She settled back in the chair. It was cool in here with the air conditioning. There was no such luxury in the nurses’ home.
Vivian watched Dr. Dornberger as he studied the chart. He was probably about the same age as Dr. Pearson, she thought, but certainly a lot different to look at. While the pathologist was round-faced and heavy-jowled, Dr. Dornberger was lean and angular. In other ways, too, his appearance was a contrast, with the thatch of white hair carefully combed and parted. She noticed his hands were manicured, his white hospital jacket pressed and spotless.
Dornberger handed back the chart. “Thank you,” he said. “It was good of you to bring it.” He has a sparkle to him, Vivian thought. She had heard he was much beloved by his women patients. There was little need to wonder why.
“We’ll be seeing each other, I expect.” Dornberger had risen and opened the door courteously. “Good luck in your studies.”
“Good-by, Doctor.” She went out, leaving a trace of fragrance behind her, Dornberger thought. Not for the first time the contact with someone youthful left him wondering about himself. He returned to the swivel chair and leaned back meditatively. Almost absently he took out his pipe and began to fill it.
He had been in medicine now for almost thirty-two years; in a week or two he would being his thirty-third. They had been full years and rewarding ones. Financially he had no problems. His own four children were married, and he and his wife could live comfortably on the careful investments he had made. But would he be content to retire and rusticate? That was the rub.
In all his years in medicine Charles Dornberger had prided himself in keeping up to date. He had made up his mind long ago that no young newcomer was going to surpass him, either in technique or knowledge. As a result he had read avidly and still continued to do so. He subscribed to many of the medical journals which he read thoroughly and occasionally contributed articles himself. He was a regular attender at medical conventions and conscientiously took in most of the business sessions. Early in his career, long before the present boundary lines were drawn in medicine, he had foreseen the need for specialization. His own choice had been obstetrics and gynecology. It was a choice he had never regretted, and he often felt it had helped him to keep young in mind.
Because of this by the mid-thirties, when American specialty boards were coming into being, Dornberger was already established in his own field. As a result, under the so-called “grandfather” clause, he had been given Board certification without examination. It was something he had always been proud of. If anything, it had made him keener still to remain up to date.
And yet he had never resented younger men. When he had felt them to be good and conscientious, he had gone out of his way to offer help and advice. He admired and respected O’Donnell. He considered the youthful chief of surgery one of the best things that had ever happened to Three Counties. His own morale had risen with O’Donnell’s changes and progress in the hospital.
He had made many friends, some among his own immediate colleagues, others in unlikely places. Joe Pearson might be called one of the unlikely ones. Professionally the two men looked at a lot of things in different ways. Dornberger knew, for example, that Joe did not read much these days. He suspected that in a few areas of knowledge the elderly pathologist had slipped behind the times, and, administratively, there was the problem which yesterday’s meeting had revealed. And yet, over the years, the bond between the two men had grown strong. To his own surprise sometimes he had found himself siding with Pearson at medical conferences and defending him occasionally when Pathology was criticized in private.
Dornberger’s interjection ten days ago at the mortality conference had been much like that. He supposed other people recognized the alliance between himself and Joe. What was it Gil Bartlett had said? “You’re a friend of his; and besides he doesn’t have a vendetta with obstetricians.” Until this moment he had forgotten the remark, but he realized now it had had an edge of bitterness and he was sorry about that. Bartlett was a good physician, and Dornberger made a mental note to be especially cordial next time they met.
But there was still his own problem. To quit or not to quit? And if he did quit, when? Just lately, despite his carefully guarded physical fitness, he had found himself tiring. And although he had spent a lifetime answering night calls, lately they had seemed harder to take. Yesterday at lunch he had heard Kersh, the dermatologist, telling a new intern, “You should join us in the skin game, son. Haven’t been called out at night in fifteen years.” Dornberger had laughed with the rest but harbored a little secret envy.
One thing he was sure of though. He would not hang on if he found himself weakening. Right now he knew he was as good as ever. His mind was clear, his hands steady and eyes sharp. He always watched himself carefully because he knew that at the first sign of failing he would not hesitate. He would clear his desk and go. He had seen too many others try to stay the course too long. That would never be for him.
But as for the present, well, maybe he would let things go another three months, then think it over.
By this time he had packed the tobacco tightly in his pipe and now he reached for a folder of matches. He was about to strike one when the telephone rang. Putting down pipe and matches, he answered it. “Dr. Dornberger speaking.”
It was one of his patients. She had begun labor pains an hour ago. Now her membranes had ruptured and she had discharged water. She was a young girl in her early twenties, and it would be her first baby. She sounded breathless, as if nervous but trying not to be.
As he had so many times before, Dornberger gave his instructions quietly. “Is your husband at home?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Then get your things together and have him drive you to the hospital. I’ll see you after you’ve arrived.”
“Very well, Doctor.”
“Tell your husband to drive carefully and stop at all the red lights. We’ve plenty of time. You’ll see.”
He could sense, even over the phone, that he had helped her to relax. It was something he did often, and he considered it as much a part of his job as any course of treatment. Nevertheless he felt his own senses quickening. A new case always had that effect. Logically, he thought, he should have lost the feeling long ago. As you grew older in medicine you were supposed to become impervious, mechanical and unsentimental. It had never worked that way for him, though—perhaps because, even now, he was doing what he loved to do most.
He reached for his pipe, then changed his mind and picked up the telephone again. He must let Obstetrics know that his patient was coming in.
Eight
“I’m not even sure that defeating polio was a good or necessary thing.”
The speaker was Eustace Swayne—founder of a department-store empire, millionaire philanthropist, and member of the board of directors of Three Counties Hospital. The background was the shadowed, oak-paneled library of Swayne’s aging but imposing mansion, set alone in fifty acres of parkland and near the eastern fringes of Burlington.
“Come now, you can’t be serious,” Orden Brown said lightly. The hospital-board chairman smiled at the two women in the room—his own wife, Amelia, and Swayne’s daughter, Denise Quantz.
Kent O’Donnell sipped the cognac which a soft-footed manservant had brought him and leaned back in the deep leather chair he had chosen on entering this room with the others after dinner. It occurred to him that the scene they made was almost medieval. He glanced around the softly lighted room, his eyes ranging over tiers of leather- bound books rising to the high-timbered ceiling, the dark and heavy oaken furniture, the cavernous fireplace laid with great logs—not burning now, this warm July evening, but ready to blaze to life at the touch of a servant’s torch; and, across from O’Donnell, Eustace Swayne, seated kinglike in a straight-backed, stuffed wing chair, the other four—almost as courtiers—formed in a semicircle, facing the old tycoon.
“I am serious.” Swayne put down his brandy glass and leaned forward to make his point. “Oh, I admit—show me a child in leg braces and I’ll cringe with the rest and reach for my checkbook. But I’m talking of the grand design. The fact is—and I challenge anyone to deny it—we’re busily engaged in weakening the human race.”
It was a familiar argument. O’Donnell said courteously, “Would you suggest that we should stop medical research, freeze our knowledge and techniques, not try to conquer any more diseases?”
“You couldn’t do it,” Swayne said. “You couldn’t do it any more than you could have stopped the Gadarene swine jumping off their cliff.”
O’Donnell laughed. “I’m not sure I like the analogy. But if that is so, then why the argument?”
