“You will be notified.” Now he spoke to the officer, not looking up, writing steadily: “That’s all.”
“I better get him out of here before that husband blows in with a gun or something, hadn’t I, Doc?” the officer said.
“You will be notified,” the man at the desk repeated without looking up.
“All right, Jack,” the officer said. There was a bench, slotted and hard, like in old-time open trolley cars. From it he could see the rubber-tired door. It was blank, it looked final and impregnable as an iron portcullis; he saw with a kind of amazement that even from this angle it hung in its frame by only one side, lightly, so that for three-quarters of its circumference there was an unbroken line of Klieg light. But she might, he thought. She might. “Jesus,” the officer said. He held an unlighted cigarette in his hand now (Wilbourne had felt the movement against his elbow). “—Jesus, you played—What did you say your name was? Webster?”
“Yes,” Wilbourne said. I could get there. I could trip him if necessary and get there. Because I would know. I would. Surely they would not.
“You played hell, didn’t you. Using a knife. I’m old-fashioned; the old way still suits me. I dont want variety.”
“Yes,” Wilbourne said. There was no wind in here, no sound of it, though it seemed to him that he could smell, if not the sea, at least the dry and stubborn lingering of it in the oyster shells in the drive: and then suddenly the corridor became full of sound, the myriad minor voices of human fear and travail which he knew, remembered—the carbolised vacuums of linoleum and rubber soles like wombs into which human beings fled before something of suffering but mostly of terror, to surrender in little monastic cells all the burden of lust and desire and pride, even that of functional independence, to become as embryos for a time yet retaining still a little of the old incorrigible earthy corruption—the light sleeping at all hours, the boredom, the wakeful and fretful ringing of little bells between the hours of midnight and the dead slowing of dawn (finding perhaps at least this good use for the cheap money with which the world was now glutted and cluttered); this for a while, then to be born again, to emerge renewed, to bear the world’s weight for another while as long as courage lasted.
He could hear them up and down the corridor—the tinkle of the bells, the immediate sibilance of rubber heels and starched skirts, the querulous murmur of voices about nothing. He knew it well: and now still another nurse came down the hall, already looking full at him, slowing as she passed, looking at him, her head turning as she went on like an owl’s head, her eyes quite wide and filled with something beyond just curiosity and not at all shrinking or horror, going on. The officer was running his tongue around inside his teeth as though seeking the remnants of food; possibly he had been eating somewhere when the call came. He still held the unlighted cigarette.
“These doctors and nurses,” he said. “What a fellow hears about hospitals. I wonder if there’s as much laying goes on in them as you hear about.”
“No,” Wilbourne said. “There never is any place.”
“That’s so. But you think of a place like a hospital. All full of beds every which way you turn. And all the other folks flat on their backs where they cant bother you. And after all doctors and nurses are men and women. And smart enough to take care of themselves or they wouldn’t be doctors and nurses. You know how it is. How you think.”
“Yes,” Wilbourne said. “You’ve just told me.” Because after all, he thought, they are gentlemen. They must be. They are stronger than we are. Above all this. Above clowning. They dont need to be anything else but gentlemen. And now the second doctor or surgeon—the one of the fountain pen—came out of the office and down the corridor, the skirts of his tunic sucking and snicking behind him too. He did not look at Wilbourne at all, even when Wilbourne, watching his face, rose as he passed and stepped toward him, about to speak, the officer rising hurriedly too, surging up. Then the doctor merely paused long enough to look back at the officer with one cold brief irascible glance through the glasses.
“Aren’t you in charge of this man?” he said.
“Sure, Doc,” the officer said.
“Then what’s the trouble?”
“Come on now, Watson,” the officer said. “Take it easy, I tell you.” The doctor turned; he had scarcely paused even. “How about smoking, Doc?” The doctor didn’t answer at all. He went on, his smock flicking. “Come on here,” the officer said. “Sit down before you get yourself in a jam or something.” Again the door went inward on its rubber tires and returned, clapped silently to with that iron finality and that illusion of iron impregnability which was so false since even from here he could see how it swung in its frame by one side only, so that a child, a breath, could move it. “Listen,” the officer said. “Just take it easy. They’ll fix her up. That was Doc Richardson himself. They brought a sawmill nigger in here couple three years ago where somebody hit him across the guts with a razor in a crap game.
Well, what does Doc Richardson do, opens him up, cuts out the bad guts, sticks the two ends together like you’d vulcanise an inner tube, and the nigger’s back at work right now. Of course he aint got but one gut and it aint but two feet long so he has to run for the bushes almost before he quits chewing. But he’s all right. Doc’ll fix her up the same way. Aint that better than nothing? Huh?”
“Yes,” Wilbourne said. “Yes. Do you suppose we could go outside a while?” The officer rose with alacrity, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand.
“That’s an idea. We could smoke then.” But then he could not.
“You go on. I’ll stay right here. I’m not going to leave. You know that.”
“Well, I dont know. Maybe I could stand at the door yonder and smoke.”
“Yes. You can watch me from there.” He looked up and down the corridor, at the doors. “Do you know where I could go if I get sick?”
“Sick?”
“Should have to vomit.”
“I’ll call a nurse and ask her.”
“No. Never mind. I wont need it. I dont suppose I’ve got anything more to lose. Worth the trouble. I’ll stay right here until they call me.” So the officer went on down the corridor, on past the door hung in its three fierce slashes of light, and on toward the entrance through which they had come. Wilbourne watched the match snap under his thumb-nail and flare against his face, beneath the hat-brim, face and hat slanted to the match (not a bad face either exactly, just that of a fourteen-year-old boy who had to use a razor, who had begun too young to carry the authorised pistol too long), the entrance door apparently still open because the smoke, the first puff of it, streamed back up the corridor, fading: so that Wilbourne discovered that he really could smell the sea, the black shallow slumbering sound without surf which the black wind blew over.
Up the corridor, beyond an elbow, he could hear the voices of two nurses, two nurses not two patients, two females but not necessarily two women even, then beyond the same elbow one of the little bells tinkled, fretful, peremptory, the two voices murmuring on, then they both laughed, two nurses laughing not two women, the little querulous bell becoming irascible and frenzied, the laughter continuing for half a minute longer above the bell, then the rubber soles on the linoleum, hissing faint and fast; the bell ceased.
It was the sea he smelled; there was the taste of the black beach the wind blew over in it, in his lungs, up near the top of his lungs, going through that again but then he had expected to have to, each fast strong breath growing shallower and shallower as if his heart had at last found a receptacle, a dumping-place, for the black sand it dredged and pumped at: and now he got up too, not going anywhere; he just got up without intending to, the officer at the entrance turning at once, snapping the cigarette backward.
But Wilbourne made no further move and the officer slowed; he even paused at the light-slashed door and flattened his hat-brim against it, against the crack for a moment. Then he came on. He came on, because Wilbourne saw him; he saw the officer as you see a lamp post which happens to be between you and the street because the rubber-tired door had opened again, outward this time (The Kliegs are off, he thought.
They are off. They are off now.) and the two doctors emerged, the door clashing soundlessly to behind them and oscillating sharply once but opening again before it could have resumed, re-entered immobility, to produce two nurses though he saw them only with that part of vision which still saw the officer because he was watching the faces of the two doctors coming up the corridor and talking to one another in clipped voices through their mouth-pads, their smocks flicking neatly like the skirts of two women, passing him without a glance
