“Thank you,” she said, and hung up.
That promise meant he had to mollify the assistant administrator’s secretary, who seemed to feel that, while his using the telephone once was a possibly forgivable breach of etiquette, using it twice clearly violated one if not several of the more obscure canons of the Council of Nicaea. The secretary had his revenge by leading Bushell to a waiting room that not only stank of carbolic acid but was so bare, so stark, so grim that any prisoner interrogated in it would have had good cause to complain to a judge through his barrister on grounds of inhumane treatment. The magazine rack held three ragged periodicals, none of them anything Bushell cared to read, none more recent than the previous December’s issue.
A little less than an hour later, a nursing sister escorted Ted Kittridge into the waiting room. The sergeant nodded but wasted no precious words explaining why he’d come - if Bushell couldn’t figure it out, too bad. Instead, Kittridge lit up a cigarillo. The look the nursing sister turned on him would have petrified a basilisk. He seemed to find it mild and benignant. Defeated, and incredulous at being defeated, the nursing sister retired in disorder.
Except for the pungent smoke, waiting with Kittridge was like waiting alone. Bushell stared at the glossy white paint on the far wall and waited for something - anything - to happen. After an hour or so, something did: a doctor in surgical whites came through the door. Bushell bounced to his feet. “How is he?”
“Pretty well, all things considered,” the medico answered. “The bullet cracked the radius, but didn’t splinter it - must have hit at an angle and ricocheted away rather than smashing right through. He should recover full function in the hand, or close to it, at any rate.”
“Good news,” Bushell said. Kittridge nodded again, and lighted another cigarillo. The medico’s glare had no more effect on him than had the nursing sister’s. Bushell went on, “When can I see him?”
“Another couple of hours, I’d say,” the surgeon answered. “He’s still anesthetized now, of course, and we’ll be giving him more morphia when he regains consciousness. But as I told you, absent a wound infection, he should do very well.”
“Good news,” Bushell repeated. “I’ll ring his wife and let her know.” He stretched, noticing for the first time in several hours how worn he was, then shook his head in slight bemusement. “By God, I really do think that wraps things up.”
XVII
Bushell got off the line quickly after letting Phyllis Stanley know Sam had come through the surgery well. That gave the assistant director’s secretary an agreeable surprise; by his expression, he’d thought Bushell aimed at bankrupting the hospital with his extravagant telephone habits. His suspicions returned when Bushell asked for the use of a razor, shaving soap, and a showerbath in an unoccupied room, and redoubled when Ted Kittridge not only asked for the same things but blew smoke in his face doing it. His plaintive cries were, however, overruled, and he went off to sulk in his tent while the two RAMs bathed in the advantage of their heroic stature.
Putting back on the suit he’d been wearing so long irked Bushell, but not enough to make him want to go over to the William and Mary for fresh clothes. After he’d seen Sam would be time enough for that.
“Sir?” A nursing sister approached him - warily. When she seemed satisfied he wouldn’t bite, she went on, “Dr. Duncan says you can see Mr., uh, Stanley for a few minutes, provided you don’t tire him.”
“Oh, too bad,” Bushell said. “I’d been planning to take him out for a run around the block.” The nursing sister stared, shook her head, and reluctantly let him follow her to Samuel Stanley’s room. The chamber smelled of carbolic acid, even more strongly than the waiting room had. Arm swathed in splints and bandages, Stanley looked up at Bushell. His eyes were large and round and staring. “Hullo, Chief,” he said in a distant voice: he was awake, and alert enough to know who Bushell was, but still woozy from the medications they’d given him.
“Hullo, Sam. I told Phyllis you were all right.”
“Oh, she’d be sure of that any which way. She knows I was born to hang.” Stanley giggled, not the sort of sound Bushell was used to hearing from him.
“You’re feeling no pain,” he observed.
Stanley shook his head. Each back-and-forth motion seemed to require a separate effort of will. “It’s there,” he said. “I know it’s there. It’s just that it’s there and I’m - over here.” He raised his right arm and waved it around to indicate some immense distance. Then he giggled again. Bushell didn’t know what to make of that. Standing here in the white room, looking at the white bandages, reminded him of how close they’d come to failing, too. He didn’t want to think about that, so he said, “I wish you’d been plainer about what you thought of Bragg.”
“That tight-arsed, Negro-hating old statue?” Stanley couldn’t have been a great deal plainer if he’d tried for a week. With his head buzzing from anesthetic and morphia, he didn’t care what he said. “You liked him, though. I never could figure that out, but what the hell? I just thought, Nobody’s smart about everything, and went on about my business.”
“Nobody’s smart about everything,” Bushell repeated. “Bragg damn near was. Even after we found out he was the villain, he almost -“ He didn’t want to say it. The British Empire hadn’t suffered regicide in more than three hundred years. God willing, another three hundred would go by before the Empire had to worry about it again.
“Put that vile thing out this instant, do you hear?” a nursing sister said out in the hall, her voice unwontedly loud and angry. When Ted Kittridge came into the room a moment later, he did so sans cigarillo.
He stopped a couple of paces in from the doorway and stood looking toward Stanley. “Glad you’re going to be all right, Captain,” he said, more words than Bushell had heard from him in all the time they were waiting.
“I suppose I am,” Stanley said. “Glad you were driving. Glad we got there in time. Glad -“ His smile was broad and foolish. He seemed to know it, saying, “Listen to the medicine talking.”
Kittridge waved that aside - wordlessly, as usual. The nursing sister came in and said, “That will be enough of that, gentlemen.” She was short and thin and elderly - and no one in his right mind would have thought even for an instant of disobeying her. Under her stern, bespectacled gaze, Bushell and Kittridge left the room.
Once out in the hallway, Bushell asked her, “Have you got a cafeteria in this place?” As if to punctuate the sentence, his stomach growled like an irritated mastiff. He hoped the nursing sister didn’t hear it.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Ground floor, west corridor, most of the way back from the street.”
Bushell made it to the cafeteria without too much trouble. Ted Kittridge accompanied him. They filled their trays and found an empty table: not hard, since most of them were empty. As soon as he dug in, Bushell understood why. “This is worse than what they feed you in the army,” he said, being unable to come up with any stronger dispraise on the spur of the moment.
“And you don’t have to pay for that,” Kittridge agreed, dismayed into using a complete sentence. After he’d eaten as much as he could stomach, which didn’t take long, Bushell once more bearded the assistant director’s secretary in his den. That worthy, assured Bushell did not intend to strain the hospital’s accounts by ringing long-distance yet again, grudgingly vouchsafed him the further use of a telephone.
He dialed the number for RAM headquarters. When he identified himself, the switchboard operator shouted in his ear, then managed more coherent congratulations. “Has Major Williams got in yet?” he asked.