“Hi, Doc!” It was Blake’s voice that broke in. “Get away from there; when this Dr. Brown needs help, I’ll be right in there. I’ve been sleeping like a darned fool all night, from four this morning on. Didn’t hear the phone, or something, didn’t know what was going on until I got to the gate out there. You go rest.”
Ferrel grunted in relief; Blake might have been dead drunk when he finally reached home, which would explain his not hearing the phone, but his animal virility had soaked it out with no visible sign. The only change was the absence of the usual cocky grin on his face as he moved over beside Brown to test Jorgenson. “Thank the Lord you’re here, Blake. How’s Jorgen-son doing?”
Brown’s voice answered in a monotone, words coming in time to the motions of her fingers. “His heart shows signs of coming around once in a while, but it doesn’t last. He isn’t getting worse from what I can tell, though.”
“Good. If we can keep him going half an hour more, we can turn all this over to a machine. Where’s Jenkins?”
“A machine? Oh, the Kubelik exciter, of course. He was working on it when I was there. We’ll keep Jorgenson alive until then, anyway, Dr. Ferrel.”
“Where’s Jenkins?” he repeated sharply, when she stopped with no intention of answering the former question.
Blake pointed toward Ferrel’s office, the door of which was now closed. “In there. But lay off him, Doc. I saw the whole thing, and he feels like the deuce about it. He’s a good kid, but only a kid, and this kind of hell could get any of us.”
“I know all that.” Doc headed toward the office, as much for a smoke as anything else. The sight of Blake’s rested face was somehow an island of reassurance in this sea of fatigue and nerves. “Don’t worry, Brown, I’m not planning on lacing him down, so you needn’t defend your man so carefully. It was my fault for not listening to him.”
Brown’s eyes were pathetically grateful in the brief flash she threw him, and he felt like a heel for the gruffness that had been his first reaction to Jenkins’ absence. If this kept on much longer, though, they’d all be in worse shape than the boy, whose back was toward him as he opened the door. The still, huddled shape did not raise its head from its arms as Ferrel put his hand onto one shoulder, and the voice was muffled and distant.
“I cracked, Doc — high, wide and handsome, all over the place. I couldn’t take it! Standing there, Jorgenson maybe dying because I couldn’t control myself right, the whole plant blowing up, all my fault. I kept telling myself I was O.K., I’d go on, then I cracked. Screamed like a baby! Dr. Jenkins — nerve specialist!”
“Yeah…. Here, are you going to drink this, or do I have to hold your blasted nose and pour it down your throat?” It was crude psychology, but it worked, and Doc handed over the drink, waited for the other to down it, and passed a cigarette across before sinking into his own chair. “You warned me, Jenkins, and I risked it on my own responsibility, so nobody’s kicking. But I’d like to ask a couple of questions.”
“Go ahead — what’s the difference?” Jenkins had recovered a little, obviously, from the note of defiance that managed to creep into his voice.
“Did you know Brown could handle that kind of work? And did you pull your hands out before she could get hers in to replace them?”
“She told me she could. I didn’t know before. I dunno about the other; I think… yeah, Doc, she had her hands over mine. But—”
Ferrel nodded, satisfied with his own guess. “I thought so. You didn’t crack, as you put it, until your mind knew it was safe to do so — and then you simply passed the work on. By that definition, I’m cracking, too. I’m sitting in here, smoking, talking to you, when out there a man needs attention. The fact that he’s getting it from two others, one practically fresh, the other at least a lot better off than we are, doesn’t have a thing to do with it, does it?”
“But it wasn’t that way, Doc. I’m not asking for grand-stand stuff from anybody.”
“Nobody’s giving it to you, son. All right, you screamed — why not? It didn’t hurt anything. I growled at Brown when I came in for the same reason — exhausted, overstrained nerves. If I went out there and had to take over from them, I’d probably scream myself, or start biting my tongue — nerves have to have an outlet; physically, it does them no good, but there’s a psychological need for it.” The boy wasn’t convinced, and Doc sat back in the chair, staring at him thoughtfully. “Ever wonder why I’m here?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you might. Twenty-seven years ago, when I was about your age, there wasn’t a surgeon in this country — or the world, for that matter — who had the reputation I had; any kind of surgery, brain, what have you. They’re still using some of my techniques… uh-hum, thought you’d remember when the association of names hit you. I had a different wife then, Jenkins, and there was a baby coming. Brain tumor — I had to do it, no one else could. I did it, somehow, but I went out of that operating room in a haze, and it was three days later when they’d tell me she’d died; not my fault — I know that now — but I couldn’t realize it then.
“So, I tried setting up as a general practitioner. No more surgery for me! And because I was a fair diagnostician, which most surgeons aren’t, I made a living, at least. Then, when this company was set up, I applied for the job, and got it; I still had a reputation of sorts. It was a new field, something requiring study and research, and damned near every ability of most specialists plus a general practitioner’s, so it kept me busy enough to get over my phobia of surgery. Compared to me, you don’t know what nerves or cracking means. That little scream was a minor incident.”
Jenkins made no comment, but lighted the cigarette he’d been holding. Ferrel relaxed farther into the chair, knowing that he’d be called if there was any need for his work, and glad to get his mind at least partially off Jorgenson. “It’s hard to find a man for this work, Jenkins. It takes too much ability at too many fields, even though it pays well enough. We went through plenty of applicants before we decided on you, and I’m not regretting our choice. As a matter of fact, you’re better equipped for the job than Blake was — your record looked as if you’d deliberately tried for this kind of work.”
“I did.”
“Hm-m-m.” That was the one answer Doc had least expected; so far as he knew, no one deliberately tried for a job at Atomics — they usually wound up trying for it after comparing their receipts for a year or so with the salary paid by National. “Then you knew what was needed and picked it up in toto. Mind if I ask why?”
Jenkins shrugged. “Why not? Turnabout’s fair play. It’s kind of complicated, but the gist of it doesn’t take much telling. Dad had an atomic plant of his own — and a darned good one, too, Doc, even it it wasn’t as big as National. I was working in it when I was fifteen, and I went through two years of university work in atomics with the best intentions of carrying on the business. Sue — well, she was the neighbor girl I followed around, and we had money at the time; that wasn’t why she married me, though. I never did figure that out — she’d had a hard enough life, but she was already holding down a job at Mayo’s, and I was just a raw kid. Anyway—
“The day we came home from our honeymoon, dad got a big contract on a new process we’d worked out. It took some swinging, but he got the equipment and started it…. My guess is that one of the controls broke though faulty construction; the process was right! We’d been over it too often not to know what it would do. But, when the estate was cleared up, I had to give up the idea of a degree in atomics, and Sue was back working at the hospital. Atomic courses cost real money. Then one of Sue’s medical acquaintances fixed it for me to get a scholarship in medicine that almost took care of it, so I chose the next best thing to what I wanted.”