U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [478]
-315-is letting them up yet." The nurse was a freshfaced girl with a slightly Scotch way of talking. "I bet you're a Canadian," said Charley. "Right that time," said the nurse.
"I knew a wonderful nurse who was a Canadian once. If I'd had any sense I'd have married her."
The housephysician was a roundfaced man with a jovial smooth manner almost like a headwaiter at a big hotel.
"Say, doc, ought my leg to hurt so damn much?""You see we haven't set it yet. You tried to puncture a lung but didn't quite get away with it. We had to remove a few little splinters of rib.""Not from the lung . . .""Luck-ily not.""But why the hel didn't you set the leg at the same time?""Wel , we're waiting for Dr. Roberts to come on from New York. . . . Mrs. Anderson insisted on him. Of course we are al very pleased, as he's one of the most eminent men in his profession. . . . It'l be another little operation." It wasn't until he'd come to from the second operation that they told him that Bil Cermak had died of a frac-tured skul . Charley was in the hospital three months with his leg in a Balkan frame. The fractured ribs healed up fast, but he kept on having trouble with his breathing. Gladys han-dled al the house bil s and came every afternoon for a minute. She was always in a hurry and always terribly worried. He had to turn over a power of attorney to Moe Frank his lawyer who used to come to see him a couple of times a week to talk things over. Charley couldn't say much, he couldn't say much to anybody he was in so much pain.
He liked it best when Gladys sent Wheatley to see him. Wheatley was three years old now and thought it was great in the hospital. He liked to see the nurse working al the little weights and pul eys of the frame the leg hung in. "Daddy's living in a airplane," was what he always
-316-said about it. He had tow hair and his nose was beginning to stick up and Charley thought he took after him.
Marguerite was stil too little to be much fun. The one time Gladys had the governess bring her, she bawled so at the look of the scarylooking frame she had to be taken home. Gladys wouldn't let her come again. Gladys and Charley had a bitter row about letting Wheatley come as she said she didn't want the child to remember his father in the hospital. "But, Glad, he'l have plenty of time to get over it, get over it a damn sight sooner than I wil ." Gladys pursed her lips together and said nothing. When she'd gone Cfiarley lay there hating her and wondering how they could ever have had children together. Just about the time he began to see clearly that they al expected him to be a cripple the rest of his life he began to mend, but it was winter before he was able to go home on crutches. He stil suffered sometimes from a sort of nervous difficulty in breathing. The house seemed strange as he dragged himself around in it. Gladys had had every room redecorated while he was away and al the servants were different. Charley didn't feel it was his house at al . What he enjoyed best was the massage he had three times a week. He spent his days playing with the kids and talk-ing to Miss Jarvis, their stiff and elderly English gov-erness. After they'd gone to bed he'd sit in his sittingroom drinking scotch and soda and feeling puffy and nervous. God damn it, he was getting too fat. Gladys was always cool as a cucumber these days; even when he went into fits of temper and cursed at her, she'd stand there looking at him with a cold look of disgust on her careful y madeup face. She'entertained a great deal but made the servants understand that Mr. Anderson wasn't wel enough to come down. He began to feel like a poor relation in his own house. Once when the Farrel s were coming he put on his tuxedo and hobbled down to dinner on his crutches. There
-317-was no place set for him and everybody looked at him like he was a ghost.
"Thataboy," shouted Farrel in his yapping voice. "I was expecting to come up and chin with you after dinnex." It turned out that what Farrel wanted to talk about