"Oh, I'm glad! I thought you'd never come, Doc."
"Say," her voice was quarrelsome, "do you think I've nothin' to do but
wait at the beck and call of you wops?"
The boy, for he was only that, looked surprise and resentment at the
epithet, but he was too weak to waste his strength in useless words.
She raised his arm bound in its blood-soaked rags roughly and he
groaned.
"Keep still, you calf!"
He shut his teeth hard and the sweat of agony stood out on his pallid
face as she twisted and pulled and probed with clumsy, drunken fingers.
"Nell!" she called thickly.
The woman was watching from the doorway.
"Get the hypodermic and I'll give him a shot of hop, then I'm goin' to
bed. Lamb can look after him when he comes. I'm not goin' to monkey with
him now."
"But, Doc," the boy protested, "don't leave me like this. The bullet's
in there yet, and a piece of my shirt. The boys pulled out some, but
they couldn't reach the rest. Ain't you goin' to clean out the hole or
something? I'm scart of blood-poisonin', Doc, for I've seen how it
works," he pleaded.
His protest angered her.
"God! but you're wise with your talk of blood-poisonin'! You bums from
the Ditch give me more trouble and do more kickin' than all my private
patients put together. What do you want for a dollar a month"--she
sneered--"a special nurse? A shot in the arm will shut your mouth till
morning anyhow."
She shoved up the sleeve of his night clothes on the good arm and
gripped his wrist; then she jabbed the needle viciously.
His colorless lips were shut in a straight line and in his pain-stricken
eyes there was not so much anger now as a great wonder. Was this the
woman of whose acquaintance he had been proud, by whose bow of
recognition he always had felt flattered; this woman whose free speech
and careless good-nature he had defended against the occasional
criticism of coarser minds? This woman with her reeking breath and an
expression which seen through a mist of pain made her face look like
that of Satan himself, was it possible that she had had his liking and
respect? He was still wondering when the drowsiness of the drug seized
him and he slipped away into sleep.
Dr. Harpe gathered his clothes from the foot of the bed as she passed
out.
"Did he have anything on him, Nell?"
"No."
"They must have cleaned him out down below." She jerked her head toward
the dance hall as she turned a pocket inside out. "A dollar watch and a
jack-knife." She threw them both contemptuously upon the kitchen table.
"If he wakes up bellerin', shove the needle into him--you can do it as
well as I can. I'm goin' to bed."
She lunged down the corridor once more and Nell Beecroft stood looking
after with a curious expression of derision and contempt upon her hard
face.
Dr. Harpe threw herself upon the bed in one of the private rooms and
soon her loud breathing told Nell Beecroft that she was in the heavy
sleep of drink. The nurse opened the door and stood by the bedside
looking down upon her as she lay dressed as she had come from the dance,
on the outside of the counterpane. One bare arm was thrown over her
head, the other was hanging limply over the edge of the bed, her loose
hair was a snarled mass upon the pillow and her open mouth gave her face
an empty, sodden look that was bestial.
"I wonder what your swell friends would say to you now?" the woman
muttered, staring at her through narrowed lids. "Those private patients
that you're always bragging swear by you? What would they say if I
should tell 'em that just bein' plain drunk like any common prostitute
was the least of----" she checked herself and glanced into the hallway.
"What would they think if they knew you as I know you--what would they
say if I told them only half?" Her mouth dropped in a contemptuous
smile. "They wouldn't believe me--they'd say I lied about their 'lady
doc.'"