Sinclair Lewis - The Collected Works of Sinclair Lewis

To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his examination, “Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast.” But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor sighed, “I don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her a hypo. Good night.”

Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.

Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.

He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been aroused by Verona's entrance and her agitated “Oh, what is it, Dad?”

His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light, but now he did not compare her with Tanis; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing — or any real desire to change — the eternal essence.

With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned.

“Don't see much change,” said Patten. “I'll be back about eleven, and if you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famous pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now George, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bag filled — might as well leave that on, I guess — and you, you better beat it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were the patient. The nerve of husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women! They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!”

Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy.

His wife greeted him with surprise. “Why did you come back, dear? I think I feel a little better. I told Verona to skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get sick?”

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 up-stairs 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 hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush 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 up-stairs. 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!”