He taxied downtown to the athletic club, where he maintained his
three-room apartment. The 20-story building was a citadel of
masculinity--no females allowed--and recently it was an especial relief
to enter the lobby and leave behind the world of turbulently mixed
sexes.
The small but lush entry chamber had a deserted air about it this
afternoon. At the room desk, Crumbley, the clerk, handed him his key
with a pallid hand and returned to sigh over a colored picture in
_Esquire_--it was the "fold-out" page, featuring a gorgeous blonde
reclining at full length. Crumbley's expression, however, was far from
the loose-lipped, lecherous leer that he normally exposed to such art.
His eyes had a thin glaze over them, he breathed shallowly and, if Dr.
Murt had not known the little man's cynically promiscuous nature so
well, he'd have sworn Crumbley was in love.
Upstairs, Murt donned rubber-soled gym shoes and sweat clothes and rode
the elevator back down to the gymnasium. Three times a week, he put his
muscles through the whole routine-work on the bars, rings, the leather
horse, the rope climb and a twenty-lap jog around the balcony racetrack.
Afterward, he showered, took a dip in the swimming pool and retired to
the health service department for a rubdown and some sunlamp.
Throughout the whole routine, he encountered not a single other member.
While Charlie, the husky blond masseur, hammered and kneaded his
muscles, Murt reflected on the abating interest in athletics at the
club.
"Are we losing members, Charlie?" he asked.
"You'd think so from how dead it is up here," Charlie replied. "But
Crumbley says we aren't. The guys just aren't exercising. Can't figure
it, Doc. Even with the usual summer slump, it's never been this slow."
When he had absorbed all the punishment he could stand, Murt rolled off,
went into the ultraviolet room, set an alarm clock and lay down by
himself on one of the paper-covered tables. He adjusted the dark goggles
and reflected thankfully that he didn't have to go to the beach for his
sun and have sand kicked in his face by a procession of predatory
females, ogling his long limbs and trying to attract his attention.
The clean smell of ozone was pleasant, the warmth of the lamps relaxed
him, and he dozed off. He dreamed that he heard someone else come in and
lie down on the next table and, when he raised his head to see who it
was, was amazed to discover his assistant, Dr. Phyllis Sutton, stretched
out like himself, wearing only shower-sandals and goggles.
The alarm clock wakened him from the disturbing dream. He was sweating
profusely and took another shower, using the cold water at full needle
force to dispel his shock at his subconscious.
* * * * *
Wrapping the robe around him, Murt returned to his apartment to dress
for dinner. As he snapped the paper laundry band off a clean shirt, he
caught himself wondering how old Phyllis Sutton was. Twenty-eight?
Thirty? She appeared younger, but she was in her last year of residence
to gain her specialty of pathology. That meant over eleven years of
school and practice. She was a lovely creature, but she was no child.
He had half an impulse to phone her for dinner, then became lost in
studying his own reaction to the thought. Pulse over a hundred,
respiration quickening, irregular. There was a tensing of the abdomen, a
faint burning in the pit of his stomach.
He remembered the urge at the office, the dream in the sunroom, the
sudden sweat that had required five minutes under the cold needle
shower.
After so many years of deliberate, scholarly celibacy, what was
happening to him?
He stared at the phone. With six motions of one finger, he could dial
Phyllis Sutton's face into view, and suddenly he yearned to do that very
ridiculous thing.
After staring at her, off and on, for the six months since she had
transferred to High Dawn to complete her residency, now he wanted to see
her face outside of working hours for some inexplicable reason.
Call her up, date her, take her dancing, proposition her--get this silly
feeling off your chest!
Suppose she was busy or refused to go out with him? Suppose she already
had a boy friend?
This last thought deepened the burn in the pit of his stomach, and he
finished dressing listlessly. To hell with it! This was poker night. If
he did succeed in dating his assistant, they'd inevitably talk shop.
That was why he enjoyed a night of cards with his six non-medical
brother clubmen, once a week. It was refreshing to break away from the
professional point of view.
No, he wouldn't sacrifice that for any woman.
* * * * *
He ate alone, read the paper, joined the poker party at seven o'clock,
played six hands of stud, cashed in his chips and returned to his room.
In a mood of deep irritation, he found Phyllis Sutton's home phone
number and rang it four times with no result.
He thought to try the hospital. She answered from the lab extension on
audio only, but her voice and its frankly curious tone sent vertically
polarized chills through him.
"I--I wanted to apologize for my rudeness this afternoon," he said with
difficulty from a suddenly dry mouth.
There was a brief silence. "Have you been drinking, Dr. Murt?" He
noticed that she did not call him Sylvester. Why was he so damned
thirsty for some little sign of warmth and friendliness from her?
He cleared his throat. "No, I'm serious. It occurred to me that your
interest in the out-clinic problem was commendable, and that I was
rather short in my remarks to you."
"Oh! I take it I have your permission to work my project in during the
day, then?"
"That's right, so long as it doesn't interfere with the routine." He
sounded stuffy to himself, but he was entirely out of practice in
speaking to please a female.
"Thanks," she said wryly, and the conversation ended.
Somehow, the brief talk with her restored his perspective. Once again
she was his assistant, and the significance of her as a woman faded. She
was a dedicated physician like himself. In another few years, she would
find a residency of her own. She had no more inclination to knock off
and become a woman than he had to squander his time and energy on
attaining the status of family man.
* * * * *
It was with mounting admiration that he followed her new project in
examining blood samples. As they came up from the clinic, she sorted the
specimen tubes at once, putting a tiny snip of yellow Scotch tape under
the label of each sample that belonged to a patient with the new
undiagnosed disorder.
Then, after the requested hemoglobin, blood sugar and other standard
tests had been run, she retrieved the samples from the technicians,
grouped them in a special rack and devoted every spare minute to further
examination.
She centrifuged, precipitated, filtered and stained over and over, using
every qualitative procedure in the book. Murt signed her requisitions
for exotic reagents and rare stains. He helped her balance out the large
centrifuge to get the maximum r.p.m. from it. He let her use the most
costly of the fine-porosity filters.
He had little hope of success, but it was good practice for her. She was
required to identify every organism she found, bone up on its known
effects, then determine that it could not cause the symptoms reported.
She did all this without impairing her usefulness to Murt. When he
needed her, she was at his side, dissecting, taking down notes,
preparing delicate sections and checking slides before they came to him.
In several weeks, she exhausted all known tests on the first samples.
After lunch one day, she turned her palms up. "_Nichts da!_" she said,
pulling a mashed cigarette from the huge pocket of her white smock.
He glanced at her and swiveled to stare out the window. It was part of
his tight campaign to prevent a disastrous recurrence of the emotional
tempest he had suffered the day she had begun this research.
"It was a nice brush-up on your bacteriology," he said. "Have you saved
the filtrates?"
"Yes, of course. Did I overlook anything?"
"Nothing that we could do here, but there's an electron microscope
downtown at Ebert Industrial Labs. How about photomicrography? Could be
a filtrable virus."
He knew that she was aware of the possibility, and also that she was
reluctant to ask him for additional funds to go into a virus hunt with
the expensive piece of equipment.
"Wonderful!" she told him. "I did hate to ask you, but it would be a
shame to waste all that immaculate filtrate."