“Is she?”
“I don’t think so-but she’s awful bad off, doctor. I’m scared. Can you come over right away?”
There was a short silence, then Potbury said gruffly, “I’ll be over.”
“Oh, good! Look-what should I do before you get here?”
“Don’t do anything. Don’t touch her. I’ll be right over.” He hung up.
Randall put the phone down and hurried back to the bedroom. Cynthia was just the same. He started to touch her, recalled the doctor’s instructions, and straightened up with a jerk. But his eye fell on the piece of paper from which he had improvised a stethoscope and he could not resist the temptation to check up on his earlier results.
The tube gave back a cheering lubadup; he took it away at once and put it down.
Ten minutes of standing and looking at her with nothing more constructive to do than biting his nails left him too nervous to continue the occupation. He went out to the kitchen and removed a bottle of rye from the top shelf from which he poured a generous three fingers into a water glass. He looked at the amber stuff for a moment, then poured it down the sink, and went back into the bedroom.
She was still the same.
It suddenly occurred to him that he had not given Potbury the address. He dashed into the kitchen and snatched the phone. Controlling himself, he managed to dial the number correctly. A girl answered the phone. “No, the doctor isn’t in the office. Any message?”
“My name is Randall. I-”
“Oh-Mr. Randall. The doctor left for your home about fifteen minutes ago. He should be there any minute now.”
“But he doesn’t have my address!”
“What? Oh, I’m sure he has-if he didn’t have he would have telephoned me by now.”
He put the phone down. It was damned funny-well, he would give Potbury three more minutes, then try another one.
The house phone buzzed; he was up out of his chair like a punch-drunk welterweight. “Yes?”
“Potbury. That you, Randall?”
“Yes, yes-come on up!” He punched the door release as he spoke.
Randall was waiting with the door open when Potbury arrived. “Come in, doctor! Come in, come in!” Potbury nodded and brushed on by him.
“Where’s the patient?”
“In here.” Randall conducted him with nervous haste into the bedroom and leaned over the other side of the bed while Potbury took his first look at the unconscious woman. “How is she? Will she be all right? Tell me, doctor-”
Potbury straightened up a little, grunting as he did so, and said, “If you will kindly stand away from the bed and quit crowding me, perhaps we will find out.”
“Oh, sorry!” Randall retreated to the doorway. Potbury took his stethoscope from his bag, listened for a while with an inscrutable expression on his face which Randall tried vainly to read, shifted the instrument around, and listened again. Presently he put the stethoscope back in the bag, and Randall stepped forward eagerly.
But Potbury ignored him. He peeled up an eyelid with his thumb and examined her pupil, lifted an arm so that it swung free over the side of the bed and tapped it near the elbow, then straightened himself up and just looked at her for several minutes.
Randall wanted to scream.
Potbury performed several more of the strange, almost ritualistic things physicians do, some of which Randall thought he understood, others which he definitely did not. At last he said suddenly, “What did she do yesterday-after you left my office?”
Randall told him; Potbury nodded sagely. “That’s what I expected-it all dates back to the shock she had in the morning. All your fault, if I may say so!”
“My fault, doctor?”
“You were warned. Should never have let her get close to a man like that.”
“But . . . but . . . you didn’t warn me until after he had frightened her.”
Potbury seemed a little vexed at this. “Perhaps not, perhaps not. Thought you told me someone had warned you before I did. Should know better, anyhow, with a creature like that.”
Randall dropped the matter. “But how is she, doctor? Will she get well? She will, won’t she?”