“I wouldn’t call her that. I’ve known her a while, but – look here, what are you driving at?”
“Jerome sees too much of her. He has no sense of form and I don’t like it. Apart from being bad for the hospital, it’s bad for him. Now that girl’s certainly a communist, and the two of them have been seen at too many meetings not to get themselves talked about. I don’t like it. Mind you, I’m not saying anything more than that.”
“You seem to be hinting at a hell of a lot more than that, Jack.”
“Am I? Perhaps so. Other people are, if I’m not.”
I finished my drink and poured myself another.
“What’s got into everyone these days I don’t know. This damned Spanish War, you’d think it was happening here. All these meetings where the same people tell each other the same old things. What do they know about Spain? How the hell do they know whether what they say is true or not? At best they’re guessing, at worst they’re saying what they like to hear. Those Spanish War meetings are like revivals in a Methodist tent. What’s Spain to a man like Jerome? He’s never been there. That country’s always been an impossible country. What’s Spain to any of these people except an excuse for them to give free play to their neuroticism?”
I became irritated. “Don’t be so stuffy, Jack.”
“You think I really am?” He looked like a scientist faced with new evidence it was his duty to assess. “Perhaps you’re right and I am stuffy. But I was talking about Jerome, not myself. Some of the things he’s doing and saying at the hospital are getting past a joke. We’ve had a new bequest, a considerable one, and with no strings attached. Before there was the slightest mention of how the money was to be used, he was saying around the corridors, so that everyone heard him, ‘Well, now I suppose we’ll be building a new pleasure dome for our rich patients.’ He knew as well as the rest of us that the Beamis is short of beds, but he made it sound like a dirty deal. Of course what he wants is an extension of the out-patient’s facilities, and I’m not saying he’s wrong in that – at least not at the moment. It was his work in that clinic for the unemployed that got him started in all this. I’m not saying it was a wrong thing to do, but all sorts of people have got around him on account of that.”
Jack was seldom so talkative and I looked at him in surprise.
“Of course,” he went on, “every word he said reached Dr. Rodgers. Why does he have to behave that way? Why do all you people talk as though everyone in authority is a crook? Medicine should be above this propaganda.”
“According to Jerome, a good deal of medicine in this town is on the side of the big battalions.”
Jack’s cheeks showed a faint flush. “He’s too suggestible. He used to be a medical man, and that’s what he still is. Politics disgust me.”
“Can you keep politics out of anything these days?”
“You people rot your minds with all this stuff you read and repeat it to each other. I suppose you think I’m a reactionary.”
“Since you ask me, I do. This country happens to have about one million unemployed in it. The States must have about twelve million. Meanwhile Hitler’s on the rampage, and you want to live in an ivory tower.”
Christopher shrugged. “It so happens I have a scientific mind, George. You haven’t, and neither has Jerome. He’s a good biochemist – it amazes me how much science he actually does know. But that’s because he has an incredible memory and was well trained. He’s quicker to learn than anyone I’ve ever met. But he’s not a scientist.”
“Okay. He’s not a member of the priesthood. So what?”
“So this. Outside his profession, he’s as gullible as anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Which no scientist ever is – outside his profession?”
Jack gave me a coldly level glance. “It so happens, George, that I owe a great deal to Jerome and I care what happens to my friends. He’s rotting his mind with this stuff. He’s a wonderful surgeon. You can’t possibly know how good he is. Don’t ask me why. Surgeons like him are born, not made. In time he could become the greatest abdominal man on the continent. Besides that he’s got a mysterious power very few doctors possess. I can’t describe it, exactly, and I don’t want to sound sentimental or give you any of the guff you read about doctors in novels and magazines. But it’s an empirically observed fact that some medical men have more powers of healing than others. In that respect Jerome’s unique. I’ve never seen his equal.”
“Well?”
“This is very rare, George. A man like him is worth ten dozen politicians. But if he keeps on the way he’s going now –” he gave an exasperated shrug. “He’s letting these neurotics and troublemakers use him. There’s not one in that whole crowd of socialists and communists and talkers who’d be acting like that if they were personally successful.”
“Jack,” I said, “tell that to your friends in St. James Street, where you probably heard it the first time.”
“Did I?” He flushed in anger, a rare thing for him to do. “Let me tell you something. They’re using a man better than themselves. They flatter him and he laps it up. If I didn’t love the damned fool I’d be disgusted. I don’t like seeing a first-class man used by a third-class one, and above all I don’t like seeing him used by that bitch of a nurse. Maybe I’m stuffy, but there are a lot of people who look up to Jerome. Whether he likes it or not, he’s expected to set an example of discipline in the hospital.”
Never had I heard so much conversation from Jack Christopher, who could be silent for hours. If I had been more observant I would have realized that such an outburst from a man like him was actually an understatement, but I was not observant, I was blinded by my own feelings, I was determined to permit in myself no jealousy of Jerome and I was hostile to Jack’s entire point of view outside of his work. I became angry, and would have soon become offensive if Jerome had not at that moment entered the house.
We heard his voice loud in the hall: “Well everybody, here I am!”
Sally came tumbling down the stairs to meet him, he picked her up and swung her almost to the ceiling as she squealed with delight, and while still playing with her he called to me to pour him a drink, and to make it a stiff one. He continued to play with Sally who gurgled with joyous laughter while Jack contemplated the scene as though he were trying to figure out its hidden mechanisms. Jerome roughed her up and she loved it, and he was still doing it when Catherine came down. He tossed the child onto a sofa and turned to his wife, kissed her, put his arm about her waist and fondled her, slapped Sally’s backside, swallowed half of his drink and told Jack he wanted to speak to him in his study. Jack rose and went with him, Sally ran upstairs to find something she wanted to show her father, and Catherine and I were left alone.
“Well,” I said, “this seems one of his manic days.”
“Every day would be like this if he didn’t wear so many people out they begin to wear him out in turn. Come, help me set the table.”
We made small talk between dining room and kitchen and a feeling of desire came to me, so sharp it hurt, as I saw the curve of her hips.
“Jack tells me Jerome’s been doing too many things,” I said.
“That’s how the man is made. Sometimes I wonder if he can think of anything else besides Spain. Do you think about Spain all the time?”
“I suppose I do.”
“I’m sure he thinks about Spain in the middle of his operations. What’s the matter with me, George? I can’t think about Spain when I’m cooking a dinner. I could spend a week doing nothing and never think about Spain at all.”
“It’s a pretty important subject these days, Catherine.”
“I suppose it is. But do you really believe that’s why all you people think about nothing else?”
She looked at me with a frown line between her eyes, her heartshaped face not at all serene.
“It’s not so easy being a good wife to Jerome,” she said. I laughed: “It must be tiring sometimes.”
“Tiring!�
�� she turned away. “Jack believes he’s doing too much outside his work.”
“Jack’s right. He’s the only one of our friends who’s not completely blind.” She turned to me again. “He changes so fast, George. Can’t you see the change in him since last fall? What causes it? I wish I knew. He’s so exposed and he doesn’t know it.” She lifted her hands and let them fall. “Oh, let’s not talk about us. How was your own week?”
“My weeks are always the same.”
It was seven-thirty before we sat down at table and Jerome, not noticing Catherine’s mood, talked with manic excitement about a Spanish tank officer he was going to introduce to a public meeting the next night.
“When the war began he was a garage mechanic and now he’s a full colonel. How’s that for proof of what a man can do in a good system? For the first time I’m beginning to think that Norman Bethune was dead right about Spain. Even that Englishman Clifford was right. Now that the Soviets are helping them, the Loyalists are going to win. But they do need doctors. Beth’s over already. They need all the outside help they can get.”
When we went into the living room for our coffee, Jerome’s excitement spread itself as it so often did. He put his arm about Catherine’s waist and gave her a glance that caused Jack to turn aside in embarrassment. He was certainly obvious; when he felt sexual desire it showed as though an electric light had been ignited in his face. With a quiet smile Catherine slipped away to an armchair, and I guessed this was one of her bad days.
The phone stabbed into the middle of Jerome’s monologue, he answered it and said it was for me. Wondering who beside my parents could know I was here, I picked up the instrument and heard Shatwell’s voice hysterical with anxiety.
“George, Martha is dying. They wouldn’t let me see her at first, but I made them and it’s pitiful and they’re doing damn all.”
He poured out details about her symptoms until I stopped him and asked why he did not consult her doctor.
“How can I? The chap who cut her up, the surgeon, you understand, is in Detroit or Buffalo or some such bloody place reading some bloody paper to some bloody other doctors.”
“I meant her own physician.”
“Oh, he’s absolutely not of the slightest use whatever.”
“Come on, Randolph, how do you know that?”
“This physician chap who turned her over to the sawbones who botched her, he’s conked out himself. He’s a patient here too.” He hesitated. “For God’s sake help me, George. Speak to Dr. Martell, will you please, George?”
I had seen this coming. “That’s asking quite a lot, Randolph. It’s not Dr. Martell’s case.”
“But he works in this bloody hospital, doesn’t he?”
“Who is her physician?”
“I think the name of the chap is Crawford. Listen, old boy, this isn’t merely serious, it’s desperate. I’ve spoken to all the housemen or interns or whatever it is they call them over here, and it’s quite obvious not one of them is giving me anything but a cover-up. If Martha has to wait for this chap to come back from Detroit she’ll have to wait till Monday, and by Monday she’ll be dead.”
“Come on, Randolph! They don’t take cases into hospitals and just leave them.”
“Don’t they, though! Don’t they! George, please help us!”
“I’ll ask the doctor, but I can’t promise anything. Where can I reach you if I have to call you back?”
“Here at the hospital. I’m sticking, George. They’d like to get rid of me but they bloody well can’t.”
After hanging up I spoke to Jerome, who frowned and asked Jack and me to join him in his study. Sitting in a swivel chair with a cigarette between thumb and forefinger, his eyes hooded against the smoke, he listened in silence while I repeated Shatwell’s story. Christopher gave me a glance suggesting he wished I’d dropped dead.
“Crawford’s laid out, all right,” Jerome grunted when I had finished. “The poor devil’s passing a kidney stone.”
I had never seen Jerome involved in a case, and the change in him was dramatically impressive. His gaiety disappeared and so did the youthfulness of his manner. He became intense, concentrated and grave, and he looked like my idea of a general pondering a tough decision. Christopher responded to the change and reverted to a correct intern in the presence of a senior.
“Do you know anything about this patient?” Jerome asked him. “I was with Dr. Crawford when he made his rounds this morning.”
“And?”
“I’d rather you asked Dr. Crawford himself.” Jerome shot him a bleak glance and Jack stopped hedging. “There’ve been complications. Dr. Crawford said if her temperature continued to rise it would be necessary to go in once more.”
They exchanged some medical language and Jerome abruptly picked up the telephone extension from his desk and dialed the hospital.
“Who’s on her floor tonight?” he said over his shoulder to Jack. “I think it’s Sawyer.”
When the intern came onto the line I felt sorry for him. Jerome shot a series of questions at him, interrupted most of the replies, and finally exploded.
“Has it occurred to you that you’re being trained to think for yourself? Even to act for yourself? You tell me her temperature was 101 at eleven-thirty, 102½ at three and you tell me it’s now 103. And while this goes on you’ve dutifully observed what you’ve read on her chart. What’s that you say? I know Dr. Crawford’s passing a kidney stone. The whole hospital knows about that damned stone. Aren’t there any other doctors? You say Dr. McGregor’s up north and Dr. Smith can’t be found? Damn it, you knew where I could be found. Why didn’t you call me?”
He slammed down the phone and looked at Christopher as though it were Jack’s fault.
“Dr. North is in town,” Christopher said quietly. “And I know where I can locate Dr. Adamson and Dr. Simpson.”
“Yes,” said Jerome, “I know where I can locate them, too.” We followed him out and heard him tell Catherine he had to go to the hospital. Before leaving he asked her to make his apologies to the guests who had been invited for the rest of the evening.
“Perhaps I’d better go along with you?” suggested Christopher. “No, you stay here.”
“I’d really prefer to go.”
“And I’d really prefer you here.”
Jack went slightly white as the door closed behind Jerome and we heard his feet running down the steps. We heard his car start and drive away.
“Damn him!” Jack said between closed lips.
He came into the room and looked at Catherine, she looked back and they seemed to understand each other. Catherine was tired and anxious, and I hardly knew what to say, for I did not understand something which she and Jack, without having mentioned it to one another, clearly did understand.
Then steps sounded and the first guests arrived, followed by more, and soon the familiar chorus filled the living room: Spain, Chamberlain, Blum, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Roosevelt, the Soviets, capital, unemployment and all the rest of it. I found my way to Catherine, sat on the floor beside her chair and our eyes met.
“I wish I were in bed,” she said. “Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Not till Jerome comes back.”
“Is anything serious the matter?”
“With Jerome? Yes, I’m afraid there is.”
“I meant with you.”
“Oh me! I’m just weary of being half of a person. Help Arthur Lazenby with the drinks and forget about me.”
“Wherever Arthur is, he’s always serving the drinks.”
“Wherever there’s an evening like this, there’s always Arthur.”
“Except that he doesn’t talk.”
“You talk, George. It’s good for you. Talk all you like.” But that night I did not feel like talking at all; or rather, I wanted only to talk to Catherine, and not about politics. Jack Christopher, who was spending his first and only evening in this kind of a crowd, sat in a corner chair with his fingertips pressed together
and his eyes on the ceiling. For an hour nobody paid him the slightest attention and he paid none to anyone else. Lazenby crossed and tried to interest him in a beer, then in some broken conversation, but he failed and presently found himself another place. Around eleven-thirty Jack left the room and I guessed his destination was the phone in Jerome’s study. Soon afterwards I was conscious of him tall and aloof in the doorway looking with exasperated contempt at the cluster of intellectuals bent forward to argue and agree, and when he caught my eye, I joined him in the hall.
“Well,” he said coldly, “he’s done it. He’s operated on your friend’s mistress.”
“How do you know she’s Shatwell’s mistress?”
He disregarded the question and said: “I suppose it might have been worse.”
“For Mrs. Moffat?”
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn about Mrs. Moffat.”
“Is it your idea that he should have let her die for the sake of medical ethics?”
Jack gave me a glance of withering contempt, then his anger disappeared almost instantly behind the facade of his professional manner. But he look at me very coldly.
“You’d never have made that remark if you hadn’t heard him make similar ones. And he’d not make them if it wasn’t for these new friends and ideas of his. He shouldn’t do it, George. What’s more, he knows he shouldn’t do it. Maybe it’s true that in one case in a thousand a patient’s neglected because he’s not important, but –”
“It occurred to Shatwell that this might be the one case in the thousand.”
“Which is not an original thought. About one family in ten gets the idea sooner or later that it’s not getting all it deserves from the medical profession.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. I heard Jerome’s conversation with that intern.”
“You heard only his half of it, and you aren’t in a position to understand it. You political people are always on the lookout for something crooked. I don’t know what’s the matter with you.” Jack gave an exasperated shrug. “At least he telephoned Detroit, but of course Dr. Rodgers wasn’t in his hotel room and he didn’t locate him. He did talk to Dr. Crawford, but Crawford’s blind with pain and apparently did nothing more than tell him to use his own judgment. Oh, I suppose in the technical sense Jerome’s been correct enough.”
Watch that Ends the Night Page 28
