Medical ethics -- Fiction; Medical fiction; Medicine -- Practice -- Fiction; Medicine -- Research -- Fiction; Physicians -- Fiction; Satire
Martin was in a mood of determined hospitality. He was going to give
them supper and that was all there was to it. Miss Byers explained that
they had to be in the hospital by a quarter after eleven, but Leora said
lazily, “Oh, I don’t care. I’ll slip in through a window. If you’re
there in the morning, the Old Cat can’t prove you got in late.” Shaking
her head at this lying wickedness, Miss Byers fled to a trolley car,
while Leora, Angus, and Martin strolled to Epstein’s Alt Nuremberg Café
for beer and Swiss cheese sandwiches flavored by the sight of German
drinking mottos and papier-mâché armor.
Angus was studying Leora, looking from her to Martin, watching their
glances of affection. That a keen young man should make a comrade of a
girl who could not bring him social advancement, that such a thing as
the boy and girl passion between Martin and Leora could exist, was
probably inconceivable to him. He decided that she was conveniently
frail. He gave Martin a refined version of a leer, and set himself to
acquiring her for his own uses.
“I hope you enjoyed the play,” he condescended to her.
“Oh, yes--”
“Jove, I envy you two. Of course I understand why girls fall for Martin
here, with his romantic eyes, but a grind like me, I have to go on
working without a single person to give me sympathy. Oh, well, I deserve
it for being shy of women.”
With unexpected defiance from Leora: “When anybody says that, it means
they’re not shy, and they despise women.”
“Despise them? Why, child, honestly, I long to be a Don Juan. But I
don’t know how. Won’t you give me a lesson?” Angus’s aridly correct
voice had become lulling; he concentrated on Leora as he would have
concentrated on dissecting a guinea pig. She smiled at Martin now and
then to say, “Don’t be jealous, idiot. I’m magnificently uninterested in
this conceited hypnotist.” But she was flustered by Angus’s sleek
assurance, by his homage to her eyes and wit and reticence.
Martin twitched with jealousy. He blurted that they must be
going-- Leora really had to be back-- The trolleys ran infrequently
after midnight and they walked to the hospital through hollow and
sounding streets. Angus and Leora kept up a high-strung chatter, while
Martin stalked beside them, silent, sulky, proud of being sulky.
Skittering through a garage alley they came out on the mass of Zenith
General Hospital, a block long, five stories of bleak windows with
infrequent dim blotches of light. No one was about. The first floor was
but five feet from the ground, and they lifted Leora up to the limestone
ledge of a half-open corridor window. She slid in, whispering, “G’night!
Thanks!”
Martin felt empty, dissatisfied. The night was full of a chill
mournfulness. A light was suddenly flickering in a window above them,
and there was a woman’s scream breaking down into moans. He felt the
tragedy of parting--that in the briefness of life he should lose one
moment of her living presence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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