Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

THE NEW DOCTOR KILDARE NOVEL "Yes, eighty-five. He isn't really living. He's dead— he's dying now!' "Maybe," said Kildare, and put that light to the inhuman eye of Thornton once more. She found herself backing up toward the door. He took the stethoscope from his ears and said: "Have you seen the special?" "Not for hours," she answered. "That's queer," said Kildare. He talked as though he were drunk, with loose lips and a thick tongue. She got farther back, toward the door. "Are you afraid?" asked Kildare. She said nothing. "Come here," said Kildare. She got her feet somehow across the floor to him. "I'm ashamed of you," he said, looking up at her. "Go on about your work. I don't want you here." He looked back to Thornton and wiped the foam from the mouth of the sick man. "I'm not afraid any more," said Mary Lamont. "I'll do anything you want, Doctor." "What did the Simmons have to say to you?" "She wanted to know if you had authority from Doctor Lane to handle this case. Of course I told her you did." "Go back to her and say you lied. I haven't any authority." She felt a dreadful certainty that she was closed into the room with two madmen, not one. The thing to do is to humor the mad. "I won't go to her. I won't tell her," she said. "Take his temperature again," he commanded. She went about the work once more. Kildare took the utterly loose arm of Thornton and bent it up and down several times. Mary Lamont drew the thermometer from the clammy mouth and shuddered as she read it. "Still eighty-five, doctor," she said. "Eighty -five," murmured Kildare. "My God, eighty-five." IT was plain that he had spoken to himself, not to her and the fear that had been growing in her sprang out like an electric current, tingling in her forehead and down through the tips of her fingers. Then, not like a living creature but as though to make a mockery of sentient motion, the arm of Thornton which Kildare had flexed began to lift and fall in the same gesture, and presently he tried to sit up, still with his eyes closed; and again it was like movement in the dead. Thornton swayed his head; he was like a man trying to catch his balance on a running horse. Kildare pressed him back into the bed. A new knock came at the door. "Keep them out," said the emotionless voice of Kildare. But when the girl opened the door she saw Doctor Carew himself in the hall. "You are Nurse Lamont, aren't you?" he asked. And he went on: "I understand Kildare is in here?" "Yes, sir. He wished to work without interruption, sir." "Does he?" said Carew, and walked straight in, past her, almost as though he would have walked over her. He was not a big man but anger enlarged him. "Kildare," he said, "were you authorized to take care of this case tonight?" Then he took full note of Thornton's face and exclaimed: "By God, I think you've killed that man! Kildare!" Kildare lifted his head a little but failed to turn it. "This is Doctor Carew speaking," said the head of the hospital. "Very well," said Kildare, never moving his eyes from the face of Thornton. "Very well? But it's distinctly not very well!" said Carew, his voice kept down, his rage only a tremor of tension, in the dying presence of Thornton. "What authority have you to take charge of this case, I repeat?" "None," said Kildare. "This is entirely on my own." Carew rose to his tiptoes. He settled back on his heels more slowly. "Leave this room and get back to your own place in the hospital," he said. "I had something to tell the board about you tomorrow, now I shall have enough more. Leave this patient instantly!" "Who'll take him in charge if I go?" asked Kildare. "Does anybody else want the responsibility, now?" He turned at last and gave to Carew a ghastly smile. "What have you done to him, man?" demanded Carew. A groan from Thornton seemed to give the answer. Carew, hesitating an instant, turned and walked rapidly from the room. He slammed the J* +■*■***'*+■+■+'*'*' f+'jr door heavily after him, regardless of dead or dying patients. MARY LAMONT went out after him. She could not stand it a moment longer in the room. Daylight was coming. She leaned at an open window and told herself that the coming day gave more life and more hope to the very air she was breathing. After a few minutes she was able to go back. The daylight made things worse instead of better. It showed the senseless face of Thornton and the white torment in that of Kildare far better than the lamps had done. "Tell me how to help," she pleaded. "Nobody can help me," he said. "Not now. Nobody in the hospital. But keep looking back in on me when you can, will you?" She glanced at his preparations. There was a flat dish, a rubber tube, a hypodermic, and a reddish solution in a stoppered flask. She could make no sense out of them, and she went away again. There were things for her to do. She got through them mechanically and then hurried back, carrying a tray of coffee and thin sandwiches. Kildare, bunch-backed like an old man, leaned over the bed at watch, as he had been all those hours. There seemed little left of him. It was fantastically as though he were giving up part of his own life in order to take that of Thornton. There was something between Thornton's teeth on which he bit with locked jaws. His whole body seemed as stiff as stone, with the fists clenched, the hands turning slowly in, the arms extending themselves. In that spastic rigidity she recognized the last stage of life. Men died, a little after they reached that point. Kildare seemed to be dying with his patient. When she offered him the coffee he was unaware of it, though the steam rose into his face. "Take this," she ordered. He discovered the coffee with vague surprise and took the cup in his hand. Once more he forgot everything except the dying man on the bed. "Drink it," she commanded. He discovered the coffee again, tasted it, drank it. She pulled the empty cup from his fingers. She stepped back and looked at him. A fist fight hardly could have battered and discolored his eyes more. "Where is he — now?" she asked. The weary eyes did not shift for an instant from Thornton, as though the grip they kept upon him were what tied him to life. "He's back at the beginning of things," said Kildare. "He's gone through all the stages of evolution in reverse. His brain has been scaled away in layers, and now he's back in the stage of the reptile. Nothing in his brain is alive except the medulla, the very base of it; and the only thing that brain can tell his muscles to do is to twist and writhe, with movements like those of a snake." He spoke slowly, a phrase at a time, pauses between. As he finished speaking, he forgot her. "Will he — will he live?" she managed to ask. "Get some blood out of an artery for me," said Kildare. She prepared a syringe, and tried for the big artery at the inside of the elbow. She knew the hypodermic needle found that artery, but the blood that came out was thick, viscous, dead, like the blood from a vein. "Look!" she said, whispering. "It's from an artery, but there's no life in it. It's the same as blood from a vein. . . ." "Very well. Stop screaming at me!" The loud-speaker in his own brain had turned her voice to thunder, no doubt. "Yes, Doctor," she said. "What else can I do?" He did not hear. She crouched by his chair and looked up in his face. It was as though he had been away from her for years, he was so twisted and hardened by the endurance of those long hours. Yet her heart opened suddenly to him. She said: "Jimmy, tell me how to share it with you, and help!" He was silent. She repeated: "Are you sure what will happen to him?" "No," said Kildare. "All I know is that I have to nearly kill his brain before I can hope that he'll wake up into a few minutes of sanity." "But suppose he doesn't wake up?" "Then I've murdered him," said Kildare. She got a good grip on the foot of the bed and steadied herself. "What time is it?" he asked, never dropping his eyes from the face of Thornton. "It's after seven," she said. "Thank God!" he said. "Leave me alone with him . . . and then come back." isHE went out. There was still no sign of Carew returning. Before he came back, no doubt he would have the career of Kildare already nailed on a cross. A rumor had gone through the hospital. There were plenty of people in the corridor, now, from nurses and attendants to staff physicians. Molly Byrd, grim as a Roman soldier, bore down on the girl and cornered her. "What's going on in 412?" she asked. "Carew's half mad!" "I don't know," said Mary Lamont. "Don't be a fool!" said the Byrd. "Don't be a nitwit — you! What's the matter with you, Lamont? Have you seen a ghost? Come here and let me get some hot coffee into you!" She dragged Mary Lamont into the floor office and poured some steaming coffee. The girl sat shuddering in a chair with her hands pressed to her face. "Talk to me now," commanded the Byrd, when Mary had swallowed some coffee. "I can't," said the girl. "I can't say anything . . . it's too horrible ... I mean. . . ." "If I can't get anything out of you, I'll use my own eyes and ears," said the head nurse. "Don't go into that room!" cried Mary. Something about her voice was enough to stop Molly Byrd at the door. "Why not?" she demanded. "I don't know — except that it will haunt you every day of your life." Even the Byrd was impressed. Mary went past her into the hall. "Where are you going?" demanded the head nurse. "I've got to get back there," said Mary. When she was inside the room, she saw that the whole thing had changed. It was much more frightful to a casual eye but not to the eye of a nurse. Thornton foamed at the mouth and slobbered, turning his head from side to side with sudden movements. But life was coming back. The attitude of Kildare was altered, also. He was no longer like a murderer but what she knew of old — all eager brain and tenacious will. The period of mute waiting had ended. He wiped the foam from the mouth of Thornton. He kept saying: "Thornton, how are you? How is it now, Thornton?" Kildare turned and nodded his head toward the door. The girl, as she went out, kept remembering that last look, for there was an uncanny brightness of triumph in it. "Noon, Friday . . . where is it you have to be? What is it you have to do, Thornton . . . Noon, Friday — Thornton, what is it you have to do at noon, Friday?" The head of Thornton at last stopped rolling. Light entered the blank mist of his open eyes. "I meet Marian — in the lobby of the Clerfayt Hotel — at noon, Friday," he said. He roused suddenly and completely, crying out: "Will you get me there?" He caught at the hands of Kildare and repeated in an agony: "Will you get me there?" CHAPTER XVI TEN or fifteen minutes later a sort of quiet maelstrom in the form of Doctor Carew had picked up Mary Lamont. He had Gregory Lane with him. He was saying to Lane: "I simply want a direct understanding on one point which already has been put to you: Did you or did you not order definite work to be done on Thornton tonight, or did you give indefinite authority to any other doctor in the hospital to interfere with that patient?" "No," said Lane, "I did not." He looked curiously at Carew and then at Mary. Carew had turned on her, as they walked briskly down the corridor, saying: "Now, Nurse Lamont, I want from you a detailed report on what has been going on in Room 412 last night and this morning." "Mr. Thornton seemed very ill," she said. "Doctor Kildare was with him. . . ." "Doing what?" "I can't tell, Doctor. I was not given the full details of the treatment. . . ." "It was written on the chart, was it not?" "I believe not, sir." Carew came to an abrupt halt. He was purple with his emotion. "An uncharted treatment — given without permission— by an interne! . . . It's on Gillespie's head, eventually! Eventually on his head. . . ." He started forward again, walking with violent speed. He exclaimed: "To encourage the ignorant bullheadedness of a boy — a mere child! To place in his ~38~~