The Moon by Night (33 page)

Cheney said to Mrs. Farley, “If you'll excuse me, I'll be back as soon as I can. Do you need anything right now? Could you drink juice if I brought some?”

“That does sound good, Dr. Duvall, but don't go to any trouble. I can wait.”

Cheney washed her hands and hurried to the nurses' station. In Mrs. Flagg's neat handwriting, a note was posted at the desk.
Friday, 7 December: Dr. Buchanan in at six o'clock
. Dev always let her know when he planned to come in. Cheney was often amazed at Dev's scrupulous sense of duty. He sent one of the servants every morning with his schedule. If he was out on a call or an emergency, he sent a telegram. He was the most conscientious man Cheney had ever known.

She started toward the storage closet, which in truth was a small room that served for storage, and also had a pantry and a counter that served for quick mixing of simple prescriptives. But Nurse Nilsson was just coming out, rolling a cart loaded with juices, milk, mineral water, and a large samovar that made over a gallon of tea and kept it hot, a donation Cheney had made after her longing for tea in the middle of the night.

“Oh, hello, Nurse Nilsson, I didn't realize it was after three,” Cheney said, checking her watch. “Oh my, three-thirty, and I'm behind already. Would you please give Mrs. Farley some apple juice first? I promised her.” She turned and followed the nurse back out onto the ward.

“Of course, Dr. Duvall. She is such a lovely woman, isn't she?” the nurse said warmly. “Never complains, and poor thing, she is so very ill.”

“She does have a sweet spirit,” Cheney agreed. “Thank you, nurse.” Cheney knocked lightly on the side of Becky Green's cubicle, then pulled the curtain aside and stepped in. She was shocked at how ghastly Becky looked. It was the first glimpse Cheney had caught of her in two days. Her face was the color of old ashes, and her skin had lost so much of its elasticity that it seemed stretched too tightly over her skull, giving her the all-too-familiar “death's-head” look of the critically ill. She had obviously lost weight, and her arms looked like sticks and her hands like claws.

Cheney was professional enough that her dismay didn't show on her face, but still Ira Green jumped up and stood in front of her as if to block her view. Cheney stepped back out in the hallway and said quietly, “Dr. Buchanan will be here at six o'clock, Mr. Green.”

“Six! That's hours!” he blustered.

“Two and a half,” Cheney said mildly. “Can you tell me what is the trouble? If I knew, I might be able to find a solution that you wouldn't object to.”

“Stop talking that mealy-mouthed do-gooder gobbledygook!” he almost shouted.

Cheney was distressed to see that tears sprang to his eyes and began to roll down his cheeks, large drops that plopped onto his leather waistcoat one after the other. His face was distorted with anger, not with sorrow, but suddenly Cheney could see how terribly frightened this man had become. She stood with a fixed sympathetic expression and let him take his anger out on her. He was ranting, not making much sense, but Cheney knew that any attempt to reason with him would only make matters worse, so she stood quietly and took it. Her main regret was that she heard Becky start crying, and she wished she could have gotten Mr. Green to a private place to rail at her without upsetting the other patients.

“I can't get anybody to pay attention to us in this place because we're poor nobodies,” he snarled. “And I'm sick of it! Me and Beck, we're just gonna go on over to Bellevue, where at least we don't have to depend on the charity of stuck-up big-bugs to pay us a bit of mind!”

Cheney felt the resentment in her rise, not only for herself but for the entire hospital staff, at his brutally unfair charges. She also felt very angry at his thoughtlessness toward his wife, however scared and grieved he may be. Bellevue was a terrible place—overcrowded, understaffed, underfunded, filthy, and hopeless. She knew that Ira Green knew that.

But she also knew that he couldn't help himself, that bitterness and resentment and envy had eaten away at him until he could hardly behave like a civil human being anymore. And his misery was certain to affect the other patients, so Cheney merely nodded and said as softly and gently as she could manage, “I understand, Mr. Green, and I am genuinely sorry that you feel this way. I certainly don't want Mrs. Green to leave, but these angry scenes are upsetting to the other patients, so perhaps it would be better for everyone if you were in a hospital where you felt more comfortable with your wife's care.”

His face grew red. Tears still rolled down his leathery cheeks. “Fine! We'll be a-leaving just as soon as I can get Beck up and going!”

“Please, let me send down—let me see…Timothy Orr is here now. You know, the afternoon attendant in the men's ward? He'll be happy to help you get Mrs. Green's things together and get her into a wheeled chair. I'll go call a hackney coach.”

“We can't afford no hackney. We ain't got money to throw away like that,” he said sullenly and somewhat shamefaced now that he realized that Cheney had called his bluff.

For her part, Cheney had had no thought as to whether it was a bluff. She just wanted to defuse the situation as quickly as possible. “I honestly don't think Mrs. Green would be able to take the train, do you, Mr. Green?” Cheney said kindly. “Look, here is Miss Nilsson with the cart. Won't you and Mrs. Green have some nice hot tea and make plans on how and when to transfer her?”

“All right, but we're gonna be leaving, since I'm bothering all these other ladies so bad and all,” he muttered with a trace of his previous ire.

“At the very least, Mr. Green, please consider staying here and having dinner with Mrs. Green, and then Dr. Buchanan should be in and you could speak to him about it,” Cheney said in the most neutral manner she could manage. “In the meantime Miss Nilsson will be on the ward, so you may call for her if you need anything.”

Without another word Cheney went down the hall to the nurses' station, but she did cringe a little as she turned away, thinking Ira Green may start shouting after her. But he didn't, and Cheney could hear Miss Nilsson's quiet murmur and his low rumble.

Dr. Gilder came up the hall from the men's ward with a grave expression on his face. He was a nice enough young man, but Cheney didn't feel that he had the heart to be a really good physician. It seemed to be more of a lark to him. He was extremely intelligent, no doubt about that, but Cheney had once overheard him talking to the other student doctor from Columbia, Dr. Varick. He had said, “I can't imagine working the rest of my life in some dusty dim office just figuring up ways to pile up money like my father and my brother.”

“You'd feel differently if you didn't have money already piled up,” Dr. Varick had said sourly. He was a thin, earnest, bespectacled scholarship student, while Duncan Gilder was a charming, dashing, careless wealthy society man. As often happened, though opposites, they had become best friends.

Dr. Gilder's boyishly handsome face did show some worry now. “Dr. Duvall? I think Mr. Reese has a septic sore throat. I've only seen one case before, briefly, as part of a ward tour. Could you come see about him?”

“Of course.” Cheney joined him as they returned down the men's ward hall. “I certainly hope you're wrong, Dr. Gilder. That's all we need—another highly infectious, highly communicable disease making the rounds.”

“I know,” he said uncertainly. “But I'm pretty sure I'm right. The only thing that makes me unsure is the speed in which the symptoms have evidenced. I checked Mr. Reese very carefully yesterday before I left, and he evidenced only a slight throat irritation, caused, I thought, by the catarrhal discharge of the influenza. But today his throat looks really putrid.”

Cheney was checking Mr. Reese's throat while trying at the same time to signal Dr. Gilder to get Mr. Reese's nervous young wife away from the patient when they heard a man shouting angrily, even cursing. Obviously the man was far away, but because of the wide open hallways they could hear loud noises on either ward. Without looking up from her examination, she said in a tight voice, “That is Mr. Ira Green, Dr. Gilder. Please go see to it. If necessary, ask Mr. Green to leave. This has gone entirely too far.” The young man turned away, and Cheney called after him, “Do not forget to wash!”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said obediently.

Cheney finished her examination and said in a businesslike voice, “I'm sorry, Mr. Reese, but you have contracted a septic sore throat. I know it's causing you serious pain. I can see that your throat is inflamed, so I'm going to make you a special prescriptive for the pain and also make you a gargle. It's going to hurt, but it's absolutely imperative that you use it six times a day.”

He was so ill, he simply nodded listlessly. Cheney knew that with a throat as raw as his had proven to be, it hurt to even whisper. Mrs. Reese, a nervous, rather whiny woman, started in worrying if her darling Willie was going to die of a putrid sore throat. She had had a great-great-uncle who had died of exactly that. Oh, how she hoped she wouldn't catch it so that she couldn't take good care of her darling Willie. He was so very ill and pale and could hardly swallow a crumb of his luncheon.

Dr. Gilder appeared at the door, ashen faced. “Dr. Duvall, come with me, please.”

Cheney hurried toward the women's ward with him, noting that Ira Green was still shouting, evidently at Miss Nilsson.

“Mrs. Green vomited and tore her stitches. She's hemorrhaging,” Dr. Gilder said in a tight voice. “I told Mr. Green that I wasn't qualified to attend to it by myself and that I was going to fetch you. He said no, but I just told him on the fly that if he didn't stay out of your way and leave you alone I was going to get Officer Goodin to march him out.”

“Officer Goodin's here?” Cheney asked.

Just then they met him, holding Ira Green tightly by the arm, walking him outside. Ira was sullenly silent, but as they passed he said in a low guttural tone, “I want us to get out of this hellhole now. Just patch her up, and then we're leaving.”

“Very well, Mr. Green,” Cheney said.

As they came in, Miss Nilsson was struggling to turn Becky on her side. She was vomiting and having a seizure, and a bright red bloodstain was spreading on her nightdress. Cheney, Miss Nilsson, and Dr. Gilder worked with her for forty minutes, getting her cleaned up, bandaged, and stabilized. Cheney was trying to wind a cingulum around her torso to act as a pressure bandage, but it was almost impossible because Mrs. Green had fallen into a stupor, which Cheney feared may be the beginning of the terminal coma.

It took both Dr. Gilder and the stout Miss Nilsson to hold her upright. But the strain on the patient opened up the incision again, and Cheney was having immense difficulty staunching the blood and winding the cingulum at the same time. If the bandage was not pressurized enough to stop the blood flow, the cingulum would do no good. She was considering calling in one more person to hold the pressure bandage, but she couldn't figure out how she would maneuver around three people to place the cingulum.

At that moment she heard the most welcome voice in the world. “Here, Cheney,” Dev said, “let me get in there and see if I can figure a way to do this.”

“Gladly,” Cheney said with exhaustion. “I'm not even sure now that we shouldn't just stitch her up. I thought she might be in a state stertorous enough so that we wouldn't need anesthesia, but it was impossible to stop the pressure treatment long enough to assess her state of consciousness.”

“I see. Here, just lie her down. Yes, I see. We've got to get this hemorrhage stopped right now. Dr. Gilder, you hold that bandage down. Harder, Duncan,” he ordered, placing his stethoscope on Mrs. Green's chest.

The young doctor swallowed hard. “But, Dr. Buchanan, I can feel her ribs creaking. I'm afraid I'm going to break one.”

“She's going to bleed to death if you don't get that blood stopped,” Dev said evenly. “Do whatever it takes.”

“Yes, sir.” He stood up and leaned down, putting immense pressure on the bandage. Mrs. Green's thin frame was pushed down into the mattress, but she didn't stir. Dev lifted her eyelids and peered down into her eyes. “The lamp, please,” he said. Miss Nilsson turned the small lamp on the table beside the bed up high and handed it to him. He opened one eye and held the lamp close for a moment, then looked at the pupil to see if it was reactive. It was, and so was the other. “Not the terminus yet,” he said with relief. “But I think you're right, Cheney. We'd better take a chance on doing some quick stitching. Miss Nilsson, go get the surgery cart. You're assisting. Hurry, please. Dr. Gilder, you're doing very well. I know it's exhausting, but it should only be for a few minutes. Can you keep it up?”

“Yes, sir,” he said with more determination than Cheney would ever have given him credit for.

Dev turned to Cheney. Wearily she started to wipe her hand across her brow, but Dev quickly put up a hand and took hers gently. “Don't, Cheney dear, you're all over blood,” he said. “Come on out to wash up, and you can brief me.”

Cheney told him what had happened while she scrubbed her hands and arms at the carbolic acid stand. “You don't think it's the terminal coma?”

“No, I don't think so, but my guess is as good as Sean's and Shannon's would be. We don't know enough about—”

“You've met Sean and Shannon?” Cheney interrupted. “When?”

“I was at the orphanage this afternoon, doing the monthly checkups. Shiloh came in, so I made Sean's acquaintance,” Dev said, his dark brooding eyes twinkling just a bit. “Shiloh offered to finish doing the checkups, so I was able to leave—that's why I'm early—and I met Shannon over at Roe's.”

“They're just darling, aren't they?” Cheney said.