“Oral administration?” he asked.
She nodded. “Fifteen cc for the monkeys.”
She secured a small beaker and a tapered graduate from the glassware cabinet and set them before him. He poured 50 cc into the graduated measure and transferred it to the beaker.
“What do they call it?” he asked.
“Sulfa-tetradine,” she replied. “One of a series Peterson was testing. There is no physiological data on it yet. All he knows is that it inhibited the virus in culture. So they tried it on the monkeys.”
Murt raised the beaker to his lips. It was against every sensible tenet of scientific procedure. He was amazed that Phyllis was silent as he swallowed the bland, chalky fluid. He heard a clink. Turning, he saw her raising the graduate to her lips. In it was a like quantity of sulfa-tetradine.
“What are you doing?” he half-shouted. “We don’t need a test-control!”
“I’m not a control,” she said softly, touching her lips with a scrap of gauze. “I’ve had the virus for months.”
He stared at her unbelievingly. “How do you know?”
“One of the first test samples was my own blood,” she said. “You saw it. It was one of the twelve positive.”
“But the symptoms—you don’t show a sign of—”
“Thanks,” she said. “I started to break down yesterday, but you didn’t notice. You see, you are my fixation and when you told me that you had it, too, I—”
“Your fixation!” The beaker slipped from his fingers and smashed to the tile. “You’re in love with me?”
Her arms hung loosely at her sides and tears rimmed her eyes. “Pathologically or otherwise, I’ve been a case since before I started the blood tests.”
They moved together and clung to each other. “Phyl, Phyl—why didn’t you tell me?”
Fiercely, she closed his lips with her own, and her fingers dug deeply into his shoulders. His arms pulled her closer yet, trying to fill the void in him that was greater than the Universe. For a long minute, the knowledge of her love and physical contact with her straining body dispelled the bleak loneliness.
When their lips parted, they gasped for breath.
It was no good. It was like tearing at an itching insect bite with your fingernails. The relief was only momentary, and it left the wound bleeding and more irritated than ever. Even if they were married—look at Peter at the club—Peter and his wife, mutually in love and completely miserable. It wasn’t normal love. It was the damned virus!
As well argue with gravity. He tried to tell her, but he couldn’t make her understand. Her restraint had been magnificent, but when the dam broke, it was beyond stopping the flood of her emotion. And now he couldn’t believe it himself. Nothing this wonderful could be destroyed by mere misunderstanding. He cursed the years of his celibacy. All that time wasted—lost!
It was six o’clock before they reached her apartment. The License Bureau had been a mob scene. Hours more, upstairs in the City Hall waiting for the judge, while they held hands like a pair of college sophomores, staring into each others’ eyes, drinking, drinking the elixir of adoration with a thirst that wouldn’t be sated.
Phyllis weakened first. In the cab, after the ceremony, she released his hand and wiped her damp forehead.
Then, in the elevator, Murt felt himself relaxing. The alchemy of sustained passion had exhausted them both, he decided.
As Phyllis slipped the key in the door, she looked up at him in surprise. “Do you know, I’m hungry. I’m starved—for the first time in months.”
Murt discovered his own stomach was stirring with a prosaic pangful demand of its own. “We should have stopped to eat,” he said, realizing they had forgotten lunch.
“Steaks! I have some beauties in my freezer!” Phyllis exclaimed. They peeled off their coats and she led him into the small kitchen. She pointed at the cupboard and silverware drawer. “Set the table. We’ll eat in five minutes.”
Slipping into an apron, she explored the freezer for meat and French fries, dropped them into the HF cooker and set the timer for 90 seconds. When it clicked off, she was emptying a transparent sack of prepared salad into a bowl.
“Coffee will be ready in 50 seconds, so let’s eat,” she announced.
For minutes, they ate silently, ravenously, face to face in the little breakfast nook. Murt had forgotten the pure animal pleasure of satisfying a neglected appetite, and so, apparently, had his wife.
Wife! The thought jolted him.
Their eyes met, and he knew that the same thing was in her mind.
The sulfa-tetradine!
With the edge barely off his hunger, he stopped eating. She did, too. They sipped the steaming coffee and looked at each other.
“I—feel better,” Phyllis said at last.
“So do I.”
“I mean—I feel differently.”
He studied her face. It was new. The tenseness was gone and it was a beautiful face, with soft lips and intelligent eyes. But now the eyes were merely friendly.
And it aroused no more than a casual pleasure in him, the pleasure of viewing a lovely painting or a perfect sunset. A peaceful intellectual rapport settled over them, inducing a physical lethargy. They spoke freely of their sensations, of the hypo-adrenal effects, and wondered that there was no unpleasant reaction. They decided that, initially at least, sulfa-tetradine was a miraculous success. Murt thought he should go back to the hospital and work out a report right away.
Phyllis agreed and offered to accompany him, but he said she had better get a night’s sleep. The next day would be hectic.
After four hours at his desk, he called a taxi and, without hesitation, gave the address of his club. Not until he fell wearily into bed did he remember it was his wedding night.
By mutual agreement, the marriage was annulled the next day.
Feldman and Peterson were gratified at the efficacy of their drug, but both were horrified that Murt had chosen to experiment on himself. As usual, Phyl had insisted on being left out of the report.
After a week of close observation, one of the monkeys was chloroformed and tissue-by-tissue examination was made by an army of histologists. Blood samples showed completely clear of the virus, as did a recheck on Murt’s own blood. No deleterious effects could be detected, so the results were published through the Government Health Service.
It was the day before Christmas before Dr. Sylvester Murt first noticed the approaching symptoms of a relapse, or reinfection—he couldn’t guess which. The past weeks had been pleasantly busy and, as acclaimed authority on Murt’s virus, he had had little time to think subjectively about his experience.
Sulfa-tetradine was now considered the specific for the affliction and was being produced and shipped by the carload all over the world. The press had over-generously insisted on giving him all the credit for the remedy as well as the isolation of the disease virus. He was an international hero.
The warning of another attack came to him at 3:30 in the afternoon, when Phyllis Sutton was leaving. She stuck her head back in the door and gave him an uncommonly warm smile and cried, “Merry Christmas, Doctor!”
He waved at her and, as the door closed, caught his breath. There was the burn in his stomach again. It passed away and he refused to give it further thought.
His own cab wound its way through the heavy Christmas Eve traffic an hour before store-closing time. Finally, the vehicle stalled in a jam. It was only six blocks to his club, so Murt paid off the driver and walked.
Part of his strategy of bachelorhood had been to ignore Christmas and the other sentimental seasons, when loneliness costs many a man his independence. But now it was impossible to ignore the snowflakes, the bustling, package-laden crowds and the street-corner Santa Clauses with their tinkling bells.