Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [83]
In the hospital, death had become indifferent and natural to Martin. He had said to Angus, he had heard nurses say one to another, quite cheerfully, “Well, fifty-seven has just passed out.” Now he raged with desire to do the impossible. She COULDN’T be dead. He’d do something — All the while he was groaning, “I should’ve operated — I should have.” So insistent was the thought that for a time he did not realize that Mrs. Novak was clamoring, “She is dead? Dead?”
He nodded, afraid to look at the woman.
“You killed her, with that needle thing! And not even tell us, so we could call the priest!”
He crawled past her lamentations and the man’s sorrow and drove home, empty of heart.
“I shall never practice medicine again,” he reflected.
“I’m through,” he said to Leora. “I’m no good. I should of operated. I can’t face people, when they know about it. I’m through. I’ll go get a lab job — Dawson Hunziker or some place.”
Salutary was the tartness with which she protested, “You’re the most conceited man that ever lived! Do you think you’re the only doctor that ever lost a patient? I know you did everything you could.” But he went about next day torturing himself, the more tortured when Mr. Tozer whined at supper, “Henry Novak and his woman was in town today. They say you ought to have saved their girl. Why didn’t you give your mind to it and manage to cure her somehow? Ought to tried. Kind of too bad, because the Novaks have a lot of influence with all these Pole and Hunky farmers.”
After a night when he was too tired to sleep, Martin suddenly drove to Leopolis.
From the Tozers he had heard almost religious praise of Dr. Adam Winter of Leopolis, a man of nearly seventy, the pioneer physician of Crynssen County, and to this sage he was fleeing. As he drove he mocked furiously his melodramatic Race with Death, and he came wearily into the dust-whirling Main Street. Dr. Winter’s office was above a grocery, in a long “block” of bright red brick stores with an Egyptian cornice — of tin. The darkness of the broad hallway was soothing after the prairie heat and incandescence. Martin had to wait till three respectful patients had been received by Dr. Winter, a hoary man with a sympathetic bass voice, before he was admitted to the consultation-room.
The examining-chair was of doubtful superiority to that once used by Doc Vickerson of Elk Mills, and sterilizing was apparently done in a wash-bowl, but in a corner was an electric therapeutic cabinet with more electrodes and pads than Martin had ever seen.
He told the story of the Novaks, and Winter cried, “Why, Doctor, you did everything you could have and more too. Only thing is, next time, in a crucial case, you better call some older doctor in consultation — not that you need his advice, but it makes a hit with the family, it divides the responsibility, and keeps ’em from going around criticizing. I, uh, I frequently have the honor of being called by some of my younger colleagues. Just wait. I’ll ‘phone the editor of the Gazette and give him an item about the case.”
When he had telephoned, Dr. Winter shook hands ardently. He indicated his electric cabinet. “Got one of those things yet? Ought to, my boy. Don’t know as I use it very often, except with the cranks that haven’t anything the matter with ’em, but say, it would surprise you how it impresses folks. Well, Doctor, welcome to Crynssen County. Married? Won’t you and your wife come take dinner with us some Sunday noon? Mrs. Winter will be real pleased to meet you. And if I ever can be of service to you in a consultation — I only charge a very little more than my regular fee, and it looks so well, talking the case over with an older man.”
Driving home, Martin fell into vain and wicked boasting:
“You bet I’ll stick to it! At worst, I’ll never be as bad as that snuffling old fee-splitter!”
Two weeks after, the Wheatsylvania Eagle, a smeary four-page rag, reported:
Our enterprising contemporary,