Dr. Kildare’s Crisis E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

When young doctor James Kildare and his fiancée, nurse Mary Lamont, make plans for their wedding day, brother Mary Douglas arrives at her. Douglas asks Kildare to arrange an appointment with a wealthy Mr. Chandler, whose daughter Kildare rescued at Young Doctor Kildare to ask for a fund to create three subsidized trading schools to train unskilled workers. Kildare does not want to impose Chandler for ethical reasons, but is concerned that Doug, who hears nonexistent sounds, may be an undiagnosed epileptic.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

I. MAN ON FIRE

KILDARE came out of the operating room trundling Gillespie’s wheel-chair and looking straight ahead to avoid some of the compliments; but he had to pause when old, great Dr. Ackers said: “Good work, doctor. A fine pair of hands. Eleven minutes and twenty seconds from the first incision to the last stitch. We minimise shock, with speed like that...And that was a bad kidney to get out...I could use these hands, any day you’re through with them, Gillespie.”

Gillespie drew together the formidable white brush of his eyebrows: “Maybe you can have them damned soon, Ackers...Get those useful hands off my chair, Kildare. They’re too fine to be used like a nursemaid. You’ve taken plenty of my time, but I won’t have you taking my exercise, also.”

He wheeled himself down the corridor with Kildare walking silently beside him.

“Speed, speed!” snorted Gillespie. “No place to get to, and faster ways of getting there. That’s the Twentieth Century, and be damned! And an old fool like Ackers praising it!”

“Was I too fast, sir?” asked Kildare.

“You know damned well you were too fast,” said the old man. “What were you trying to do? Show off?”

There was a bit of silence.

“Well?” insisted Gillespie.

“Yes, sir. I was showing off–a little.”

“Leave speed for typists and airplanes; your job is to handle human lives.”

“Yes, sir. But I seemed to see my way right through that operation and–”

“Hold out your hand. Ha! Still a tremor in it, eh? Did you think you were crocheting, or what?...Did you read that book on the lymph glands last night? What’s the name of it?”

They were in the elevator, descending.

“Winslow and Parker wrote it, sir,” said Kildare. “Well, did you read it last night?”

“No, sir.”

The elevator man’s cheeks were swelling. Kildare, even from behind, knew the width of the grin on that face.

“No, sir, you didn’t read it, eh? Wasn’t time, I suppose?”

“There was an interesting pneumonia in Ward B, sir. I spent most of the night there.”

“Damn the interesting pneumonia. Nothing should interest you except what I tell you to do. You know that!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve got to use our time the way misers use money. There mustn’t be any waste...What type was the pneumonia?”

“Thirty-one, sir.”

“Ah, was it? Complications?”

“A deep abdominal infection, sir.”

“Very pretty! Why didn’t you call me?”

“You were sleeping, sir.”

“I wasn’t. Had my eyes closed to rest them, that was all. I try not to waste my nights sleeping, Kildare. What made you think I was sleeping?”

“Your snoring, sir.”

“I wasn’t snoring. I never snore. I may have been clearing my throat...What did you do with the Type Thirty-one?”

They had left the elevator and were rolling into Gillespie’s office. Kildare began: “I used an injection of–”

“That’s one of the manias today,” said Gillespie. “Injections–injections–injections! How was the patient this morning?”

“All danger is gone now, sir, I believe.”

“Good boy!” said Gillespie. “Damn the books and the theorists. Cures are what we want. What are you doing there?”

Kildare had taken from a small box two pills, which he now offered to Gillespie.

“I believe it’s time for these, sir.”

“Pills–pills–pills!” roared Gillespie. “You’ll never make a doctor if you keep using pills. They’re like sleep: chiefly a habit. The curse of the American people is the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. A hundred and thirty million people are putting pills in their mouths three times a day. How the devil can they amount to anything?

“There’s no time left for continuity of thought or effort. A hundred and thirty million of the richest, healthiest people that ever lived, watching the clock and putting pills in their mouths. Take those damned things away!”

Kildare patiently kept offering them with a small glass of water.

“It’s time for these, sir,” he insisted.

“How do I look to you, Jimmy?” asked the old man, anxiously.

“Not very badly, sir. How do you feel? Is the pain much worse this morning?”

“Questions–questions–questions!” shouted Gillespie. “How are you going to make a diagnostician unless you start using your eyes? What difference does it make how people feel? A hundred million hours a day are wasted in this nation by people asking themselves how they feel. A mere habit and luxury of the mind.

“The question is: How are they, not how do they think they feel. Self-pity is ruining the white race, and you stand there and ask me how I feel!...I’m not so damned well, if you come right down to it, Jimmy.”

“You’re a little worn, sir.”

“What should I do? Relax?”

“No, sir, you have to keep going.”

“Right! But what should I do?”

“Take these pills, sir, if you please.”

Gillespie, glowering, clapped them into his mouth and swallowed some water. He shuddered strongly.

“Superstition–witchcraft–good–luck–charms–they’re all in a class with pills and pill-taking,” he declared.

Mary Lamont came in. The sun aslant through the window flashed on her white uniform as she went to Gillespie’s desk and placed on it a small file of papers.

“Don’t come in here without knocking, What’s-your-name,” called Gillespie. “Who told you to come into this room without knocking?”

“You did, doctor,” said the girl.

There was such young beauty in her that she always seemed to have been smiling and just about to smile again.

“I don’t believe it,” said Gillespie. “And why do you have so much starch in your uniform? So it will rustle? So people will know you’re about? It makes you take up too much room. Don’t try to take a place in the sun, around here.”

“No, doctor,” she said.

“Nurses are not human beings. They’re merely pairs of hands performing services–usually badly. And don’t roll your eyes at Kildare, either. He only pretends about you. He doesn’t take you seriously. For him, you’re only a bit of simple diversion. A man has to have a little diversion, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, doctor,” she said.

“The damned young idiot has been trying for speed records in the operating room, Mary,” said Gillespie. “There’s still a tremor in him. Take his hand and see. There! But wipe that fool look off your face. You’re not seeing his immortal soul. Doctors don’t have souls. But here’s a young jackass who stays up all night nursing pneumonia patients and exhausting himself. What shall I do with him?”

“I might suggest a little diversion, sir.”

“You might suggest–What the devil are you talking about? He sees too much of you. Packmules lead an easier life than a man in love; their burdens have to be carried only part of the day; but this young fool has Mary Lamont in every breath he draws...How many people in the waiting room?”

“Thirty-five, sir,” said the girl.

“I’ll start taking them at once, sir,” said Kildare.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. Go into your office and lie down for an hour.”

“But I have to write out a report on–”

“Damn the reports. Damn the writing. It might make a novelist out of you but it’ll never make a doctor. Conover! Conover! Next patient, please!”

“He’s been difficult? He’s hurt you, Jimmy?” asked the girl.

“Gillespie? He never hurts me. But he’s worse, Mary. He’s failing fast. He’s been dying all year. It isn’t his body that the cancer’s eating. It’s his nerves; it’s his soul. I’ve been watching the pain at work in his eyes and it makes me a little sick.”

“I know,” said Mary Lamont.

“He’s a great man; and some day I’ve got to see him fall.”

“I know,” she repeated. “Poor Jimmy! I think he would have died months ago, except that he loves you, and he has to last long enough to teach you everything he knows.”

“Everything?” laughed Kildare briefly.

“Is it true that you were up again, all last night?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Take some time off, Mary,” said Kildare. “I’ve got to dig out some work now.”

“You’d better rest, hadn’t you? Hadn’t you better do what Doctor Gillespie suggests?”

“I’ll rest when he does.”

“Jimmy! You know he doesn’t sleep any more than a bird.”

“I can stand it as well as he does. Lock the door when you go out. I’m not seeing anyone. Not a soul.”

A knock came at the door then–two quick taps, a pause, and three more. Mary frowned.

“That’s Joe Weyman,” she said. “Of course I’ll tell him that you’re not seeing anyone?”

“Joe? Of course I have to see him. He’s an exception.”

“Everybody who wants your time–everybody’s an exception, except me,” she said.

“Well–Let Joe come in,” he answered.

She paused an instant to look at the youth in his face and the weary age around his eyes. All of his features would follow that pattern before very long. He was one of the few who must find their happiness in labour; they accept the curse of Adam as a blessing.

Certainly she was not one of the elect who reach pain always, and fame once in ten thousand instances. Already he was at his desk, breaking down a pile of charts and picking up a pen to assemble statistics.

She went to the door and opened it on the wide shoulders and the barbarous grin of Joe Weyman, the ambulance driver. The apes in the trees seemed nearer kin to Weyman than young Dr. Kildare, and yet he made a place in his heart for the burly fellow.

“The doctor is very busy, Joe,” she said.

“Sure he is,” said Weyman, “but I’m sick is why I wanta see him.”

“Come in, Joe,” said Kildare.

Weyman stepped inside. He looked from the doctor to the girl.

“He wants to see me alone,” said Kildare, already smiling a welcome to the ambulance man.

“All right,” sighed Mary, and went out, saying over her shoulder: “May I have a word with you later?”

“Yes. Later,” said Kildare, as the door closed behind her.

“Not a little short with her, doc, are you?” asked Weyman.

“Short? With Mary? We understand each other,” said Kildare.

“Sure,” said Weyman. “But they do the understanding and we do the guessing, usually...Doc, I’m kind of low. I wondered could you give me a pick-me-up.”

“You’ve been hitting it pretty hard, Joe?”

“Hard? I hardly never hit it hard.”

“You were hard at it last night?”

“How would you guess that?”

“It’s not too hard. You’ve got the blear in your eye and the thickness in your upper lip. You’ve been hitting it hard for a couple of weeks.”

“It’s the job, doc,” said Weyman, slowly. “You sit still as a stone waiting for a call; and then all at once it comes and you’ve gotta make tracks. Somebody’s dying, somewhere. You gotta be there sudden. You go on the jump; you pick up some mug; you jump him back to the hospital; and then you’re sitting still as a stone again, waiting for things to happen. It kind of gets on your nerves.”

“So you hit the hooch?”

“After hours, doc. Nobody never found nothing on my breath during hours. So I wondered if you’d give me a pick-me-up.”

“No,” said Kildare.

Weyman stared. He even moved a step closer, still staring, to make out that it really was Kildare who had made this strange response.

Kildare explained, carefully: “I’ve watched the way you’ve been driving, lately. You’re depending on the siren to cut your way through the traffic. And you’re going to smash up, Joe. Some day with rain on the street. You’ll go like a light. A side- swipe, and you’ll be out.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But today–”

“I don’t want you to feel any better. I want you to be as sick as a dog all day. It’ll make you think until you realise that you’ve got to get out of this business. You’ve got to quit the ambulance job, Joe. Do some thinking about it today. Will you?”

“You mean that I get nothing?” said Weyman.

“Not a thing.”

Weyman turned clumsily toward the door. When he reached it, he laughed suddenly and looked over his shoulder.

“What d’ya think, doc?” he asked. “I was almost sore at you!”

He went out, and Kildare looked after him for a moment, glancing into his life and his future and seeing the dullness of the hospital life without the bright little eyes and the broad mug of Weyman to enliven it.

That picture faded into other things: long rows of white cots, and the whisper of padding feet in the corridors; loaded wheel stretchers passing soundlessly; the glimmer of test tubes in the laboratory, and the voice of Gillespie at work in his inner ear, constantly.

He turned back to his work, which was to relate all the complicated points of a high stack of charts. It meant multiplying, dividing, adding, correlating constantly. As usual, the moment he was employed, time ceased.

The day was not for him a series of little compartments into which he closed his attention for a few moments at a time; it was the sweep of a river that carried him with it, blindly. It was what Gillespie called “the divine absorption.” Without it, he would have been an excellent doctor with a keen gift for diagnosis; with it, he gave promise of becoming the great thing that Gillespie had in mind as his destiny.

He was lost in his work; the voice of the city died out of his ears; there was no sound from the hospital, for him; before his mind’s eye there began to grow dimly the foresight and the insight into a solution of his problem, a solution that was founded upon assembled hundreds of temperatures, blood-pressures, nerve reactions, contracting pupils.

“Jimmy, when do you think you may be free...” said the voice of Mary Lamont.

He withdrew only a step from the centre of his dream.

“Don’t bother me!” he said.

The door closed softly, a moment later.

“You’ve hurt her, this time,” said Gillespie.

That voice, as always, rallied him instantly from all of his preoccupation.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, turning bewildered toward his chief.

“How do you think?” asked Gillespie. “I kicked the door open and wheeled myself in, and cleared my throat a couple of times; but you were out wool-gathering, asleep at your post.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Kildare.

“I used to be able to do it,” said Gillespie, enviously. “When I was your age, I could lose myself in a medical problem for days at a time. But now I’m old and fidgety and all I can do is try to remember. I’m too old to learn. But one thing I know without thinking; a man can’t talk to a young girl the way you spoke to Mary, just now.”

Kildare stretched and yawned. His eyes sought the charts again.

“Don’t be bored when I’m talking to you,” roared Gillespie. “You think you own her because you’re engaged to her? You think those eyes of hers don’t see other men in the world?”

“Let her see them,” said Kildare. “I haven’t time to bother–and she knows it.”

“Does she, eh? I’ll tell you what she knows. That she won’t speak to you again the whole long day.”

“Nonsense,” said Kildare.

“You know better than I do, I suppose? I saw the way her head bent when she went out through that door. She’s out there crying her eyes out, now. You’re going to cut her out of your life, young Dr. Kildare; and when she’s gone, where will you get another like her?”

Kildare yawned again, heartily.

“Not concerned, eh?” asked Gillespie.

“No, sir,” said Kildare. “But I’d like to ask you about this second batch of charts on the–”

“Damn the charts. I’m talking about the happiness of your immortal soul–because the only soul in your damned life is going to be represented by that girl–and why do you think she left the room with her head bowed?”

“She was thinking of something she could do for me,” said Kildare, indifferently.

“Of all the confounded, pig-headed, brass-knuckled stupidity I’ve ever run into,” said Gillespie. “Of all the damned flat- faced self-assurance...”

Here the door opened on Mary, who came smiling in and placed a slide-rule beside Kildare.

“Do you know how to run this, Jimmy?” she asked. “Why the devil didn’t I think of a slide-rule before?” sighed Kildare.