All these were just expedients to hold a lung still so it could get well. In artificial pneumothorax they shove a hollow needle between your ribs so that the end is between rib wall and lung wall, then pump the space in between full of air; this compresses the lung like a squeezed sponge.
But the air would be absorbed after a while and you had to get pumped up again. Every Friday morning those of us on pneumo would gather in the ward surgeon's office for the needle. It wasn't grim—lungers are funny people; they are almost always cheerful. This was an officers' ward and we treated it like a club. Instead of queuing up outside the surgeon's office we would swarm in, loll in his chair, sit on his desk, smoke his cigarettes, and swap lies while he took care of us. Four of us that morning and I was the first.
Taking the air needle isn't bad—just a slight prick as it goes in and you can even avoid that if you want to bother with skin anesthesia. It's over in a few minutes; you put your bathrobe back on and go back to bed. I hung around after I was through because the second patient, chap named Saunders, was telling a dirty story that was new to me.
He broke off in the middle of it to climb up on the table when I got off. Our number-one ward surgeon was on leave and his assistant was taking care of us—a young chap not long out of school. We all liked him and felt he had the makings of a great surgeon.
Getting pumped up is not dangerous in any reasonable sense of the word. You can break your neck falling off a step ladder, choke to death on a chicken bone. You can slip on a rainy day, knock yourself out, and drown in three inches of rain water. And there is just as unlikely a way to hit the jackpot in taking artificial pneumothorax. If the needle goes a little too far, penetrates the lung, and if an air bubble then happens to be forced into a blood vessel and manages to travel all the way back to the heart without being absorbed, it is possible though extremely unlikely to get a sort of vapor lock in the valves of your heart—air embolism, the doctors call it. Given all these improbable events, you can die.
We never heard the end of Saunders' dirty joke. He konked out on the table.
The young doc did everything possible for him and sent for help while he was doing it. They tried this and that, used all the tricks, but the upshot was that they brought in the meat basket and carted him off to the morgue.
Three of us were still standing there, not saying a word—me, reswallowing my breakfast and thanking my stars that I was through with it, an ex-field-clerk named Josephs who was next up, and Colonel Hostetter who was last in line. The surgeon turned and looked at us. He was sweating and looked bad—may have been the first patient he had ever lost; he was still a kid. Then he turned to Dr. Armand who had come in from the next ward. I don't know whether he was going to ask the older man to finish it for him or whether he was going to put it off for a day, but it was clear from his face that he did not intend to go ahead right then.
Whatever it was, he didn't get a chance to say it. Josephs stood up, threw off his bathrobe and climbed up on the table. He had just lighted a cigarette; he passed it to a hospital orderly and said, "Hold this for me, Jack, while Doctor"—he named our own surgeon—"pumps me up." With that he peels up his pajama coat.
You know the old business about sending a student pilot right back up after his first crack-up. That was the shape our young doctor was in—he had to get right back to it and prove to himself that it was just bad luck and not because he was a butcher. But he couldn't send himself back in; Josephs had to do it for him. Josephs could have ruined him professionally that moment, by backing out and giving him time to work up a real case of nerves—but instead Josephs forced his hand, made him do it.
Josephs died on the table.
The needle went in and everything seemed all right, then Josephs gave a little sigh and died. Dr. Armand was on hand this time and took charge, but it did no good. It was like seeing the same horror movie twice. The same four men arrived to move the body over to the morgue—probably the same basket.
Our doctor now looked like a corpse himself. Dr. Armand took over. "You two get back to bed," he said to Colonel Hostetter and me. "Colonel, come over to my ward this afternoon; I'll take care of your treatment."
But Hostetter shook his head. "No, thank you," he said crisply, "My ward surgeon takes care of my needs." He took off his robe. The young fellow didn't move. The Colonel went up to him and shook his arm. "Come, now Doctor—you'll make us both late for lunch." With that he climbed up on the table and exposed his ribs.
A few moments later he climbed off again, the job done, and our ward surgeon was looking human again, although still covered with sweat.
I stopped to catch my breath. Jones nodded soberly and said, "I see what you mean. To do what Colonel Hostetter did takes a kind of cold courage way beyond the courage needed to fight."
"He doesn't mean anything of the sort," Arkwright objected. "He wasn't talking about Hostetter; he meant the intern. The doctor had to steady down and do a job—not once but twice. Hostetter just had to hold still and let him do it."
I felt tired and old. "Just a moment," I said. "You're both wrong. Remember I defined 'bravery' as requiring that a man had to have a choice . . . and chooses to be brave in spite of his own fear. The ward surgeon had the decisions forced on him, so he is not in the running. Colonel Hostetter was an old man and blooded in battle—and he had Josephs' example to live up to. So he doesn't get first prize."
"But that's silly," Jones protested. "Josephs was brave, sure—but, if it was hard for Josephs to offer himself, it was four times as hard for Hostetter. It would begin to look like a jinx—like a man didn't stand a chance of coming off that table alive."
"Yes, yes!" I agreed. "I know, that's the way
I
felt at the time. But you didn't let me finish. I know for
certain
that it took more bravery to do what Josephs did.
"The autopsy didn't show an air embolism in Josephs, or anything else. Josephs died of fright."
The End
A BATHROOM OF HER OWNThe Answer:
I'll bury this in other words to keep your eye from picking it up at once; the shortcoming is that this is a true story. I was there. I have changed names, places, and dates but not the essential facts.
You may not be old enough to remember the acute housing shortage following World War II (the subject of this story) but if you are over six but not yet old enough for the undertaker, you are aware of the current problem of getting in out of the rain . . . a problem especially acute for the young couple with one baby and for the retired old couple trying to get by on Social "Security" plus savings if any. (I am not suggesting that it is easy for those between youth and old age; the present price of mortgage money constitutes rape with violence; the price tag on an honestly-constructed—if you can find one—two-bedroom house makes me feel faint.)
In 1960 in Moscow Mrs. Heinlein and I had as Intourist courier a sweet child named Ludmilla—23, unmarried, living with her father, mother, brother and sisters. She told us that her ambition in life was for her family not to have to share a bathroom with another family.
The next aesthete who sneers at our American "plumbing culture" in my presence I intend to cut into small pieces and flush him down that W.C. he despises.
Any old pol will recognize the politics in this story as the Real McCoy. Should be. Autobiographical in many details. Which details? Show me a warrant and I'll take the Fifth.
Ever step on a top step that wasn't there?
That's the way I felt when I saw my honorable opponent for the office of city councilman, third district.
Tom Griffith had telephoned at the close of filing, to let me know my opponents. "Alfred McNye," he said, "and Francis X. Nelson."
"McNye we can forget," I mused. "He files just for the advertising. It's a three-way race—me, this Nelson party, and the present encumbrance, Judge Jorgens. Maybe we'll settle it in the primaries." Our fair city has the system laughingly called "non-partisan"; a man can be elected in the primary by getting a clear majority.
"Jorgens didn't file, Jack. The old thief isn't running for re-election."
I let this sink in. "Tom, we might as well tear up those photostats. Do you suppose Tully's boys are conceding our district?"
"The machine
can't
concede the third district, not this year. It must be Nelson."
"I suppose so . . . it can't be McNye. What d'you know about him?"
"Nothing."
"Nor I. Well, we'll look him over tonight." The Civic League had called a "meet-the-candidates" meeting that night. I drove out to the trailer camp where I hang my hat—then a shower, a shave, put on my hurtin' shoes, and back to town. It gave me time to think.
It's not unusual for a machine to replace—temporarily—a man whose record smells too ripe with a citizen of no background to be sniped at. I could visualize Nelson—young, manly looking, probably a lawyer and certainly a veteran. He would be so politically naive that he would stand without hitching, or so ambitious that it would blind him to what he must do to keep the support of the machine. Either way the machine could use him.
I got there just in time to be introduced and take a seat on the platform. I couldn't spot Nelson but I did see Cliff Meyers, standing with some girl. Meyers is a handyman for Boss Tully—Nelson would be around close.
McNye accepted the call of the peepul in a few hundred well-worn words, then the chairman introduced Nelson. "—a veteran of this war and candidate for the same office."
The girl standing with Meyers walked up and took the stage.
They clapped and somebody in the balcony gave a wolf whistle. Instead of getting flustered, she smiled up and said, "Thank you!"
They clapped again, and whistled and stomped. She started talking. I'm not bright—I had trouble learning to wave bye-bye and never did master patty-cake. I expected her to apologize for Nelson's absence and identify herself as his wife or sister or something. She was into her fourth paragraph before I realized that
she
was Nelson.
Francis X. Nelson—
Frances
X. Nelson. I wondered what I had done to deserve this. Female candidates are poison to run against at best; you don't dare use the ordinary rough-and-tumble, while she is free to use anything from a blacksnake whip to mickeys in your coffee.
Add to that ladylike good looks, obvious intelligence, platform poise—and a veteran. I couldn't have lived that wrong. I tried to catch Tom Griffith's eye to share my misery, but he was looking at
her
and the lunk was lapping it up.
Nelson—
Miss
Nelson—was going to town on housing. "You promised him that when he got out of that foxhole nothing would be too good for him. And what did he get? A shack in shanty-town, the sofa in his in-laws' parlor, a garage with no plumbing. If I am elected I shall make it my first concern—"
You couldn't argue against it. Like good roads, good weather, and the American Home, everybody is for veterans' housing.
When the meeting broke up, I snagged Tom and we rounded up the leaders of the Third District Association and adjourned to the home of one of the members. "Look, folks," I told them, "when we caucused and I agreed to run, our purpose was to take a bite out of the machine by kicking out Jorgens. Well, the situation has changed. It's not too late for me to forfeit the filing fee. How about it?"
Mrs. Holmes—Mrs. Bixby Holmes, as fine an old warhorse as ever swung a gavel—looked amazed. "What's gotten into you, Jack? Getting rid of Jorgens is only half of it. We have to put in men we can depend on. For this district, you're it."
I shook my head. "I didn't want to be the candidate; I wanted to manage. We should have had a veteran—"
"There's nothing wrong with your war record," put in Dick Blair.
"Maybe not, but it's useless politically. We needed a veteran." I had shuffled papers in the legal section of the Manhattan project—in civilian clothes. Dick Blair, a paratrooper and Purple Heart, had been my choice. But Dick had begged off, and who is to tell a combat veteran that he has got to make further sacrifice for the dear peepul?
"I abided by the will of the group, because Jorgens was not a veteran either. Now look at the damn thing—What makes you think I can beat her? She's got political sex-appeal."
"She's got more than political sex-appeal"—this from Tom.
When Dr. Potter spoke we listened; he's the old head in our group. "That's the wrong tack, Jack. It does not matter whether you win."
"I don't believe in lost causes, Doctor."
"I do. And so will you, someday. If Miss Nelson is Tully's choice to succeed Jorgens, then we must oppose her."
"She
is
with the machine, isn't she?" asked Mrs. Holmes.
"Sure she is," Tom told her. "Didn't you see that Cliff Meyers had her in tow? She's a stooge—the Stooge with the Light Brown Hair."
I insisted on a vote; they were all against me. "Okay," I agreed, "if you can take it, I can. This means a tougher campaign. We thought the dirt we had on Jorgens was enough; now we've got to dig."
"Don't fret, Jack," Mrs. Holmes soothed me. "We'll dig. I'll take charge of the precinct work."
"I thought your daughter in Denver was having a baby?"
"So she is. I'll stick."
I ducked out soon after, feeling much better, not because I thought I could win, but because of Mrs. Holmes and Dr. Potter and more like them. The team spirit you get in a campaign is pretty swell; I was feeling it again and recovering my pre-War zip.
Before the War our community was in good shape. We had kicked out the local machine, tightened up civil service, sent a police lieutenant to jail, and had put the bidding for contracts on an honest-to-goodness competitive basis—not by praying on Sunday, either, but by volunteer efforts of private citizens willing to get out and punch doorbells.