Terry said slowly, “If you’re going to adopt that attitude, Doctor, I don’t think I care to disclose my name.”
Dr. Sedler’s face showed incredulous surprise.
“You have struck down a man while driving while intoxicated; you have failed to show even the human interest in him which a decent human being would have shown an injured dog; and now you have the temerity to stand before me and tell me you are not going to give me your name!”
“Exactly,” Terry said, getting to his feet with some show of indignation. “I wasn’t drunk, and if you’d taken time to make a reasonably thorough examination of me, you’d have known it. You smelled liquor and jumped to the conclusion I was drunk. I’d had one or two cocktails, and that’s all. I was able to drive then, just as well as I can now. But you wouldn’t listen to me. You started shooting off your face. I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that the man was seriously injured. I don’t know just what your racket is, but I propose to find out. Personally, I think that man jumped up in front of my headlights. How do I know that the whole thing isn’t a fake? How do I know that it isn’t some sort of frame-up? Those X-rays, for all I know, could be fifty years old!”
Dr. Sedler got to his feet with the calm, deliberate finality of an executioner. He took off his smock, hung it up, put on a coat and hat.
“I have,” he said, “just one answer to make to that. I’m going to show you the results of your criminal carelessness. My car’s at the curb. We go out this way.”
He led the way through the operating-room, through a series of treatment rooms, and out by a back door. It was growing dark, a fog swirled overhead on the wings of an ocean breeze. A light sedan was parked at the curb. Dr. Sedler jerked the door open, slid in behind the steering-wheel, switched on the headlights and ignition. Terry seated himself and jerked the door shut.
Dr. Sedler gave his attention to piloting the car. Terry settled back against the cushions, lighting a cigarette. Sedler turned into a main boulevard, drove rapidly for a dozen blocks, slowed, turned to the left, into a street given over for the most part to dingy one-story business establishments. A glass-enclosed sign bearing the letters “ROOMS”, and illuminated by three incandescents, protruded from a sombre two-story building which stretched the length of a deep lot. An occasional front and side window showed as an orange-colored oblong. Towards the rear, a row of dull red illumination marked the location of a fire-escape. Dr. Sedler slid his car in close to the curb and said, “We get out here. If you wish, you can pose as a doctor. It may help you to realize there’s nothing I’m trying to conceal.”
He led the way into the lodging-house, up a flight of stairs, past a desk on which appeared the painted legend, “ring for Manager”. Dr. Sedler marched down a long, smelly corridor, paused before a door and knocked twice, then, after a moment, twice more. He stood waiting, frowned, and said:
“I wonder...”
A querulous voice from behind the door called “Come in. It’s unlocked.”
Dr. Sedler opened the door.
“I brought a man to see you, Bill,” he said.
Terry stepped through the open door and into the room. Dr. Sedler closed the door behind him. The room was cold, cheerless, and drab, furnished with a cheap iron bedstead, painted table, rickety chairs, and faded carpets. An electric light, hanging from a twisted green drop cord, furnished meager illumination. An emaciated form was half-reclining in the bed. The face seemed as drably white as the painted metal of the bed. A leather-padded, steel brace, clamped around the man’s shoulders, held his head firmly in position.
In the far corner of the room, occupying a straight-backed chair, which had been tilted so that its back was against the wall, a man sat with the heels of his shoes hooked over the rungs of the chair.
He looked up from a movie magazine he had been reading. His eyes showed interest. His jaw, chewing gum with nervous rapidity, hesitated for a second, and then went on with its rapid, mechanical mastication.
Dr. Sedler nodded to the man in bed and said, “Bill, here’s a man come to look you over. He thinks he may be able to help you.”
The cripple said, in the drab tone of one who has been bedridden for a long time, “Do you suppose he can do anything for me, Doc?”
“Oh, sure,” the doctor said cheerfully. “It’s just going to take a little time, that’s all, Bill.”
The man who had been reading the movie magazine pushed the back of his head against the wall, made a quick jerking motion with his neck, and flipped himself forward. He was standing erect before the front legs of the chair hit the floor. Dr. Sedler said, more by way of explanation than introduction, “Fred Stevens, a friend of Bill’s who’s acting as nurse. How are you feeling, Bill?”
“Just about the same, Doc. I don’t seem to get no better.”
“Well, you aren’t getting any worse, are you?”
“I couldn’t get no worse, Doc.”
Dr. Sedler pulled the covers up from the foot of the bed, to expose the man’s feet, waxy-white and seemingly inanimate. “Let’s see you wiggle your toes, Bill.”
The face of the man on the bed twisted in a spasm of effort. The feet remained utterly without motion.
“That’s fine!” Dr. Sedler exclaimed enthusiastically. “You’re getting a little motion there now. Did you see his big toe wiggle, Fred?”
Fred Stevens said mechanically, as though he had been reciting something he had learned by rote, “Yeah, I seen it move, Doc.”
The patient said dubiously, “I couldn’t feel it move.”
“Of course not,” Sedler assured him. “That will come later.”
“When can I walk?”
“Well, I can’t tell exactly. That’s going to be quite a little while, yet.”
“When can I take this steel harness off?” the bedridden man asked, in that same expressionless voice. “I get so tired of having to be in one position all the time. I just feel numb all over. Honestly, Doc, these muscles have got so badly cramped they feel just like my legs — you know, no feeling at all.”
“Oh well,” Sedler said cheerfully, “you could be a lot worse, Bill. You could be dead, you know.”
“I wouldn’t be so bad if I was dead, Doc. This business of being dead but still being alive is what gets me.”
Fred Stevens came forward. He walked with the smooth co-ordination of a restless panther crossing its cage.
“Listen, Doc,” he said, vigorously chewing gum, “would you mind stepping in my room for a minute before you go? I’ve got a pain I want to ask you about.”
“Sure, Fred, sure,” Dr. Sedler said. “In fact we’ll go in there right now. I just wanted to look in on Bill and see how he was coming along. I’m pleased to see the improvement he’s making.”
Stevens opened a door which led to another room similar to the one in which Bill lay. Dr. Sedler, following Stevens into that room, said casually to Terry, “Would you mind stepping in here?”
When Terry had joined them, Stevens carefully closed the door and said in a low voice, “I ain’t got no pain, Doc. That was just an excuse. I want you to tell me about Bill. You know as well as I do those toes didn’t move.”
“Of course they didn’t,” Dr. Sedler admitted, “I’m afraid they’ll never move, but we’ve got to keep his mental outlook hopeful.”
“How much longer?”
Dr. Sedler shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, listen, Doc. I’ve got to get out and get some work. I can’t just stay here twenty-four hours a day. I’ve used up all the dough I had salted away for a rainy day. Gee, I don’t ever get out no more. I’m just here with him all the time. I have to wait on him hand and foot. He can’t get up. He can’t do nothing.”