Dr. Kildare’s Girl E-Book

Max Brand

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

Beschreibung

In the crowded waiting room of Dr. Gillespie there were people of ten nations of more than ten degrees, from the old pugilist with rheumatism in his broken hands to the Indian mystic whose eyes already were forgetting this world; but little Florrie Adams took precedence over all of these. Her mother lagged breathless, a step behind, as Florrie was led quickly on by a nurse so pretty that the little girl had to keep looking up at that freshness and that bloom; and so her stumbling feet forgot their way.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 1

IN the crowded waiting room of Dr. Gillespie there were people of ten nations of more than ten degrees, from the old pugilist with rheumatism in his broken hands to the Indian mystic whose eyes already were forgetting this world; but little Florrie Adams took precedence over all of these. Her mother lagged breathless, a step behind, as Florrie was led quickly on by a nurse so pretty that the little girl had to keep looking up at that freshness and that bloom; and so her stumbling feet forgot their way.

“Emergency!” said the nurse to the Negro who was on duty as though to guard the door. “Emergency, Conover!”

So they came to the threshold and the mother leaned over the child, saying: “He’s a great man, Florrie. He’s a great, great man; and you just look at him and listen at him, and he’ll make you well!”

Then the door opened and little Florrie entered, prepared to listen with all her soul, and to see. She saw an office worn and old and littered, with the smell of a drug store and the look of a second-hand furniture shop. She saw a young man in white with a pale face and eyes darkly stained by sleeplessness; he seemed to Florrie like someone who has stared too long and too hard at intangible, fading things; there was about him the humility and the tension of a foreigner who listens to speech that is only partially understood. But the great man was not he. The great man sat yonder in a wheelchair. To Florrie he was as old as her private conception of the deity, and like her God he wore a tangled radiance of white hair, thin and luminous. He had a high forehead with a blue vein of wrath etched across it; he had the smile of a fighting Irishman who may be delighting in the battle or suffering from a twist of exquisite pain; and beyond all else he had eyes of fire that made Florrie forget the rest. He barked at the pretty nurse in a harsh voice: “Well, Lamont, what’s this?”

“An emergency, Dr. Gillespie,” she answered.

Florrie expected her to shrink, but there seemed no fear in her; she even smiled at this great and terrible doctor.

“It’s scarlet fever, Dr. Gillespie,” said the mother. “Little Joanie, she come down exactly like this; but I thought maybe there’s a way of...”

“Never mind what you thought,” snarled the great Gillespie. “What the devil is this, anyway?”

The last words were for another nurse who had come in with a tray that she placed across the arms of the wheelchair.

“It’s two boiled eggs with some toast and crisp bacon crumbled into them,” said the nurse.

“Take the stuff away!” shouted Gillespie. “Take it away and bring me coffee!”

The young doctor, in the meantime, sat on his heels and took the hand of Florrie with a touch so gentle, so firm, so assured, that she could not help feeling that everything would be all right, if only the terrible old man would stop roaring. She smiled at him and he smiled back as he scanned her face deliberately, reading it up, reading it down.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the nurse of the tray was saying. “It was orders to bring this.”

“By the jumping thunder&mdash:by the living...whose orders?” boomed Gillespie.

“Dr. Kildare, sir.”

“Kildare!” exploded the great voice.

“Yes, sir?” answered the young man who sat on his heels.

Florrie trembled, but this Kildare did not even turn his head from the examination as he spoke.

“And what am I to say is the meaning of this?” said the terrible voice. “About this confounded interference, what am I to do?”

“If I were you, I would eat the eggs, sir. You’ve had nothing since yesterday.”

He rose as he spoke and kept on smiling down at Florrie. The wrath of the great Gillespie dissolved.

“Not since yesterday? Haven’t I, Jimmy?” he said, apologetically. But instantly he was barking: “Where’s the coffee, Parker?”

His anger drove her back toward the wall.

“It wasn’t ordered for the tray, Dr. Gillespie,” she said.

“I’m to be treated like a babe in swaddling clothes, am I?” demanded Gillespie. “You think I’m going to put up with this damned outrage? Well, get out of my sight! What are you waiting for, Nosey?”

The nurse vanished.

“Bring the child to me,” commanded Gillespie.

“Certainly, sir, when you’ve finished eating,” said Kildare.

And still the lightning did not fall!

“It’s a simple case,” went on Kildare. And he said with that wonderfully gentle and quiet voice that opened the heart of Florrie: “She’s been having aspirin, hasn’t she?”

“Oh, yes,” said the mother.

“I wouldn’t give her any more just now,” suggested young Dr. Kildare. “Aspirin is a very good thing, but sometimes it will bring out a bit of a rash like this.”

“Is that all it is?” gasped Mrs. Adams. “Oh, Dr. Gillespie, is this right?”

“Right?” boomed Gillespie. “Why, the young fool doesn’t dare to be wrong, does he?”

So Florrie was drawn out of the room, still with her head turned to catch her last close view of greatness.

“Why did Molly Lamont bring that case in here?” Gillespie growled. “It could have gone through other avenues...”

“Perhaps Mrs. Adams is a sister of Mike Ryan, sir,” suggested Kildare.

“Mike Ryan? The ignorant bartender in the saloon over there?”

“Yes, sir; my old friend Mike Ryan.”

“Next patient!” called Gillespie. “You’ve got a taste for low company,” he added with his growl, “that may drag you down to the gutter. And don’t say: ‘Yes, sir,’ to that!”

“No, sir,” said Kildare.

There was a commotion in the outer office, a hurrying of heavy feet, a confusion of voices.

The door was broken open and a burly ambulance driver with a prizefighter’s jaw and the bright little eyes of a pig came in, supporting a man doubled-up with pain. At the door appeared Conover, complaining: “I tried to keep them out, Dr. Gillespie!”

“Never mind him, Joe,” said the big man. “Here’s the little old doc, and he’ll fix you up. He fixes everybody up. He can look right through you like an X-ray.” Joe, slumped in a chair, managed to whisper, with a twisting grin: “Then he’ll see the slug that McCarthy left inside of me five years ago.”

“What d’you mean by this, Weyman?” demanded Gillespie. “Do you think this is the regular emergency ward, or what?”

Weyman, his cap in his hand, began backing up with small steps, only taking note that Kildare, on his knees, already was at work on the patient.

“Yeah, sure&mdash:emergency room,” said Weyman, “only it was farther away&mdash:and I thought about how fast the Doc is, here&mdash:and Joe is a pal of mine...”

“Get out!” commanded Gillespie, and Weyman disappeared, saying hastily as he went through the door: “Doc, he’s even got the same name as me! We was raised on the same block!”

“By the same cops with the same nightsticks,” commented Gillespie, suddenly grinning. “Let me get at that boy, Jimmy!”

“It’s all right, sir, I’ve got it...Stomach pains for several years, Joe?”

“Yeah, Doc. Off’n on. But this one&mdash:it’s different&mdash:it’s a sock in the eye...”

Pain cut off his breath. The smile he was trying to give turned into a ghastly, white contortion.

“How long has this pain been going on?...Nurse, ring Killefer in surgery. I’ve got a job for him. A rush job...And get an orderly here to take him...How long has this been going on, Joe?”

“Since about five this morning...I thought it’d pass...”

“And the pain went down lower?”

“Yes. And then I remembered about you&mdash:because I was scared.”

“Ten hours?” murmured Kildare. “I wish you’d remembered me sooner...”

As the orderly appeared with the wheeled stretcher, Kildare picked up Joe and laid him on his side on the table.

He said briefly: “Dr. Killefer&mdash:ruptured gastric ulcer&mdash:ten hours old. Tell Killefer.”

Kildare gripped Joe’s hand and followed the stretcher to the door.

“I’ll see you through, Joe,” he said.

“Will you? That’s swell!” murmured Joe, and relaxed, his eyes closing over their story of pain.

“More of your low company, Kildare,” said Gillespie. “I see you’re the ‘doc’ to the whole district, now. When any ragamuffin pickpocket, yegg, or second-story man speaks of ‘the doc,’ he means young Dr. Kildare. And what do you get out of it? For the sake of a fugitive rat with a bullet-hole in him, you slap down the authorities, kick the hospital in the face, and damn near ruin yourself; and what would they do for you?”

“I don’t know,” said Kildare, thoughtfully, “but I think some of them would die for us&mdash:and they’re the only ones who would.”

CHAPTER 2

THE call OF “Next Patient!” brought in a sallow- faced youth of twenty-two and his personal physician, a Dr. Arthur Sloan, who kept the sprightly verve of an athlete at fifty-five. “You have the case history and the laboratory reports already, Dr. Gillespie,” said Sloan.

“Good,” said Gillespie, “and now I have the man! Arthur Sloan is a known and experienced physician, Kildare, but you may be able to help him.”

“I’ll try, sir,” said Kildare.

Dr. Sloan stiffened.

“I hoped for your personal attention to a very baffling case, Dr. Gillespie,” he said.

“You’ll have it if it’s needed,” said Gillespie. “But Kildare does something more than fill time-gaps around here. He won’t waste many minutes if he hasn’t an idea.”

“Very well,” said Sloan, coldly, “if you’ll remove the bathrobe, Mr. Loring...”

Kildare went briskly ahead with his examination.

“This case has been worked up thoroughly,” said Dr. Sloan, who from the corner of his eye seemed to condemn every gesture Kildare was making. “It seems a characteristic case of chronic malaria...you know that we come from a malarial district. Mr. Loring is losing strength and appetite, together with weight. He has a degree or two of fever in the afternoons. Classical symptoms, you’ll agree. But I bring him here because I’ve been unable to find the malaria plasmodia in any of the blood smears. However, it must be malaria!”

“I’m afraid that I can’t agree with you, Dr. Sloan,” said Kildare, stepping back a little.

“Ah, you don’t agree?” asked Sloan, smiling a little. “After your very brief examination, what do you think it may be?”

“Bacterio endocarditis,” said Kildare.

“My dear young man!” said Sloan, and shrugged his shoulders in resignation.

“What’s that?” asked Gillespie. “Bacterio endocarditis? You’re not trying to be original?”

“No, sir.”

“Quite a bit out of the way, I should say,” commented Sloan.

“You’ve taken the blood smears at different times of the day, Sloan?” asked Gillespie.

“Yes, sir. Repeated smears, and always at varying hours.”