AN UNCROSSED BRIDGE
Karl awoke next morning with the sense of something wrong. Something was
making him uncomfortable, but he was not wide enough awake at first to
locate the trouble. He lay there dozing for a few minutes and when he
roused again he knew that his eyes were hurting badly. He awakened
instantly then. His eyes? Why, they had bothered him a little all day
yesterday. Was there something the matter with them?
He got up, raised the shade and looked in the glass. They looked badly
irritated, both of them. They felt wretchedly; he could scarcely keep
looking into the glass. Then leaning over the dressing table, he looked
more closely. He thought he saw something he did not like. He took a hand
mirror and went to the window. He could see better now, and the better
light verified the other one. It was true that in the corner of one eye
there was a drop of pus. In the other there was a suggestion of the same
thing.
He began to dress, proceeding slowly, his brows knitted, evidently
thinking about something, and worried. Then he opened a drawer, took out
a handkerchief, got the drop of pus from his eye and arranged the
handkerchief for preserving it.
He would find out about that, and the sooner the better! He did not like
it. He would see an oculist, too, this morning. It was plain he was going
to have some trouble with his eyes.
Ernestine noticed them at once. What made them so red?--she wanted to
know. Did they hurt? And wasn't there something he could put in them? He
told her he was going to look after them at once. He could not afford to
lose any time, and of course he could do nothing without his eyes.
Immediately after breakfast he started over to the laboratory.
It was Sunday morning and there would be no one there, which was so much
the better. He wanted to get this straightened out.
He had his head down all the way over to the university, partly because
his eyes bothered him and partly because he was thinking hard. The
trouble had evidently been coming on yesterday. He stopped short. That
trick Parkman told him about! But of course--moving on a little--that
could not have anything to do with this. He had no recollection--he was
very sure--then he walked faster, and the lines of his mouth told that he
was troubled.
When he reached the laboratory he began immediately upon the microscopic
examination. He hoped he could get at it through that, for the culture
process meant a long wait. But after fifteen minutes of careful work the
"smear" proved negative. There remained then only the longer route of the
culture.
He did not begin upon that immediately. He sat there trying to think back
to just what it was he had been doing Friday afternoon. The latter part
of the afternoon he had been sitting here by this table. That was the
time he was so buoyed up--getting so fine a light on the thing. It was
the cancer problem then--but in the nature of things nothing could have
happened with that. But there were always other things--all those things
known to the pathological laboratory.
He turned around toward the culture oven, opened the outer door and
through the inner door of glass looked in at the row of tubes. He was
trying to recall what it was he had been working with the earlier part of
Friday afternoon.
He knew now; one of the tubes had brought it to him. Yes, he knew now,
and within him there was a pause, and a stillness. Right over there was
where he sat preparing some cultures. There were two things with which he
had been working;--again a pause, and a stillness. One of them could not
make any serious difference; he went that far firmly, and then his heart
seemed to stand quite still, waiting for his thought to go on. But he did
not go on; there was a little convulsive clutching of his consciousness,
and a return, with acclaim, to the fact that _that_ could not make any
serious difference. He clung there; he would not leave that; doggedly,
defiantly, insistently, all-embracingly he affirmed that _that_ could not
make any serious difference. It was without opening his thought to
anything further that he got out his things and began preparing the
culture.
He was so accustomed to this that it went very mechanically and quickly.
He took one of the test tubes arranged for the process in the culture
oven and with the small wire instrument he had there, lifted the drop of
pus on the handkerchief into the bullion of the tube. He did it all very
carefully, very exactly, just as he always did. Then he put the tuft of
cotton over the top and placed the tube in that strange-looking box
commonly called a culture oven. In twenty-four hours he would know the
truth. He adjusted the gas with a firm hand, arranging with his usual
precision this thing which outwardly was like any of his experiments and
which in reality--but he would not go into that.
Now for an oculist. His eyes were hurting badly; it was time to do
whatever there was to be done. After all he was rather jumping at
conclusions. There was a big chance that this was just something
characteristic to eyes and had no relation to the things of his work. He
seized upon that, ridiculing himself for having looked right over the
most simple and natural explanation of all. Did not a great many people
have trouble with their eyes?
That nerved him up all the way down town. He was almost ready to think it
a great joke, the way he had hurried over to the laboratory and had gone
at it in that life-and-death fashion.
He knew that the oculist in Dr. Parkman's building was a good one, and so
he went there. It was a little disconcerting when he stepped into the
elevator to meet Dr. Parkman himself. He had not thought of trying
especially to avoid the doctor, but he had wanted to see the oculist
first and get the thing straightened out. He was counting a great deal
now on the oculist.
"Hello!" said the doctor, seeming startled at first, and then after one
sharp glance: "Going up to see me?"
"Well, yes, after a little. Fact of the matter is I thought I'd run in
and let this eye fellow take a look at me."
"Eyes bothering you?"
"Somewhat." He said it shortly, almost curtly.
When they reached the fifth floor, Dr. Parkman stepped out with him,
although he himself belonged farther up.
"I know him pretty well," he explained, "I'll go with you."
He could not very well say: "I would rather you would not," although for
some reason he felt that way.
It was soon clear to their initiated minds that the oculist did not know
the exact nature of the trouble. He admitted that the case perplexed him.
He, too, must make an examination of the pus. He treated Karl's eyes, and
advised that they begin upon an immediate and aggressive course of
treatment. Dr. Parkman, observing Karl's growing irritability, said that
he would look after all that, see that the right thing was done.
As he walked out of that office Karl was a little dizzy. His avenue of
hope had grown narrower. It was not, then, some affection characteristic
of eyes. It was, after all, something from without. It was, in all
probability, one of two things,--it was either--but again he did not go
beyond the first, telling himself with nervous buoyancy that _that_ would
not make any serious difference.
They stepped into an elevator and went up. He knew Parkman would ask him
questions now, but it seemed he could not get away from the doctor if he
tried. He felt just at present as though he had not strength to resist
any one. That oculist, he admitted to himself, had taken a good deal of
starch out of him.
When they reached the office, Dr. Parkman offered him a drink; that
irritated him considerably.
"Why no," he said, fretfully, "No--I don't want a drink. Why should I
take a drink? Did you think I was all shot to pieces about something?"
The doctor was looking over his mail, fingering it a great deal, but not
seeming to accomplish much of anything with it. At last he wheeled around
toward him.
"What's the matter with your eyes?" he asked with disconcerting
directness.
"How should I know?" retorted Karl, heatedly, almost angrily. "What do I
know about it? If an oculist can't tell--you say he is a good one--why
should you expect me to?" And then he added with a touch of eagerness, as
if seizing upon a possibility: "I don't believe that fellow amounts to
much. I think I'll go out now and hunt up somebody who knows something."
"The man's all right," said Dr. Parkman shortly. His own foot was tapping
the floor nervously. "You ought to have some idea," he added, with what
he felt to be brutal insistence, "as to whether or not you got anything
in your eyes."
"Well, I haven't! I don't know anything about it."
But he was breathing hard. His whole manner told of fears and
possibilities he was not willing to state. He would tell what he thought
now in just a minute; the doctor knew that.
He began with insisting, elaborately, that he never got things on his
hands--that was not his way; and even if he did get something on his
hands, he wouldn't get it in his eyes; even if he did rub his eyes
sometimes--he didn't admit it--but even if he did, would he be such a
fool as to rub them when he had something on his hands? But if, in spite
of all those impossibilities, just admitting for the sake of argument,
and because Parkman insisted on being ominous, that it was something like
that, there were two things it might be. It might be--he named the first
with emphasis, and Dr. Parkman, after a minute's thought, heaved a big
sigh of unmistakable relief.
"Now you see that couldn't make any vital difference," Karl added, with a
debonair manner, a thin veneer of aggressiveness.
The doctor was leaning forward in his chair. He was beginning to grow
fearful of the emphasis put upon this thing which could make no vital
difference.
Karl stopped as though he had reached the end of his story. But the
silence was wearing on him. His eyes had a hunted look.
"Why, you can see for yourself," he said--and this was the note of
appeal--"that that could not make any vital difference."
Dr. Parkman was looking at him narrowly. His own breath was coming hard.
He saw at last that he would have to ask.
"The--other?" he said, succeeding fairly well in gaining a tone of
indifference.
"Heavens--how you fellows nag for details! How you drag at a man! Well,
the other--if you're so anxious to know"--the doctor's heart sank before
the defiance of that--"the other is"--he looked all about him as one
hunted, desperate, and then snapped it out and turned away, and instantly
the room grew frightfully still.
It struck Dr. Parkman like a blow from which one must have time to
recover. Steeled though he was to the hearing of tragic facts, he was
helpless for the minute before this. And then, refusing to let it close
in upon him, it was he who turned recklessly assertive, defiantly
insistent.
"Any fool would know it's not that," he said, his gruff voice touched
with bravado.
There was one of those strange changes then. Karl turned and faced him.
"How do you know?" he asked, with a calm not to be thrust aside. "How do
you know it's not that? You can't be sure," he pursued, and there was
fairly cunning in forcing his friend upon it, cutting off all escape,
"but there are just fifty chances out of a hundred that it _is_ that. And
if it is," with a cold, impersonal sort of smile--"would you give very
much for my chances of sight?"
"You're talking like a fool!"--but beads of perspiration were on the
doctor's forehead. And then, the professional man getting himself in
hand: "You're overworked, Karl. You're nervous. Why I can fix this up for
you. I'll just--" but before that steady, understanding gaze he could not
go on.
"Not on me, Parkman--," slowly and very quietly--"not on me. I know the
ropes. Don't try those little tricks on me. I don't need professional
coddling, and I don't need professional lies. You see I happen to know
just a little about the action of germs. We'll do the usual things, of
course--that's mere scientific decency, but if this thing has really
gotten in its work--oh I've studied these things a little too long, old
man, I've watched them too many times, to be able to fool myself now."
"Well you will at least admit," said Parkman--brusque because he was
afraid to let himself be anything else--"that there are fifty chances
out of a hundred in your favour?"
Karl nodded; he had leaned back in his chair; he seemed terribly tired.
"Come now, old chap--it isn't like you to surrender before the battle.
We'll prepare to meet the foe--though I give you my word of honour I
don't expect the enemy to show up. This isn't in the cards. I _know_ it."
Karl roused a little. There was a bracing note in that vehemence. "Well,
don't ask me to do any crossing of a bridge before I come to it. I think
our friend down stairs is thinking of hospitals and nurses and all kinds
of quirks that would drive me crazy. Tell him I know what I'm about. Tell
him to let me alone!"
"All right," laughed the doctor, knowing Karl too well to press the
matter further just then, "though, of course, common-sense demands quiet
and a dark room."
"Ernestine will darken our rooms at home," said Karl stubbornly.
It was strange how quickly they could turn to the refuge of everyday
phrases, could hide their innermost selves within their average selves as
the only shelter which opened to them. There was something Dr. Parkman
wanted to do for him, and they went into the treatment room. In there
they spoke about meeting for dinner,--Ernestine had asked the doctor to
come out. Georgia and her mother were coming too, Karl told him, and the
interview closed with some light word about not being late for dinner.