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By Root 934 0

sit with her child, to be near it when it needed her. And yet the best she could manage was a few minutes in the morning, an hour after supper. She had got to the hospital early, and wasn't at all reassured by the nurse's cheery talk. And her heart had contracted when she saw Ray, all her bubbling animation gone, her face flushed, her breathing labored. But she couldn't stay. She had to go, to deliver pies, to pay off painters, to check on announcements, to contract for chickens, to make more pies. It was dinner time before she got another respite, and then she couldn't eat. She fidgeted while Letty served Veda, then loaded Veda in the car, and took her in for another vigil. Home again, she put Veda to bed, but when she went to bed herself, she couldn't sleep.

She called the hospital at eight the next morning, and after getting a favorable report, stayed on the phone, crowding her business into the next two hours. Around ten, she loaded her pies into the car, made the rounds of delivery, and arrived at the hopsital about eleven. She was surprised to find Dr. Gale already there, whispering in the corridor with a big hairy man in an undershirt, with tattoo marks on his arm. He called Mildred aside. "Now I don't want you to get alarmed. But her temperature's gone up. It's a hundred and four now, and I don't like it. I don't like it, and I don't like that thing on her lip."

"You mean it could be infected?"

"I don't know, and there's no way to tell. I've taken a smear from the pimple, another from the mucus that's coming from her nose, and a couple of CC's of blood. They're on their way to the laboratory now. They'll ring me as soon as they possibly can. But Mildred, here's the point. If we've got trouble there, she can't wait for any lab report. She's got to have a transfusion, right away. Now I've got this man here, he's a professional doner, but it's his means of livelihood, and he won't go in the room till he gets his twenty-five dollars. It's entirely up to you, but—"

Without a thought of what twenty-five dollars would do to her little reserve, Mildred was writing the check before he finished talking. The man demanded an indorsement. Dr. Gale signed, and Mildred, her hands sweating with fear, went into the sickroom. She had that same terrible feeling in her bowels that she had had that day on the boulevard. The child's eyes were dull, her face hot, her whimpering a constant accompanimeit to her rapid breathing. There was a new strip on her lip, a bigger one, covering a pack of gauze stained with the livid red of mercurochrome. A nurse looked up, but didn't stop spooning ice into the fluttering little mouth. "This happened after I talked to you, Mrs. Pierce. She had a nice night, temperature constant, and we thought she'd be all right in a few hours. Then just like that it went up."

Ray began to fret, and the nurse began talking to her, saying it was her mother, and didn't she know her mother? Mildred spoke to her. "It's Mamma, darling."

"Mamma!"

Ray's voice was a wail, and Mildred wanted to gather her into her arms, but she merely took one of the little hands and patted it. Then Dr. Gale came in, and other doctors, in white smocks, and nurses, and the doner, his sleeves rolled high this time, showing a veritable gallery of tattoo marks. He sat down, and Mildred stood like a woman of stone while a nurse swabbed his arm. Then she went out in the corridor and started walking up and down, quietly, slowly. Somehow, by a supreme effort of will, she made time pass. Then two nurses came out of the room, then one of the doctors, then the donor, and some orderlies. She went in. The same nurse, the one who had spoken to her before, was at the head of the bed, busy with thermometer and watch. Dr. Gale was bent over, peering intently at Ray. "Her temperature's down, doctor."

"Good."

"A hundred and one."

"That's just great. How's the pulse?"

"Down too. To ninety-six."

"That's wonderful. Mildred, I've probably put you to a lot of expense over nothing. Just the same—"

They walked out to the corridor, came to an