Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “Oh, no,” Dr. Wing said. “It’s bed for you.”

  “If it’s all right,” Jane said, “I’ll go get her something to eat.”

  “Sure,” Dr. Wing said. “It’s all right with me.” And when Jane had gone, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now, Bettyann, tell me: What the devil was wrong with you yesterday?”

  “I—I went over to see old Mr. Starke, and when I left, I got to feeling weak, and, and . . . all of a sudden . . . there I was.” Her smile vanished. “How is he? Have you seen him today?”

  “I haven’t called. It’s hopeless, Bettyann. There’s nothing I can do for him. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Oh, I’m all right.”

  “Yes? Well, tell me one thing. When you came home yesterday, what did you do, eat a whole can of sugar?”

  “How did you . . .?”

  “Jane said it was all over the floor. She said you must have spilled a whole can.”

  “I was hungry.”

  Dr. Wing looked at her gravely. She felt her heart skip a beat. Oh, please, she thought, don’t be angry with me, Dr. Wing. I can’t tell you why.

  “It seems to have fixed you up all right, anyway. Well, let’s look at you.”

  By the time Jane came with breakfast, he had finished his examination.

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, as far as I can tell. We’ll bring her down to the office in a couple of days and give her a thorough check-up.”

  Jane placed the tray on the coverlet. Bettyann drank the milk hungrily. Looking up from the eggs, she smiled at the doctor. “I’m sorry for causing you all this trouble.”

  “You’re being unconventional,” Dr. Wing said. “Next time, as a favor to me, come down with German measles or something I can recognize.”

  “She’s going to be all right?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Wing said.

  “She had a very upsetting experience. I think it might have been that.”

  The phone rang, and Jane excused herself to answer it.

  Bettyann began on the eggs.

  Dr. Wing said, “Where are you using up all that energy, Bettyann? You must be burning it up somehow. It’s abnormal. I don’t understand it.”

  Her eyes refused to meet his. He made her feel like a child. She looked at him shyly out of the corner of her eye. He was so . . . Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  Dr. Wing should be telling her his troubles, she thought. She could be understanding; she could smooth away his worries with gentle caresses, and here he was . . . was treating her (not in his conversation so much as in his manner) as a little girl, not as a woman.

  “Please, do me a favor. Will you?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “When you go by to see Mr. Starke, please phone me, will you, and tell me how he is?”

  Jane came back. “It was Miss Stemy. She wanted to know how you were. She heard you came back from Smith.”

  “Oh!” Bettyann said. “I’ve just got to go over and see her. She must be awfully disappointed in me!” It was Miss Stemy who had arranged for her scholarship to Smith. It seemed to Bettyann that, in trying to do what she believed she had to do, she was betraying everyone who believed in her. “I’ve got to talk to her this morning.”

  “No, you won’t!” Dr. Wing said. “You’re going to stay in bed today.”

  “I’m . . .”

  Dr. Wing was preparing to leave. “No arguments! I want you to get some rest. If you’re all right tomorrow, that’s something else.”

  When he was at the door, she called, “Dr. Wing!”

  “Yes?”

  “You will phone me?”

  “Eh? Oh! All right. I’m going over there right now.”

  “Phone?” Jane said.

  “She wants to know how old man Starke is this morning.”

  “I’ll walk down with you, Doctor,” Jane said. “Just a second.”

  Alone, Bettyann put the empty tray on the table beside her. She stretched her toes toward the foot of the bed and then snuggled down against the pillow. For a moment she let her injured arm grow until it was a normal companion to the other. If only she dared . . . but no, and the arm resumed its former shape. Yes, it will have to be done, she thought, but slowly done, so they will not notice: not at first. Two arms.

  She held Dr. Wing’s face before her. And I (she thought) will grow also, until I am worthy of him. She lost herself in dreams.

  Children! she thought.

  Yes, she thought. Children. Human children, not like me; human children with a strange mother. Oh, she thought, I shall grow old carefully. Straight and slim at sixty, clear of eye.

  Stirrings of maturity came. And desperate longing. It seemed to her that if only old man Starke lived, she would somehow have joined irrevocably the community of mankind.

  Again the face of Dr. Wing came to her. Her emotions went out to it. She buried her face in the pillow and clutching it desperately she sobbed silently, I love him, make me worthy of him, please, please. Love, she said to herself, love. I do love him. I can love. I can do that. I can love like a woman loves, although I am not truly a woman.

  When the phone rang she was still lost in dreams. Jane answered.

  After a moment, Bettyann called, “Who was it,?”

  “Dr. Wing!” Jane called back from the foot of the stairs.

  “How was—how was Mr. Starke?”

  “The same! He said to tell you, just the same!”

  Bettyann felt something almost physical drive deep into her heart.

  No, no, no, no, no, she sobbed.

  Dr. Wing came Saturday at nine o’clock and said it would be all right for her to get up.

  “See that she comes in Monday for a complete check-up, though.”

  “We’ll see that she gets down there,” Dave said.

  Bettyann dressed slowly. She viewed herself before the mirror with satisfaction. She twirled, rustling her skirt. You’re not too bad-looking, she told herself. She peered closer. She placed her middle fingers to the left of her nose, pulled down, gently, and examined her left eyeball with care. She seemed satisfied with what she saw. She repeated the process with her right eye. She stepped back. She hummed a gay little tune and twirled her skirt once more. She fluffed her hair with the comb, shook her head, rubbed her lips together, smiled at herself, and finally, assured, winked knowingly. She was absurdly happy.

  She puckered her lips to whistle.

  And stopped.

  She stared at her suddenly frozen mirror image. The lips grew lax; little trouble lines tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  Incredibly, for the few moments during which she had concerned herself with the routine duties traditional to woman, she had managed to forget the world. Looking back now, she realized that, as she made the familiar movements, her mind had been miles away in space and time. She frowned (but there was still a lingering residue of self-consciousness, for the frown was dainty and becoming).

  She went downstairs. Dave was in the living room. Jane was out shopping. Bettyann carried her coat.

  “You think you ought to go out?” Dave asked.

  “I wanted to go to the library and see Miss Stemy.”

  “Oh? I suppose that would be all right.” He nodded.

  “Yes, I think maybe that would be a good idea. Now, you’ll be going back to Smith, though. You tell her that. Next fall, I guess, won’t you?”

  “Don’t blame me for leaving college,” she said. “Please, Dad.”

  “What’s one semester more or less?” he said, puckering his lips with almost amusement. “I mean, you’ll go back and finish. That’s the important thing. You will?” he asked, with a trace of concern. “Mother feels quite strongly about it.” Not saying that his own hopes for her were also dependent, in a vague and actually undefined fashion, upon her getting a college degree—the degree symbolizing the recognition of his and Jane’s accomplishment as well as Bettyann�
��s. “Think it over,” he said. “I mean, very seriously, Bettyann. I know, right now, you’re unhappy and confused.” He waited to see if she were ready to ask for his help. He did not expect that she would. He was proud that she was independent and yet, in her independence, he suffered a loss and a sadness. The world had changed rather more rapidly than he cared to realize. “There are a lot of things you have to decide for yourself,” he said. “See how you feel in a couple of weeks or a month.”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll think . . . I think I’ll go back, Dad. If I can, if they’ll let me back in.”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “I’d better be going,” she said uneasily. “Miss Stemy leaves at noon Saturday, still? I want to catch her before she leaves.”

  “We’ll eat about one o’clock, then. You’ll be back?”

  “Yes. I’ll be back to eat. ‘By.”

  On her way downtown, she detoured by Dr. Wing’s office, hoping vainly to catch a glimpse of him, realizing as she passed the building that it was for this that she had been extra careful before the mirror. At the library she saw Miss Stemy sorting books behind the loan desk. Meekly she waited until the librarian looked up. “Miss Stemy, I . . . I’m . . . I owe you an apology.”

  “Well! Bettyann!” She came to the desk. “Bettyann, hello!”

  Miss Stemy drew a sharp look of annoyance from the bearded gentleman in the periodical room.

  “About Smith,” Bettyann whispered. “I want to explain. I don’t want you to think I’m running out.”

  “Bettyann? Pha! Certainly not. Ridiculous. You’re going back, though?”

  “. . . Yes. I don’t know. I—”

  “Now, listen. Of course you are.”

  “Well . . .”

  “You’ll miss it. I know. Confidentially, I had a little difficulty myself. But they didn’t want to let me back.” She lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. “Really. Were my parents mad! Believe me, I had to get back in. It was a lab course that did it. How I hated that lab! We had an instructor from—where the devil, Princeton? I’ll never forget him, though. We called him Reggie, not to his face . . . I was in hot water.”

  “I wanted you to understand. It wasn’t college. I was doing all right.”

  “Jane showed me your mid-term grades. All right!”

  “I wanted you to understand. I owe you so much, for the scholarship . . .”

  “You don’t owe me anything. Goodness sakes!”

  And then Bettyann was outside. She wanted to cry. Everyone was being so nice to her. She felt she had done nothing to deserve it. She felt that she brought only trouble to every life she touched and to everyone who tried to help her. She protested against fate: It’s not my fault, she thought. Then, hardening her lips: But it is. I fouled everything up, somehow. If . . . If . . .

  He’s got to get better, she thought. He’s just got to. I just didn’t go far enough last time. He’s not going to die. He’s not! He’s not! I won’t let him!

  She was half running toward old man Starke’s house. When she reached it, she was out of breath. She drew in oxygen through her skin and she breathed deeply, waiting, and when the nurse came, her breathing was soft and even.

  “Hello,” the nurse said. “Back?”

  “May I come in?”

  “He’s right where he was the day before yesterday.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nothing had changed. The old man lay motionless. The room was oppressive with the odor and the harsh sound of his breathing. The nurse had not bothered to accompany her, and she crossed (as if in a compulsive dream) to the bed.

  She reached out. She wanted to cringe away from her own body. Never in her life had she confronted a more terrifying moment. It was made terrifying now by both memory and anticipation.

  She touched the skin of his neck. Her finger tips explored, and her hand changed, and she placed her palm flat upon him. He stirred restlessly. The hand became misty and fluid.

  She was probing now with shock and sickness into a living red horror. Her eyes closed. Her lips moved soundlessly, saying, Please, oh, please, God, over and over. She forced herself to concentrate with every atom of her being. There, there, there.

  Please, oh, please . . .

  Now, now . . . not too much, don’t spend it all, don’t use it all . . .

  Oh, God.

  Too much energy.

  Easy. Easy.

  Just a little more.

  You must! she thought. How much energy am I using? Easy. A little more. There . . . Her breathing was shallow.

  Red, terrible death, please . . .

  Don’t stop now! No, you can’t, you mustn’t! Go on! Finish it!

  He’s got to live!

  Please.

  And an infinity later she turned and started away. Her thoughts spun crazily. Her knees dissolved. The doorway was forever. The individual is so weak, she thought, so weak: can’t change anything, hopeless, lost, so weak, so helpless. . . She felt herself falling. She tried to cry out in angry protest, and no sound came. She heard but she did not feel the heavy thud of something striking the floor.

  Please, she whimpered to herself in colossal blackness and echoing silence.

  Please.

  Old man Starke’s breathing changed. It seemed easy and regular and grateful, sighing soft counterpoint to the voices in the room.

  Dr. Wing had arrived in less than ten minutes, before even the ambulance appeared.

  “Move her, move her,” Dr. Wing said. Diabetic coma? Had he overlooked that? Was he getting so careless that . . .? No. “Hurry up, get her in the ambulance.” No. The sugar. She had eaten sugar before.

  In the ambulance he searched for her heartbeat. It was faint and regular and steady and weak. Slow. The pulse seemed to be dying.

  At the hospital he made the decision—had made it in fact on the way, subconsciously, but voiced it for himself for the first time to the nurse in the corridor: “Glucose.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “We’re going to have to feed this one intravenously.”

  In the white antiseptic room he laid bare her arm while the nurse wheeled in the holder for the glucose. He inserted the needle and taped it in place. He put a padded board along the back of her arm to hold the arm rigid. He was surprised to find his forehead damp.

  Damn her, he thought: damn her! (Not really, he thought, no, not really.) But suppose . . .?

  What’s wrong with her?

  “I’ll phone her parents. You watch her here, nurse.”

  Bettyann was unconscious still when Jane and Dave came. They were white-faced and frightened. Dr. Wing went out to get them.

  “How is she?” Dave demanded.

  “I think she’s going to be all right now.”

  “What is it?” Jane asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s just like the day before yesterday. I don’t, I don’t honestly know.” He was appalled by his ignorance and unwilling, before friends at least, to retreat behind the defenses of professional reserve and omniscient confidence.

  “We’d better get some specialists in here then,” Dave said.

  “Yes, I . . . Yes.” He felt hurt and defeated and exhausted and he wanted to sit down. “There’s a Dr. Albertson in Joplin. If it’s glandular . . .”

  “Let’s get him over here.”

  “He couldn’t do any more than I am, right now. I’m going to consult him on the phone . . .”

  “I’m not blaming you, Jerry,” Dave said.

  “I know you’re not.”

  “We shouldn’t have let her go out,” Jane said. “She should have stayed home in bed. She was sick when she came home. I could tell.”

  “May we see her?”

  “Yes.”

  They went to her room. She lay motionless.

  Dr. Wing crossed to her and felt her pulse. Jane and Dave stood hushed. Jane bit back tears.

  Wing turned and nodded reassuringly. He led them into the corridor. “Her pulse is stronger
. . . She’ll be all right. She’s got a beautiful heart. I’ll stay here. I don’t see any sense in you waiting, though. Go on home.”

  “I couldn’t,” Jane said.

  They went to the waiting room. They sat down. Wing offered Dave a cigarette. Dave nodded an abstracted thanks and bent to the flame. Wing put the lighter away and studied his hands.

  “I think, just like last time, she’ll wake up in a little while practically starved,” he said. “I think she’ll be all right in the morning. This time we’re going to keep her in bed until we can find out something.”

  “Maybe we could get this Joplin doctor over here,” Dave said.

  “Let’s wait,” Wing said. “Let’s let it wait, as long as she continues to improve. After I talk to him on the phone, he’ll know whether it’s necessary to come over or not.”

  Jane and Dave came to see her at ten o’clock Sunday. Bettyann was awake. “Don’t stay too long,” Wing told them. They sat for five minutes in her room, talking quietly.

  Bettyann was tired and listless. She tried to reassure them. She was ashamed of herself for what she was doing to them. She began to cry. “I didn’t intend . . . I didn’t intend . . .”

  She tried to choke back the tears.

  Jane went to her and touched her face and Dave cleared his throat uneasily.

  After they had gone, she lay staring at the smooth white ceiling. You spoil everything, she thought. You do. Everything.

  She slept, awoke hungry, ate, and felt infinitely improved.

  The cost of the hospital room weighed heavily on her. I’ll make it up to them, she promised herself over and over. It’s not right, she thought, I’ll . . . I’ll get a job. I’ll . . . Oh, I don’t know. I feel so awful about everything. I can’t do anything right.

  Listlessly she plucked at the sheet. She stared down at her body, and for a moment she hated the sight of it.

  Wing came again at four o’clock. “Hello, young lady. Feeling all right?”

  “Fine,” she smiled.

  “Now, now. Lie back there!” He drew up a chair to her bedside and sat down. She was still smiling at him. Her eyes had followed his every movement.