Clifford D. Simak
Shotgun Cure
The clinics were set up and in the morning they'd start on Operation Kelly — and that was something, wasn't it, that they should call it Kelly!
He sat in the battered rocking chair on the sagging porch and said it once again and rolled it on his tongue, but the taste of it was not so sharp nor sweet as it once had been, when that great London doctor had risen in the United Nations to suggest it could be called nothing else but Kelly.
Although, when one came to think of it, there was a deal of happenstance. It needn't have been Kelly. It could have been just anyone at all with an M.D. to his name. It could as well have been Cohen or Johnson or Radzonovich or any other of them — any one of all the doctors in the world.
He rocked gently in the creaking chair while the floor boards of the porch groaned in sympathy, and in the gathering dusk were the sounds, as well, of children at the day's-end play, treasuring those last seconds before they had to go inside and soon thereafter to bed.
There was the scent of lilacs in the coolness of the air and at the corner of the garden he could faintly see the white flush of an early-blooming bridal wreath — the one that Martha Anderson had given him and Janet so many years ago, when they first had come to live in this very house.
A neighbor came tramping down the walk and he could not make him out in the deepening dusk, but the man called out to him.
'Good evening, Doc,' he said.
'Good evening, Hiram,' said old Doc Kelly, knowing who it was by the voice of him.
The neighbor went on, tramping down the walk.
Old Doc kept up his gentle rocking with his hands folded on his pudgy stomach and from inside the house he could hear the bustling in the kitchen as Janet cleared up after supper. In a little while, perhaps, she'd come out and sit with him and they'd talk together, low-voiced and casually, as befitted an old couple very much in love.
Although, by rights, he shouldn't stay out here on the porch. There was the medical journal waiting for him on the study desk and he should be reading it. There was so much new stuff these days that a man should keep up with — although, perhaps, the way things were turning out it wouldn't really matter if a man kept up or not.
Maybe in the years to come there'd be precious little a man would need to keep up with.
Of course, there'd always be need of doctors. There'd always be damn fools smashing up their cars and shooting one another and getting fishhooks in their hands and falling out of trees. And there'd always be the babies.
He rocked gently to and fro and thought of all the babies and how some of them had grown until they were men and women now and had babies of their own. And he thought of Martha Anderson, Janet's closest friend, and he thought of old Con Gilbert, as ornery an old shikepoke as ever walked the earth, and tight with money, too. He chuckled a bit wryly, thinking of all the money Con Gilbert finally owed him, never having paid a bill in his entire life.
But that was the way it went. There were some who paid and others who made no pretense of paying, and that was why he and Janet lived in this old house and he drove a five-year car and Janet had worn the selfsame dress to church the blessed winter long.
Although it made no difference, really, once one considered it. For the important pay was not in cash.
There were those who paid and those who didn't pay. And there were those who lived and the other ones who died, no matter what you did. There was hope for some and the ones who had no hope — and some of these you told and there were others that you didn't.
But it was different now.
And it all had started right here in this little town of Millville — not much more than a year ago.
Sitting in the dark, with the lilac scent and the white blush of the bridal wreath and the muted sounds of children clasping to themselves the last minutes of their play, he remembered it.
It was almost 8:30 and he could hear Martha Anderson in the outer office talking to Miss Lane and she, he knew, had been the last of them.
He took off his white jacket, folding it absent-mindedly, fogged with weariness, and laid it across the examination table.
Janet would be waiting supper, but she'd never say a word, for she never had. All these many years she had never said a word of reproach to him, although there had been at times a sense of disapproval at his easy-going ways, at his keeping on with patients who didn't even thank him, much less pay their bills. And a sense of disapproval, too, at the hours he kept, at his willingness to go out of nights when he could just as well have let a call go till his regular morning rounds.
She would be waiting supper and she would know that Martha had been in to see him and she'd ask him how she was, and what was he to tell her?
He heard Martha going out and the sharp click of Miss Lane's heels across the outer office. He moved slowly to the basin and turned on the tap, picking up the soap.
He heard the door creak open and did not turn his head. 'Doctor,' said Miss Lane, 'Martha thinks she's fine. She says you're helping her. Do you think…'
'What would you do,' he asked.
'I don't know,' she said.
Would you operate, knowing it was hopeless? Would you send her to a specialist, knowing that he couldn't help her, knowing she can't pay him and that she'll worry about not paying? Would you tell her that she has, perhaps, six months to live and take from her the little happiness and hope she still has left to her?'
'I am sorry, doctor.'
'No need to be. I've faced it many times. No case is the same. Each one calls for a decision of its own. It's been a long, hard day…'
'Doctor, there's another one out there.'
'Another patient?'
'A man. He just came in. His name is Harry Herman.'
'Herman? I don't know any Hermans.'
'He's a stranger,' said Miss Lane. 'Maybe he just moved into town.'
'If he'd moved in,' said Doc, 'I'd have heard of it. I hear everything.'
'Maybe he's just passing through. Maybe he got sick driving on the road.'
'Well, send him in,' said Doc, reaching for a towel. 'I'll have a look at him.'
The nurse turned to the door.
'And Miss Lane.'
'Yes?'
'You may as well go home. There's no use sticking round. It's been a real bad day.'
And it had been, at that, he thought. A fracture, a burn, a cut, a dropsy, a menopause, a pregnancy, two pelvics, a scattering of colds, a feeding schedule, two teethings, a suspicious lung, a possible gallstone, a cirrhosis of the liver and Martha Anderson. And now, last of all, this man named Harry Herman — no name that he knew and when one came to think of it, a rather funny name.
And he was a funny man. Just a bit too tall and willowy to be quite believable, ears too tight against his skull, lips so thin they seemed no lips at all.
'Doctor?' he asked, standing in the doorway.
'Yes,' said Doc, picking up his jacket and shrugging into it. 'Yes, I am the doctor. Come on in. What can I do for you?'
'I am not ill,' said the man.
'Not ill?'
'But I want to talk to you. You have time, perhaps?'
'Yes, certainly,' said Doc, knowing that he had no time and resenting this intrusion. 'Come on in. Sit down.'
