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By Root 931 0

angle, went on. He resumed talking in a casual way: "I hated to do it, Mildred, just hated to slap that outlay on you—though I'll see that every charge is as reasonable as they can make it. But if I had it to do over again, I'd tell you just what I told you before. You see, here's what we're up against. Any infection above the mouth drains into the lateral sinus, and that means the brain. Now with that little pip on her lip there was no way to tell. Every symptom she had spelled grippe, but just the same, all of those symptons could have been caused by strep, and if we had waited until we were sure, it would have been too late. The way she's reacting to that transfusion shows it was all a false alarm—but I'm telling you, if it had been that other, and we hadn't moved fast, I'd never have forgiven myself, and neither would you."

"It's all right."

"These things happen, they can't be helped."

Somewhere on the floor a buzzer sounded, then sounded again, sharply, insistently. It seemed to Mildred that Dr. Gale turned rather quickly, that their saunter was no longer a saunter. As they approached the room an orderly hurried past them, carrying hot-water bottles. He entered the room. When they went in, the nurse was jamming them under the covers, which were thick with the extra blankets she had already piled on. "She's having a chill, doctor."

"Orderly, get Dr. Collins."

"Yes sir."

From the ice that was forming around her heart, Mildred knew it was no false alarm this time, She sat down, watched Ray's face turn white, then blue; when the little teeth began to chatter she looked away. An orderly came in with more bottles, which the nurse pushed under the covers without looking up. He was followed by Dr. Collins, a short, heavy man who bent over Ray and studied her as though she were an insect. "It's the pimple, Dr. Gale."

"I can't believe it. She reacted to that transfusion—"

"I know it."

Dr. Collins turned to an orderly and snapped orders in a curt, clipped voice: for oxygen, adrenalin, ice. The orderly went. Both doctors studied Ray in silence, the chattering of her teeth the only sound in the room. After a long time the nurse looked up. "Her pulse is faster, Dr. Collins."

"What is it?"

"A hundred and four."

"Take off the hot-water bottles."

As the nurse pulled out the hot-water bottles and dropped them to the floor the room began to fill. Other nurses appeared, wheeling an oxygen apparatus and a white table full of vials and syringes. They stood around, as though waiting. Ray's teeth stopped chattering and her face lost the blue look. Then red spots appeared on her cheeks, and the nurse felt her forehead. "Her temperature's rising, Dr. Collins."

"Take off the blankets."

Two nurses stripped off the blankets and a third stepped forward with icebags, which she packed around Ray's head. For a long time they were all motionless, and there was no sound except Ray's labored breathing, and the first nurse's report on the pulse: "A hundred and twelve. . . . A hundred and twenty-four. . . . A hundred and thirty-two. . .

Presently Ray was panting like a little dog, and her whimpering had a pitiful note in it that made Mildred want to cry out against the injustice that one so small, so helpless, should have to bear such agony. But she sat perfectly still, not distracting by so much as a movement the attention of those on whom Ray's chance depended. The child's struggle went on and on, and then suddenly Mildred tightened. The breathing stopped for a second, then resumed in three or four short, harrowing gasps, then stopped altogether. Dr. Collins motioned quickly, and two nurses stepped forward. They had scarcely begun their rapid lifting and lowering of Ray's arms before Dr. Gate had the mask of the oxygen apparatus over her face, and Mildred caught the thunderstorm smell of the gas. Dr. Collins filed the neck of a vial, snapped it off. Quickly filling a syringe, he lifted the covers and jabbed it into Ray's rump. The first nurse had Ray's wrist, and Mildred saw her catch Dr. Collins's eye and glumly shake