Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1914 — AN INCURABLE CASE [ARTICLE]

AN INCURABLE CASE

By IZOLA FORRESTER.

“I should humor him until the crisis is past, Miss Powell. In these typhoid cases, we find some peculiar manifestations as the patient loses strength. He is totally unconscious of who you are, and merely connects you with thia other mental picture. ’ You understand?”

“Yes, doctor,” returned Beth, obediently. She stood by the cot after the door had closed, looking down at the patient. He had been brought in the week before from one of the large hotels. She understood that he seemed well supplied with money. His doctor had engaged a private room and nurses. She was the night nurse. It was her first y&ar of active service. Up home in Oregon they had taken it as a sort of joke when Beth, joyous, outdoor-loving Beth, decided to leave her garden and books and mountain life and go down to San Francisco to enter the hospital. “Beth’s never been just like the rest of us, though,” Margaret had declared. “She’s been like Joan of Arc, don’t you know, seeing visions in her garden. Now Vai and Dot and I never think of hospitals or troubles of other people. Lordy, haven’t we enough of our own to worry over. But Beth’s been bandaging her dolls ever since I can remember, and putting ice bags oh their poor little heads. It’s too bad because a girl loses all her chanced going ’way oft like that.” “Chances of what?” Vai had asked, interestedly. Vai was fifteen, and curious over the vital issues of life. “I think Beth’s wonderful.” “Lots of good it wljl do her shut up in a hospital. The very best they ever do is to marry a doctor,” said Margaret vaguely. Yet Beth had gone down to the hospital for her years of training. That summer she had had her first long visit back home, but when the first tang of coolness came in the fall air, it had called her back to the long white wards, and the duty that was her life. Her second case was the typhoid ' one, and it bothered her. She had never before lost her professional grip on heffeelf, but there was something about this brown-haired boy lying back on the pillows, his voice pleading with her all through the long hours of the night, that had stirred an unsuspected .force lying dormant in her nature. ? V He was about twenty-six, with face and body that told of clean, right living. Sometimes he called her Carol, sometimes his mother. At first she had tried to quiet him, to turn his mind on something else, when he would beg pitifully for her to stroke his head for him, to slip her cool palm under his cheek so that he could rest. Then he would lay it across his lips, and kiss it. It was all very disconcerting when one was alone, and the hours stole by slowly. • The doctor had told her he had wired for his mother from the East, and she would arrive any time. She wondered if “Carol” would come with her, if she had a right to come. Oddly enough, she began to resent the idea. But<,the days passed and no one came for the patient in 12-6. The day nurse was an old-timer, cheerful and thoroughly used to habits and customs of typhoid cases. “My goodness, they all make love to you sooner or later,” she laughed, when Berth asked her rather shyly if the patient acted strangely in the daytime. “I’ve had more proposals from my typhoids than any others. It seems to be part of the disease, their falling in love with their nurses.”

“Oh, but it isn’t with me. He only takes me for somebody else,” said Beth, hastily. “He calls me by a girl’s name.”

"He’ll call you by your own before he’s Bitting up, my dear. About three weeks clears the brain, and they never remember who they loved before. Do you like him?” Beth flushed hotly, resentfully, and the day nurse laughed. "Oh, you needn’t tell me if you don’t want to. I always enjoyed my typhoid cases my first year or two. He does seem a pretty, well-built youngster, and he talks well, too. Doctor says his name is Randall Sears, and he’s from Pittsburgh.” The third week the doctor said they had heard from bls mother, and she had been abroad. Beth thought of her a good deal the night of the crisis. He had sunk into a stupor, breathing slowly and tlredly. His forehead was cold and damp. She befit over him after the doctor had made his rounds and laid her hand on his head, but he did not stir. And a strange thing happened in 12-6 through the weary hours before the gray dawn showed under the window shade. Beth knelt beside her patient, praying over him, talking to him. pleading him to fight against the gray mist that was closing in around him, begging him to hear and to fight, fight, fight for life. She did not care then what he called her, his mother,. or Carol, or any name, just so long as he listened and heard her, and it gave him strength. Several times she fancied she felt a pressure from the fingers she held in hers, but when he looked at her, his eyes seemed to have lost their brilliancy, and he did not rave any more, only slipped back into the sleep that seemed the last. It was after four when the doctor came in. He smiled at sight of the night nurse. She was on the chair beside the cot, her hands holding the patient’s against her own warm gUw-

Ing face as if she would have given him some of her strength" sb. “Better, nurse?*’ "Yes. He’s all right, I think. Isn’t he sleeping normally now?” The doctor nodded. “His mother’s downstairs. She can’t come up, but she won’t go away. You’d better go. down and calm her. Tell her he’s out of danger now, but can’t be seen for a day or two.” < She was the only person id the re ception room. Plurqp and rather tall with beautiful gray hair curling around her fresh young face, and ‘eyes just like the patient’s upstairs. Beth caught her breath as they looked at her be seechingly. “You’re Randall’s nurse, the doctor tells me. My dear, is he really better?” “Oh, very much. The crisis is past and he is sleeping normally for the first time, so you see how dangerous and unwise it would be to waken or startle hint. And he thinks you were with him anyway.” She took the hands outstretched towards her, and went on pluckily. '“All through the nights he has called me ‘mother,’ and ‘Carol.’ ” “‘Carol?’” repeated Mrs. Sears. “He doesn’t know anybody named that, I’m sure. ‘Carol.’ I don’t understand at all.”

Beth went back feeling comforted some way. Even his own mother didn’t know who Carol was. She began to feel that Carol was a distinct interloper in the family, and as if she herself were a part of it. The next weeks passed swiftly. As soon as Randall was convalescent, his mother took him to the mountains, and Beth went with them as nurse. Mrs. Sears said she would feel safer to have her near for fear ot a relapse, as Randall had acted weak just as soon as he had been told he was to leave the hospital.

And the spring days stretched into June. Beth, who had been born a mountain girl, enjoyed every moment of her freedom. It was part of her patient’s daily regime, the long walks, the horseback rides, the games of tennis, and sleeping out of doors. For nearly three months they had seen each other constantly day after day, and when she spoke of leaving to go back to the hospital, he threatened a relapse. “Why don’t you let yourself be frank with me, nurse,” he said one day, as they rode slowly toward the lodge. “You know I’ll let you go now.” “It’s only a part of the typhoid (symptoms,” laughed Beth. “Do you know that all through your deliriund you made fdantic love to me, not exactly to me, either. To —Carol.” It was out at last, snd she felt’ better. But over Randall’s face there spread first a look of bewilderment, and then he laughed. “Did I call you Carol? It was surely delirium. Now listen, dear, and be fair. I’ve been an everlasting chump. Dad left me money with mother as trustee, and she’s been too good to me. I’ve been writing a play, and called it ‘Carol.’ It’s a pack of nonsense, too, and I fired it before I came down sick. But I suppose the thing ran through my brain.” “But you kissed my hand, and wanted me to —” Beth hesitated. “To what?” “Smooth your hair, and hold your hands, and —and when you were near the crisis, I had to kneel beside you all night, because you wouldn’t let go of my hands.” “* .' “Great Scott,” gasped Randall, “and I had all of that and didn’t know it. Beth, get off that pony, just for a minute. I’ve got to talk to you, I’ve simply got to. If you don’t stop, I’ll have a relapse.” “I didn’t know this was an incurable case," laughed Beth, reining up, and slipping from her saddle into his After a minute, Randall answered: “It’s chronTc, nurse."” (Copyright, , 1914, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)