The Doctor Takes a Wife (12 page)

“Briefly, you mean?”

“Not so much briefly, as simply.” His eyes twinkled at her, and she flushed. A little.

“I
’
m sure you
’
d be familiar with any term I
’
d use, Dr. Scoles.”

“I
’
m just as sure I wouldn
’
t So break it down, please. And is there a law against calling me
Phil
?”

She frowned a little, and shifted some paper-wrapped cylinders about on the table top. “My grant,” she said, after a deep breath, “is for research in micro-organisms which cause encephalitis.” Her thick lashes lifted.

On the other stool, the young man nodded. “O.K. so far.”

“We
know
that mosquitoes give the disease to humans. We
suspect
that birds are the carriers. My research is to determine how the transferal is made from the birds to the mosquitoes.”

“That
’
s easy—they get stung.”

Page was not amused.

“What kinda birds?” asked Phil quickly.

“We
’v
e found the virus in red-winged blackbirds and magpies.”

“And you grind them up in Waring blenders? Pretty red-winged blackbirds?”

“Nothing is pretty to science if it carries a disease as virulent, and increasingly so, as sleeping sickness!”

“You
’
re right,” Phil agreed warmly. “How do you go about dete
rminin
g the way the thing is spread?”

“Oh, many are working on it We make maps of the disease incidence. We also try to create our own hosts
—
by inoculation, exposure, many ways—”

“Eggs?”

“Embryos? Yes. We determine if the carrier transmits the disease to its own young—if it is to be found in the nest—in the droppings—in streams or puddles where the birds drink or bathe, and mosquitoes hatch
...”

“Gee whiz!” breathed Phil.

“Yes,” sighed Page. “A virus disease presents many challenges. You work at it from all angles. We take our maps and determine the sort of birds and insects and animals in those districts. If we get a case, we are meticulous in our investigation. If the case dies, as it usually does, we take tissue of all sorts—like this.” She took some slides from a file, and slipped one under the lens.

She got a bit over his head with her discussion of dyes, her rattling of statistics, her terminology of cell formation
—
When she let Phil look at a slide, he knew just enough about all this to be sure that the brain tissue on the stage was not in a healthy condition.

“The bird tissue does not change,” Page was telling him. “I mean, the bird does not get sick. My present project is to secure one hundred birds known to be carriers, dissect them completely and try to determine—”

Phil was still hunched over the swirling purple pattern under the microscope lens. “Was this a child?” he asked.

“What?” asked Page, startled to have her line of thought—and her lecture—broken into.

Phil
’
s finger indicated the slide. “The person who died of the stuff, and gave you this slide—how old was he?”

Page consulted the file. “Fourteen, male, white. Ralls County, Missouri.”

“Poor people?”

She stared at him. “I
’
m sure I don
’
t know.”

“It could make a difference.”

“How?”

“Food they ate, bathroom facilities, bathing
—
Did the boy fish in a slough? Was he the kind of kid to go fishing? Did he work too hard for his age, maybe?”

“I
doubt...”
she began impatiently.

“Why, sure it could make a difference! You talk about going into detail with your red-winged blackbirds and your mosquitoes—why not spend a little time on the people!”

“We
do
know
...”
She pointed to the file.

“Yeah, yeah.
‘
Fourteen, male, white. Ralls County, Missouri.
’
Now maybe that tells you if he lived in a part of the country common to blackbirds and magpies, but I don
’
t think you
’
ve got much else. Did he go barefooted?
”

“We know mosquitoes transmit the disease to humans.”

“But what sort of humans?”

“Dr. Scoles—”

“I think it would make a difference, Page. It
does
make a difference! We O.B.
’
s know that a pregnant woman getting a lot of protein mothers a healthy child, where one not getting it—doesn
’
t, always. And what good does that knowledge do us? Where we possibly can, we see that the individual mothers get protein.”

“Obstetrics is a much simpler field.”

“I can think of other examples where the kind of person makes a difference. There was a carpenter out in Berilo. I bought a house when I was out there, and this man did some work we wanted—he put shelves into a closet for me—book shelves.”

She looked up quickly. “Are you married, Dr. Scoles?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Go on. Did the man have encephalitis?”

“Let me tell it. He was a carpenter, he did this work for me, and while he was doing it, I noticed he walked oddly—a little to one side.”

“Ms?”

“Yes, it was. At first he confused the diagnosis by telling of a spine injury which he
’
d suffered in Germany—he was in the Remagen bridge incident—it got blown up, you know?”

Her eyes were vague; she still waited for his scientific report.

“He was a fine carpenter—and we hoped it was only a spinal injury which could be corrected. However, we soon decided that the brain and nerve centers were involved
—
and reached a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.”

“The spinal injury still could have caused the involvement, couldn
’
t it?”

“Yes. And if we had not known our patient, it would have rested there. But we did know Vic. He had, in his youthful days, before the war, been a very gay dog around town. And, of course, the injury was done at that period, though it showed up only after he
’
d settled down to work, and married a fine girl. It seemed a shame
—
Vic thought so, too. As he put it, the illness would not have surprised him when he knew he was misbehaving, but to have it come on after he had reformed—that hurt.”

He paused, smiling, waiting for Page
’
s warm agreement and sympathy.

“Naturally,” she said crisply, “you
’
d treat his case differently, once you knew it was Ms.”

He blinked. She
’
d missed his point, completely. Vic Jaeger—nice guy, young, a clever workman—was destroyed brain and spinal tissue to Page—no more, no less. Just as the country boy of fourteen was only some purple-stained tissue on a laboratory slide.

Phil looked at the young woman as if seeing her for the first time. As indeed he was doing. And the girl he looked at would never awe him again, because here in her sterile laboratory, with all the prestige which her place in it implied, such a yawning chasm in this smart girl
’
s knowledge had been betrayed to him that he knew that she had much more to learn than to teach.

Kindly, he talked a little of the things which the Clinic back in Berilo hoped to do for Vic. They
’
d work with the Veterans Hospital
...

“If he
’
s cooperative,” said Page, “his case could make a real contribution to science.”

“We
’
re most interested in making a contribution to Vic,” said Phil sourly.

She smiled at him indulgently. An hour ago that smile might have interested Phil Scoles. It was the best one he
’
d ever got from Page.

“I
’
m afraid,” she said gently, “you
’
ll never acquire the detachment proper to research, Doctor.”

“If it means forgetting people as such,” he said, still sourly, “I
’
m beginning to hope you
’
re right.”

“The first thing we have to learn, Doctor, is that one case and its progress is significant only if it is repeated a hundred or a thousand times.”

He stood down from his stool, and held out his hand. “I
’
ve used too much of your time,” he said courteously. “Thank you—it
’
s been very interesting.”

She stood up, too, but he shook his head. “I think I can work my way back. If not, I
’
ll yell.”

Her laughter was young, and pretty. “Oh, but we
’
re soundproof, too.”

He realized that she was right With the door closed, even the movement in the adjoining lab could not be heard. “Just like a grave,” he said cheerfully. “Well
—
thanks again. Sometime you should come and see one of my clinics.”

“Why should I do that?” Pure question again.

“Oh, we
’
ve things you folks over here never see or know about. People!” His lips pressed together for a minute. “Live people—the clinics are crowded with them. The noise of
‘
em. An old man belching, a sobbing woman with nervous hysteria, another getting cross because she
’
s had to wait so long—or maybe it
’
s just scuffling feet and sniffling noses. We
’
re not sound-proof, in any sense.”

“Dr. Scoles
...”
she began, in the tone of a patient teacher.

“There are smells, too,” Phil went on rapidly. His smile was at its best, webbing the
corner
s of his twinkling brown eyes, bracketing his mouth. “The smell of people too poor to buy soap, or too cheap to want to buy it. The smell of sickness, and old age, and fear. Oh, yes, they
’
re smelly places—

“Not all shiny tile and sterile lab equipment. Our work is the hard grind of people and their ills, but oh, Lord, girl! it
’
s real work. You see your effort have its effect, you get your results, good and bad, while the hemorrhaging woman still lies on your table, or the arthritic old man is being wheeled up to the ward. It
’
s a far, far cry from grinding up a bird
’
s pretty feathers, or slicing up a kid
’
s brain for pickling and preserving.” His smile was gone now, and his face angry; not at her—but at Philip Scoles whom he was seeing as if he, too, lay mercilessly exposed under the light of a microscope stage.

But Page took his implied criticism to herself, and to her work.
‘
Tell me one thing,” she said in her limpid manner of seeking information for its own sake. “Don
’
t you consider my work important, Dr. Scoles? I grind up the pretty birds, remember, to save children from unpretty deaths.”

“That
’
s true!” he said readily. “And, of course, it is important. But maybe not as
valuable
as it might be if you
’
d see and consider the children as individuals.”

“But—”

“I
know. You consider mankind as a whole. And I
’
ll agree that research may go along on such a basis—yours might. I can think of another example. Last week
’
s Bulletin gave a report on the findings that chlorophyll seems to work faster against infections than either penicillin or sulpha. Now that
’
s important to anyone, to any infection. But in that same Bulletin, there was a report that a wound on the index finger heals more quickly than one on the pinky. My first reaction was to ask if it mattered? Then I realized that it
would
matter—to some people. A man who worked with his hands—it would matter a great deal to him. So that research had importance if those people were kept in mind.”

Her lovely eyebrows drew together in a frown. “In other words, you think if I would look up the personality and background of that boy”—she gestured toward the microscope and its slide—“my research would be better.”

“Not necessarily! But
you
’
d
get more out of it. And you
’
d put more—well
—warmth
into your project.”