The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [88]
Then Moses ran up the path to his car and, driving it a little way through the woods, he got it onto the loose dirt of the bridle path where the man still knelt by his wife. Then, opening the door, they managed together to lift her into the car. He started back for the road, the wheels of the car spinning in the loose dirt, but he was able to keep it moving and was cheered when they got onto the black-top road. There were choking and grunting sounds of grief from the back seat. “She’s dying, she’s dying,” the stranger sobbed. “If she lives I’ll repay you. Money is no consideration. Please hurry.”
“You know you both seem pretty old for horseback riding,” Moses said.
He knew there was a hospital in the next village and he made good time until he got stuck, on the narrow road, behind a slow-moving truck loaded with live chickens. Moses blew his horn but this only made the truck driver more predatory and how could Moses communicate to him that the thread of a woman’s life might depend on his consideration? He passed the truck at the crown of a hill but this only excited the driver’s malevolence and, roaring downhill, his chicken crates swaying wildly from side to side, he tried, unsuccessfully, to repass Moses. They had come down at last into the leafy streets of the village and the road to the hospital. Many people were walking at the side of the road and then Moses saw signs nailed to the trees advertising a hospital lawn party. They were out of luck. The hospital was surrounded by the booths, lights and music of a country fair.
A policeman stopped them when they tried to approach the hospital and waved them toward a parking lot. “We want to get to the hospital,” Moses shouted. The policeman leaned toward them. He was deaf. “We have a woman here who is dying,” the stranger cried loudly. “This is a matter of life and death.” Moses got past the policeman and through the fair, approaching a brick building, darkened by many shade trees. The place was shaped like a Victorian mansion and may have been one, modified now by fire escapes and a brick smokestack. Moses got out of the car and ran through an emergency entrance into a room that was empty. He went from there into a hall where he met a gray-haired nurse carrying a tray. “I have an emergency in my car,” he said. There was no kindliness in her face. She gave him that appalling look of bitterness that we exchange when we are too tired, or too exacerbated by our own ill luck, to care whether our neighbors live or die. “What is the nature of the emergency?” she asked airily. Another nurse appeared. She was no younger but she was not so tired. “She was thrown by a horse, she’s unconscious,” Moses said. “Horses!” the old nurse exclaimed. “Dr. Howard has just come in,” the second nurse said. “I’ll get him now.”
A few minutes later a doctor came down the hall with a second nurse and they wheeled a table out of the emergency room down a ramp to the car and Moses and the doctor lifted the unconscious woman onto this. They accomplished this in a summer twilight, surrounded by the voices of hawkers and the sounds of music that came from the fair beyond the trees. “Oh, can’t somebody stop this?” the stranger asked, meaning the music. “I’m Charles Cutter. I’ll pay any amount of money. Send them home. Send them home. I’ll pay for it. Tell them to stop the music at least. She needs quiet.”
“We couldn’t do that,” the doctor said quietly, and with a marked upcountry accent. “That’s how we raise the money to keep the hospital running.” In the hospital they