The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [358]
"Go boil me some water. Too much excitement to send for the doctor a little earlier?"
The girl clawed at his hand with her sticky nails.
"Have you touched her?" he asked.
"See there? And she don't want you trying it, either," said a voice in the room.
A necklace like sharp and pearly teeth was fastened around her throat. It was when he took that off that the little girl who had been sent for him cried out. "I bid that!" she said, but without coming nearer. He found no other wounds.
"Does it hurt you to breathe?" He spoke almost absently as he addressed the girl.
The nipples of her breasts cast shadows that looked like figs; she would not take a deep breath when he used the stethoscope. Sweat in the airless room, in the bed, rose and seemed to weaken and unstick the newspapered walls like steam from a kettle already boiling; it glazed his own white hand, his tapping fingers. It was the stench of sensation. The women's faces coming nearer were streaked in the hot lamplight. Somewhere close to the side of his head something glittered; hung over the knob of the bedpost, where a boy would have tossed his cap, was a tambourine. He let the stethoscope fall, and heard women's sighs travel around the room, domestic sounds like a broom being flirted about, women getting ready for company.
"Stand back," he said. "You got a fire on in here?" Warm as it was, crowded as it was in here, he looked behind him and saw the gas heater burning, half the radiants burning blue. The girl, with lips turned down, lay pulling away while he took her pulse.
The child who had been sent for him and then had been sent to heat the water brought the kettle in from the kitchen too soon and had to be sent back to make it boil. When it was ready and in the pan, the lamp was held closer; it was beside his elbow as if to singe his arm.
"Stand back," he said. Again and again the girl's hand had to be forced away from her breast. The wound quickened spasmodically as if it responded to light.
"Icepick?"
"You right this time," said voices in the room.
"Who did this to her?"
The room went quiet; he only heard the men in the yard laughing together. "How long ago?" He looked at the path of newspapers spread on the floor. "Where? Where did it happen? How did she get here?'
He had an odd feeling that somewhere in the room somebody war sending out beckoning smiles in his direction. He lifted, half turned his head. The elevated coal that glowed at regular intervals was the pipe of an old woman in a boiled white apron standing near the door.
He persisted. "Has she coughed up anything yet?"
"Don't you know her?" they cried, as if he never was going to hit on the right question.
He let go the girl's arm, and her hand started its way back again to her wound. Sending one glowing look at him, she covered it again. As if she had spoken, he recognized her.
"Why, it's Ruby," he said.
Ruby Gaddy was the maid. Five days a week she cleaned up on the second floor of the bank building where he Kept his office and consulting rooms.
He said to her, "Ruby, this is Dr. Strickland. What have you been up to?"
"Nothin'!" everybody cried for her.
The girl's eyes stopped rolling and rested themselves on the expressionless face of the little girl, who again stood at the foot of the bed watching from this restful distance. Look equalled look: sisters.
"Am I supposed to just know?" The doctor looked all