Radio-TV mirror (Jan-June 1953)

Irwin tell you where she'd be staying in Boston?" "Tell me! Of course not. I could find out from Jasper, probably. Dan — why?" "Because I'm afraid Herbert Irwin wasn't as lucky as Mr. Pulaski. It looks as though Mrs. Irwin ought to be told to get back here as fast as she can. I've got to go now. I'll tell you the details when I get home. See what you can find out, will you?" He didn't hear me say, "I'll try," because my throat was suddenly so dry. It took a lot of effort to sound natural when I talked to Jasper. With a shaking pencil I noted the hotel he named. What had happened? The question hammered away at my skull like a woodpecker. Mr. Pulaski and Herbert Irwin . . . what happened? Dan came in almost on the heels of my call, stopping on his way from the hospital to his office. There had been a big dance at the country club the night before. Maybe that was why Herbert Irwin was driving along the highway somewhere around four in the morning — maybe he'd just taken his date home and was racing back to his own house. Had something gone wrong with the beloved Italian car? Or had he closed his eyes for a second ''o^ed off before he knew it — it only needed a second to lose control, swerve, crash into a stone wall. And then with Herbert unconscious, pinned behind the wheel, the car had burst into soaring, devouring flame. That they knew for certain, for when Mr. Pulaski came along in his onehalf-ton panel truck on his way to the wholesale meat market all he saw at first was a mass of flame. It was a second or so before he even realized there was a car in the center of the horror, and a man in the car. He'd rushed in, thoughtless of anything except that he must do something, something. Nobody could imagine how he'd twisted and heaved that charred figure out of the flames. Or how, burnt as he himself was, he'd managed to speed to the hospital, and stay conscious long enough to make them understand there was somebody out in his car. Somebody Nobody knew who. There was only just life in him, but no identifying mark of any kind remained. They did what they could, even as they did for Mr. Pulaski, and put them both in the same room. When Mr. Pulaski regained consciousness he told the nurse Dan was his doctor, and that was how Dan came into it. He'd taken charge of Mr. Pulaski, and at the butcher's pleading he'd agreed to have a look at the motionless, nightmare figure that lay so quietly on the other bed. He'd had to lift swathing bandages to see the face. Only then had Dan recognized Herbert Irwin. Blinded and maimed and so terribly destroyed that recovering would be no mercy for him. You couldn't even cry or be torn with pity. It was too dreadful for that. All you could do was any small thing that might be of some use. We never even thought it was odd that we, of all people, should be calling Mrs. Irwin. This was the quickest way, that was all, and better than having her learn of the tragedy from a servant. She was amazing. I can't remember what was said, exactly, or what words I used. But I do remember, very well, the hard control that came down over her like an iron mold, shaping her actions, steadying her words. I remember that when her plane got in she didn't seem surprised that I had come to meet her, to go with her to the hospital. It was almost frightening, the way she R didn't break down. I would have been M terrified if she had, but at least it would have seemed normal. She was like a stone figure, but her mind wasn't frozen. With „o at least one small part of it she was aware of the rest of the world, as the taxi crept through traffic toward the hospital. She talked to me, asked about Dan. She even recalled that the board meeting was to be held the next night. Dr. Sanders, she said, had kept her well informed, though she didn't understand why he bothered. Her poise was so perfect that when I took her hand in the hospital lobby I could feel it steadier than my own. She did look at me then, though. "Don't be upset for me, my dear," she said. "I'm — quite old." Then her hand twisted suddenly in mine. "But Herbert was so young." A nurse came up and touched her arm, and I left them. There was no more I could do for anyone, no way I could change anything that might happen. All I could do was go home and pray for all of us . . . and wait. And try to be everything Dan needed, so that in some way I'd keep him strong when he so badly needed to be. Everything I know about what happened at the hospital I got in brief snatches of talk with Dan, on the phone or when he came tiredly home to eat or sleep. It wasn't until everything was over, the next night, that we sat down together long enough for him to tell me the whole thing. Even then, of course, there were important parts he didn't know because he'd spent most all his time with Herbert Irwin. It must have been quite a shock for Mrs. Irwin to discover that Herbert had insisted that Dan take care of him. The poor fellow's conscious moments were few, but they'd been enough for him to find out that Dan was Mr. Pulaski's doctor. Herbert seemed to attach a mystical importance to that. Mr. Pulaski had saved his life. He kept calling him his "brother," and Herbert seemed to want to get as close to the butcher, spiritually and emotionally, as he could in the time that was left to him. For Herbert knew that he was dying. "It was a strange thing to watch," Dan told me thoughtfully. "Almost as if the fire had burned away a useless shell and suddenly freed the real person in Herbert. The way he lashed out at his mother when she started giving orders to have Pulaski moved!" Mrs. Irwin had been grateful to Mr. Pulaski, of course. She had stood by his bed and told him, with the closest approach to tears anyone had ever seen in her, that there were no words she knew to convey her gratitude. "I owe you the life of my only child," she told him. "If you were a mother you would understand that there are no words, nothing I can do or say, that would begin to thank you enough. You're a fine man, Mr. Pulaski, a good and wonderful man. You risked your own life, I understand. One thing I can and will do is to see that you have every comfort." And she started giving orders about a private room for Mr. Pulaski, day and night nurses, a fund to make up what he'd lose while his business was closed. She was dumfounded when Herbert refused to let Mr. Pulaski be moved. Mr. Pulaski didn't want to go, either. He had tried in his quiet, deprecating way, to say that she needed to do nothing for him, but she had simply disregarded that and gone ahead. It was Herbert who got through to her. "Can't you understand anything, anything about people?" He hadn't had the strength to shout, but Dan said you could feel him wanting to. "Human beings, Mother, with feelings and hearts. I want him here, beside me. He's my brother. There's nobody closer than a man who's done what he did for me, without knowing or caring who I was, only that another human being was in trouble and needed help." "Darling, don't waste your strength." Mrs. Irwin held the bandaged hand lightly in both of hers. "I'll do anything you say, anything." "Then stop paying with money for what he did. Unless you can pay him with love, with understanding, you can't pay at all and you'd better not try it." Dan had gone quietly out then and sent the nurse in with Herbert's medication. He was so shaken and startled at those words, those thoughts, coming from Herbert Irwin that he'd been afraid for a minute he was going to cry himself. The tragedy of Herbert's accident was suddenly intensified beyond bearing. It had been sad, because he was so young — because it was so terrible. But for Herbert to find on the thin edge of the end of his life that he might have lived a very different one, that he might have been a really worthwhile, thinking, feeling person . . . that was tragedy to twist even a doctor's carefully protected emotions. Doctors see many births and deaths in the course of a lifetime, many wonderful, terrible things — but it isn't often even a doctor sees the birth of a soul. Preoccupied with Herbert and his office practice, to say nothing of his other hospital patients, Dan didn't have the time or inclination to brood about the board meeting that was now only hours away. He was too tired to think about fighting. Dr. Sanders intended to press for his dismissal on the grounds that he had been reckless, irresponsible of the hospital's welfare, had shown poor judgment. In short, Dr. Sanders was going to say, "Gentlemen, if Dr. Daniel Palmer weren't such an idealistic, I bull-headed, opinionated man, this hospital would now be drawing up plans for the new wing we've all been crying for. I do not criticize him as a doctor; we all know that his devotion and talent have added greatly to the stature of our hospital. I say that in view of the difficult situation his stubbornness has created, he would be a more useful doctor in some other institution than ours." All Dan wanted was a few minutes before the board, to clarify his position. He just wanted to explain, and get out. But the evening of the board meeting he saw that he might not even be able to do that, and he didn't even care much. For Herbert Irwin was sinking. Dan judged he mi^ht not last through the night. And he couldn't seem to bear having Dan out of his hearing. He wasn't conscious much, and sometimes he wandered. At one point Dan thought he heard him say, "I wonder if it's an illusion. Maybe at the end everyone thinks he might have been something different. Stay around, Dr. Palmer. You help." Dan bent to him. "I'll stay, Herbert. As long as you want me." In the corner, Mrs. Irwin stirred in her chair. When Dan left the bedside, she murmured, "The board meets tonight, Dr. Palmer, does it not? I imagine you'll want to be there." "It's not that important. If Herbert wants me here, that's that." She gave him a strangely piercing look. "Of course," she said. "It would be chat way, with you. " They had spoken little after that, and Herbert's fitful mutterings had been the only sound for a while. At about nine a nurse motioned Dan into the corridor. Dr. Edwards was out there, worried. "Dan — the meeting's held up waiting for you. When can you get loose here?" "I can't at all. Irwin wants me with him. He's going, and he knows it. They can get along without me better than this kid can." Dr. Edwards hesitated, searching Dan's pale, drawn face. "Sanders will make capital of it. He'll hint you're afraid to defend yourself." Dan smiled. It must have carried so much meaning — so much scorn of what Dr. Sanders or anyone could do to influence him in the face of what was going on in the