Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [13]
He swallowed this argument, and a double bromide; the one for his conscience, the other for his pulse. Both sedatives worked. When he hesitated for a moment outside Captain Grimm’s office for a last check, his blood thumped tranquilly past his fingers at seventy-five, and he felt buoyant and relaxed. He pushed open the door.
The first object that caught his eye in the room was a blue sleeve with four gold stripes on it. The sleeve was gesticulating at a fat Navy nurse seated at a desk. Captain Grimm, gray and very tired-looking, was waving a sheaf of papers and complaining bitterly about slipshod accounting of morphine. He turned on Willie. “What is it, boy?”
Willie handed him the envelope. Captain Grimm glanced at the papers. “Oh, Lord. Miss Norris, when am I due at the operating room?”
“In twenty minutes, sir.”
“All right, Keith, go into that dressing room. I’ll be with you in two minutes.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie went through the white-painted door and closed it. The little room was stuffily hot, but he was afraid to tamper with the windows. He wandered around in a narrow circle, reading labels on bottles, looking out the window at the sad gray jumble of the Brooklyn waterfront, and yawning. He waited two minutes, five, ten. The bromide and the warmth took stronger hold. He stretched out on the examining table, assuring himself that a little relaxation would be good for him.
When he woke his watch read half-past five. He had slept, forgotten by the Navy, for eight hours. He washed his face in a basin, straightened his hair, and emerged from the dressing room with a look of martyrdom. The fat nurse’s jaws fell open when she saw him.
“Holy Christmas! Are you still here?”
“Nobody ever told me to come out.”
“But my God!” She jumped out of the swivel chair. “You’ve been here since- Why didn’t you say something? Wait!” She went into an inner office, and came out in a moment with the captain, who said, “Blazes, boy, I’m sorry. I’ve had operations, meetings- Step into my office.”
In the book-lined room he told Willie to strip to the waist, and inspected his back. “Touch your toes.”
Willie did it-not without a loud grunt. The captain smiled doubtfully, and felt his wrist. Willie sensed hammering again. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “I’m okay.”
“We have standards,” said the captain. He picked up his pen. It hovered over Willie’s record. “You know,” he added, “Navy casualties are worse than Army in this war, so far.”
“I want to be a Navy man,” said Willie, and only when the words were out of his mouth did he realize that they were quite true.
The doctor looked at him, with a flicker of good will in his eye. He wrote decisively on the record: Mild lordosis well compensated. Pulse normal-J. Grimm, Chief Med. Bklyn. He crumpled up and threw away the red-lettered memo, and returned the other papers to Willie. “Don’t suffer in silence in this outfit, boy. Speak up when something damn silly is happening to you.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The captain turned his attention to a spread of papers on his desk, and Willie left. It occurred to him that his naval career had probably been saved by a doctor’s shame at keeping a patient waiting eight hours, but he rejoiced at the outcome, anyway. Back at Furnald Hall he returned his medical record to the pharmacist’s mate of the red pencil in the dispensary. Warner put aside a bowl of purple antiseptic to glance eagerly