"Then good night."
"Night, darling."
What dripped now was not eau de Croton Reservoir. It came from Wylie's
pores.
Almost--I called her back about the plane.
She had sounded fine--thank God!
It was not always so.
We had been married, Ricky and I, for two years (was it three?) and
built a candy-box house on an island in Biscayne Bay (before the sixty
sewers of Greater Miami belched the water sludge-thick) when she fell
sick. Brucellosis, they called it, or undulant fever. In cattle, Bang's
disease. The cows abort. They told us it was common everywhere in our
fair land and caught from unpasteurized milk, or cheese, ice cream,
or meat improperly inspected. The pasteurization laws in those days,
they said, were altogether inadequate; inspection was bad; and cattle
owners--they said further--were loath to lose their stricken animals.
For a small bribe, we were told, they might be warned of impending
inspection. Thereupon, they could drive the afflicted members of their
herds into hiding while the government agent went by. They were in
business (after all) and a buck is sacred; so are American sacred
cattle sacred; let the public look after itself. Some of the cowmen
don't believe the germ theory, anyhow; they think hygiene is one more
racket like their own. And some, of course, like a certain proportion
of the men in every business, would sell you leper's dung (neatly
packaged--nationally advertised) if there were money in it.
They sold the milk.
We drank it.
Some get brucellosis--some not. Some hundreds of thousands of free
American citizens. It is one of the marvels of our Age.
Some die.
Some heal themselves, in due time.
Others, like my Ricky, drag out the years in pain, debility, and
sorrow. Fits of fever seize them. They take to their beds for days, for
weeks, for months--racked and suffering and exhausted, sick at their
stomachs, sick in their heads. The gram-negative bacterium is (they
say) neurotoxic. It inflames the ganglia of the brain. The patient may
expect not merely fever and pains, but constant anxiety, causeless
fears, a collapse of the calmest temper, hysterias, heebie-jeebies,
screaming meemies, spasms, and incomprehensible alarms.
You must try to ignore it, Mrs. Wylie. Personality changes occur owing
merely to the nature of your disease. Devote your (changed) self to a
consideration of the change as physical phenomenology. You are lucky
to get your trouble diagnosed. Hundreds of thousands of undulant fever
sufferers spend their lives running from one doctor to another without
avail. They're told they have tuberculosis, intestinal poisoning, brain
tumor, neurasthenia, and bad dispositions. Medicine is--though the
fact's not medicine's fault--very laggard about recognizing this common
malady. Consider yourself lucky.
Ricky threw into the tormented years her fortitude. She said she was
fortunate. They knew the name of her ailment and they were doing all
they could.
Hospitals and clinics, X rays and tests, sulfas and antibiotics,
vaccines and sterile sores--a little improvement, a red-hot
localization and the hospital again. Coming fine! Another year or two
and you should feel--pretty much your old self. Patience. Courage.
Well. She had plenty.
The doctors--the dozens, the scores, mauled and mangled and encouraged.
We have great hope for this new immunizing serum.
She took it.
Stubborn case, Mrs. Wylie. You seem to be especially sensitive to
brucella.
Streptomycin holds out hope.
We find it, in a chronic case like yours--ineffectual.
Some new mold is what we are searching for.
The years--two--three--five--continued with their hopes and horror.
It may be, Mrs. Wylie, that brucella sterilizes women in the same way
it causes cattle to abort. Not all the sufferers--but a percentage. Of
course, we aren't sure. But I wouldn't set my heart on having children,
now. You're not in condition now, anyway; and when you've recovered,
you may find it is impossible.
She is a game girl, Ricky.
Two years ago, she began to get well.
We have had our fingers crossed--
crossed--and held tightly in the clamp of one more hope.