A Midnight Visitor
I slipped unobserved into the diet kitchen, where I left my cape and
to some degree repaired damages. I found, on emerging from the
kitchen, that the new patient in Eighteen had arrived. It is a rule
with me personally to superintend the installation of a new patient,
so I went at once to Room 18. I still found it unpleasant to enter
that room, especially since the figure on the narrow bed reminded me
forcibly of that other figure that had lain there.
Mr. Gastin was an elderly man, somewhat peevish at being thrust into
bed, and quite to my liking. He must have been a person of some
importance, for flowers galore had already arrived, among them a
potted lobelia, a sinister-looking flower that I have never liked.
He replied rather bitterly that he was as comfortable as might be
expected and asked for the evening papers.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but we don’t have them.”
“Don’t have them!” he exclaimed, eyeing me shrewdly. “Oh. Oh, yes, I
see why. Where did all this trouble occur, anyway? And see here,
what’s the matter with this radio? The thing don’t work. Is it turned
on at this hour? I want the stock reports. I want to tune in myself.”
“The radio is in the general office,” I explained hastily, fearing he
would return to the question I did not wish to answer. “The speakers
in the different rooms connect with it. It is usually turned on at
this hour, but I don’t know whether they have got the stock reports or
not.”
“Well, bring me a speaker that works, anyhow,” he said, hitching
himself on one elbow among the pillows and then flopping back again.
“Anything for amusement. I suppose it will be bedtime stories. Well,
bring ’em on. And you might slip me a cigar.”
I felt rather sad as I took the loud speaker, pulled the plug from its
connection above the bed, and started away. It doesn’t take five
minutes to place a new patient in his correct category and I knew all
too well where this one belonged. Someone had labelled them “crippled
captains of finance,” and the title stuck.
Being in a hurry I took the faulty speaker into Sonny’s room. He was
engrossed with a new block puzzle and paying no attention to the radio
so I exchanged the speakers, taking the one in Sonny’s room to Mr.
Gastin for the time being. Once connected, soft and dulcet tones rang
through Number 18: “. . . and then Bunny Brown Eyes—scampered
along . . .”
“Oh, hell,” remarked Mr. Gastin.
“The dinner concert comes on at seven,” I suggested.
“Think I can stand this till then?” he asked, but left the plug in.
“Can you bring me a—er—blanket or two, nurse? Somehow this room seems
sort of—I don’t know—cold, I guess. You might turn on that light up
there—yes, and the one over the dresser, too.”
The light over the bed was already glowing, but I did as he asked.
Which only goes to prove that Room 18 was already getting in its work.
I left the door open and remember that I spoke very earnestly when I
told him to turn on the signal light if he wanted anything.
He did not have to listen to the bunny story after all, however, for I
met Miss Jones coming along with a truck and she told me that she was
taking Mr. Gastin to Dr. Letheny’s—that is, Dr. Balman’s office for an
examination.
“He hasn’t had his supper tray yet, has he?” she asked anxiously.
Meeting O’Leary in the hall I told him that Room 18 was vacant for a
few minutes; I went on downstairs to eat, however, and did not
accompany him. But when I sat down to glance at the charts of the
south wing an hour later, O’Leary stopped beside me.
“No luck?” I said.
“Not a thing,” he replied.
There was a distinctly puzzled look in his face.
“Keep your eyes open to-night, Miss Keate. If anything occurs like
last night, ’phone to me immediately. Here’s my number. I’ll sleep
right by the telephone. Thanks. Good-night.”
But before taking five steps he whirled back to me.
“By the way, Miss Keate,” he said in a low voice so that the little
cluster of white-clad nurses around the dumbwaiter could not hear him.
“By the way, it seems peculiar that after the inquest when the matter
of your seeing this hypodermic needle was brought to light so
publicly, no one tried to retrieve it. One wonders why. And another
thing—I should like to know where this Jim Gainsay spent the time
between your meeting him at the corner of the porch, and his starting
to town in Dr. Letheny’s car. There are, according to your story,
about fifteen minutes unaccounted for——Good-night, again.”
I did not return to the south wing until midnight. I found only Maida
there for second watch, Miss Dotty having arranged the schedule of
nursing hours on its old basis, thus depriving us of our temporary
increased help. I thought it somewhat presumptuous of Miss Dotty, who,
after all, is only superintendent of nurses and has no jurisdiction
over our wing. Olma Flynn had been placed on first watch, as formerly,
and on relieving her she assured me that everything was going well and
though the new patient in Eighteen was a trifle restless, I had
expected that, so I thought nothing of it.
Olma had locked the south door and its key hung peacefully on its
customary nail. Under Maida’s understanding gaze I took the key from
the nail and slipped it under an order pad on the chart desk; if
anyone wanted it that night he should have to ask for it!
I hadn’t been on the floor ten minutes when Eighteen’s light went on;
upon answering it I found my patient sitting bolt upright in bed, with
the small light over the bed glowing brightly.
“I don’t like this bed, nurse!” he said. His rumpled gray hair gave
him a rather ferocious aspect and his pajama coat was all wrinkled and
twisted from flouncing around on the bed.
His words gave me rather a turn for, as far as that went, I didn’t
like the bed myself. But I advanced coolly enough and began
straightening the tossed sheets and blanket.
“What is the matter with it?” I asked, in my professionally
comfortable voice. I was not prepared for his reply.
“It feels like a coffin,” he said, staring gloomily at his feet.
“Like a coffin!”
He glanced at me sharply.
“Like a coffin,” he repeated stubbornly. “I don’t like it.”
“Nonsense,” I said, recovering myself and reaching for a pillow. “You
aren’t used to it, that’s all.”
“What do they make them so high for?” he said peevishly, peering over
the edge of the bed. “If I’d fall out I’d have a long way to go.”
“You’re not going to fall out,” I reassured him. “And if they didn’t
make them high we nurses would break our backs. That is the greatest
life-saver for nurses that anybody ever found. You see, if they were
built at the height of ordinary beds we would have to bend away
over——”
“Well, they don’t have to be so narrow,” he interrupted sulkily.
“Every time I turn over I have to grab to save myself from going out.”
“Oh, it isn’t that bad, is it?” I plumped the pillows briskly,
replaced them and pulled the draw sheet straight. “Now, that will be
better. Try to relax and lie quiet.”
He subsided on the pillow, still muttering childishly.
It seemed close in the room, so I raised the window higher and brought
him a fresh drink of water. Of course, if the window had already been
up I should have lowered it; I make it a point to fuss around the room
a little just to make the patient think I’m doing things for his
comfort, and nine times out of ten he will drop off to sleep at once.
This was the tenth time, however, for within half an hour Eighteen’s
light flickered on again. Maida answered it that time and when she
came out she looked very peculiar.
“What is the matter?” I asked, meeting her in the corridor.
“It is Eighteen. He is very restless.”
“Yes, I know that he is.”
“He——” she hesitated. “He does not seem to like the room.”
Our eyes met but I tried to keep the little tremor of fright out of my
voice as I replied: “He isn’t accustomed to a hospital room yet, that
is all.”
“I hope so, I’m sure,” said Maida somewhat morosely and went on about
her errand.
I myself am so accustomed to the hospital that is home to me that it
is only once in a while that I see it as it impresses a stranger. For
a singular moment or two that night I saw it with alien eyes, so to
speak; the corridor was long and strange and dark with the vases of
flowers along the walls making grotesque shadows against the lighted
region of the chart desk at the extreme end of the wings; the hush
that always surrounds a hospital, particularly at night, seemed
unfamiliar and grim; the doors swung noiselessly; the little thud of
our rubber-heeled shoes along the rubberized floor-runner seemed
stealthy. Our hushed, low voices had a furtive note. The hospital
odours of antiseptics and soap and medicines and sickness, with under
it all a lurking, faint but ever-present breath of ether, came to my
nostrils with the clearness of novelty. The dim red gleams of
scattered signal lights, above the black voids that were doors, seemed
strange, too, and weird. I caught myself staring up and down the
corridor, puzzled and wondering and faintly frightened as if I were in
a new and terrifying place. Then all at once, things resolved
themselves into the old, familiar wing. But the feeling of uneasiness
persisted.
The patient in Eighteen finally turned off his light and must have
gone to sleep, for we heard nothing of him for an hour or two. We were
fairly busy, with little opportunity for conversation. Along about two
o’clock I found that Sonny had managed to acquire a sore throat, a
hot, flushed face and icy feet. I was hurrying for camphorated oil and
a hot-water bottle when Eighteen’s light shone redly above the door. I
hastened to answer it.
“Nurse,” said our patient firmly, his eyes quite swollen from lack of
sleep, and his bedclothes more tousled than ever. “Nurse, I do not
like this room. I want another.”
I sighed inwardly even as I went again about the business of
straightening him and the bed.
“There isn’t another on the floor, Mr. Gastin,” I said quietly. “And
anyway we can’t move you in the middle of the night.”
“But I insist upon being moved,” he said, with an odd mixture of
childish pettishness and adult command. What would be the result if
the world at large knew these important business men as we know them!
Big babies, they are, most of them!
“This room is exactly like any other room,” I said.
“I don’t like it!” he reiterated. “There’s—there’s noises.” His eyes
roved about the room uneasily. “There’s noises! Sounds like
whispering.”
I’ll not deny that these extraordinary words stirred my hair at its
roots.
“Non—sense!” I brought out jerkily. “Nonsense! You are nervous.”
He was regarding me with shrewd little eyes. I stared back at him,
trying to appear steady and at ease, but it was no use. He raised his
hand to point a square forefinger at me, shaking it emphatically in my
face.
“I’ll bet you ten dollars—I’ll bet you a hundred dollars, right there
in my pants pocket, that this is _the room!_”
Fascinated, I kept my eyes on the square finger. He did not need to
say what room, for I knew well what he meant. I moistened my lips.
“How about it?” he went on more briskly. “How about it? Do I win?”
And at my continued silence he chuckled, lying back again on the
pillow.
“I can see that I win,” he said. He pulled the sheet up over his
shoulders, and stuffed the pillow more comfortably under his head.
“Now that I know what the trouble is, I can go to sleep all right,”
said this amazing man. He laughed softly. “I’m no nervous woman,” he
went on with a touch of swagger. “Turn out the light, will you?”
He closed his eyes with the utmost unconcern.
“The whispers won’t bother me now that I know what they are,” he said
casually as I moved toward the door.
Still feeling shaken, I walked slowly along the corridor. What could
the man mean?
Resolving at length to take a lesson from my patient’s sang-froid, I
tried to shrug the matter away as a fancy on his part, and proceeded
to take care of Sonny’s needs, applying the hot-water bottle to his
throat and the camphorated oil to his feet in the coolest fashion
until Sonny remonstrated with a hoarse giggle.
By three o’clock things had quieted down all over the wing. The
patients were either asleep or resting and the windows dark with the
blackest hour of the night. Maida was sitting at the chart desk, her
white-capped head bent over Eleven’s chart, and I had gone into
Sonny’s room to make sure he was all right. The whole place was as
quiet and hushed as a city of the dead.
I took my thermometer and shook it vigorously. And in the very act of
placing it between Sonny’s lips, I lost hold on it, dropped it and
whirled facing the door. For without any warning at all a scream was
rising from somewhere in the wing.
It rose and swelled to the very old roofs, choked horribly at its
height and ceased.
It was a scream of stark terror!
A woman’s scream!
Somehow I got into the corridor. Maida was there, too, running toward
Room 18, and I followed her.
It was Maida who reached for the light. It revealed our patient half
out of bed, staring with blinking eyes at something on the other side
of the bed.
We followed his gaze. Huddled there on the floor was a woman. We saw a
dark cloak, a brown hand outflung and metallic waves of hair. We both
leaned closer.
“It’s Corole!” cried Maida sharply.
We turned her on her back. For a horrible moment I though that
Eighteen had added another victim to its list. But all at once Corole
opened her eyes, sat up dazedly, saw Mr. Gastin still sitting on the
edge of the bed, and at the sight her mouth opened, her eyes glared,
and she pressed her hand tight across her mouth as if to prevent an
outcry.
The relief of seeing that she was alive was so great that Maida sank
limply to a chair and I turned in natural reaction to anger.
“What on earth are you doing here, Corole?” I asked warmly. “What
happened to you? Are you hurt?”
She ignored my questions.
“Who is that?” she whispered hoarsely, pointing to the bed. There was
such urgency in her tone and gesture that I replied.
“That is a new patient.”
“A new patient? _Here?_”
“Certainly. Why not?”
She looked at me; her eyes were green and shone.
“When did he come?”
“Late this afternoon. Why? What is the matter? Tell me what happened!”
She groped for the cloak, pulled it absently around her and rose to
her feet in one long, sinuous motion.
“He frightened me,” she said. “I thought—— I saw him lying there on
the bed—— I didn’t know you had a patient here. I thought it was—I
thought——” With a visible effort she controlled herself, passed a hand
across her pallid face. She looked terrible—grim, hag-ridden; her lips
were blue, her face ashen and her eyes like a frantic cat’s.
And at the moment we heard hurrying footsteps in the corridor and Dr.
Hajek, clutching a bathrobe around his pajamas, followed by Dr.
Balman, burst into the room. Dr. Hajek had a revolver in one hand, and
at sight of us he paused abruptly, his eyes met Corole’s for a long
moment, and I experienced the strangest feeling that they were
corresponding, without words or motions, there in front of my eyes. It
was the briefest of impressions, gone before the thought had more than
come to me, and I saw Dr. Hajek slowly dropping the revolver into his
bathrobe pocket.
“What is it?” inquired Dr. Balman. In a few words I explained the
situation, as far as I could. Dr. Balman surveyed us all for a space
during which I could hear my own heart thudding, then he walked to the
bed, drew the patient gently back and pulled the covers over him. Mr.
Gastin submitted without a word, his gaze still on Corole.
“I was frightened,” said Corole, her voice harsh. “I thought—— Never
mind what I thought. I——” She tried to smile and the grimace she made
was dreadful. “I must have fainted. I’m sorry. Sorry to disturb you.”
This apology was not like Corole. I started to speak, stopped myself,
started again. No one seemed to hear me.
Dr. Hajek cleared his throat.
“Was there—anything wrong?” he asked in what struck me as rather
belated inquiry.
“I——” began Corole again. Her face was looking a little less hideous,
and by the time she had finished she seemed more like herself. “I did
not know that there was a patient in the room. I saw his figure in
bed, there. It frightened me. I screamed. And fell. I suppose I roused
the whole hospital. Really, Miss Keate, I do not think you should have
put a patient in this room.”
It was like the hussy to try to blame me, and indignation almost
choked me. While I was stuttering for a suitable reply Maida spoke. At
the first word I glanced at her in amazement and saw Dr. Balman and
Dr. Hajek follow my gaze.
“And what were _you_ doing in this room?” asked Maida. Her eyes were
like twin swords, her straight black brows stern. “You had no honest
business in this room, Corole Letheny! Why did you come here?”
Corole’s head jerked toward Maida with a flash of green light from
those crafty eyes.
For a moment the two women surveyed each other, neither faltering in
her steadily inimical regard. I moved uneasily and in the hush I heard
one or two signal lights clicking. At the sound I pulled myself
together; we should have another panic on our hands if we did not take
care.
“Yes, Corole,” I said decisively. “Why did you come here? And how did
you get into the room?”
“I think your presence demands an explanation,” added Dr. Balman
quietly.
She looked at me, she swept Dr. Balman’s mild brown eyes, she
flickered a green glance at Dr. Hajek, she drew her silk wrap more
closely about her, she moved her brown hands uneasily up and down its
collar, and she finally replied.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I got to thinking of Louis and
somehow—got the idea that if I came over here I might be able to—to——”
Her excuse died away from very lack of body, she took a long breath,
and raised her eyelids insolently. “I felt I must see Room 18. So I
came. I got in at the window. If you have nothing more to
say—Good-night.” Her strange eyes swept us and actually they harboured
a gleam of amusement. Then she drew the cloak tightly about her,
walked to the window, put one hand on the sill, and with a long,
graceful movement swung herself over the sill and through the window.
It was done with the nonchalance and ease of an animal and she did not
even glance back at us. For an instant her gold hair shone beyond the
window, then the screen came down upon a black void and she was
definitely gone.
No one left in the room spoke. Dr. Hajek made a motion as if he
thought to accompany her but thought better of it. Dr. Balman reached
for Mr. Gastin’s pulse. Maida crossed the room swiftly and went into
the corridor. As her starched skirts rustled past the bed Mr. Gastin
took his eyes from the window.
“I think,” he said feebly. “I think I should like to have an upstairs
room.”
“We’ll see in the morning,” I said absently.
“_In the morning!_” observed Mr. Gastin with feeling. “Do you think
I’m going to stay in this haunted room for the rest of the night!”
And believe it or not, we had to give up and bundle him on a truck and
take him to a temporary bed in the charity ward! This was the first
time in all my years of nursing that I was so influenced by a patient
and this was not accomplished without resistance on my part and
extremely sulphuric language on his. In fact, he proved to be
versatile in the latter respect, attaining heights that made my hair
stand on end. Dr. Balman was quite scarlet at the end of one climactic
triumph and sent Dr. Hajek hurriedly for the truck.
So, all in all, it was not until I was back in the wing, and our
patients had been assured by the story of a mouse that Maida in a
burst of unexpected mendacity brought forth, and things were quiet and
peaceful again, that I began to wonder what had been the purpose of
Corole’s visit.
And it was clear to me, all at once, that she was looking for
something.
What could that something be—the radium? Could Corole believe that the
radium was still in Room 18? And if so, what reason had she for her
belief?
And at the same time I recalled my promise to O’Leary to telephone to
him if the night brought any disturbance. It was with some trepidation
that I convinced myself that he could do nothing till morning anyway,
and it was as well that I had forgotten my promise.
I did not for a moment believe Corole’s faltering attempt at an
explanation. But at the same time it occurred to me that had she been
of a mind to lie she could likely have invented a much more plausible
and convincing tale than the one she told.