“No…I have to speak to you, Miss Lamont.”
“Are you going to leave me, Johnny?”
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
In the hall, Mary Lamont said: “Now I know why you left Doctor Gillespie. I was fool enough to think that it was money and all that; but now I know it was Nancy Messenger. And she’s lovely. She’s lovely, Jimmy!”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Kildare. “Are you going to be a damned fool?”
She stared at him. “It isn’t…” she murmured.
“It isn’t what?” he snapped.
“I don’t know,” she said faintly.
“Try to make sense, will you, Mary?”
“Yes, I’ll try.”
“Tell me what she was doing when you came up.”
“She was staring at the ceiling and thinking. If I’d been a lip reader I could have made out her thoughts.”
“Black, were they?”
“Jimmy, she’s going to die!”
“Nonsense!”
“She doesn’t want to live.”
“That can be fixed.”
“How, Jimmy?”
“By cutting out her will to die and transplanting a will to live,” he said harshly. “Just a little operation. That’s all. What’s her appetite?”
“She can’t eat. She won’t eat, Jimmy…Poor girl! She’s so sweet, Jimmy!”
“Stop crying about her, will you?”
“Yes, Jimmy.”
“I want a bright attitude in that room. I want cheer and hope and all that sort of rot. You understand?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“You can help because you’re her kind.”
“Yes, doctor?”
“Thoroughbred, I mean,” said Kildare, and went back into Nancy’s room.
“If you don’t eat,” said Kildare, “I’m going to force-feed you like a Strasbourg goose. You hear?”
“I’ll never see him, again,” said Nancy. “Never, never, never!…Will you come over to me a little closer, Johnny?”
“I’m not going to let you cry all over me,” said Kildare. “I won’t have any of this damned nonsense.”
“Ah, I wish the old Johnny were back with me!” sighed Nancy. “He understood—everything:”
“I have some news for you,” said Kildare, standing over the bed and staring down at her. She felt this nearness and touched him with a groping hand and smiled faintly.
He went on: “We’ve completed the X-ray pictures and the tests practically. There’s only one thing we’re sure about. There is no brain tumour, malignant or otherwise.”
She caught her hands back to her face and gasped, looking into the darkness of her world with bewilderment.
“But that’s not true,” she said at last. “You’d say anything to make me happy. You can’t fool me with your grimness, Johnny. I’ve looked so far into you that I’ve seen your heart.”
“Damn my heart,” said Kildare.
He took a quick breath, set his teeth, and then said: “I give you my professional word of honour—whatever is wrong with you, it’s not what caused your mother’s death. Think that over and try to stop acting like a half-wit.”
He turned his back on her and got hastily into the adjoining room where Messenger waited. Carew was there, with the eye-specialist, Landon, and the great brain man, McKeever.
“They tell me it’s a very dark mystery, doctor,” said Messenger anxiously. “May I go in to see her only for a moment?”
“No,” answered Kildare. “She needs a bit of time to digest some good news.”
He looked straight across the room at McKeever. “I’ve just told her,” he said, “that there is no brain tumour.”
“But, my dear fellow,” protested McKeever gently, “can you go as far as that? Can you be sure of that at the present moment? Admitting the general indications are favourable…”
“I’ve given her my professional word of honour that there is no brain tumour,” said Kildare.
“But is that ethical?” demanded Landon with suddenly rising anger.
Messenger, deeply troubled, looked from one of them to the other.
“I’m not thinking of ethics. I’m thinking of Nancy Messenger,” said Kildare.
“Young man—I wonder if you always remember how very young you are?” asked Carew darkly.
“I know your instinct and your way, Doctor Kildare,” said the gentle voice of old McKeever, as he smiled on the boy. “You fight with the point and with the edge and you give no quarter. You’ll take big chances if you think the patient may profit by it. But…considering this entire case…”
He allowed his voice to die out.
Kildare gestured to Messenger.
“You’ve put this case in my hands,” he said. “Technically, that’s impossible. An intern can’t have absolute control of anything in a hospital. I think I see my way a step or two ahead through the fog of this case, but only dimly. I’ve not much more than instinct to go on just now—but I’ve made a definite statement to your daughter. If you want that statement retracted, you can take the authority away from me with a single word.”
He turned his back on all of them and went to stare out the window.
“With all due respect to young Doctor Kildare,” said Carew, “and considering how very young he is, I cannot help pointing out to you that in this room with you are two of the finest specialists that can be…”
“No, Carew. No, Walter,” said old McKeever. “The boy has a great heart and a fine mind. Why not let him have his chance? The rest of us have little or no light to throw on the problem.”
“It’s a hard decision for me to make,” said Messenger. “I realise that Kildare is not the oldest man in the world, but it’s my habit in business to put my trust in the people who win. When I had the whole world searching for Nancy, he reached into the dark and brought her back to me…Kildare, the case is entirely in your hands.”
“Thank you,” said Kildare, suddenly facing them again.
Old McKeever went up and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Use me in any way you can, my dear boy,” he said. “I’m at your service.”
But a greater help than even McKeever could give was what Kildare needed. He went to find Gillespie.
Staten Island, which seems a hundred years behind the times, is not famous for its beaches. Nevertheless there is a stretch of seaside that looks out over blue water toward the jumbled heights of Manhattan. Dr. Gillespie sat in his wheel chair on the edge of the sand with the rush and foaming of the waves just before him. Conover held an umbrella over him.
“The legend of the seventh wave being the largest,” said Gillespie, looking up from a notebook in which he had been making marks, “is definitely wrong.”
“Yes, sir,” said the big negro.
“It must be dismissed from all minds as pure tradition and bunk,” insisted Gillespie.
“Yes, sir,” said Conover.
“Tradition and legend,” said Gillespie, “is the embalmed idiocy accumulated by the ages.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is the enemy of science.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a man,” said Gillespie, “heading directly toward us. It is probably a reporter.”
He relaxed in his chair.
“Make signs to him,” said Gillespie, “that I’m asleep.”
He closed his eyes.
“It’s no good sir,” said Conover.
“What the devil do you mean it’s no good?” demanded Gillespie angrily.
“He’ll see right through your closed eyes,” said Conover. “There ain’t any fooling him. Not about you, sir. It’s Doctor Kildare.”
The footfall came through the whispering sands of the beach.
“Doctor Gillespie,” said the voice of Kildare, “may I speak with you for a moment?”