Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“Orderly, get Dr. Collins.”

“Yes sir.”

From the ice that was forming around her heart, Mildred knew it was no false alarm this time. She sat down, watched Ray’s face turn white, then blue; when the little teeth began to chatter she looked away. An orderly came in with more bottles, which the nurse pushed under the covers without looking up. He was followed by Dr. Collins, a short, heavy man who bent over Ray and studied her as though she were an insect. “It’s the pimple, Dr. Gale.”

“I can’t believe it. She reacted to that transfusion—”

“I know it.”

Dr. Collins turned to an orderly and snapped orders in a curt, clipped voice: for oxygen, adrenaline, ice. The orderly went. Both doctors studied Ray in silence, the chattering of her teeth the only sound in the room. After a long time the nurse looked up. “Her pulse is faster, Dr. Collins.”

“What is it?”

“A hundred and four.”

“Take off the hot-water bottles.”

As the nurse pulled out the hot-water bottles and dropped them to the floor the room began to fill. Other nurses appeared, wheeling an oxygen apparatus and a white table full of vials and syringes. They stood around, as though waiting. Ray’s teeth stopped chattering and her face lost the blue look. Then red spots appeared on her cheeks, and the nurse felt her forehead. “Her temperature’s rising, Dr. Collins.”

“Take off the blankets.”

Two nurses stripped off the blankets and a third stepped forward with icebags, which she packed around Ray’s head. For a long time they were all motionless, and there was no sound except Ray’s labored breathing, and the first nurse’s report on the pulse: “A hundred and twelve... A hundred and twenty-four... A hundred and thirty-two...”

Presently Ray was panting like a little dog, and her whimpering had a pitiful note in it that made Mildred want to cry out against the injustice that one so small, so helpless, should have to bear such agony. But she sat perfectly still, not distracting by so much as a movement the attention of those on whom Ray’s chance depended. The child’s struggle went on and on, and then suddenly Mildred tightened. The breathing stopped for a second, then resumed in three or four short, harrowing gasps, then stopped altogether. Dr. Collins motioned quickly, and two nurses stepped forward. They had scarcely begun their rapid lifting and lowering of Ray’s arms before Dr. Gale had the mask of the oxygen apparatus over her face, and Mildred caught the thunderstorm smell of the gas. Dr. Collins filed the neck of a vial, snapped it off. Quickly filling a syringe, he lifted the covers and jabbed it into Ray’s rump. The first nurse had Ray’s wrist, and Mildred saw her catch Dr. Collins’s eye and glumly shake her head. The artificial respiration went steadily on. After a minute or two, Dr. Collins refilled his syringe, again jabbed it into Ray’s rump. Another minute went by, and Mildred saw glances exchanged between nurses. As Dr. Collins refilled his syringe, she stood up. She knew the truth, and she also knew that one more jab into the lifeless little bottom would be more than she could stand. She lifted the mask of the oxygen apparatus, bent down, kissed Ray on the mouth, and pulled the sheet over her face.

She was sitting in the alcove again, but here it was Dr. Gale who broke down, not she. The cruel suddenness of it had left her numb, as though she had no capacity to feel, but as he approached, his stoop was a tottering slump. He dropped down beside her, took off his glasses, massaged his face to keep it from jerking. “I knew it. I knew it when I saw that orderly, running with the bottles. From then on there was no hope. But — we do everything we can. We can’t give up.”

Mildred stared straight ahead of her, and he went on: “I loved her like she was mine. And there’s only one thing I can say. I did everything I could. If anything could have saved her, that transfusion would — and she had it. And you too, Mildred. We both did everything that could have been done.”

They sat for a few minutes, both swallowing, both locking their teeth behind twitching lips. Then, in a different tone, he asked: “You got any choice on an undertaker, Mildred?”

“I don’t know any undertaker.”

“I generally recommend Mr. Murock, out there in Glendale, just a few blocks from you. He’s reasonable, and won’t run up charges on you, and he’ll attend to everything the way most people want it done.”

“If you recommend him, then it’s all right.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Is there a phone around?”

“I’ll find you one.”

He took her to a little office on the same floor, and she sat down and dialed Mrs. Biederhof. She asked for Bert, but he was out, and she said: “Mrs. Biederhof, this is Mildred Pierce. Will you tell Bert that Ray died a few minutes ago? At the hospital. I wanted him to know, right away.”

There was a long, bellowing silence, and then: “Mrs. Pierce, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him just as soon as I can find him, but I want to tell you that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. Now is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you.”

“Can I take Veda for a little while?”

“No, thanks ever so much.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Biederhof.”

She drove home mechanically, but after a few blocks she began to dread the stop signals, for sitting there, waiting for the light to change, she would have time to think, and then her throat would clutch and the street begin to blur. When she got home, Bert came out to meet her, and took her into the den, where Letty was trying to quiet Veda. Letty went back to the kitchen, and Veda broke into loud sobs. Over and over, she kept saying: “ I owed her a nickel! Oh, Mother, I cheated her out of it, and I meant to pay it back, but — I owed her a nickel!”

Soothingly, Mildred explained that if she really meant to pay it back, this was the main thing, and presently Veda was quiet. Then she began to fidget. Mildred kissed her and said: “Would you like to go over to your grandfather’s, darling? You could practice your piano lessons, or play, or whatever you want to do.”

“Oh Mother, do you think it would be right?”

“Ray wouldn’t mind.”

Veda trotted out of the house, and Bert looked a little shocked. “She’s a child, Bert. They don’t feel things the way we feel them. It’s better that she not be here while — arrangements are being made.”

Bert nodded, wandered about the room. A match in the fireplace caught his attention, and he stooped to pick it up. So doing, he bumped his head. If he had been hit with an axe he couldn’t have collapsed more completely. Instinctively, Mildred knew why: poking-into the fireplace had brought it all back, the game he used to play with Ray, all the gay nonsense between the elephant and the monk. Mildred led him to the sofa, took him in her arms. Then together, in the darkened room, they mourned their child. When he could speak, he babbled of Ray’s sweet, perfect character. He said if ever a kid deserved to be in heaven she did, and that’s where she was, all right. Goddam it, that’s where she was. Mildred knew this was a solace from a pain too great for him to bear: that he was taking refuge in the belief she wasn’t really dead. Too realistic, too literal-minded, to be stirred much by the idea of heaven, she nevertheless craved relief from this aching void inside of her, and little heat lightnings began to shoot through it. They had an implication that terrified her, and she fought them off.

The phone rang. Bert answered, and sternly said there had been a death in the family, and that Mrs. Pierce couldn’t possibly talk business today. Mildred barely heard him. The restaurant seemed remote, unreal, part of a world that no longer concerned her.