One Interne, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

Traditionally, the Coccidian Club show is given on the hottest night of spring, and that year was no exception. Two hundred doctors and students sweltered in the reception rooms of the old narrow house and another two hundred students pressed in at the doors, effectually sealing out any breezes from the Maryland night. The entertainment reached these latter clients only dimly, but refreshment was relayed back to them by a busy bucket brigade. Down cellar, the janitor made his annual guess that the sagging floors would hold up one more time.

Bill Tulliver was the coolest man in the hall. For no special reason he wore a light tunic and carried a crook during the only number in which he took part, the rendition of the witty, scurrilous and interminable song which described the failings and eccentricities of the medical faculty. He sat in comparative comfort on the platform and looked out over the hot sea of faces. The most important doctors were in front—Doctor Ruff, the ophthalmologist; Doctor Lane, the brain surgeon; Doctor Georgi, the stomach specialist; Doctor Barnett, the alchemist of internal medicine; and on the end of the row, with his saintlike face undisturbed by the rivulets of perspiration that poured down the long dome of his head, Doctor Norton, the diagnostician.

Like most young men who had sat under Norton, Bill Tulliver followed him with the intuition of the belly, but with a difference. He knelt to him selfishly as a sort of great giver of life. He wanted less to win his approval than to compel it. Engrossed in his own career, which would begin in earnest when he entered the hospital as an interne in July, his whole life was pointed toward the day when his own guess would be right and Doctor Norton’s would be wrong. In that moment he would emancipate himself—he need not base himself on the adding machine-calculating machine-probability machine-St. Francis of Assis machine any longer.

Bill Tulliver had not arrived unprovoked at this pitch of egotism. He was the fifth in an unbroken series of Dr. William Tullivers who had practised with distinction in the city. His father died last winter; it was not unnatural that even from the womb of school this last scion of a medical tradition should clamor for “self-expression.”

The faculty song, immemorially popular, went on and on. There was a verse about the sanguinary Doctor Lane, about the new names Doctor Brune made up for the new diseases he invented, about the personal idiosyncrasies of Doctor Schwartze and the domestic embroilments of Doctor Gillespie. Doctor Norton, as one of the most popular men on the staff, got off easy. There were some new verses—several that Bill had written himself:

“Herpes Zigler, sad and tired,
Will flunk you out or kill ya,
If you forget Alfonso wired
For dope on hoemophilia.
Bumtiddy—bum—bum,
Tiddy—bum—bum.
Three thousand years ago,
Three thousand years ago.”

He watched Doctor Zigler and saw the wince that puckered up under the laugh. Bill wondered how soon there would be a verse about him, Bill Tulliver, and he tentatively composed one as the chorus thundered on.

After the show the older men departed, the floors were sloshed with beer and the traditional roughhouse usurped the evening. But Bill had fallen solemn and, donning his linen suit, he watched for ten minutes and then left the hot hall. There was a group on the front steps, breathing the sparse air, and another group singing around the lamp-post at the corner. Across the street arose the great bulk of the hospital about which his life revolved. Between the Michael’s Clinic, and the Ward’s Dispensary arose a round full moon.

The girl—she was hurrying—reached the loiterers at the lamp-post at the same moment as Bill. She wore a dark dress and a dark, flopping hat, but Bill got an impression that there was a gayety of cut, if not of color, about her clothes. The whole thing happened in less than a minute; the man turning about—Bill saw that he was not a member of the grand confraternity—and was simply hurling himself into her arms, like a child at its mother.

The girl staggered backward with a frightened cry; and everyone in the group acted at once.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, yes,” she gasped. “I think he just passed out and didn’t realize he was grabbing at a girl.”

“We’ll take him over to the emergency ward and see if he can swallow a stomach pump.”

Bill Tulliver found himself walking along beside the girl.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, yes.” She was still breathing hard; her bosom rose, putting out its eternal promises, as if the breath she had taken in were the last breath left in the world.

“Oh, catch it—oh, catch it and take it—oh, catch it,” she sighed. “I realized right away that they were students. I shouldn’t have gone by there tonight.”

Her hair, dark and drawn back of her ears, brushed her shoulders. She laughed uncontrollably.

“He was so helpless,” she said. “Lord knows I’ve seen men helpless—hundreds of them just helpless—but I’ll never forget the expression in his face when he decided to—to lean on me.”

Her dark eyes shone with mirth and Bill saw that she was really self-reliant. He stared at her, and the impression of her beauty grew until, uncommitted by a word, by even a formal introduction, he felt himself going out toward her, watching the turn of her lips and the shifting of her cheeks when she smiled…

All this was in the three or four minutes that he walked beside her; not till afterward did he realise how profound the impression had been.

As they passed the church-like bulk of the administration building, an open cabriolet slowed down beside them and a man of about thirty-five jumped out. The girl ran toward him.

“Howard!” she cried with excited gayety. “I was attacked. There were some students in front of the Coccidian Club building——”

The man swung sharply and menacingly toward. Bill Tulliver.

“Is this one of them?” he demanded.

“No, no; he’s all right.”

Simultaneously Bill recognized him—it was Dr. Howard Durfee, brilliant among the younger surgeons, heartbreaker and swashbuckler of the staff.

“You haven’t been bothering Miss——”

She stopped him, but not before Bill had answered angrily:

“I don’t bother people.”

Unappeased, as if Bill were in some way responsible, Doctor Durfee got into his car; the girl got in beside him.

“So long,” she said. “And thanks.” Her eyes shone at Bill with friendly interest, and then, just before the car shot away, she did something else with them—narrowed them a little and then widened them, recognizing by this sign the uniqueness of their relationship. “I see you,” it seemed to say. “You registered. Everything’s possible.”

With the faint fanfare of a new motor, she vanished back into the spring night.

II

Bill was to enter the hospital in July with the first contingent of newly created doctors. He passed the intervening months at Martha’s Vineyard, swimming and fishing with Schoatze, his classmate, and returned tense with health and enthusiasm to begin his work.

The red square broiled under the Maryland sun. Bill went in through the administration building where a gigantic Christ gestured in marble pity over the entrance hall. It was by this same portal that Bills father had entered on his interneship thirty years before.

Suddenly Bill was in a condition of shock, his tranquillity was rent asunder, he could not have given a rational account as to why he was where he was. A dark-haired girl with great, luminous eyes had started up from the very shadow of the statue, stared at him just long enough to effect this damage, and then with an explosive “Hello!” vanished into one of the offices.

He was still gazing after her, stricken, haywire, scattered and dissolved—when Doctor Norton hailed him:

“I believe I’m addressing William Tulliver the fifth——”

Bill was glad to be reminded who he was.

“—looking somewhat interested in Doctor Durfee’s girl,” continued Norton.

“Is she?” Bill asked sharply. Then: “Oh, howdedo, Doctor?”

Dr. Norton decided to exercise his wit, of which he had plenty. “In fact we know they spend their days together, and gossip adds the evenings.”

“Their days? I should think he’d be too busy.”

“He is. As a matter of fact, Miss Singleton induces the state of coma during which he performs his internal sculpture. She’s an anaesthetist.”

“I see. Then they are—thrown together all day.”

“If you regard that as a romantic situation.” Doctor Norton looked at him closely. “Are you settled yet? Can you do something for me right now?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I know you don’t go on the ward till tomorrow, but I’d like you to go to East Michael and take a P. E. and a history.”

“Certainly.”

“Room 312. I’ve put your methodical friend Schoatze on the trail of another mystery next door.”

Bill hurried to his room on the top of Michael, jumped into a new white uniform, equipped himself with instruments. In his haste he forgot that this was the first time he had performed an inquisition unaided. Outside the door he smoothed himself into a calm, serious manner. He was almost a white apostle when we walked into the room; at least he tried to be.

A paunchy, sallow man of forty was smoking a cigarette in bed.

“Good morning,” Bill said heartily. “How are you this morning?”

“Rotten,” the man said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Bill set down his satchel and approached him like a young cat after its first sparrow.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“Everything. My head aches, my bones ache, I can’t sleep, I don’t eat, I’ve got fever. My chauffeur ran over me, I mean ran over me, I mean ran me, if you know what I mean. I mean from Washington this morning. I