Max Brand

Dr. Kildare’s Crisis

Warsaw 2020

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

I. MAN ON FIRE

KILDARE came out of the operating room trundling Gillespie’s wheel-chair and looking straight ahead to avoid some of the compliments; but he had to pause when old, great Dr. Ackers said: “Good work, doctor. A fine pair of hands. Eleven minutes and twenty seconds from the first incision to the last stitch. We minimise shock, with speed like that...And that was a bad kidney to get out...I could use these hands, any day you’re through with them, Gillespie.”

Gillespie drew together the formidable white brush of his eyebrows: “Maybe you can have them damned soon, Ackers...Get those useful hands off my chair, Kildare. They’re too fine to be used like a nursemaid. You’ve taken plenty of my time, but I won’t have you taking my exercise, also.”

He wheeled himself down the corridor with Kildare walking silently beside him.

“Speed, speed!” snorted Gillespie. “No place to get to, and faster ways of getting there. That’s the Twentieth Century, and be damned! And an old fool like Ackers praising it!”

“Was I too fast, sir?” asked Kildare.

“You know damned well you were too fast,” said the old man. “What were you trying to do? Show off?”

There was a bit of silence.

“Well?” insisted Gillespie.

“Yes, sir. I was showing off–a little.”

“Leave speed for typists and airplanes; your job is to handle human lives.”

“Yes, sir. But I seemed to see my way right through that operation and–”

“Hold out your hand. Ha! Still a tremor in it, eh? Did you think you were crocheting, or what?...Did you read that book on the lymph glands last night? What’s the name of it?”

They were in the elevator, descending.

“Winslow and Parker wrote it, sir,” said Kildare. “Well, did you read it last night?”

“No, sir.”

The elevator man’s cheeks were swelling. Kildare, even from behind, knew the width of the grin on that face.

“No, sir, you didn’t read it, eh? Wasn’t time, I suppose?”

“There was an interesting pneumonia in Ward B, sir. I spent most of the night there.”

“Damn the interesting pneumonia. Nothing should interest you except what I tell you to do. You know that!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve got to use our time the way misers use money. There mustn’t be any waste...What type was the pneumonia?”

“Thirty-one, sir.”

“Ah, was it? Complications?”

“A deep abdominal infection, sir.”

“Very pretty! Why didn’t you call me?”

“You were sleeping, sir.”

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