Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [82]
As Mrs. Novak, padding on thick slippered feet, brought in the hot cloths, Novak appeared with a blank “Nobody sleeping at the drug store, and Blassner’s house-line is out of order.”
“Then listen. I’m afraid this may be serious. I’ve got to have antitoxin. Going to drive t’ Leopolis and get it. You keep up these hot applications and — Wish we had an atomizer. And room ought to be moister. Got ‘n alcohol stove? Keep some water boiling in here. No use of medicine. B’ right back.”
He drove the twenty-four miles to Leopolis in thirty-seven minutes. Not once did he slow down for a cross-road. He defied the curves, the roots thrusting out into the road, though always one dark spot in his mind feared a blow-out and a swerve. The speed, the casting away of all caution, wrought in him a high exultation, and it was blessed to be in the cool air and alone, after the strain of Mrs. Novak’s watching. In his mind all the while was the page in Osler regarding diphtheria, the very picture of the words: “In severe cases the first dose should be from 8,000 —” No. Oh, yes: “— from 10,000 to 15,000 units.”
He regained confidence. He thanked the god of science for antitoxin and for the gas motor. It was, he decided, a Race with Death.
“I’m going to do it — going to pull it off and save that poor kid!” he rejoiced.
He approached a grade crossing and hurled toward it, ignoring possible trains. He was aware of a devouring whistle, saw sliding light on the rails, and brought up sharp. Past him, ten feet from his front wheels, flung the Seattle Express like a flying volcano. The fireman was stoking, and even in the thin clearness of coming dawn the glow from the fire-box was appalling on the under side of the rolling smoke. Instantly the apparition was gone and Martin sat trembling, hands trembling on the little steering-wheel, foot trembling like St. Vitus’s dance on the brake. “That was an awful’ close thing!” he muttered, and thought of a widowed Leora, abandoned to Tozers. But the vision of the Novak child, struggling for each terrible breath, overrode all else. “Hell! I’ve killed the engine!” he groaned. He vaulted over the side, cranked the car, and dashed into Leopolis.
To Crynssen County, Leopolis with its four thousand people was a metropolis, but in the pinched stillness of the dawn it was a tiny graveyard: Main Street a sandy expanse, the low shops desolate as huts. He found one place astir; in the bleak office of the Dakota Hotel the night clerk was playing poker with the ‘bus-driver and the town policeman.
They wondered at his hysterical entrance.
“Dr. Arrowsmith, from Wheatsylvania. Kid dying from diphtheria. Where’s Blassner live? Jump in my car and show me.”
The constable was a lanky old man, his vest swinging open over a collarless shirt, his trousers in folds, his eyes resolute. He guided Martin to the home of the druggist, he kicked the door, then, standing with his lean and bristly visage upraised in the cold early light, he bawled, “Ed! Hey, you, Ed! Come out of it!”
Ed Blassner grumbled from the up-stairs window. To him, death and furious doctors had small novelty. While he drew on his trousers and coat he was to be heard discoursing to his drowsy wife on the woe of druggists and the desirability of moving to Los Angeles and going into real estate. But he did have diphtheria antitoxin in his shop, and sixteen minutes after Martin’s escape from being killed by a train he was speeding to Henry Novak’s.
VI
The child was still alive when he came brusquely into the house
All the way back he had seen her dead and stiff. He grunted “Thank God!” and angrily called for hot water. He was no longer the embarrassed cub doctor but the wise and heroic physician who had won the Race with Death, and in the Peasant eyes of Mrs. Novak, in Henry’s nervous obedience, he read his power.
Swiftly, smoothly, he made intravenous injection of the antitoxin, and stood expectant.
The child’s breathing did not at first vary, as she choked in the labor of expelling her breath. There was a gurgle, a struggle in which her face blackened, and