“If we knew that we’d have her right where we want her.” Ned sighed. “If only there were some way we could really put the screws on her, shake her down—”
“Well, there isn’t.”
“No, I mean unofficially. Get Endicott into it with me, and the two of us can take her out somewhere and break her apart.”
“Oh, that would be just great,” said Gibby heatedly. “Get right down in the gutter and fight it out on her level, I suppose! And you’re supposed to be a doctor.”
“Well, damn it, Gibby—”
“Now look, Dr. Thompson — you either forget about that sort of thing, or else you can forget I ever thought you were worth spitting at. If you so much as lay a hand on her you can count me out, do you understand? I won’t play it that way, that’s all. I just won’t” She blew her nose and tried to wipe her eyes with her starched cuff. “I love my work more than anything else I know. I wouldn’t ever want to do anything except nursing, and I hate people like that woman who come in and dirty it and degrade it. But I won’t let them get me dirty trying to stop them.”
He watched her across the table, then suddenly grinned and tossed her his handkerchief. “Blow,” he said. “Go ahead, don’t be afraid, wake up the whole first floor. We’ll sweat it out a while longer.”
“None of this strong-arm stuff?”
“Not a bit of it.”
She grinned back, and blew with vigor. “Maybe you’re not such a slob after all,” she said.
He took Gibby’s master key to the narcotics drawer — an infringement of the strictest of all hospital rules — after promising faithfully to return it to the nursing office when he was through, and made his way to Fourth floor after the shift change at eleven o’clock. Somewhere there was an answer; there had to be, yet in three days they were further from the answer than when they started.
He walked into the medications alcove, took a stool, and sat staring at the high wall cabinets filled with stock medications, at the gleaming stainless-steel sink, the syringe sterilizer, the sterile tray with needles, sponges, tourniquets, forceps. This was where she worked, her niche, her corner in the busy activities of the place — but the walls did not repeat the echoes of her thoughts.
Murky thoughts, Ned Thompson reflected. Desperate and empty thoughts. No escape from the everpresent fear of all drug addicts, even here in the midst of plenty. He opened the drawer, stared down at the tubes and vials and ampules. Piece by piece he emptied the drawer, narcotics tray, emergency tray, injection medications of all sorts, trying to think as she would think, to see what she might see, trying to find the simple answer he knew could be found here. Thinking—
But what does a drug addict think? A preoccupation with two principles, with all else cast aside. First: get the drug, at any cost whatsoever; second: don’t get caught. Simple, and imponderable.
And then, quite suddenly, another kind of door opened in his mind — and he knew what Jane Davis was doing. It was obvious — and fearful. He blinked at the drawer open before him, and smoked a cigarette, and then-smoked another. Then, quickly, he replaced the drugs and slammed the drawer shut, as though he had to get it closed quickly, quickly, while there was still time. He wiped large wet drops from his forehead.
He knew now that they couldn’t go on waiting any longer. They wouldn’t catch her because they couldn’t risk it at this price. Fire her, yes, get rid of her, fast, while there was still time. But no more waiting—
He started to call Gibby, then realized how foolish it was. She’d be in bed, there would be plenty of time to warn her in the morning that Davis mustn’t come to work another day, not another hour. By three o’clock the formalities could be taken care of.
He went downstairs and fell asleep like a rock. At breakfast he would tell Gibby...
But he never got to breakfast. His day started at 5:15 A.M. with a call to the emergency room that drove every other thought from his mind. There are few true medical emergencies that demand immediate action, on the spot, now; but diabetic acidosis is that kind of emergency. The patient was a boy of seven years who had never been suspected of diabetes before. When he arrived at St. Christopher’s emergency room, he was nearly dead. Ned Thompson met Dr. Morton, the attending man, coming in the door to the hospital as Ned ran upstairs; they nodded without words, because they knew what lay ahead for both of them.
After six hours of solid unbroken work, they knew the child would not die if they kept at it. Morton took a break for lunch, and brought Ned back a sandwich. Later, Ned stepped out into the corridor for a smoke, and nearly tripped over the floor nurse coming to fetch him. “They’ve been paging you for half an hour, Doctor. You have a new coronary in 301, just came in the ambulance, and three other new patients to see—”
It was one of those days. He saw the coronary just long enough to assure himself that an expiration was not imminent, and got back to the diabetic. By four o’clock in the afternoon Dr. Morton nodded, glanced over the chart, and then at the boy, who was sitting up in bed, wan but cheerful. “Well, I think we’re out of the woods. These juveniles are tough.”
“You’re telling me,” said Ned. “You think these fluid orders will hold him for an hour or so?”
“I think so.” The older man slipped on his jacket. “And Ned — thanks. Hope you haven’t got too much piled up on you.”
He left as Dr. Endicott stuck his long nose into the room. “Say, Ned — old Wilcox is having trouble up on Fourth. Will you have a chance to look in on him?”
Ned stepped into the corridor with him. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, you know as well as I do. Dr. Frank read yesterday’s tracing and figured he was extending, and he just hasn’t got much anterior cardiac wall left to work with. I talked to Frank about it, and he’d like you to look in, then give him a call.”
Ned nodded. “Heavy schedule upstairs today?”
Endicott’s face settled into a grimace. “It’s the Chopper’s day to scream, you know. He’s starting one of these subtotal disembowelments in about ten minutes and I’m anchor man on the retractor.”
Ned was checking the boy again when he heard himself being paged. It was Allison on Fourth. “You’d better come up right away, Doctor. It’s Mr. Wilcox. He’s very bad.”
“But Dr. Endicott just saw him—”
“He’s got much worse in just the last few minutes.”
“Chest pain?”
“Terrible pain. He had a hundred milligrams of Demerol at two o’clock and then fifty more an hour ago—”
“Give him another hundred. I’ll be right up.” He slammed down the telephone, swearing under his breath. The diabetic’s chart was still in his hand; he scribbled some orders, studied them a moment, trying to force Mr. Wilcox out of his mind, then grunted in approval and started for the stairs. On the way he met another of the attending men, and was stopped for a report on another patient. It was almost ten minutes before he reached the Fourth floor, and nearly tripped over Jane Davis emerging from Mr. Wilcox’s room—
He stared at her, unbelieving, then remembered with a jolt. He hadn’t told Gibby. He hadn’t even seen Gibby. The nurse’s eyes caught his, held them for an instant — bottomless, expressionless eyes.
“That the Demerol for Wilcox?”
She nodded, and moved past him down the hall.
On the bed George Wilcox was gasping, his hand pressed tight to his chest. He looked bad. A single glance at the gray-faced man told Ned Thompson more than a dozen questions. Allison was there in the room, moving birdlike, twittering in her over-efficient way. Ned checked the man’s blood pressure. “Get an ampule of nor-epinephrine in 500 cc of water. Quick!”