Young Doctor Kildare by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Romance
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2019-02-23T23:00:00+00:00

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X. — FREE CLINIC

HE went back to his room with a book on neuropsychiatrics from the hospital library and was well into it when Tom Collins came in and turned on his radio full blast. Kildare endured as much as he could, while the jazzy words crooned their way into the midst of the medical terms. Then he covertly made two balls of cotton and wadded them into his ears. After that he could hear the singing, but only as a far-off murmur down the wind, or the drowsing noises of bees on a summer’s day. It was a long time later before something other than the music reached him from the outside. He looked up at last and heard the angry voice of Collins saying, as he pulled the cotton from one ear: “If you don’t want to answer, why don’t you say so, and be damned to you?”

There was Collins with a pamphlet open and his finger marking the place about which he had been trying to ask some question. Kildare turned to explain but Collins slammed out of the room; a moment later his voice was raised in a fine staccato of cursing in the room of Vickery and Dick Joiner near by. Kildare sighed. He had been wondering if he could not ask Collins and his chums if they thought it honourable for an interne to make love to a sick patient for the sake of her nervous and mental health, but he could see that he had opened a wider gap than ever between him and the rest.

So, impatient of himself, he closed his book and went off to hunt for relief in the place where he never failed to find it—one of the great free clinics which the hospital maintained. There were a dozen parts of the huge building about which he knew nothing, but already he was familiar with every nook and corner of the clinics. There, where the sick gathered in a steady stream, he found himself employed by an irresistible fascination.

It was the children’s clinic that he headed for at this hour of the day. They were unlike all the other patients. Mature people dreaded the very thought of disease but the children seemed to feel that important maladies gave them an added personal dignity. Regardless of faces, to every white uniform of nurse or doctor they gave a boundless ocean of trust. To adults, hospitals, like the police, are symbols of things that have gone wrong; to children the police and the hospitals are emblems of fatherly and motherly care. But Kildare was not thinking of that as he moved slowly through the waiting-room, scanning white faces and humped shoulders and parents anxious or serene.

“What are you thinking about, Kildare?” asked a man’s voice behind him.

“I was thinking how much good stuff comes out of bad soil,” said Kildare. Then, turning, he recognized Gillespie. He stood on his dignity at once.

“Ah, our independent thinker,” said Gillespie, standing closer

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