Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

Her cheerless childhood had left her dull in social situations. She could not joke or flirt easily. Unlike the other student nurses, she had not flexed her emotions by falling in love with at least two medical students, interns, residents, laboratory technicians, elevator operators, or personable male patients.

When Sidney Rowalski was admitted for repair of a defective heart valve, her needs and his met. Their marriage was a monument testifying that he and she had made it. If the valve job had held up, they would have done as well as most.

She checked the baby, then brought out a glass of milk and a cookie for the little girl.

“How do you feel about things now?” he asked her.

She looked at him seriously. He could see the fatigue lines around her eyes and lips. “I can’t be sure,” she said. “If I could just believe we could be happy.”

“And can’t you believe this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

On the way home he stopped at the chain drug store. Bill would be coming home from military school this weekend; he bought a box of peanut brittle. Then he went to the corner where the old man sold flowers, and bought a big bunch of yellow roses. Maisie would feel faintly jealous and suspect him of patting some secretary at the Tankerville Herald. He couldn’t help that.

Publication of “The Hopeful Supplicants” changed Sturbridge’s life. Lawrence Jennings stopped him in the hall to pound him on the back and say, “Man, you can really write.” The lawyer, Hartman, stopped him on the street, took him to lunch, and talked and talked about how much he and his wife had enjoyed the articles. Things were looking up, Sturbridge thought; at least it didn’t look as if he had to worry about his job. Then UPI asked to syndicate his articles. At last, Sturbridge admitted, he could taste money, he could smell money, and, God willing, he would damn soon have some.

He was working hard on his fourth article, which he called “By These Hands.” He hoped to convey something of what he had glimpsed through the window in Gruber’s control room the night Tanker died. And the things Gruber and his brother had told him since. At the Hartmans’ for dinner, the Sturbridges met a nurse from University Hospital, Gladys Peterson, an old friend of Mrs. Hartman’s. “Mr. Sturbridge needs your help. Gladys,” Mrs. Hartman said. “He needs to know just what went on.”

Gladys took a big swallow of her bourbon and started in. She was a big blond blustery sort of girl, good-natured and willing. She had an eye for what counted. She took Sturbridge through the developing drama of the operating floor as the patients came up. She followed them as they were moved to different rooms and told him what the rooms contained. With the arrival of the body of John Phillpott Tanker, the overall show faded out, because she was in the room where the heart transplant from Tanker to Rowalski was being done.

“A thing like that is real exciting, Mr. Sturbridge. I mean even when you’ve worked around hospitals for years like I have, still there’s something about putting another heart in a person that makes the shivers run up my spine. I’m just not tough enough, I guess.” She paused for a swallow of her bourbon, a quick fluff fluff to her hair, a glance around to see that she was holding her audience.

“They had Rowalski up in the operating room for, oh, a good hour or more before Mr. Tanker finally died.

They were checking up all the time back and forth with Recovery, because they had to get Rowalski connected to the heart-lung machine in plenty of time, but yet not too early because it don’t do them any good to be on one of those heart-lung machines a minute longer than they need to.” She finished her bourbon and Mrs. Hartman brought her another. Gladys took a good swallow. “I tell you, Mrs. Hartman, I just couldn’t be a scrub nurse today. I just couldn’t stay with it. When I was a scrub nurse, just one doctor did the operating and the other doctors helped him by keeping things back out of the way so he could see what he was doing. And if they started in trying to do any of the operating, they got a good sharp rap on the fingers from the doctor that was doing it. But it’s not like that now. What with hooking up the heart-lung machine and maybe doing a tracheotomy, that’s putting a tube in their neck to hook up to the anesthesia machine, and then opening them up so you can get at the liver or kidney or heart or whatever you are going to transplant, why you may have three or four people cutting and sewing at the same time. There is so much to do and it goes fast, fast, fast, and the girls that are scrubbed just have to be quick and pay real strict attention, because when those young squirts stick out their hand for something they want it right now. A nurse may have been out necking with that same doctor the night before, but she better be right on her toes in that operating room. She won’t be out necking with that doctor and she won’t be in there giving him the wrong instruments, either, if she can’t stay with it.

“You know, Mr. Sturbridge, the really spooky part for me was when they had taken Rowalski’s heart out but they hadn’t put Mr. Tanker’s heart in yet. That’s when you really looked at that heart-lung machine over there with the blood running down through the big cellophane bag and the oxygen bubbling up through it. You can hear the pumps going chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk, and see the blood flow into those plastic hoses that run from the machine down across the floor to Mr. Rowalski. Then they take Mr. Tanker’s heart out of the perfuser and they have it up there trimming it so it will fit exactly and you know I wanted to holler at those pumps—don’t stop—don’t stop—don’t stop—because you could just see that that pump was all there was.”

“By These Hands” was reprinted across the country, and Sturbridge had the rare and delightful pleasure of seeing and hearing himself quoted. When Readers' Digest wrote requesting reprint rights, he found that even the fullest cup could hold a little more. Sturbridge’s style had appeal. UPI asked him to write a column, once a week to start, on transplant problems. UPI felt it might go if he wanted to give it a try.

His concern for Rowalski’s family was genuine. Lawrence Jennings agreed to give plenty of publicity to any local groups that would help out, and between the veterans’ organizations, the lodges, the churches, and Rotary, they made a howling success of cleaning up and painting the place. The Legion rearranged its car lottery so that Mrs. Rowalski, with everyone forewarned, got one of the cars. Rowalski, doing well, was being considered for a trial visit home.

Later that week the reporter, Hank Coggins, came up. “That Krillus boy ain’t changed none. Killed another kid this morning with his damned car.”

“What happened?”

“He hit a kid named Andrews. Family lives down by the brick kilns. Killed him instantly.”

The next day Hank was back. “There’s more to that story if you want it.”

“Dump your bag,” Sturbridge said.

“It’s a mixed-up deal. Tony Krillus had a row with his old man and moved in with a friend in the old Packer Apartments down by the railroad station. Usually if a family has money, there isn’t too much trouble about killing a kid down in that neighborhood. But this time old man Krillus wasn’t having any. Seems Tony had his own car and he’s over twenty-one and the old man either canceled the insurance or it run out, so there isn’t anything to pay the Andrews family with. So the family got a lawyer, that new fellow, Yates, and he’s had Tony Krillus arrested until he posts bond. Yates swears somebody is going to pay.”

Sturbridge wrote a column on the hazards of keeping criminals or insane people alive by transplants. The liver transplant died, and he did a little more work on his fifth big article, which he called “On Borrowed Time.” Then one day he saw Hartman boil up the stairs as if outrunning a subpoena server and duck into Lawrence Jennings’ office. A few minutes later Sturbridge’s phone rang and Jeninngs asked him to come over.