The Fire Fighters

When this opens, I am M. O. D. (medical officer of the day) and this phone call comes through: An Eighth Cav. fire truck has just lost an argument with the Osaka Express. It's about ten o'clock on what has been a quiet Saturday evening. The voice is confused, but I pull through the static something about two bodies--condition unspecified--headed our way. Thanks for letting us know, Mac.

• • •

My office was hot and sticky, and the fan didn't help much. Polly Baker's heels clicked in the corridor as she approached the closed door. I threw down the last chart with relief, leaned back in the chair and put my feet on the desk. "Come in," I said to the familiar tap. "Hi, Polly. Damn time we had coffee. What's new?"

Lieutenant Baker sat in the chair by the side of my desk, where patients usually sat. "And what, Captain Adams, have you been up to?"

"I've been up to making rounds, going over these inadequate charts and fighting God's own hangover. And me with the duty tonight. Where's the coffee?"

Polly crossed one leg over the other. She had red hair and dimples--dimples all over, I'd heard--and her grass-green eyes held a pleasurable estimation of men that I found exciting. I kept my gaze as impersonal as I could. She belonged to the chief of another service, but she ran my ward, and I wasn't about to give up all my proprietary interest.

"Major Carter wants you in his office. That's why I asked what you've been up to."

Now what. My lucky day. "What did he say?"

"He said to tell you he wanted to see you in his office. He called just now."

"Why didn't he call me?"

"He goes through channels. Besides, I'm prettier than you."

"The unspeakable bastard."

I spoke without animus, but I didn't like the relay. If there was good news, the colonel was happy enough to pass it on; but when it was bad, it was up to the exec. And he was an ignorant Regular Army type who hated medical officers.

I sighed and rose. "Have coffee ready when I come back, will you? Please? Please, ma'am?"

"All right, condemned one. Hurry back. Take it like a soldier."

I have said that Polly was a redhead. She was also efficient, and she was nice. And she belonged to a no-neck dogcatcher.

Off I went, down the long corridor I hadn't set foot in until six weeks ago but had walked a million times since; now that stretch of bare plywood was as familiar as the strawberry mark at five o'clock from my lovely girl's umbilicus.

• • •

Yokohama that August was hotter than those hinges. No air conditioning. Walking down that long corridor, shirt sticking to my back, I remembered the trip over.

(... the fiasco aboard the Stetson Victory. Holds awash with vomit, 20 men in a row sitting on 20 johns all at once--something new in my experience. No end to the days. Fujiyama there, all right, when we finally approached Tokyo Bay. And, believe it or not, a band playing on the pier. Arrival at repple depple, assignment to the 143rd Station Hospital--once the largest department store in Yokohama. There I go as chief of the neuropsychiatric service. Somewhere back in the States, in the course of my involuntary military odyssey, I had expressed an interest in psychiatry; that, plus the departure of my immediate predecessor, had conveyed upon me the title of neuropsychiatrist. Would you believe an authentic spec. rating?)

I reached the end of the corridor, entered the main building and walked up one flight to the exec's office--to confront a fat red-faced nonentity behind the desk, and on his shoulders the insignia of a rank superior to mine. Protocol required that I salute, but that face hung me up. I dispensed an ambiguous gesture.

It spoke: "You're going to Kamakura on T. D. Y. a couple weeks. Their M. O.'s gone Stateside on emergency leave. B Company, Eighth Cav."

Oh, no. And his pleasure in telling me this. "But I'm a psychiatrist." Hadn't the Army just made me one? Didn't I have a spec. number to prove it? "They don't----"

"Until they get a replacement, you'll take sick call out there every morning, Adams. At eight o'clock. And you'll come back here each day when you're finished out there."

His beady eyes, his ignorance. I see him suddenly as a dog who can't learn--every time he takes a bite at life, he gets porcupine quills in his nose.

"The ward is pretty busy now, sir----" I tried.

"We can't spare anyone else. Eisenberg can handle ward ten for you in the mornings."

Yes, and he'll love that.

I didn't have to put Carter on the couch for 50 minutes to know he had it in for me. He had it in for all of us--for many reasons, one of which was that the nurses (by and large) liked us; but they had his number and lavished upon him an unveiled contempt--for which I blessed them, perceptive girls that they were. My own time at the 143rd had been short, but a deep antagonism had developed between Carter and me, and I think he hated me most of all. Perhaps I should have been flattered. And, man, did he enjoy pulling rank on me. Nothing I could do.

"I'll need transportation," I said.

"You got an Army driver's license?"

"No, sir." The irony of my intonation wasted--a bottled message cast into the sea, never to be recovered.

"Stateside?"

"Of course."

You think, maybe, I drive my blue Ferrari without a license? My lovely car came now to my mind, and my lovely girl at my side. Lovely girls are so--lovely. Mine I wouldn't see for a long time; for a long time I wouldn't hurl the wind through her long blonde hair as I and my blue Ferrari carried the three of us imprudently to places of soft lights and hard drinking. Carter was quite right, of course, to hate me. My Ferrari and my girl, and other Ferraris and Jags and other girls, were a world he grazed only in movies and paperbacks.

"Well," the major said, "how about that." But I had his number also, and I knew he saw before him a Ferrari, an Alfa Romeo, a Rover, maybe a Silver Cloud--if he knew what they were--and in their seats, snuggling next to men not even cospecific to his red-faced self, girls of grace beyond his knowing, poor bastard; but he knew enough to know they were out there somewhere, and without being told, he knew I had one of those girls and he hated me more than ever. Our terra, his incognita.

"Call Sergeant Cooper and tell him I said to give you an Army license. You can have a jeep from the pool. Mornings only, until you get back here."

Thank you so much. "All right, yes, sir." My intonation again. Lost, lost.

The major's provision of the jeep was neither brotherly love nor largess. He was graveled enough at having to let me have it, but I had to get out there--after all, he was sending me, and it would take six hours to walk there--and he would have flipped totally at providing me with a driver as well.

Its last statement: "That's all, Adams." I felt his little hates--a pack of hungry dachshunds, yapping round my ankles.

You can put a lot into a salute, if you put your mind to it. Enlisted men are better at this than officers, but I did a pretty good job with mine as I made the gesture and got out of there.

The long corridor was an escape hatch, a clean breathing space, my heels thumping off the yards.

Polly--dear Polly--had coffee waiting when I got back with the bad news. The hangover still had it in for me, and the touch of her hand on my shoulder, and the coffee, helped.

• • •

I drive the jeep on the left side of the road to Kamakura, wondering where and when it was I pushed the malfunctioning button that has brought me here. It is too early in the morning and I am in progress in an unfamiliar vehicle to a rendezvous not of my choice. Japanese on foot all over the road, owning it, conducting their business there. Black-banged little girls of great charm, hobbling grandmothers of immense age, and now and again a lady of quality, obi and all. Men, too, and boys, but it was the girls I noticed. All over the road, all of them. Try to get where you're going without killing or maiming. Not easy. And feeling guilty about using their meeting place for traffic, anyway.

Arrival at Eighth Cav. commanding officer's command post. A depressing locus, which I shall not attempt to describe. Captain Adams reporting for duty and instructions from the C. O. Another RA type, of course, but on the obnoxious scale, he can't even approach Carter.

"Have 'em stand to attention when you walk in that door, Captain, and let 'em know you expect it." He leaned to his left and spat into a container hidden from my view. "They're a lax crew. Some of you medical officers don't care much for discipline. I expect you to have those boys play it by the book. Understood, Captain?"

"Yes, sir."

Could he really think I meant it? Probably.

"Corporal Naughton will take you to the dispensary."

I am dismissed.

Corporal Naughton leading, we enter the low, depressing excuse for a building that houses the dispensary. In the Army, you get used to these structures, they become a way of life. Sick call is assembled and waiting, comes reluctantly to attention as I, Captain Adams, enter.

"As you were," I had, after a pause of no more than two or three seconds, the wit to say. On into the office, the door closing.

The staff is Corporal Naughton and Private First Class Stokely. Both are white. Lots of spades sitting outside, I had noticed on the way in.

I look over the equipment. Not too much surgical facility here, not enough to be a disastrous problem--but enough. I see rubber gloves, needles, sutures, syringes. These I see and these I don't like. I'm a psychiatrist--the Army says so--and surgery makes my hands shake sometimes.

The sick-call list is on the desk.

"What's the policy on confining to quarters and sending to the hospital?"

They told me.

"All right, let's go."

"Yes, sir." Private First Class Stokely consulted the list and went to the door. "Watkins!"

It was routine until the end--at least what I took to be a routine mix of low-grade temperatures, V. D. and malingering. And, speaking of V. D.--some of those primary lesions you wouldn't believe. Anyway, it was reasonably routine and we took care of it in reasonably (continued on page 155) Fire Fighters (continued from page 96) good order. I was thinking we had finished when Naughton brought Ellsworth and Lincoln in.

Privates first class these were, and black. Black, I thought, as the color of their truelove's hair. They were considerably the worse for wear. Off with the shirts, off with crude dressings. Revealed for my inspection are a nasty cut on Ellsworth's chest, an equally repulsive gash on Lincoln's left forearm, coming close to tendons and vessels of importance. The bearers of these wounds--gifts laid at my feet, now, to complete my welcome to this wild and desolate dispensary--were silent.

(Ellsworth: His black silent self radiates an obscure communication that is too much intake to decode all at once, but one parameter of this personality comes through with no sweat--quality. Lincoln: His silent communication is also obscure; but here, also, something comes through the white noise--I'll find a good word later, but whatever it is, I don't like it. Neither of them has said anything, but these black bodies have told me things I will sort out later. I remember reading about black body radiation in college physics, but here we have a different context. Lincoln makes me think of my girl; and for a moment, I wonder why this is so. If you are testing me for racial bias, put down that I would not have this dark Lincoln anywhere near my girl or any lovely girl. He transmits a--"slyness" will do for now--that I can almost touch.)

I look at the wounds, not with approval. "Well. And what have you been up to?"

Polly, back in the missed 143rd, had asked me that the day before. I'll try it on them.

"Li'l argument, like," they said. In unison. They might have been rehearsing.

"When did this happen?" Important from a surgical point of view.

"Last night," Naughton answered for them. "Or early this morning, actually--sir----"

Damn. "They should have been seen then and you know it. I know you've lost your M. O., but the hospital's always open."

The Negroes were silent, but both transmitting. I wanted to turn the receiver off and go back where I belonged, to the 143rd.

"I know, sir," said Naughton, "but these jokers have had plenty of trouble lately. If this gets on their records--well, we thought maybe you could just sew them up...."

A moral issue.

"All right," I addressed the dark presences, "what were you arguing about, then?"

"Just an argument, suh," one of them said. "You know how it is."

I looked at them with what I intended as an expression of grave incredulity. "Matter of fact, I don't know at all how it is, do I? Damn serious argument, I'd say," I said. "Lincoln, you wait out there." Out the door. "Ellsworth, on the table." Pupils dilating, up he goes. "You know what we need, Naughton."

"Yes, sir. Cap'n Frankel taught us pretty good. He's going to be a surgeon when he gets out of the Army."

Great.

Naughton and Stokely had us set up in remarkably short time, with remarkable efficiency. Hats off to Cap'n Frankel. May his emergency leave be long, may his scalpels gleam sharply in his steady hand.

"All right," I said. "Gloves. Size seven."

Naughton and Stokely exchanged a glance. "We only got one size, Cap'n. All eights."

But of course.

"All right, that's close enough. Have to be, won't it? What was Frankel's size--nine? Let's go."

I had thought of sending these somber problems to the hospital, but more than one moral issue was involved here. I put on the gloves. Stand up and fight, I said to something out there.

"Yes, sir."

My staff assists me expertly, and I am thankful for that. I inject novocain locally and clean out the cut with green soap and peroxide. Sprinkle in some sulfa. These boys had sharp knives, anyway, the cut was sharp as a--can't say razor's edge. Sharp as a serpent's--forget it. The cut was sharp and clean. There must be some way to say that without using a surgeon's scalpel. Sharp and clean enough so maybe it might not become infected. Though the time lapse was too much for comfort.

Naughton and Stokely were good--competent caddies on a strange course, giving me the right club every time, making the right moves when I, a stranger, couldn't be expected to. Doing it quietly, no fuss and feathers. Good. My hands shook a little, but not too much. While I was working, this colloquy:

"Really, Ellsworth--what was the fight about?"

"Nothin'. Nothin' worth mentioning, suh."

Captain's bars on my shoulders, caduceus in my lapel, and he hands me this. His dark spirit has had experience of captain's bars before, but not of mine: "Oh. I see. Yes. You want this in your 201 file, right?"

Bull's-eye. Ellsworth's pupils, not constricted before, dilated further. More whites of the eyes showing, as well. No--this face is in no sense a caricature; there is a dignity in this ebon presence that places him beyond that; but there are the dilated pupils big enough to swim in and the whites of the eyes, as if that white were trying to balance all the black.

"No, suh! Not another one of these in my file, no, suh, please." The fear in his eyes. Of what? I asked my curious self. Undesirable discharge? In his circles, these were not unheard of. Why so afraid? Ask the question now, look for the answer later. I held aloft the last suture and Naughton clipped it with precision. He loved it, I could tell. He could have sewed up Ellsworth as well as I had.

"All right," I said, as Naughton applied the dressing. I address Ellsworth: "You had a fight with Lincoln about something you won't talk about now. Not here, anyway." I was removing my gloves--one could say that this round of the fight was over. "Later you will come to the hospital and you will tell me all about it. Privately."

(It is obvious that Ellsworth has aroused my curiosity. I want to know more of what has happened here. Curiosity--yes. Why I am a psychiatrist. Though I'm only an Army one at the moment. Actually, at the moment I'm an Army surgeon. The hell with it.)

"Yes, suh." Rolling of eyes. For some reason, Ellsworth doesn't like the word "hospital." One of the better words in my lexicon just then.

We have sprinkled sulfa into the cleansed and then closed incision into the person of Ellsworth. He must have sulfa by mouth as well. We have it, Naughton? Yes. We provide, with directions, sulfa in a canary-yellow envelope. In the midst of oceans of olive drab, a bright young color ... and my lovely one so far away I can taste the distance, mile by mile. And Lincoln here, still needing to be sewed.

"Back to your barracks, Ellsworth. Take these pills, one four times a day until they're gone, as is written on the envelope. Understand? You'll be on sick call for a few days. Keep quiet, don't move around much, don't have another fight with Lincoln. You're confined to quarters."

"Yes, suh. Thank you, Cap'n--for fixing me, us, up. And not putting it in the 201. Thank you, Cap'n."

Goddamn it. "I didn't say I wouldn't put it in the 201. I said I'd see you in the hospital later and you'd tell me about it. All right?"

An apprehensive glance at me and he is through the door. Naughton and Stokely have Lincoln set on the table and we have a repetition of the business with Ellsworth. There isn't much conversation, but Lincoln emerges as a not-nice character. (Granted, my psychiatric grasp was then callow and intuitive, but Lincoln couldn't move a muscle, say a word, without arousing in me a distast, whose magnitude surprised me.) In any case, we sew him up, give him sulfa and off he goes. Sick call is finished. This outpost of military medicine has felt and known my presence. And I its, yes.

I to staff: "Be sure they're on sick call the next few days. Those cuts should have been sewed up hours earlier. We'll see what happens."

"Yes, sir."

"Would it be too much to ask what report you propose to make on those two privates? Their platoon leader knows they're on sick call, right?"

"Sure----"

"How about the company commander?"

"Well"--Naughton deals here with a problem of diplomacy--"Well, he won't have to know exactly----"

These two had served me well in my first brush with surgery in the military boondocks of Japan, and I was not above furthering their cause, if I could only find out what it was.

"And even if he did," Naughton said, "it might be all right----"

"Might be all right," I repeated. "In the name of God and Douglas MacArthur, how come everyone is so agreeable to covering up for these two privates first class? Why should I let you turn in a false report on those two? What gives?"

(Naughton expounding: Ellsworth and Lincoln are fire fighters. A local cat house caught fire some time back and they and their fire-fighting company put it out, saved some lives. Vivid scene--naked girls and boys all over the place. Courage and fortitude on Ellsworth's part. Two officers in there, way off limits. The fire fighters have those officers over a barrel, if they choose to put them there. Following Ellsworth, they don't. Ellsworth is the hero here, needing protection, you can't turn Lincoln in, over this trivial argument, without implicating Ellsworth.)

Trivial, Naughton says. "That cut came within half an inch of Ellsworth's pericardium." I gaze at my staff. "All right, so they both had a low-grade temp of unknown etiology." Farewell, Hippocrates. "And be damn-well sure they're back here on sick call tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir. And thanks, Cap'n. That was a couple of neat jobs." Embarrassed pause. "Why do you want to see them in the hospital?"

"They interest me." At least Ellsworth does, and Lincoln is deeply involved with him. My curiosity. "If you can arrange to cover up this--shall we say, minor surgery--you can arrange to have them sent to the hospital to see me when they're out of quarters, can't you?"

"Oh, sure, Cap'n. No problem----"

Of course no problem. Don't ever let anyone tell you the officers have anything to do with running the Army. Never in those years, never in a million years....

• • •

I am back on ward ten, with Polly bringing coffee when needed, which is frequently. I am a psychiatrist again, doing what the Army says I know how to do. I have the duty every fourth or fifth day; but on balance, the situation is once more relatively cozy. I write my lovely girl that life, until we are together again, is at least minimally supportable. I tell her that I have ceased my samisen lessons, though her suspicions are entirely unfounded. I miss you beyond your ability to comprehend, I write. The occasional transpacific phone call brings her voice into my ear and I am broken up and behave strangely for some time after. But I run my service and live. As follows:

Ellsworth comes in for his first interview, which is fairly long. He tells me about his girl--Taeko. He describes her and I recognize the genre, having had passing acquaintance of it myself. I soon understand his fear of being sent Stateside with an undesirable discharge--he would rather be busted to private and stay here with Taeko than be sent back to the States without her as the first and only Negro five-star general of the Army. Or President of the United States, for that matter, with a 21-gun salute (to remind him it's time for breakfast, say) going off every morning on the east lawn of the White House.

Which is to say that Ellsworth has something going with Taeko, and what he has going sounds very nice to me and is life itself to him. I have said that Ellsworth communicates a certain quality. But Lincoln tries to move in. This is (of course) what the fight was about. They both want Taeko. Ellsworth shows me her picture, and I can't blame them. She belongs to Ellsworth at this point, but Lincoln is there in the background--needling, probing, after her with the scruples of a tomcat. Ellsworth would like to come back and talk some more. Can do? Yes.

Then the first--and only--interview with Lincoln. This confrontation is shorter. His moral bankruptcy does not elude me. If it cost a moral nickel to go from Yokohama to the Persian Room at the Plaza, he couldn't afford a ticket from the side of my desk to the end of the corridor. I am more of a match for him than he suspects; but for the moment, he commands my curiosity. At one point, I ask: "How about this girl, then--Taeko?"

"She's a girl," Lincoln said. "What's the difference? A girl is a girl."

"That's why you and Ellsworth cut each other up over her."

"Well--she's a special girl."

"Yes." My cold look against his. "Ellsworth's."

He shrugged his shoulders. He wants Taeko and he is an opportunistic shark. Ellsworth loves and is threatened by forces of evil--in the person of Lincoln, now sitting sullenly at the side of my desk. Lincoln doesn't like medical officers, either.

I think of my own lovely girl, 7000 miles away, and I hope nobody is after her. My blue Ferrari is also way the hell over there, and I want the three of us together again. And I don't like Lincoln. Unprofessional attitude? Yes.

• • •

Ellsworth comes back once a week to talk. He calls me Doc once, instead of Cap'n, and it sticks; we both like it better. When people call me Doc, I don't feel like a pharmacist. Ellsworth and I speak of (among other things) his love for Taeko, always with the intrusion of Lincoln, the rat. As the weeks go by (the surgical wounds heal well, by the way--you can't keep a good surgeon down), Lincoln comes into possession of large amounts of yen. He has made a big score in the black market or elsewhere and puts his illicit boodle to use. He buys goodies for Taeko and her family. Taeko is a good girl--and this must be understood--but she is overrun when Lincoln manages to procure penicillin for her moribund father, thus raising him from what would have been his pneumonic deathbed. Procurement of penicillin was not easy then, even for medical officers. The drug was new, there wasn't much of it and control was rigid. Amounts of it were diverted into unorthodox channels, however, and some of it, via Lincoln, went Taeko's way, and Taeko wavered. In gratitude. She was fond of her father. Ellsworth tells me this, sitting there at the side of my desk, smoking cigarettes, long legs stretched out.

Approach of denouement. Ellsworth is sent away briefly on some mission or other, and when he comes back, Taeko has made the switch. Not only that but Lincoln has her pregnant--which Ellsworth, out of love, has carefully avoided.

Ellsworth sitting there at the side of my desk--a man in pain, a man in love, a man loving. "What must I do?" he asks.

I sit in the familiar chair and make a familiar response: "I can't help you with that one."

• • •

Back, now, to the opening. I am M. O. D. It is written in some big book somewhere that when surgical emergencies arise, Captain Adams is the medical officer of the day. It is Saturday night and the dance is on at the officers' club across the way, almost within shouting distance. And shouting is what I want to do when the phone call comes in. I restrain myself and try the hospital switchboard. Dealing with Japanese switchboards in those days was, by the way, frequently exhilarating.

After first being connected with the manager of a hotel in Atami. I reach Kieffer at the club and alert him and Gagliardi to stand by for possible need in their field of expertise. They are good boys and don't wait for the ambulance to arrive. They saunter over and sit around, smoking, making jokes about why don't I give up headshrinking and go into surgery, since I am so obviously attracted to it. Good boys, these. Really--they could be over there dancing with Red Cross girls, nurses and the colonel's wife; but they sit here with me, waiting for trouble to arrive--trouble up their alley, not mine.

The phone call mentioned fire truck and, of course, I am thinking of Ellsworth and Lincoln. When the ambulance comes screeching up, these are (of course) the traumatized cargo.

Lincoln is dying, as even a psychiatrist can see. Ellsworth is badly hurt, but conscious.

Up to the O. R., the lot of us. Since Lincoln is the more grievously damaged and there is the outside chance of saving him, my surgical colleagues deal with him first. I remain in the corridor outside, with Ellsworth lying there. In the 143rd, we have one O. R. and one surgical team. I stand by the stretcher and look down into Ellsworth's open eyes. Is there fear there? No, I decide. Not fear but lots, lots of something.

"For Christ's sake, Ellsworth, what happened?"

A space before he can answer: "I picked him off with the Osaka Express, Doc." Trace of smile. I wipe blood seeping through temporary dressings.

Jesus. I knew that train. I could see it leaping through the night with the speed of a thrown knife. I could see it smashing and carrying and discarding the fire truck and Ellsworth and Lincoln in a split second, howling on into the darkness. "Were you drunk?"

He has trouble breathing. We are surrounded by the hushed, occupied and efficient quiet of the top floor of a place where they used to sell furniture, carpets, samisens--who knows.

"No," he said, "but he sure was. I saw to that." I waited while he adjusted himself to the difficulty of breathing. Nothing I could do except be there, let him know I was standing there. "Taeko wanted to come back to me. Doc, wanted to be back with me--that's how it was. She finally had him figured. But he wouldn't let her. Taeko is a good girl." The words coming hard. "We've talked about what a good girl is--you know. I got Lincoln loaded at the E. M. club."

I stood there, unable to do one damn thing, offering my presence, my ears, my caring. When he could talk again: "I asked him, didn't he want to go for a ride on the fire truck? He sure did, like I knew he would. He always likes to ride behind, shouting bloody murder at everybody, clearing the way like he was Ben-Hur in an eight-cylinder red-painted hot-rod chariot. I read a book about Ben-Hur once." He winced and looked up at me. "I got a chance, Doc?"

I knew then what it was in those eyes--his need to know. He had to know if he would ever see his girl again.

"Better than his," I said. "Go on."

"I knew what time the Osaka Express went by that crossing. No guardrails or nothing. I could see it coming from the rise. My, it do go fast, that one." He fumbled for the glass of water and I helped him. " 'Beat 'em.' he yelled. He was a great one for beating people, he was." Ellsworth slowly turned his head this way and that. "Anyway, 'Beat the sons of bitches,' he yelled. The bastard. 'All right,' I said. And--Doc--man, did I pour it on...."

I sopped up some more blood and wished Kieffer and Gagliardi had taken Ellsworth first. But they had, of course, made the proper decision. Also, they didn't know Ellsworth. Nor had they said goodbye to Hippocrates.

"I figured to get me and the front of the truck across and have the train cancel him and the rear end. Just about happened that way, too, from what I saw." Faint smile.

"Pretty good timing," I said. The thought of my blue Ferrari came into my mind. "But dangerous, Ellsworth. Goddamn it----"

"I know, Doc, I do know. I had to find an answer you couldn't give me. She's worth it, Doc. You know----"

He smiled up at me. Then I held a kidney basin while he spit up blood.

"Will I make it, Doc? You can tell me straight."

He had to know, and I understood that. If I could have told him, I would have.

Kieffer and Gagliardi came out of the O. R., followed by orderlies wheeling the table. Kieffer looked at me, shook his head and pointed his thumb at the floor. I was glad I was a psychiatrist, not a surgeon. I didn't know if Ellsworth had seen the covered mass go by. I put my hand on his shoulder. "I don't know, Ellsworth, I don't." He knew I always leveled with him, and he knew it now. "You've a better chance than he," I said.

Those big eyes turning on me. But now he didn't need a psychiatrist, he needed a couple of surgeons, and he needed them in a hurry.

"All right," Kieffer said to the orderlies, "bring him in."