“Really?” said the old country doctor. “But the mortal illness?”
“Incurable,” said Gillespie. “You’re an old man. And God and all his angels can’t keep you from dying of old age…That’s all that’s wrong with you, you fool!”
Mary Lamont waited for the exit of the old doctor before she went to Gillespie.
The tyrant said: “I thought that you were back on general duty. What are you doing here, Lamont?”
“I’m here to shame you,” said the nurse.
“I’ve stood a lot in my life,” said Gillespie, “but I’ve never had to stand the hysterical jitters of a probation nurse. Not before this moment.”
“I have this for you,” said Mary Lamont, and put on the desk before him a sadly crumpled piece of paper.
“What is it?” asked Gillespie, peering.
“This says twenty thousand dollars, and Paul Messenger’s signature makes it mean what it says.”
“It’s made out to Kildare,” said Gillespie. “I see what you mean, Mary. You’re giving me an object lesson in how to be a doctor and how to take in the spoils at the same time. Is that it?”
“Look!” said the girl. “He’s endorsed it and handed it to me…to give away…to any charity…or keep for myself. He doesn’t care.”
“Don’t try to make a fool of me,” snarled Gillespie. “This fellow Kildare would give his soul for hard cash. He wants nothing out of life except the long green…He wouldn’t give this away…But he has,” said Gillespie.
He crumpled the cheque between both his hands suddenly and stared at the girl.
“What are you saying to me?” cried Gillespie. “Are you trying to make an absolute doddering idiot of me? Are you trying to tell me that he had some secondary purpose? What was it, Lamont? What was it?”
“I don’t know,” said the nurse. “But you were a very sick man a few days ago.”
“Is that it?” said Gillespie softly. “I remember shouting him down when he told me that I had to rest. So he took the tools for work out of my hands. He simply removed himself without explanation and left us here damning him.”
“Yes, doctor,” she answered in a trembling voice.
“Stop that snivelling!” snarled Gillespie.
“Yes, doctor,” she said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FOR the hospital, it was a large room. The flowers were everywhere, but even flowers, even fields of them, cannot take the entire curse from a hospital room.
After all, it was not the impersonal environment on which Kildare intended to depend. He stood by the bed and looked down at the girl for a moment. She had one bare arm thrown up above her head. Thick bandages swathed the upper part of her face. On the other side of the bed stood Nora, looking from Nancy to Kildare like a frightened child at a school-teacher. He said to her: “Nora, you’re rather a blatherskite.”
“Yes, sir. Yes, doctor,” said Nora.
“But if so much as once you mention her mother or her mother’s death to Nancy while you’re with her, I’ll have you boiled in oil.”
“Yes, sir,” said Nora.
Kildare turned on his heel and went into the adjoining room. Landon and McKeever were there with Carew and big Charles Herron. Paul Messenger walked nervously up and down, halting suddenly when he saw the intern.
Kildare said abruptly: “I’ve put Miss Messenger to sleep and bandaged her eyes. I’ve told her that when she wakes up she will have had three days of treatments to her eyes—and that when the bandages are removed, she will have perfect vision.”
Messenger and Herron exclaimed softly. The doctors said nothing at all. They merely looked at one another.
Kildare said: “The X-ray plates and the physical examination practically remove all possibility that there can be a tumour or any lesion affecting the optic nerve. The eyes seem normal, and following a suggestion indirectly made by Doctor Gillespie, it seems to me that Miss Messenger’s blindness may be attributed to hysteria. In a moment of great emotional stress she was told by Mr. Herron that she never would see him again; she never would lay eyes on him again. The thought persisted in her mind. She kept repeating the word. The idea entered her deeply. Afterward, she received an unpleasant shock when she discovered that I was a doctor and therefore, she felt, established as a spy upon her life. She ran away and hid herself, prepared to take her own life. Then the hysteria overtook her suddenly. She went blind. I have given her enough barbital to put her into a sound sleep. I now propose to inject a stimulant which will end that sleep suddenly. When she wakes up, she will remember, I hope, that I have promised her perfect vision again. At the moment of her waking, I shall give her a happy shock through Mr. Herron. I’ve discussed with him what he is to say in her hearing. It’s my duty to explain my procedure to you, Doctor Landon, and to you, Doctor McKeever.”
Carew broke out: “Wouldn’t it have been much closer to regular procedure if you had consulted the doctors before you instituted this—this unusual treatment?”
“I was afraid,” said Kildare frankly, “that they would object. They would not like my idea in promising her perfect vision, because if the experiment does not work, and if she does not have perfect sight when the bandages are removed, the shock may react detrimentally and confirm her hysteria.”
“Exactly,” said Landon. “You’re risking everything on this. It’s neck or nothing.”
“It seemed to me,” said Kildare, “that I had to devise the greatest possible happy expectation and then at the critical moment supply the greatest possible happy shock. I couldn’t create the expectation without making the largest possible promise.”
“Irregular, dangerous, and highly dubious procedure throughout,” said Landon. “McKeever, do you agree?”
McKeever, after a pause, said slowly: “I’m afraid that I’m too old and conservative to agree with Doctor Kildare; and yet there’s something in me that tells me he may be right. It’s all or nothing.”
“But to make the promise—to risk everything!” groaned Carew.
Messenger said in a voice which extreme tension made flat and mechanicaclass="underline"
“The case is entirely in your hands, Kildare. Whether you succeed or fail, you have my support.”
“If the experiment doesn’t work, I accept the entire blame,” said Kildare, and went back to Nancy.
He gave the injection quickly, leaning over the bed, listened to her heart with a stethoscope. After a moment he said to Nora:
“She’s waking up. Be here by the bed. Speak in a very quiet voice and say to her over and over: ‘Everything is all right, now!’”
“Everything is all right now, darling,” said Nora.
“Softer!”
“Everything is all right now, Nancy, dear,” murmured Nora.
“That’s right. Keep saying that; and hold her hand. So.”
He went back into the next room. His face was white, but he had his jaw set, all the bulldog in him showing. He had left the connecting door open, and for a long moment the room was in silence, waiting. At length the voice of Nancy murmured something indistinguishable. They could barely hear the reassuring words of Nora as she said: “It’s all right, Nancy. My dear, it’s all going to be right with you…”
The voice of the girl came again more clearly.
“Now!” said Kildare, nodding to Herron, and the big man made a gesture of assent. They faced the door of the sick room together.
Kildare said loudly:
“She’s in there, but she mustn’t see you now.”
“I’ve got to see her,” said Herron.