A Treasury of Doctor Stories Read online

  “Sounds silly to me,” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “I don’t care how silly it sounds,” said the inspector. “It’s regulations. And, besides, she isn’t even a registered nurse.”

  “She’s a practical one,” said Doc Mellhorn. “Of course back on earth a lot of her patients died. But that was because when she didn’t like a patient, she poisoned him. Well, she can’t poison anybody here and I’ve kind of got her out of the notion of it anyway. She’s been doing A-1 work for me and I’d like to recommend her for—”

  “Please!” said the inspector. “Please! And as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve even been meddling with the staff. I’ve a note here on young Asmodeus—Asmodeus XIV—”

  “Oh, you mean Mickey!” said Doc Mellhorn, with a chuckle. “Short for Mickey Mouse. We call him that in the clinic. And he’s a young imp if I ever saw one.”

  “The original Asmodeus is one of our most prominent citizens,” said the inspector severely. “How do you suppose he felt when we got your report that his fourteenth great-grandson had rickets?”

  “Well,” said Doc Mellhorn, “I know rickets. And he had ’em. And you’re going to have rickets in these youngsters as long as you keep feeding ’em low-grade coke. I put Mickey on the best Pennsylvania anthracite and look at him now!”

  “I admit the success of your treatment,” said the inspector, “but, naturally—well, since then we’ve been deluged with demands for anthracite from as far south as Sheol. We’ll have a float a new bond issue. And what will the taxpayers say?”

  “He was just cutting his first horns when he came to us,” said Doc Melihorn reminiscently, “and they were coming in crooked. Now, I ask you, did you ever see a straighter pair? Of course, if I’d had cod liver oil—My gracious, you ought to have somebody here that can fill a prescription; I can’t do it all.”

  The inspector shut his papers together with a snap. “I’m sorry, Doctor Mellhorn,” he said, “but this is final. You have no right here, in the first place; no local license to practice in the second—”

  “Yes, that’s a little irregular,” said Doc Mellhorn “but I’m a registered member of four different medical associations—you might take that into account. And I’ll take any examination that’s required.”

  “No,” said the inspector violently. “No, no, no! You can’t stay here! You’ve got to go away! It isn’t possible!”

  Doc Mellhorn drew a long breath. “Well,” he said, “there wasn’t any work for me at the other place. And here you won’t let me practice. So what’s a man to do?”

  The inspector was silent.

  “Tell me,” said Doc Mellhorn presently. “Suppose you do throw me out? What happens to Miss Smith and Paisley and the rest of them?”

  “Oh, what’s done is done,” said the inspector impatiently, “here as well as anywhere else. We’ll have to keep on with the anthracite and the rest of it. And Hades only knows what’ll happen in the future. If it’s any satisfaction to you, you’ve started something.”

  “Well, I guess Smith and Ferguson between them can handle the practice,” said Doc Mellhorn. “But that’s got to be a promise.”

  “It’s a promise,” said the inspector.

  “Then there’s Mickey—I mean Asmodeus,” said Doc Mellhorn. “He’s a smart youngster—smart as a whip—if he is a hellion. Well, you know how a youngster gets. Well, it seems he wants to be a doctor. But I don’t know what sort of training he’d get—”

  “He’ll get it,” said the inspector feverishly. “We’ll found the finest medical college you ever saw, right here in West Ball. We’ll build a hospital that’ll knock your eye out. You’ll be satisfied. But now, if you don’t mind—”

  “All right,” said Doc Mellhorn, and rose.

  The inspector looked surprised. “But don’t you want to—” he said. “I mean my instructions are we’re to give you a banquet, if necessary—after all, the community appreciates—”

  “Thanks,” said Doc Mellhorn, with a shudder, “but if I’ve got to go, I’d rather get out of town. You hang around and announce your retirement, and pretty soon folks start thinking they ought to give you a testimonial. And I never did like testimonials.”

  All the same, before he left he took a silver half dollar out of Mickey Asmodeus’ chin.

  When he was back on the road again and the lights of the gates had faded into a low ruddy glow behind him, Doc Mellhorn felt alone for the first time. He’d been lonely at times during his life, but he’d never felt alone like this before. Because, as far as he could see, there was only him and Lizzie now.

  “Now, maybe if I’d talked to Aesculapius—” he said. “But pshaw, I always was pigheaded.”

  He didn’t pay much attention to the way he was driving and it seemed to him that the road wasn’t quite the same. But he felt tired for a wonder—bone-tired and beaten—and he didn’t much care about the road. He hadn’t felt tired since he left earth, but now the loneliness tired him.

  “Active—always been active,” he said to himself. “I can’t just lay down on the job. But what’s a man to do?”

  “What’s a man to do?” he said. “I’m a doctor. I can’t work miracles.”

  Then the black fit came over him and he remembered all the times he’d been wrong and all the people he couldn’t do anything for. “Never was much of a doctor, I guess,” he said. “Maybe, if I’d gone to Vienna. Well, the right kind of man would have gone. And about that Bigelow kid,” he said. “How was I to know he’d hemorrhage? But I should have known.

  “I’ve diagnosed walking typhoid as appendicitis. Just the once, but that’s enough. And I still don’t know what held me back when I was all ready to operate. I used to wake up in a sweat, six months afterward, thinking I had.

  “I could have saved those premature twins if I’d known as much then as I do now. I guess that guy Dafoe would have done it anyway—look at what he had to work with. But I didn’t. And that finished the Gorhams’ having children. That’s a dandy doctor, isn’t it? Makes you feel fine.

  “I could have pulled Old Man Halsey through. And Edna Biggs. And the little Lauriat girl. No. I couldn’t have done it with her. That was before insulin. I couldn’t have cured Ted Allen. No, I’m clear on that. But I’ve never been satisfied about the Collins woman. Bates is all right—good as they come. But I knew her, inside and out—ought to, too—she was the biggest nuisance that ever came into the office. And if I hadn’t been down with the flu . . .

  “Then there’s the flu epidemic. I didn’t take my clothes off, four days and nights. But what’s the good of that, when you lose them? Oh, sure, the statistics looked good. You can have the statistics.

  “Should have started raising hell about the water supply two years before I did.

  “Oh, yes, it makes you feel fine, pulling babies into the world. Makes you feel you’re doing something. And just fine when you see a few of them, twenty-thirty years later, not worth two toots on a cow’s horn. Can’t say I ever delivered a Dillinger. But there’s one or two in state’s prison. And more that ought to be. Don’t mind even that so much as a few of the fools. Makes you wonder.

  “And then, there’s incurable cancer. That’s a daisy. What can you do about it, Doctor? Well, Doctor, we can alleviate the pain in the last stages. Some. Ever been in a cancer ward, Doctor? Yes, Doctor, I have.

  “What do you do for the common cold, Doctor? Two dozen clean linen handkerchiefs. Yes, it’s a good joke—I’ll laugh. And what do you do for a boy when you know he’s dying, Doctor? Take a silver half dollar out of his ear. But it kept the Lane kid quiet and his fever went down that night. I took the credit, but I don’t know why it went down.

  “I’ve only got one brain. And one pair of hands.

  “I could have saved. I could have done. I could have.

  “Guess it’s just as well you can’t live forever. You make fewer mistakes. And sometimes I’d see Bates looking at me as if he wondered why I ever thought I could practice.

>   “Pigheaded, opinionated, ineffective old imbecile! And yet, Lord, Lord, I’d do it all over again.”

  He lifted his eyes from the pattern of the road in front of him. There were white markers on it now and Lizzie seemed to be bouncing down a residential street. There were trees in the street and it reminded him of town. He rubbed his eyes for a second and Lizzie rolled on by herself—she often did. It didn’t seem strange to him to stop at the right house.

  “Well, Mother,” he said rather gruffly to the group on the lawn. “Well, Dad. . . . Well, Uncle Frank.” He beheld a small, stern figure advancing, hands outstretched. “Well, Grandma,” he said meekly.

  Later on he was walking up and down in the grape arbor with Uncle Frank. Now and then he picked a grape and ate it. They’d always been good grapes, those Catawbas, as he remembered them.

  “What beats me,” he said, not for the first time, “is why I didn’t notice the Gates. The second time, I mean.”

  “Oh, that Gate,” said Uncle Frank, with the easy, unctuous roll in his voice that Doc Mellhorn so well remembered. He smoothed his handlebar mustaches. “That Gate, my dear Edward—well, of course it has to be there in the first place. Literature, you know. And then, it’s a choice,” he said richly.

  “I’ll draw cards,” said Doc Mellhorn. He ate another grape.

  “Fact is,” said Uncle Frank, “that Gate’s for one kind of person. You pass it and then you can rest for all eternity. Just fold your hands. It suits some.”

  “I can see that it would,” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “Yes,” said Uncle Frank, “but it wouldn’t suit a Mellhorn. I’m happy to say that very few of our family remain permanently on that side. I spent some time there myself.” He said, rather self-consciously, “Well, my last years had been somewhat stormy. So few people cared for refined impersonations of our feathered songsters, including lightning sketches. I felt that I’d earned a rest. But after a while—well, I got tired of being at liberty.”

  “And what happens when you get tired?” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “You find out what you want to do,” said Uncle Frank.

  “My kind of work?” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “Your kind of work,” said his uncle. “Been busy, haven’t you?”

  “Well,” said Doc Mellhorn. “But here. If there isn’t so much as a case of mumps in—”

  “Would it have to be mumps?” said his uncle. “Of course, if you’re aching for mumps, I guess it could be arranged. But how many new souls do you suppose we get here a day?”

  “Sizable lot, I expect.”

  “And how many of them get here in first-class condition?” said Uncle Frank triumphantly. “Why, I’ve seen Doctor Rush—Benjamin Rush—come back so tired from a day’s round he could hardly flap one pinion against the other. Oh, if it’s work you want—And then, of course, there’s the earth.”

  “Hold on,” said Doc Mellhorn. “I’m not going to appear to any young intern in wings and a harp. Not at my time of life. And anyway, he’d laugh himself sick.”

  “ ’Tain’t that,” said Uncle Frank. “Look here. You’ve left children and grandchildren behind you, haven’t you? And they’re going on?”

  “Yes,” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “Same with what you did,” said Uncle Frank. “I mean the inside part of it—that stays. I don’t mean any funny business—voices in your ear and all that. But haven’t you ever got clean tuckered out, and been able to draw on something you didn’t know was there?”

  “Pshaw, any man’s done that,” said Doc Mellhorn. “But you take the adrenal—”

  “Take anything you like,” said Uncle Frank placidly. “I’m not going to argue with you. Not my department. But you’ll find it isn’t all adrenalin. Like it here?” he said abruptly. “Feel satisfied?”

  “Why, yes,” said Doc Mellhorn surprisedly, “I do.” He looked around the grape arbor and suddenly realized that he felt happy.

  “No, they wouldn’t all arrive in first-class shape,” he said to himself. “So there’d be a place.” He turned to Uncle Frank. “By the way,’ he said diffidently, “I mean, I got back so quick—there wouldn’t be a chance of my visiting the other establishment now and then? Where I just came from? Smith and Ferguson are all right, but I’d like to keep in touch.”

  “Well,” said Uncle Frank, “you can take that up with the delegation.” He arranged the handkerchief in his breast pocket. “They ought to be along any minute now,” he said. “Sister’s been in a stew about it all day. She says there won’t be enough chairs, but she always says that.”

  “Delegation?” said Doc Mellhorn. “But—”

  “You don’t realize,” said Uncle Frank, with his rich chuckle. “You’re a famous man. You’ve broken pretty near every regulation except the fire laws, and refused the Gate first crack. They’ve got to do something about it.”

  “But—” said Doc Mellhorn, looking wildly around for a place of escape.

  “Sh-h!” hissed Uncle Frank. “Hold up your head and look as though money were bid for you. It won’t take long—just a welcome.” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “My,” he said with frank admiration, “you’ve certainly brought them out. There’s Rush, by the way.”

  “Where?” said Doc Mellhorn.

  “Second from the left, third row, in a wig,” said Uncle Frank. “And there’s—”

  Then he stopped, and stepped aside. A tall grave figure was advancing down the grape arbor—a bearded man with a wise majestic face who wore robes as if they belonged to him, not as Doc Mellhorn had seen them worn in college commencements. There was a small fillet of gold about his head and in his left hand, Doc Mellhorn noticed without astonishment, was a winged staff entwined with two fangless serpents. Behind him were many others. Doc Mellhorn stood straighter.

  The bearded figure stopped in front of Doc Mellhorn. “Welcome, Brother,” said Aesculapius.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Doctor,” said Doc Mellhorn. He shook the outstretched hand. Then he took a silver half dollar from the mouth of the left-hand snake.

  The Nurse

  BEN AMES WILLIAMS

  THERE is a curious institution, widely distributed, called the waiting room. You will find specimens almost everywhere, in railroad stations, in hotels, in department stores, and in business offices of every description. The waiting room is a fearful thing. At best it offers boredom, and at the worst it is a place where one sits through minutes that seem interminable, filled with apprehension or with despair.

  Millie had had some experience of waiting rooms, and she dreaded them. She had been sitting in this particular waiting room at the employment agency for three days. She was a little woman, one of those women whose appearance suggests that they have been wrung dry by the torque and torsion of their own emotions; a little woman thin and taut and just now curiously tremulous. She was probably about forty-five years old and she sat among the others without taking any part in the occasional passages of conversation among them. She seemed to be unconscious of their presence, and her eyes, inflamed and weary, looked blankly straight before her. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, they became suffused with tears; not merely misted with moisture, but drowned in a swimming, drenching flood which flowed over her lids and down her dry cheeks until she remembered to wipe away these evidences of the grief which racked her.

  On her first day, when she had tried to talk with a prospective employer, she had been unable to control her voice; and her eyes had thus gushed tears till the other woman said impatiently :

  “Well, I certainly don’t want you if you’re the crying kind,” and turned away.

  Millie had then been rather relieved than disappointed. She always dreaded this necessity of seeking new employment while she was still in the throes of her latest loss. So she sat all that day and the next and into the third. And whenever it appeared that she must talk with one of those who came here seeking servants, she averted her eyes, weakly endeavoring to avoid attracting their notice, w
illing to put off the inevitable adventure of new employment.

  But on the third day she found herself replying in a dull voice to the questions put to her by a woman, perhaps thirty years old, who introduced herself by a name which Millie scarcely heard. She was not interested in the names of her mistresses; she had had so many of them. They were a shadowy procession in the background of her life, those in they past no more definite in her mind than those who waited for her in the future. This woman’s name might have been Smith or Brown. It happened to be Mrs. Jones.

  Millie answered her questions in a dull and lifeless tone, telling as impersonally as though she spoke of someone else what her life had been. She had been a baby nurse since she was seventeen years old. It would be hard to pack into one sentence a more tragic biography. A woman who has loved one baby and lost it wears forever after in her eyes the mark of her grief like a pale flower. But Millie had been condemned by life to love many babies and to lose them all.

  Mrs. Jones asked question upon question, but Millie asked only one. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “A little girl,” Mrs. Jones replied, and Millie’s ravaged face seemed to lighten faintly at the word.

  “I always like the girls best,” she confessed.

  They arranged for Millie to come the next morning to take the place, and Millie was for the rest of that day a little more cheerful. Her aching grief found anodyne in the prospect of having another baby to love.

  There is hardly another ordeal comparable to that of entering the home of strangers and finding yourself there at once an alien, an outsider, liable to instant dismissal, and at the same time in such an intimate relation to the life of the family as that held by the baby nurse. Millie was still sick with sorrow over the loss of her last baby, a loss as irrevocable and a grief as poignant as though the baby had died. But she had no more tears, and she entered this new household, hiding her misery behind a stony countenance.