Max Brand

The People vs. Dr. Kildare

Warsaw 2020

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER ONE

A GREAT hospital must find hands for everything. The Blair General Hospital always had. Whether victims came pouring in from an explosion in a laundry or from a fire in the factory, the Blair General managed in some way to take care of the extra burden. But on this day when Mrs. Elijah Green was about to have a baby, no one could be found to send to her.

The check-over of available doctors in a hospital can be made quickly. In the delivery room the obstetricians were busy; they could not be spared. Every resident and every interne was engaged. Seven members of the surgical staff were operating.

The secretary’s office passed the case of Willa Ann Green to the head of the hospital; an emergency had been reached, and emergencies were the special occupation of Doctor Carew, who had organised the hospital and who loved and knew his creation from the sun decks to the boiler room.

“It’s a coloured woman–a Mrs. Elijah Green,” said the secretary.

Carew’s office wires began to hum, probing quickly into every part of the great institution; but the place was like a ship in a storm, with all hands called on deck. For the powerful machines of the X-ray department there was a long line-up of appointments waiting–people who could not be put off from the regular course of their treatment. Two doctors in the fluoroscope room were observing a suspected malignancy, outlined in barium. In the laboratories, two pathologists were at work, but could not be interrupted, for one was examining spinal fluid of a suspected case of meningitis, and another was typing the pneumonia case of a patient at the last gasp. Even in the accident room, where a spare pair of hands usually was available, every man was employed. The steam tank of a laundry had burst, and the victims had been crowded into Blair Hospital.

The resources of Carew and his hospital seemed completely exhausted when he said to his secretary, “Have we tried every available doctor in the place?”

“Every one except Doctor Gillespie,” she reported.

“Not Gillespie, of course,” said Carew. “But we might borrow his right hand. See if we can steal young Kildare.”

The strange line-up that flowed by night and day into the offices of Doctor Leonard Gillespie was present now. As a rule, the cases which came to the clinic of the great diagnostician had been referred to him by other doctors as to a court of last resort, but always there was a sprinkling of patients with minor ailments, for the famous old man would exclude no one. In the front office young Doctor Kildare took most of these, passing dubious or peculiar cases on to his superior. Mary Lamont was the nurse who carried the case histories with Kildare’s diagnoses and notes to the internist.

Such a history Gillespie was unfolding now, while the patient before him talked rapidly. He was a tall, fragile man, almost sixty, and he was saying, “There’s a sense of impending disaster. When my back is turned, something materialises in the corner of the room; behind the door something is waiting; the wind seems to be whistling words into my ear, if I could only understand them. My temper keeps snapping. I can’t sleep. I feel as though hell itself were rising up around me and about to take shape.” While he talked, Gillespie was reading Kildare’s note. It said: “He was bitten about a year ago by a dog. The wound was slight, and in the foot. I’m afraid it’s a case of rabies–God help him!”

Gillespie noted again the apprehension, the unnameable terror in the eyes of the patient. He said gently, “You’d better stay with us for a day or two of observation. You need rest and sedatives. Try to put your mind at ease, my friend.”

He sat with bowed head when the patient had gone. That fearful apprehension would increase. A horrible paralysis would reach the throat. Nothing could save this man from a frightful death. He had come too late.

“They trust time to cure them,” Gillespie said sadly to Mary Lamont. “They trust time instead of doctors, and so death catches up with them and there’s nothing we can do.”

A moment later she brought in a mother and small boy of three. “I can’t do anything about him,” the mother was saying. “I can’t shame him. I’ve put everything on his hands but he will suck his thumb. I know it means colic. It will ruin his teeth; it will deform the shape of his mouth. It will spoil the joints of his fingers.”

Gillespie read Kildare’s note:–

“This idiot is hysterical. You’d better scare her. You might even roar.”

“Take the little boy out,” said Gillespie.

“But I’ve brought him for you to see,” the mother complained. “I’ve got to find out what’s wrong with him. I’ve got to know what to do about his nerves! Please look at him, Dr. Gillespie.”

“I see you, and that’s enough for me,” said the terrible old man with a scowl. “Mary, take the boy out.” When the child had gone, he added, “Thumbsucking won’t spoil his teeth or the shape of his mouth till the permanent set is erupted at six or so. Thumb-sucking is a dirty habit, but it won’t give him colic...What do you do with your time? Bridge?”

“I do belong to a small club,” she said.

“I knew you were a contract player,” said Gillespie. “They all have a sleepless look and fidgets in their fingers. They’ve got the worn-out look that comes from wasted time...Do you know what causes thumb-sucking?”

“No, doctor,” she whispered, shocked by the thunder in his voice.

“Boredom causes it!” he bellowed. “That child is bored. Every three-year-old is bored and cranky. Do you know why?”

“No, doctor,” the woman repeated faintly.

“Because he’s trying to do things and doesn’t know how. He’s trying to learn words. He’s trying to learn how to run and climb and use his feet and hands. He’s working harder than a college student. And unless he has help, companionship, somebody to make it all a game, he’s frustrated. You leave him alone while you play your damned contract. Give up that infernal game! Your boy can’t read to himself, so he sucks his thumb. Why don’t you read aloud to him? Stop being a silly girl and try to be a mother. That’s all I have to say to you.”

As she fled from the room, he reached for the ringing telephone.

“Was I too hard on her, Mary?” he asked.

“Just a little hard, sir,” said the nurse.

“Pretty little devil, wasn’t she?” asked Gillespie. “With the pretty ones, you never hit a lick amiss unless you miss altogether. These beauties live on their face value, damn them. I’m going to tell Kildare to keep a strong hand over you, too.”

“I’m sorry, doctor,” she said.

“Don’t smile. It’s no smiling matter. You have a pair of eyes that won’t stay still. They break every law of God and man.”

He roared into the telephone. “Well? Well? What do you want?...Doctor Carew’s office?...Take Kildare away when he’s up to his neck down here?...Carew runs this damned hospital like a broken-down truck...Very well–very well. Why didn’t you say there was a baby in it, in the first place? Send down the case history.”

He turned from the phone. “Get an obstetrical kit, Lamont,” he commanded, “and tell Kildare to step in here.” Kildare came in, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Don’t do that!” roared Gillespie. “When are you going to learn to stand at attention and be on your toes? Look at you, blear-eyed and done in because you’ve lost a few nights of sleep. When I was your age, I only closed my eyes once a week...Jimmy, I know you’re tired so I’ve arranged a little break in the day for you. There’s an outside obstetrical case. I’m sending you to take charge.”

“Thanks,” said Kildare, “but if there’s a spare minute I want to get down to the laboratory. Jackson is staining some frozen sections that may–”

“Argument!” growled Gillespie. “All I get from you these days is argument! When you were just an interne, Kildare, I had some hope that by pounding and prayer I might turn you into a doctor some day. But now you’re a resident physician and it’s gone to your head. You’re getting too damned much money and too damned many ideas of your own. And wipe that grin off your face, too.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kildare.

“Go out and enjoy a breath of air, Jimmy,” said Gillespie, yawning in his turn, “and bring a fine little pickaninny into the world, for a change. It’s the only kind of doctoring that’s worth a damn. All day long you and I are handling hopeless cases. We’re breathing mortal dust and death. If I had my life to live over again, I’d do nothing but obstetrics. There’d be ten thousand youngsters with Gillespie as a front name!”

That was why James Kildare and Nurse Mary Lamont stepped into a hospital car at twenty minutes to four that afternoon.

“You drive,” said Kildare.

“Why, Jimmy?” she asked.

“So I can watch you.”

“You’ll go to sleep,” she said.

She slipped the car into the traffic, driving with confidence.

“Don’t forget there’s been a rain and the streets are still slippery,” he reminded her.

“Nothing can happen to us,” said the girl.

He made himself comfortable and looked at her dreamily. “All right. Nothing can happen to us,” he agreed.

“We’re bound straight for happiness and it’s only thirty days away, and not even the devil himself would want to stop us.”

“Not if he could see you. Where’d you get that sassy hat?”

“It’s the same old hat. I just had the feather dyed. I’m glad you haven’t any eyes, Jimmy. It’d cost so much more to keep you happy.”

Kildare whistled. A light delivery truck had dipped past them so close that Mary had to jam down the brakes. The truck was an empty, with a red-headed young driver behind the wheel, taking his ease at fifty miles at hour through Manhattan’s traffic. A youngster of ten on the seat beside him was laughing up at him in pure trust and delight.

Mary looked at Kildare and whistled.

A red light pooled the traffic at the next corner.

“Does Doctor Gillespie hate me?” she asked, as she stopped the car. “Because I’m going to take you partly away from him, I mean.”

“But I’m not going to be taken away,” answered Kildare.

“You mean you’re not going to give up much time to marriage?”

“Be nice, Mary. There’s all this sunshine. We don’t want to spoil it. Doctor Gillespie thinks you’re wonderful.”

“Did he ever say so?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

“If he didn’t think you were wonderful, he’d cut your throat.”

“He may–later on. If your mind wanders a bit, I mean, and he feels that marriage has slowed up his work of pouring all he knows into your mind.”

“But marriage won’t hinder that,” said Kildare, as the lights turned green and traffic began to flow once more. “Nothing can be allowed to hinder that.”

“Because naturally it’s your duty as a doctor.”

“Naturally,” agreed Kildare.

“And nothing can be allowed to interfere with that?”

“Of course not,” said Kildare. He roused a bit from his calm acceptance of these remarks. “Are you sticking pins in me?” he asked.

Before she could answer, brakes and tyres screamed midway in the block ahead of them, and then came the crunch and ring of heavy metal bodies beaten into one another. A hundred automobile horns groaned; a hundred other brakes and tyres yelled as the traffic opened on either side and Mary Lamont brought her car to a stop. Just before her the empty truck lay on its side; on its back, with wheels still spinning, was an open convertible–something in the fifteen-hundred-dollar class, thought Kildare as he reached for his kit.

When he had got out on to the pavement a crowd was running along the sidewalks. New York is too big to feel human pity for its little tragedies. An accident is news, whether it is in the paper or eye-witnessed. Part of the crowd gathered around the girl who had been thrown out of the convertible. She lay flat on her back. As consciousness returned she began to scream. Another portion of the mob swept toward the red-headed boy who had driven the truck. Blood ran over his shoulder from a wound in the back of his head. Heedless of this, he was on his knees beside the small boy, who lay still. The child was so frail that his body seemed to have been driven into the pavement. But he was not dead. Even as Kildare came up on the run, he saw the blood streaming across the boy’s face. And the dead don’t bleed. His legs and arms were oddly disposed, but his eyes were wide open.

The redhead was saying, “Are you hurt bad, Tommy? Are you all right?”

“Sure I’ll be all right,” said the small boy. “I’m fine, Bill. It’s funny. It’s like being sort of asleep, partly.”

Kildare, shouldering the crowd aside, leaned over Tommy. A big, red-faced policeman was striding through the mob. “Give us room, officer,” said Kildare. “I’m a doctor.”

“Is he going to be all right?” the redhead asked Kildare. “There was a wet spot, and we took a skid. Oh, my God, what’s Mom going to say?”

The blood on Tommy’s face came from a scalp wound that looked shallow and unimportant. The odd twisting of the limbs was what interested Kildare as he put his hand over the boy’s heart, to feel the pulsations.

“Straighten your legs, Tommy,” he said.

“I been trying to,” said the boy, “but they won’t work.”

Kildare drew the legs straight. He placed the lifeless arms at Tommy’s side and rallying himself, he smiled into the boy’s eyes. “We’ll have you all right,” he said. “Where does the pain begin?”

“Keep back!” the policeman was shouting, pushing the crowd away with his night stick.

Kildare’s swift fingers opened the obstetrical kit. He filled a syringe quickly and gave an injection. “This will ease the pain, Tommy,” he said. “Lie quietly here. Don’t try to stir. Don’t make a single try.”

“Sure, doc,” said Tommy.

Kildare stood up, with Bill screeching at him, incredulous. “You ain’t gonna go away and leave him bleed to death, are you?”

“Keep your hands off your brother,” said Kildare, and ran toward the screaming woman.

Other groans and screams came from automobile horns up and down the street, because traffic was completely jammed. A police siren cut through the other noises.

Kildare elbowed through the crowd, snapping, “Give way, please. I’m a doctor.”

A tangle of phrases came to him from the staring mob.

“It was a wet spot in the street...”

“There oughta be a law...”

“My God, look at her bleed!”

“I wish Harry were here to see this.”

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