He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten’s car in front. He looked out of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache—Dr. A. I. Dilling, the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and hurried down to the door.
Dr. Patten was profusely casual: “Don’t want to worry you, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her.” He gestured toward Dilling as toward a master.
Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode upstairs Babbitt tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife’s confinements there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly sagacious.
Dr. Dilling spoke:
“I’m sorry, old man, but it’s acute appendicitis. We ought to operate. Of course you must decide, but there’s no question as to what has to be done.”
Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, “Well I suppose we could get her ready in a couple o’ days. Probably Ted ought to come down from the university, just in case anything happened.”
Dr. Dilling growled, “Nope. If you don’t want peritonitis to set in, we’ll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say go ahead, I’ll phone for the St. Mary’s ambulance at once, and we’ll have her on the table in three-quarters of an hour.”
“I—I Of course, I suppose you know what—But great God, man, I can’t get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in her state, so wrought-up and weak—”
“Just throw her hairbrush and comb and toothbrush in a bag; that’s all she’ll need for a day or two,” said Dr. Dilling, and went to the telephone.
Babbitt galloped desperately upstairs. He sent the frightened Tinka out of the room. He said gaily to his wife, “Well, old thing, the doc thinks maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few minutes—not half as serious as a confinement—and you’ll be all right in a jiffy.”
She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a cowed child, “I’m afraid—to go into the dark, all alone!” Maturity was wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. “Will you stay with me? Darling, you don’t have to go to the office now, do you? Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this evening—if everything’s all right? You won’t have to go out this evening, will you?”
He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, “Old honey, I love you more than anything in the world! I’ve kind of been worried by business and everything, but that’s all over now, and I’m back again.”
“Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be a good thing if I just went. I was wondering if anybody really needed me. Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I’ve been getting so stupid and ugly—”
“Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing your bag! Me, sure, I’m young and handsome and a regular village cut-up and—” He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered incoherencies they found each other.
As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He’d have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned impishly, “it was one doggone good party while it lasted!” And—how much was the operation going to cost? “I ought to have fought that out with Dilling. But no, damn it, I don’t care how much it costs!”
The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbitt who admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill with which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried her downstairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white thing. Mrs. Babbitt moaned, “It frightens me. It’s just like a hearse, just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me.”
“I’ll be right up front with the driver,” Babbitt promised.
“No, I want you to stay inside with me.” To the attendants: “Can’t he be inside?”
“Sure, ma’am, you bet. There’s a fine little campstool in there,” the older attendant said, with professional pride.
He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched the radiator, and he squealed:
“Ouch! Jesus!”
“Why, George Babbitt, I won’t have you cursing and swearing and blaspheming!”
“I know, awful sorry but—Gosh all fishhooks, look how I burned my hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn radiator is hot as—it’s hot as—it’s hotter ’n the hinges of Hades! Look! You can see the mark!”
So, as they drove up to St. Mary’s Hospital, with the nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though he tried
