Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [60]
But one got through. They heard the blang-blang-blang of a racing ambulance, incessant, furious, defiant. Without orders, the crowd opened, and through them, almost grazing them, slid the huge gray car. At the back, haughty in white uniform, nonchalant on a narrow seat, was The Doctor — Martin Arrowsmith.
The crowd admired him, the policemen sprang to receive him.
“Where’s the fireman got hurt?” he snapped.
“Over in that shed,” cried the police sergeant, running beside the ambulance.
“Drive over closer. Nev’ mind the smoke!” Martin barked at the driver.
A lieutenant of firemen led him to a pile of sawdust on which was huddled an unconscious youngster, his face bloodless and clammy.
“He got a bad dose of smoke from the green lumber and keeled over. Fine kid. Is he a goner?” the lieutenant begged.
Martin knelt by the man, felt his pulse, listened to his breathing. Brusquely opening a black bag, he gave him a hypodermic of strychnin and held a vial of ammonia to his nose. “He’ll come around. Here, you two, getum into the ambulance — hustle!”
The police sergeant and the newest probationer patrolman sprang together, and together they mumbled, “All right, Doc.”
To Martin came the chief reporter of the Advocate–Times. In years he was only twenty-nine, but he was the oldest and perhaps the most cynical man in the world. He had interviewed senators; he had discovered graft in charity societies and even in prize-fights. There were fine wrinkles beside his eyes, he rolled Bull Durham cigarettes constantly, and his opinion of man’s honor and woman’s virtue was but low. Yet to Martin, or at least to The Doctor, he was polite.
“Will he pull through, Doc?” he twanged.
“Sure, I think so. Suffocation. Heart’s still going.”
Martin yelped the last words from the step at the back of the ambulance as it went bumping and rocking through the factory yard, through the bitter smoke, toward the shrinking crowd. He owned and commanded the city, he and the driver. They ignored traffic regulations, they disdained the people, returning from theaters and movies, who dotted the streets which unrolled before the flying gray hood. Let ’em get out of the way! The traffic officer at Chickasaw and Twentieth heard them coming, speeding like the Midnight Express — urrrrrr — blang-blang-blang-blang — and cleared the noisy corner. People were jammed against the curb, threatened by rearing horses and backing motors, and past them hurled the ambulance, blang-blang-blang-blang, with The Doctor holding a strap and swinging easily on his perilous seat.
At the hospital, the hall-man cried, “Shooting case in the Arbor, Doc.”
“All right. Wait’ll I sneak in a drink,” said Martin placidly. On the way to his room he passed the open door of the hospital laboratory, with its hacked bench, its lifeless rows of flasks and test-tubes.
“Huh! That stuff! Poking ‘round labs! This is real sure-enough life,” he exulted, and he did not permit himself to see the vision of Max Gottlieb waiting there, so gaunt, so tired, so patient.
II
The six interns in Zenith General, including Martin and Angus Duer, lived in a long dark room with six camp beds, and six bureaus fantastic with photographs and ties and undarned socks. They spent hours sitting on their beds, arguing surgery versus internal medicine, planning the dinners which they hoped to enjoy on their nights off, and explaining to Martin, as the only married man, the virtues of the various nurses with whom, one by one, they fell in love.
Martin found the hospital routine slightly dull. Though he developed the Intern’s Walk, that quick corridor step with the stethoscope conspicuous in the pocket, he did not, he could not, develop the bedside manner. He was sorry for the bruised, yellowed, suffering patients, always changing as to individuals and never changing as a mass of drab pain, but when he had thrice dressed a wound, he had had enough; he wanted to go on to new experiences. Yet the ambulance work outside the hospital was endlessly stimulating to his pride.
The Doctor, and The Doctor alone, was safe by