Diagnosis had become a workaday matter—almost. He had made a few nice guesses and Doctor Norton had given him full credit.
“Nine times out of ten I’ll be right,” Norton said. “The rare thing is so rare that I’m out of the habit of looking for it. That’s where you young men come in; you’re cocked for the rare thing and that one time in ten you find it.”
“It’s a great feeling,” said Bill. “I got a big kick out of that actinomycosis business.”
“You look tired for your age,” said Doctor Norton suddenly. “At twenty-five you shouldn’t be existing entirely on nervous energy, Bill, and that’s what you’re doing. The people you grew up with say they never see you. Why not take a couple of hours a week away from the hospital, if only for the sake of your patients? You took so many chemistry tests of Mr. Doremus that we almost had to give him blood transfusions to build him up again.”
“I was right,” said Bill eagerly.
“But a little brutal. Everything would have developed in a day or two. Take it gently, like your friend Schoatze. You’re going to know a lot about internal medicine some day, but you’re trying to rush things.”
But Bill was a man driven; he tried more Sunday afternoons with current debutantes, but in the middle of a conversation he would find his mind drifting back to those great red building blocks of an Idea, where alone he could feel the pulse of life.
The news that a famous character in politics was leaving the Coast and coming to the hospital for the diagnosis of some obscure malady had the effect of giving him a sudden interest in politics. He looked up the record of the man and followed his journey east, which occupied half a column daily in the newspapers; party issues depended on his survival and eventual recovery.
Then one August afternoon there was an item in the society column which announced the engagement of Helen, debutante daughter of Mrs. Truby Ponsonby Day, to Dr. Howard Durfee. Bill’s reconciled world turned upside down. After an amount of very real suffering, he had accepted the fact that Thea was the mistress of a brilliant surgeon, but that Dr. Durfee should suddenly cut loose from her was simply incredible.
Immediately he went in search of her, found her issuing from the nurses’ ward in street clothes. Her lovely face, with the eyes that held for him all the mystery of people trying, all the splendor of a goal, all reward, all purpose, all satisfaction, was harried with annoyance; she had been stared at and pitied.
“If you like,” she answered, when he asked if he could run her home, and then: “Heaven help women! The amount of groaning over my body that took place this afternoon would have been plenty for a war.”
“I’m going to help you,” he said. “If that guy has let you down——”
“Oh, shut up! Up to a few weeks ago I could have married Howard Durfee by nodding my head—that’s just what I wouldn’t tell those women this afternoon. I think you’ve got discretion, and that’ll help you a lot when you’re a doctor.”
“I am a doctor,” he said somewhat stiffly.
“No, you’re just an interne.”
He was indignant and they drove in silence. Then, softening, she turned toward him and touched his arm.
“You happen to be a gentleman,” she said, “which is nice sometimes—though I prefer a touch of genius.”
“I’ve got that,” Bill said doggedly. “I’ve got everything, except you.”
“Come up to the apartment and I’ll tell you something that no one else in this city knows.”
It was a modest apartment but it told him that at some time she had lived in a more spacious world. It was all reduced, as if she had hung on to several cherished things, a Duncan Phyfe table, a brass by Brancusi, two oil portraits of the 50’s.
“I was engaged to John Gresham,” she said. “Do you know who he was?”
“Of course,” he said. “I took up the subscription for the bronze tablet to him.”
John Gresham had died by inches from radium poisoning, got by his own experiments.
“I was with him till the end,” Thea went on quickly, “and just before he died he wagged his last finger at me and said, ’I forbid you to go to pieces. That doesn’t do any good. ’ So, like a good little girl, I didn’t go to pieces, but I toughened up instead. Anyhow, that’s why I never could love Howard Durfee the way he wanted to be loved, in spite of his nice swagger and his fine hands.”
“I see.” Overwhelmed by the revelation, Bill tried to adjust himself to it. “I knew there was something far off about you, some sort of—oh, dedication to something I didn’t know about.”
“I’m pretty hard.” She got up impatiently. “Anyhow, I’ve lost a good friend today and I’m cross, so go before I show it. Kiss me good-by if you like.”
“It wouldn’t mean anything at this moment.”
“Yes, it would,” she insisted. “I like to be close to you. I like your clothes.”
Obediently he kissed her, but he felt far. off from her and very rebuffed and young as he went out the door.
He awoke next morning with the sense of something important hanging over him; then he remembered. Senator Billings, relayed by crack trains, airplanes and ambulances, was due to arrive during the morning, and the ponderous body which had housed and expelled so much nonsense in thirty years was to be at the mercy of the rational at last.
“I’ll diagnose the old boy,” he thought grimly, “if I have to invent a new disease.”
He went about his routine work with a sense of fatigue that morning. Perhaps Doctor Norton would keep this plum to himself and Bill wouldn’t have a chance at him. But at eleven o’clock he met his senior in a corridor.
“The senator’s come,” he said. “I’ve formed a tentative opinion. You might go in and get his history. Go over him quickly and give him the usual laboratory work-up.”
“All right,” said Bill, but there was no eagerness in his voice. He seemed to have lost all his enthusiasm. With his instruments and a block of history paper, he repaired to the senator’s room.
“Good morning,” he began. “Feeling a little tired after your trip?”
The big barrel of a man rolled toward him.
“Exhausted,” he squeaked unexpectedly. “All in.”
Bill didn’t wonder; he felt rather that way himself, as if he had travelled thousands of miles in all sorts of conveyances until his insides, including his brains, were all shaken up together.
He took the case history.
“What’s your profession?”
“Legislator.”
“Do you use any alcohol?”
The senator raised himself on one arm and thundered, “See here, young man; I’m not going to be heckled! As long as the Eighteenth Amendment—” He subsided.
“Do you use any alcohol?” Bill asked again patiently.
“Why, yes.”
“How much?”
“A few drinks every day. I don’t count them. Say, if you look in my suitcase you’ll find an X-ray of my lungs, taken a few years ago.”
Bill found it and stared at it with a sudden feeling that everything was getting a little crazy.
“This is an X-ray of a woman’s stomach,” he said.
“Oh—well, it must have got mixed up,” said the senator. “It must be my wife’s.”
Bill went into the bathroom to wash his thermometer. When he came back he took the senator’s pulse, and was puzzled to find himself regarded in a curious way.
“What’s the idea?” the senator demanded. “Are you the patient or am I?” He jerked his hand angrily away from Bill. “Your hand’s like ice. And you’ve put the thermometer in your own mouth.”
Only then did Bill realize how sick he was. He pressed the nurse’s bell and staggered back to a chair with wave after wave of pain chasing across his abdomen.
III
He awoke with a sense that he had been in bed for many hours. There was fever bumping—in his brain, a pervasive weakness in his body, and what had wakened him was a new series of pains in his stomach. Across the room in an armchair sat Dr. George Schoatze, and on his knee was the familiar case-history pad.
“What the hell,” Bill said weakly. “What the hell’s the matter with me? What happened?”
“You’re all right,” said George. “You just lie quiet.”
Bill tried, to sit upright, but found he was too weak.
“Lie quiet!” he repeated incredulously. “What do you think I am—some dumb patient? I asked you what’s the matter with me?”
“That’s exactly what we’re trying to find out. Say, what is your exact age?”
“My age!” Bill cried. “A hundred and ten in the shade! My name’s Al Capone and I’m an old hophead. Stick that on your God damn paper and mail it to Santa Claus. I asked you what’s the matter with me.”
“And I say that’s what we’re trying to find out,” said George, staunch, but a little nervous. “Now, you take it easy.”
“Take it easy!” cried Bill. “When I’m burning up with fever and a half-wit interne sits there and asks me how many fillings I’ve got in my teeth! You take my temperature, and take it right away!”
“All right—all right,”
