The doctor, who had his o^ reasons for disliking the orderly, was strongly inclined to say: 'Drunk, I see.' He was suddenly disgusted by the waistcoat, the long frock-coat and the ear-ring in that meaty ear. But he repr^Kd his rancour, and spoke gently and politely as always.
'Did Gerasim have his milk?'
'Yes, Doctor,' replied Smimovsky, also softly.
While talking to his patient, Gerasim, the doctor glanced at the temperature chart, and felt another surge of hatred. He held his breath to stop himself speaking, but could not help asking in a rude, choking voice why the temperature had not been recorded.
'Oh, it was, Doctor,' said Smimovsky softly. But on looking at the chart and satisfying himself that it indeed was not, he shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.
'I don't understand, Doctor—it must be Sister's doing,' he mut- tered.
'It wasn't recorded last night either,' the doctor went on. 'All you ever do is get drunk, blast you! You're positively pie-eyed at this moment. Where is Sister?'
Sister Nadezhda Osipovna, the midwife, was not in the wards, though she was supposed to be on duty every morning when the dreuings were changed. The doctor looked around him, and received the impression that the ward had not been tidied and was in an mes, that none of the necewary routine had been carried out, and that everything was as bulging, crumpled and fluff-bedecked as the orderly's odious waistcoat. He felt prompted to tear off his white apron, rant, throw everything over, let it all go to hell, and leave. But he mastered himselfand continued his rounds.
After Gerasim came a patient with a tissue inflammation of the entire right arm. He needed his dreuing changed. The doctor sat by him on a stool and tackled the arm.
'They were celebrating last night—someone's name-day,' he thought, slowly removing the bandage. 'You just wait, I'll give you parties! What can I do about it, though? I can do nothing.'
He felt an abscess on the purple, swollen arm and called: 'Scalpel!'
Trying to show that he was steady on his feet and fit for work, Smirnovsky rushed off and quickly came back with a scalpel.
'Not this—a new one,' said the doctor.
The assistant walked mincingly to the box—which was on a chair— containing material for the dressings, and quickly rummaged about. He kept on whispering to the nurses, moving the box on the chair, rustling it, and he twice dropped something. The doctor sat waiting, and felt a violent irritation in his back from the whispering and rustling.
'How much longer?' he asked. 'You must have left them down- stairs.'
The orderly ran up and handed over two scalpels, while committing the indiscretion of breathing in the doctor's direction.
'Not these!' snapped the doctor. 'I told you quite clearly to get me a new one. Oh, never mind, go and sleep it off—you reek like an ale- house. You're not fit to be trusted.'
'What other knives do you want?' asked the orderly irritably, slowly shrugging his shoulders. Annoyed with hi^^lf, and ashamed to have the patients and nurses staring at him, he forced a smile to conceal his emba^^ment. 'What other knives do you want?' he repeated.
The doctor felt tears in his eyes and a trembling in his fingers. He made another effort to control hi^^lf. 'Go and sleep it off,' he brought out in a quavering voice. 'I don't want to talk to a d^mk.'
'You can't tell me off for what I do off duty,' went on the orderly. 'Suppose I did have a drop—well, it don't mean anyone an order me about. I'm doing me job, ain't I? What more do you want? I'm doing me job.'
The doctor jumped to his feet, swung his arm without realizing what he was doing, and struck his assistant in the face with his full force. Why he did it he did not know, but he derived great pleasure from the punch landing smack on the man's face and from the fact that a dignified, God-fearing family man, a solid citizen with a high opinion of himself, had reeled, bounced like a baU and collapsed on a stool. He felt a wild urge to land a second punch, but the feeling of satisfaction vanished at the sight of the nurses' pale and troubled faces near that other hated face. With a gesture of despair he rushed out of the ward.
In the grounds he encountered the Sister on her way to the hospital —an u^arried woman of about twenty-seven with a sallow face and her hair loose. Her pink cotton dress was very tight in the skirt, which made her take tiny, rapid steps. She rustled her dres, jerking her shoulders in time with each step, and tossing her head as ifhumming a merry tune to herself.
'Aha, the Mermaid!' thought the doctor, recalling that the staff had given the Sister that nickname, and he savoured the prospect of ^^g the mincing, self-ob^ed, fashion-conscious creature do^wn a peg.
'Why are you never to be found?' he shouted as their paths crossed. 'Why aren't you at the hospital? The temperatures haven't been taken, the place is in a mess, my orderly is drunk, and you sleep tiU noon. You'd better find yourself another job—you're not working here any more.'
Reaching his lodgings, the doctor tore off his white apron and the piece of towelling with which it was belted, angrily hurled them both into a corner, and began pacing his study.
'Good grief, what awful people!' he said. 'They're no use, they're only a hindrance. I ^'t carry on, I really an't. I'm getting out.'
His heart was th^ping, he was trembling all over, and on the brink of tears. To banish these sensations he consoled himself by con- sidering how thoroughly justifed he was, and what a good idea it had been to hit his assistant. The odious thing was, he reflected, that the fellow had not got his hospital job in the ordinary way, but through nepotism—his aunt worked for the Council Chairman as a children's nurse. And what a loathsome sight she was when she came in for treat- ment—this high-powered Auntie with her offhand airs and queue- j^ping presumptions! The orderly was undisciplined and ignorant. What he did know he had no understanding of at all. He was drunken, insolent, unclean in his person. He took bribes from the patients and he sold the Council's medicines on the sly. Besides, it was co^mon knowledge that he practised medicine himself on the quiet, treating young to^rafolk for u^entionable complaints with special concoc- tions of his It would have been bad enough had he just been one more quack. But this was a quack militant, a quack with mutiny in his heart! He would cup and bleed out-patients without telling the doc- tor, and he would assist at operations with unwashed hands, digging about in the wounds with a perennially dirty probe—all of which served to demonstrate how profoundly and blatantly he scorned the doctor's medicine with all its lore and regulations.
When his fingers were steady the doctor sat at his desk and wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Council.
'Dear Leo Tro^movich,
'If, on receipt of this note, your Committee does not discharge the hospital orderly Smirnovsky, and if it denies me the right to choose my own assistants, I shall feel obliged—not without regret, I need hardly say—to request you to consider my employment as doctor at N. Hospital terminated, and to concern yourself with seeking my successor. My respects to Lyubov Fyodorovna and Yus.
'Faithfully,
g. ovchinnjkov'
Reading the letter through, the doctor found it too short and not formal enough. Besides, it was highly improper to send his regards to Lyubov Fyodorovna and Yus (nickname of the Chairman's younger son) in an official communication.
'Why the blazes bring in Yus?' wondered the doctor. He tore the letter up, and began planning another. 'Dear Sir,' he thought, sitting at his open ^mdow, and looking at
the duclcs and ducklings which hurried down the road, waddling and st^bling, and which must be on their way to the pond. One duckling picked a piece of offal from the ground, choked and gave a squeak of alarm. Another ran up to it, tore the thing out of itl beak and started choking too. Far away, near the fence, in the lacy shadows cast on the grau by the young limes, Darya the cook was wandering about picking sorrel for a vegetable stew. Voices were heard. Zot the coachman, a bridle in his hand, and the dirty-aproned hospiul odd-job-man Manuylo stood near the shed di^^ing something and laughing.