned and looked squarely at Charlie. Then he raised the whip again, even higher, and brought it down on the horse’s welt-streaked back with all his might.
Things went red in front of Charlie’s eyes. He didn’t yell again. He knew darned well now what he was going to do. It began with pulling that teamster down off the wagon where he could get at him. And then he was going to beat him to a pulp.
He heard Paula’s high heels clicking as she started after him and called out, “Charlie, be caref-“
But that was all of it that he heard. Because, just at that moment, it happened.
A sudden blinding wave of intolerable heat, a sensation as though he had just stepped into the heart of a fiery furnace. He gasped once for breath, as the very air in his lungs and in his throat seemed to be scorching hot. And his skin—
Blinding pain, just for an instant. Then it was gone, but too late. The shock had been too sudden and intense, and as he felt again the cool rain in his face, he went dizzy and rubbery all over, and lost consciousness. He didn’t even feel the impact of his fall.
Darkness.
And then he opened his eyes into a blur of white that resolved itself into white walls and white sheets over him and a nurse in a white uniform, who said, “Doctor! He’s regained consciousness.”
Footsteps and the closing of a door, and there was Doc Palmer frowning down at him.
“Well, Charles, what have you been up to now?” Charlie grinned a bit weakly. He said, “Hi, doc. I’ll bite. What have I been up to?”
Doe Palmer pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down in it. He reached out for Charlie’s wrist and held it while he looked at the second hand of his watch. Then he read the chart at the end of the bed and said “Hmph.”
“Is that the diagnosis,” Charlie wanted to know, “or the treatment? Listen, first what about the teamster? That is if you know-“
“Paula told rue what happened. Teamster’s under arrest, and fired. You’re all right, Charles. Nothing serious,”
“Nothing serious? What’s it a non-serious case of? In other words, what happened to me?”
“You keeled over. Prostration. And you’ll be peeling for a few days, but that’s all. Why didn’t you use a lotion of some kind yesterday?”
Charlie closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. And said, “Why didn’t I use a-For what?”
“The sunburn, of course. Don’t you know you can’t go swimming on a sunny day and not get-“
“But I wasn’t swimming yesterday, doc. Nor the day before. Gosh, not for a couple weeks, in fact. What do you mean, sunburn?”
Doc Palmer rubbed his chin. He said, “You better rest a while, Charles. If you feel all right by this evening, you can go borne. But you’d better not work tomorrow.”
He got up and went out.
The nurse was still there, and Charlie looked at her blankly. He said, “Is Doc Palmer going-Listen, what’s this all about?”
The nurse was looking at him queerly. She said, “Why! you were…I’m sorry, Mr. Wills, but a nurse isn’t allowed to discuss a diagnosis with a patient. But you haven’t anything to worry about; you heard Dr. Palmer, say you could go home this afternoon or evening.”
“Nuts,” said Charlie. “Listen, what time is it? Or aren’t nurses allowed to tell that?”
“It’s ten-thirty.”
“Golly, and I’ve been here almost two hours.” He figured back; remembering now that he’d passed a clock that said twenty-four minutes after eight just as they’d turned the corner for that last block. And, if he’d been awake again now for five minutes, then for two full hours.
“Anything else you want, sir?”
Charlie shook his head slowly. And then because he wanted her to leave so he could sneak a look at that chart, he said, “Well, yes. Could I have a glass of orange juice?”
As soon as she was gone, he sat up in bed. It hurt a little to do that, and he found his skin was a bit tender to the touch. He looked at his arms, pulling up the sleeves of the hospital nightshirt they’d put on him, and the skin was pinkish. Just the shade of pink that meant the first stage of a mild sunburn.
He looked down inside the nightshrt, and then at his legs, and said, “What the hell-” Because the sunburn, if it was sunburn, was uniform all over.
And that didn’t make sense, because he hadn’t been in the sun enough to get burned at any time recently, and he hadn’t been in the sun at all without his clothes. And—yes, the sunburn extended even over the area which would have been covered by trunks if he had gone swimming.
But maybe the chart would explain. He reached over the foot of the bed and took the clipboard with the chart off the hook.
“Reported that patient fainted suddenly on street without apparent cause. Pulse 135, respiration labored, temperature 104, upon admission. All returned to normal within first hour. Symptoms seem to approximate those of heat prostration, but—”
Then there were a few qualifying comments which were highly technical-sounding. Charlie didn’t understand them, and somehow he had a hunch that Doc Palmer didn’t understand them either. They had a whistling-in-the-dark sound to them.
Click of heels in the hall outside and he put the chart back quickly and ducked under the covers. Surprisingly, there was a knock. Nurses wouldn’t knock, would they?
He said, “Come in.”
It was Jane. Looking more beautiful than ever, with her big brown eyes a bit bigger with fright. “Darling! I came as soon as the Pest called home and told me. But she was awfully vague. What on earth happened?”
By that time she was within reach, and Charlie put his arms around her and didn’t give a darn, just then, what had happened to him. But he tried to explain. Mostly to himself.
PEOPLE ALWAYS try to explain.
Face a man, or a woman, with something he doesn’t understand, and he’ll be miserable until he classifies it. Lights in the sky. And a scientist tells him it’s the aurora borealis-or the aurora australis-and he can accept the lights, and forget them.