The Doctor Takes a Wife (6 page)

I pointed that out to Chappell one day at lunch. He said something about Phil
’
s looking fit, and wasn
’
t he ready to admit it?

“He
’
s contracted a bad case of idealism,” I told the Old Man.

“Eh?” He had a trick of flashing his eyeglasses when he was startled or angry. Now, he lifted his head sharply, and I blinked.

“Well—” I glanced at Phil, who sat back in his chair grinning at me. “The boy thinks he should turn to research
—
not waste his time on people, especially women with eclampsia.”

“Oh,” growled Chappell. “One of those.”

“Doctor
...
” said Phil, ready to speak, for himself. “Whitley has the floor. Let him tell how your idea sounds to others.” He loudly crushed crackers into his bowl of soup.

“Don
’
t get any idea that I agree with Phil,” I prefaced. “But he
’
s been bending my ear on the subject
—
You see, he got a scare up there at McCord, and decided that life was short and easily wasted.”

“I can walk out on this,” murmured Phil. “You know that?”

“That would be typical. You
’
re promising to walk out on your job.” I leaned toward Chappell. “That
’
s what he says he wants to do, sir. He argues that life being as short as it is, a man should waste none of it doing anything except realizing his dreams.”

Dr. Chappell pushed his soup bowl away from him. “What is it you plan, Scoles?” he asked courteously. I
’
ll never attain his ability to conceal his own feelings, or even opinions, until he gets all the facts.

Phil told him, repeating the terms that he
’
d used on me. They didn
’
t sound any better this time, and when he
’
d finished I said so. “Did you ever hear such foolishness?” I demanded.

Dr. Chappell let his eyes go to the open door of the-staff dining room. Out in the hall, a few people were already sitting on the chairs and benches. An anxious young man holding his wife
’
s pocketbook, two women gossiping cheerfully, another woman talking urgently to a nurse
...

“There are some doctors,” he said thoughtfully,
“
who are better at ideas and theory than they are at practice. I wouldn
’
t have said Scoles was one of them, but I
’
ve been wrong many times in my seventy years. Medicine, as we practice it here in our Clinic, would not be what it is today if it were not for the researchers. Pasteur and Semmelweis, Fleming and Wachtman, Koch and Wasserman. But on the other hand, of course, research needs a goal. Your Dr.
Koch did a lot for t.b. but the best expression of his theories has been afforded by a surgeon in your same St. Louis who first ventured to excise a diseased lung.” He shot a keen glance at Phil.

“Research,” he went on, “takes a certain type of doctor. He needs patience, imagination—an ability to take disappointment and failure. For one Koch there must have been a thousand men who lived and worked and died without recognition.”

“But they were doing the work they wanted to do!” Phil broke in.

“Presumably, yes. And if the work alone was their goal, they fulfilled their possibilities. But so was I, working here in Berilo for forty-five years, though I
’
ve not contributed one thing to the science of medicine.”

“You
’
ve built this clinic and hospital,” I cried.

“Yes, Whitley, I have. But one might ask, what is one more hospital among thousands?”

“The fellow to answer that question is the man who
’
s been able to bring his wife and his child here for care! You could even ask brother Philip here whether it was o.k. to have Berry and Chappell where it was on the night of December 18th?”

“Oh,
Whit...”
groaned Phil.

“Well, I think you should face a few facts like that instead of going off on a tangent—walking out on a job you know you can do because of a crazy notion
your
name is Koch!”

“Now, now!” said the Old Man soothingly. “For all we know, his name
is
Koch, Larry. It
’
s my opinion that Scoles should leave here.”

Phil was fully as startled as I was.

Dr. Chappell, seemingly unaware of this, carefully put three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “Don
’
t coax him to stay with us, Whitley,” he said gravely. “If he doesn
’
t believe in the sort of work we do here—in the importance of our preventive medicine as well as the cures we effect
—
why, he
’
s no good for us, and the sooner he goes away, the better!”

Phil resented that, I could see and he argued with the Old Man. “You don
’
t quite understand, sir
...”

“Oh, yes! I understand completely.”

“I
’
ve no wish—nor need—to belittle the surgery I
’
ve been doing here.”

“You
’
re a capable surgeon, Scoles. And I
’
ve always thought you had a real talent for people, but if you
’
ve lost that feeling—and you must have lost it, to consider the research end more important—”

“You can
’
t deny that a bit of research could be done in the matter of blood clots!”

“I don
’
t deny it. I
’
m not arguing with you at all. I give you credit for knowing what it is you want to do. I was just pointing out to Whitley that our work here is too exacting, we
’
re entirely too busy, to appeal to a man ready to give up practicing medicine.

“I understand your larger ideal of serving humanity, Scoles. But the individual, as such, no longer seems important to you. You
’
re ready to save all women from the threat of post-partum blood clots, and that
’
s a wonderful ideal.

“But, in the meantime, you will let somebody else do your work here in the hospital and clinic. Take that woman in the green suit out there in the hall. I presume she
’
s come in for a routine examination and check-up. In the course of that examination, she
’
d normally pass under your hands and eyes and skill, and you could either decide she was in good condit
i
on and ready to carry on with her usual duties as wife and mother, or you could discover the little growth on her cervix which needs removal by a surgeon, analysis in our pathology lab—and so on. You
’
d do that operation skillfully, catching the growth at an early stage, perhaps saving her life.

“Now,
I
’
ll
grant that she
’
s only one woman. I don
’
t know her name, nor how much she means to society—”

“Dr. Chappell—”

The Old Man got to his feet. “Go on and do your research,” he urged. “Save humanity! I think you should. You
’
re no good to us, and we wouldn
’
t have you wasting your time around here, Dr. Scoles! Good-bye, sir!”

He stalked out, and closed the hall door behind him. Even I was shocked at the bitterness of his attack on
Phil. And Phil was angry—so angry that I thought for a minute he
’
d stay just to prove the Boss wrong.

I don
’
t think the Old Man had jumped him for that purpose, though. Dr. Chappell was sold on his clinic. He
’
d built it on more ideals, longer maintained, than we younger men knew about. What he had said made me glimpse the long-term integrity of the man and his project. I hoped Phil would see it, too.

And maybe he did.

But just the same, he packed up his gear, and left Berilo at the end of that month.

CHAPTER 5

I
didn
’
t
do any more arguing with Phil before he left. I
’
d stated my position, and I had no wish to lose him as a friend My doubts about his feelings for Min I simply buried. I kept busy at the Clinic, and he attended to his own affairs. We didn
’
t see a lot of each other. Perhaps, while still in Berilo, he entertained some gnawing doubts. One usually does when making a radical change.

But he had a lot to do, and I think he was on the train, looking out of the window at Wyoming, before he faced active regret over his decision. His broken ribs and the little injury to his lung made us advise against flying, and the train trip gave
him
thirty-six hours in which to think, alone, unhampered by disagreement or agreement.

He sat there looking out at the beautiful, and bleak, panorama of mountain and desert, at the streaks of snow still to be seen, at the ducks on the green mirror of a lake, at all the prime colors of that country—red, blue and yellow—and he thought of all the things he had left behind in Idaho. Jonquils in bloom, the three-lined streets, the towering spruces
...

And his friends. The hospital. Some cases he
’
d been interested in. He should have contacted those women, and reassured them, taken some pains to establish their confidence in the doctors who would now look lifter them. He had a half-dozen post-operatives he should have eased off.
He made notes on a pad for letters which he should—and would—write back to Forrestal and Putnam.

His case records were clear and exact, but—there was that psychosomatic angle to Annis Nevin
’
s approaching delivery. It should be normal in all respects, but her mother had had a heart condition and had died in childbirth when Annis was fourteen. She was sure that she too risked dea
th
; she believed in Phil
’
s ability to ease her through by surgery, if necessary—Oh, he should have called Annis in for examination, and persuaded her that the other men on the staff were equally capable of taking care of her!

He spent some minutes thinking about me. He hoped Whitley understood that some of the vile temper and ugly behavior lately had been due to weakness from his injury—

He
’
d never had a friend quite like Whit. Understanding, and pleasant, no matter what. A man of both opinions and performance (these were Phil
’
s words in the letter which he wrote to me) and yet a man, too, who was always ready to give proper interest to his friend
’
s ideas and deeds.

Everyone in Berilo had been wonderfully friendly to Phil. He supposed living where they did explained some of their nature; the size of the mountains, their grandeur, was a challenge to a man
’
s personality. The boundless blue sky, the terrifying bulk of those heaps of up-ended rocks—a man had to be big to live in such a place. Pettiness and self-interest could look too puny for long survival. To live in such a place each man must think at least as often of his neighbor as he did of himself.

Phil sat up very straight in his seat. By God!
That
was why Chappell had told him to get out! Phil had begun to think only of himself, of his own dreams, however creditable; he made the excuse of doing research to benefit all humanity, but he was doing it first and foremost to satisfy an urge in
Phil Scoles
. Chappell had seen that. And Whit, too, probably.

This was a prickly thought, and Phil went quickly to the club car to get away from it. But in that car he encountered a blonde girl in a mink coat. She looked so much like Marynelle—long, slim legs, languid wrists with her cigarette, boldly appraising eyes—that he soon went back to his roomette, and then deliberately thought about Marynelle, about the house he had had to sell before leaving Berilo.

Except for filling in with their wedding gifts, the place had been completely furnished when Marynelle was killed. She
’
d had keys to it, but Phil was quite sure her family had not gone there while he was in the hospital. Sitting now in the warm train, feeling the rush of its wheels against the rails, hearing but not heeding the muted clash and shake and rattle of steel on steel, he considered his feelings on the afternoon when he drove out to that house to show it to a man and his wife who were interested in buying it furnished.

The snowy sidewalk showed only the footprints of a neighborhood dog; the new house had a vague air of neglect and abandonment which would have been difficult to identify. A certain cloudiness of the window panes, perhaps, and the absence of wheel tracks in the driveway. The oil tank had been filled, the furnace turned low, so that the pipes would not freeze, yet the air of the house when Phil got the door open—it stuck a bit from disuse and dampness—was as cold as that of a vault, as dead—

Even now he shivered to realize his metaphor. He must avoid morbidity, and yet it could not be avoided. The house was so much like Marynelle! Even with the heat turned up, and the curtains opened upon the bright colors, the gle
am
ing
, empty surfaces of floor and table top, it continued to look lie her house, to be her house—and so dead that it should have been decently buried with her.

He wished that he had let a real estate agent handle the sale of the house; Phil would be put to it to make things seem normal to a prospective buyer. He had determined not to mention the tragedy, just to say that he had decided to do some work in St Louis. With newcomers, he could manage that sort of thing.

The Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had inquired if he might be selling the house; he thought he had a buyer—

Phil was reassured to find these people middle-aged; the man was a writer; his wife
’
s health was not good, a higher altitude had been advised. She was interested in Phil
’
s be
in
g a doctor, and in their discussion he was able to lean heavily upon that fact.

To her husband, anxious that his wife be pleased, Phil need only say that he
’
d probably enjoy the Little Theatre group in Berilo. They were a pleasant bunch, and would surely latch on to Kenneth Knox.

“Do they bear identifying marks so that I
’
ll be forewarned?” the man asked.

“No, and I might be persuaded to suppress your identity—
”

They
’
d grinned at each other.

Mrs. Knox had been charmed with the house—it was like a picture! She
’
d never manage to keep it free of knick
-
knacks, but she
’
d try. Why
o
n earth was Phil selling it? She
’
d bet his wife—

He mentioned briefly that his plans to marry had been disrupted, and they tactfully said no more. Phil offered to take Mrs. Knox personally to the Clinic and introduce her to the doctors there.

This he had done, and would not have returned to the house except that Mrs. Knox called him to say that she
’
d found some clothes hanging in the storage closet; she felt they must belong to his ex-
fiancée
whose name she did not know
...

Phil had to go for them Two plastic bags filled with Marynelle
’
s summer dresses, brought there understandably. He must take them to her mother, and, at last, face Marynelle
’
s family, a task which he had been avoiding in a cowardly fashion.

He should have gone before, of course. I was shocked
w
hen he mentioned his predicament to me.

“Haven
’
t you heard a word from them?” I asked.

“They sent me some flowers to the hospital.”

“That all?”

“Yes, but I could understand their not running around at such a time.”

“You
’
ve been able to do a certain amount of running yourself, lately.”

“I know, Whit. I know. I should have gone out there. Now I guess I have to go.”

“I guess you do,” I agreed. He looked so glum that I offered
...
“Want me to drive you out?”

“I
’
d like a little moral support
.
You went to the funeral, didn
’
t you?”

“I left my card at the house.”

“I knew you
’
d have done the proper thing. Lord, Whit, I didn
’
t even send flowers
!
”

“The town knew you were almost killed, Phil.”

He brightened. “Yeah, I guess they did. Look, Whit—it wasn
’
t—I did feel bad about Marynelle—but there just didn
’
t seem anything to say.”

“You know, Phil, you could just send her clothes over.”

“They
’
ve been waiting for me to help them dispose of some of the wedding gifts.” He spoke in a hollow voice.

“That would normally be the bride
’
s job, I
’
d
think
—her family
’
s.”

“They
’
ve done most of it. But there
’
s some family silver and stuff sent by my folks.”

“Good Lord, Phil! Did they ask you to come?”

“Yes. When I was able. Mrs. Lowe sent me a note.”

“Well, now, you
’
re sure able.”

He was looking terribly uneasy. “But you will come with me?”

I went. On the drive out I tried to tell the big sap how many unhappy tasks must have faced this family. The cancellation of all the wedding plans, the big job of recalling invitations, of sending back the gifts—added to the grief and preoccupation which attends any death.

“Maybe they didn
’
t notice my behavior,” he suggested.

“
We hope.”

“There
’
s one thing I haven
’
t told you, Whit,” he said unhappily, “about that night in the snow.”

I groaned.

“I did tell you that Marynelle and I had quarreled?”

“Yes, over Min.”

“And other things. But before we were hurt I got to thinking about why I should be marrying
her
—Marynelle, I mean. It seemed to me so much a matter of happenstance, that when I was hurt and realized how I
’
d been just letting my life drift, one of the first things I regretted was my plan to marry as I was doing.”

“You
mean...”

“Yes. I knew I shouldn
’
t marry a girl merely because we
’
d been thrown together and she was good-looking and gave slick parties.”

I took a deep breath. “You didn
’
t love her?”

“Not as a man should when he marries. It might have worked, in a cool sort of way, but it wasn
’
t the best I could have out of life. Like my doctoring
...
”
He
cast a glance at me, and coughed slightly.

I said nothing.

“When I came out of it and realized that I had been given a reprieve, my first thought was to break off with Marynelle. This was so firmly in my mind, Whit, that it was as if the engagement had already been broken before she died.”

I pulled into the driveway of the Lowe home, and cut the switch. “I don
’
t know that I
’
d advise your mentioning that in here, Phil,” I said anxiously.

“I wanted you to know why I
’
d stayed away.”

I opened my door. “I
think
that
second thought was a good one,” I muttered, but I doubt if Phil heard me.

Marynelle
’
s father is a contractor on a big scale. He builds dams and highway systems and hydroelectric power plants—and he does it all around the world. He
’
d been in Berilo at the time of his daughter
’
s death, having come for the wedding, but we found, on entering the house, that he was now away in Italy. Mrs. Lowe and her son were in the sunroom, the Filipino boy told us.

He took our coats, and led the way through a cathedral
-
lighted living room to the very pleasant room whose windows, by day, looked out upon the desert and Table Rock. By night, the bamboo curtains were drawn, and a log fire burned upon the stone hearth.

Marynelle had been the late flowering of her parents
’
marriage. Her only brother, Eugene, was easily forty, and, unfortunately, looked like his mother, who was one of those small, desiccated women you so often find married to big and hearty men. I suppose that, as a girl, Mrs. Lowe had been the Dresden doll type, and not brainy.

At sixty-five, she was no brainier than before, and had lost all claim to beauty except in her own mind. She wore a quantity of jewels, elaborately curled her thin white hair, rouged and powdered her dry old skin and talked in a thin and foolish voice.

Of course, we all gave consideration to her recent tragedy. I watched Phil handle his difficult position with much better grace than I could have brought to it. Mrs. Lowe clung to him, and wept. He sat down beside her on the hibiscus-flowered couch and listened attentively while she told him every detail of Marynelle
’
s funeral. Eugene sat near them and fidgeted with a contraption of wire and colored beads that had an oriental look and meant absolutely nothing to me. Eugene
’
s wife, a nice, horse-faced woman inappropriately named Fern, endeavored to entertain me. She asked about the theatrical performances, and about the Clinic.