Calvary Alley

Chapter XXIX. In Training

One sultry July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, he tiptoed down to the landing and, making an undignified syphon of himself, peered down into the rear passage. In a circle on the floor, four nurses in their nightgowns softly beat time, while a fifth, arrayed in pink pajamas, with her hair flying, gave a song and dance with an abandon that ignored the fact that the big thermometer in the entry registered ninety-nine.

The giggles that had so disturbed Dr. Lavinski's peace of mind increased in volume, as the dancer executed a particularly daring passeul and, turning a double somersault, landed deftly on her bare toes.

"Go on, do it again!" "Show us how Sheeny Ike dances the tango." "Sing Barney McKane," came in an enthusiastic chorus.

But before the encore could be responded to, a familiar sound in the court without, sent the girls scampering to their respective rooms.

Dr. Isaac, reluctantly relinquishing his chance for administering prompt and dramatic chastisement, came down the stairs and out to the entry.

An ambulance had just arrived, and behind it was a big private car, and behind that Dr. Adair's own neat runabout.

Dr. Adair met Dr. Isaac at the door.

"It's an emergency case," he explained hastily. "I may have to operate to-night. Prepare number sixteen, and see if Miss Molloy is off duty."

"She is, sir," said Isaac, grimly, "and the sooner she's put on a case the better."

"Tell her to report at once. And send an orderly down to lend a hand with the stretcher."

Five minutes later an immaculate nurse, every button fastened, every fold in place, presented herself on the third floor for duty. You would have had to look twice to make certain that that slim, trim figure in its white uniform was actually Nance Molloy. To be sure her eyes sparkled with the old fire under her becoming cap, and her chin was still carried at an angle that hinted the possession of a secret gold mine, but she had changed amazingly for all that. Life had evidently been busy chiseling away her rough edges, and from a certain poise of body and a professional control of voice and gesture, it was apparent that Nance had done a little chiseling on her own account.

As she stood in the dim corridor awaiting orders, she could not help overhearing a conversation between Dr. Adair and the agitated lady who stood with her hand on the door-knob of number sixteen.

"My dear madam," the doctor was saying in a tone that betokened the limit of patience, "you really must leave the matter to my judgment, if we operate--"

"But you won't unless it's the last resort?" pleaded the lady. "You know how frightfully sensitive to pain he is. But if you find out that you must, then I want you to promise me not to let him suffer afterward. You must keep him under the influence of opiates, and you will wait until his father can get here, won't you?"

"But that's the trouble. You've waited too long already. Appendicitis is not a thing to take liberties with."

"You don't mean it's too late? You don't think--"

"We don't think anything at present. We hope everything." Then spying Nance, he turned toward her with relief. "This is the nurse who will take charge of the case."

The perturbed lady uncovered one eye.

"You are sure she is one of your very best?"

"One of our best," said the doctor, as he and Nance exchanged a quizzical smile.

"Let her go in to him now. I can't bear for him to be alone a second. As I was telling you--"

Nance passed into the darkened room and closed the door softly. The patient was evidently asleep; so she tiptoed over to the window and slipped into a chair. On each side of the open space without stretched the vine-clad wings of the hospital, gray now under the starlight. Nance's eyes traveled reminiscently from floor to floor, from window to window. How many memories the old building held for her! Memories of heartaches and happiness, of bad times and good times, of bitter defeats and dearly won triumphs.

It had been no easy task for a girl of her limited education and undisciplined nature to take the training course. But she had gallantly stood to her guns and out of seeming defeat, won a victory. For the first time in her diversified career she had worked in a congenial environment toward a fixed goal, and in a few weeks now she would be launching her own little boat on the professional main.

Her eyes grew tender as she thought of leaving these protecting gray walls that had sheltered her for four long years; yet the adventure of the future was already calling. Where would her first case lead her?

A cough from the bed brought her sharply back to the present. She went forward and stooped to adjust a pillow, and the patient opened his eyes, stared at her in bewilderment, then pulled himself up on his elbow.

"Nance!" he cried incredulously. "Nance Molloy!"

She started back in dismay.

"Why, it's Mr. Mac! I didn't know! I thought I'd seen the lady before--no, please! Stop, they're coming! Please, Mr. Mac!"

For the patient, heretofore too absorbed in his own affliction to note anything, was covering her imprisoned hands with kisses and calling on Heaven to witness that he was willing to undergo any number of operations if she would nurse him through them.

Nance escaped from the room as Mrs. Clarke entered. With burning cheeks she rushed to Dr. Adair's office.

"You'll have to get somebody else on that case, Doctor," she declared impulsively. "I used to work for Mr. Clarke up at the bottle factory, and--and there are reasons why I don't want to take it."

Dr. Adair looked at her over his glasses and frowned.

"It is a nurse's duty," he said sternly, "to take the cases as they come, irrespective of likes or dislikes. Mr. Clarke is an old friend of mine, a man I admire and respect."

"Yes, sir, I know, but if you'll just excuse me this once--"

"Is Miss Rand off duty?"

"No, sir. She's in number seven."

"Miss Foster?"

"No, sir."

"Then I shall have to insist upon your taking the case. I must have somebody I can depend upon to look after young Clarke for the next twenty-four hours. It's not only the complication with his appendix; it's his lungs."

"You mean he's tubercular?"

"Yes."

Nance's eyes widened.

"Does he know it?"

"No. I shall wait and tell his father. I wouldn't undertake to break the news to that mother of his for a house and lot! You take the case to-night, and I'll operate in the morning--"

"No, no, please, Doctor! Mr. Clarke wouldn't want me."

"Mr. Clarke will be satisfied with whatever arrangement I see fit to make. Besides another nurse will be in charge by the time he arrives."

"But, Doctor--"

A stern glance silenced her, and she went out, closing the door as hard as she dared behind her. During her four years at the hospital the memory of Mac Clarke had grown fainter and fainter like the perfume of a fading flower. But the memory of Dan was like a thorn in her flesh, buried deep, but never forgotten.

To herself, her fellow-nurses, the young internes who invariably fell in love with her, she declared gaily that she was "through with men forever." The subject that excited her fiercest scorn was matrimony, and she ridiculed sentiment with the superior attitude of one who has weighed it in the balance and found it wanting.

Nevertheless something vaguely disturbing woke in her that night when she watched with Mrs. Clarke at Mac's bedside. Despite the havoc five years had wrought in him, there was the old appealing charm in his voice and manner, the old audacity in his whispered words when she bent over him, the old eager want in his eyes as they followed her about the room.

Toward morning he dropped into a restless sleep, and Mrs. Clarke, who had been watching his every breath, tiptoed over to the table and sat down by Nance.

"My son tells me you are the Miss Molloy who used to be in the office," she whispered. "He is so happy to find some one here he knows. He loathes trained nurses as a rule. They make him nervous. But he has been wonderfully good about letting you do things for him. It's a tremendous relief to me."

Nance made a mistake on the chart that was going to call for an explanation later.

"He's been losing ground ever since last winter," the doting mother went on. "He was really quite well at Divonne-les-Bains, but he lost all he gained when we reached Paris. You see he doesn't know how to take care of himself; that's the trouble."

Mac groaned and she hurried to him.

"He wants a cigarette, Miss Molloy. I don't believe it would hurt him," she said.

"His throat's already irritated," said Nance, in her most professional tone. "I am sure Dr. Adair wouldn't want him to smoke."

"But we can't refuse him anything to-night," said Mrs. Clarke, with an apologetic smile as she reached for the matches.

Nance looking at her straight, delicate profile thrown into sudden relief by the flare of the match, had the same disturbing sense of familiarity that she had experienced long ago in the cathedral.

But during the next twenty-four hours there was no time to analyze subtle impressions or to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. From the moment Mac's unconscious form was borne down from the operating room and handed over to her care, he ceased to be a man and became a critically ill patient.

"We haven't much to work on," said Dr. Adair, shaking his head. "He has no resisting power. He has burned himself out."

But Mac's powers of resistance were stronger than he thought, and by the time Mr. Clarke arrived the crisis was passed. Slowly and painfully he struggled back to consciousness, and his first demand was for Nance.

"It's the nurse he had when he first came," Mrs. Clarke explained to her husband. "You must make Dr. Adair give her back to us. She's the only nurse I've ever seen who could get Mac to do things. By the way, she used to be in your office, a rather pretty, graceful girl, named Molloy."

"I remember her," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. "You better leave things as they are. Miss Hanna seems to know her business."

"But Mac hates Miss Hanna! He says her hands make him think of bedsprings. Miss Molloy makes him laugh and helps him to forget the pain. He's taken a tremendous fancy to her."

"Yes, he had quite a fancy for her once before."

"Now, Macpherson, how can you?" cried Mrs. Clarke on the verge of tears. "Just because the boy made one slip when he was little more than a child, you suspect his every motive. I don't see how you can be so cruel! If you had seen his agony, if you had been through what I have--"

Thus it happened that instead of keeping Nance out of Mac's sight, Mrs. Clarke left no stone unturned to get her back, and Mr. Clarke was even persuaded to take it up personally with Dr. Adair.

Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into lines of permanent anxiety.

The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of restrictions.

"He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great deal of this trouble on himself!"

Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting.

"I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without frightening him."

"I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy.

The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her to her task.

"I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?"

"Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me."

"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice little bunch of advice."

"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you."

Nance declined the invitation.

"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?"

"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it hadn't been for you."

"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you did before?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better."

He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed.

"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and that's you?"

The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a spoiled, selfish lovable boy!

With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand:

"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother headed him off."

He shot a swift glance at her.

"What do you mean, Nance?"

Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment.

From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for a year and perhaps die at the end of it!

Nance faced the bitter crisis with him, whipping up his courage, strengthening his weak will, nerving him for combat. When she left him an hour later, with his face buried in the pillow and his hands locked above his head, he had promised to submit to the doctor's advice on the one condition that she would go home with him and start him on that fight for life that was to tax all his strength and patience and self-control.