Chapter 10

“He’s a big man,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “It took every ounce of my strength to lift him. But he had to be moved to the edge of the bed, doctor. The sheets had to be changed.”

A whirling in my head, needles darting in and out. I had to strain my ears to catch what another voice was saying in reply. It was a man’s voice, but gruff, deep-throated and somehow less distinct than the first voice. Perhaps Gruff Voice was standing further from the bed. Or possibly he didn’t want me to hear what he was telling the nurse.

She had to be a nurse, because Gruff Voice wasn’t addressing her by name. He wasn’t calling her Miss Hadley or Miss Betty Anne Simpson-Cruickshank. He was saying “Nurse this,” and “Nurse that” and speaking with crisp authority, as if there was a gulf between a nurse and a doctor which even the kindliest, least hidebound of physicians had no right to ignore.

I rather liked his voice, gruff as it was. He spoke with the air of a man who knew his business, with a kind of restrained sympathy--the “no nonsense” approach. Too much calm self-assurance can be irritating, because it usually goes with the inflated egos of people who think very highly of themselves. But in a doctor you don’t object to that sort of thing so much.

“He’s waking up,” Gruff Voice was saying. “Just let him rest and don’t encourage him to talk. No more sedation--he won’t need it. Did you take his temperature, Nurse?”

“Just ten minutes ago, Doctor. It’s on the chart. I always--”

“Put it down immediately? Who do you think you’re kidding, Susan, my love? Once in awhile you put it off, when this kind of emergency case makes you wish you had a dozen pairs of hands. You put if off for fifteen or twenty minutes, when you’ve no reason to think some white-coated drum major is going to barge in unexpectedly, just to lean on you. Did you ever know me to lean, Susan--heavily or otherwise? You’re doing the best you can and it’s a very good ‘best.’ I wish we had more ‘bests’ like it.”

“I do feel ... sort of wobbly, Roger. I deserve to be leaned on, because once you start feeling that way you’re no longer at peak efficiency and you become nervously over-scrupulous. That’s both good and bad, if you know what I mean.”

“What did you expect, Susan? I could have had a nurse in here to relieve you hours ago if you hadn’t been so stubborn. You’ve been worrying your cute blonde head off without stopping to rest for sixteen hours, and you never set eyes on the guy before this morning. What is there about some men--”

“It was touch and go, Roger. You said yourself that a little of the poison got into his blood. You told me a tenth of a cc would have been fatal.”

“That was when I first looked at the lab analysis and took the gloomiest possible view of his chances. I didn’t even know you heard me. Damn it all, Susan. Can’t a doctor think out loud without giving his most competent nurse a martyr complex? What is there about him? I’m asking you. If he wasn’t married I could perhaps understand it. I could at least make a stab at trying to figure it out. But you’ve seen his wife. A man with a wife as attractive as she is would have to be even more susceptible than I am to look twice at another woman. That’s just another way of saying it couldn’t happen.”

“I’ve had two long talks with her, Roger. She loves him so much that if anything happened to him I’m afraid to think what she might do. All alone on Mars, with no close relatives or friends to turn to for help and warmth and comfort. She’d need a lot of support, because there’s nothing shallow about her. She’s the intense type, very deep in her emotions. I’m that way myself.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I could hear him saying. “You’re the empathy-plus type. It’s what makes a good many otherwise sensible women embrace the toughest profession on the list. Hard-boiled, unemotional women make good nurses too. But I prefer the kind of nurse you can’t help being. Only ... a little moderation even in people who go all out can be a saving grace.”

“But don’t you see, Roger? It means I can identify with her. I know exactly how terrible the uncertainty must be for her, because if I loved a man that much and lost him I’d probably go right out and kill myself. If you want the full truth ... there’s probably a little of the male-female absurdity mixed up in it too. It’s an absurdity in a situation like this, where it makes no sense. But just the fact that he’s a man and I’m a woman--”

“Talk like that will get you nowhere,” he said. “I’m too sure of you.”

There was a rustling sound and a sudden gasp and I was pretty sure I knew what it meant. He’d taken her into his arms and was kissing her. I don’t know why I didn’t open my eyes. I was fully awake now, aware of every movement in the room. But I just remained quiet and listened, grateful that the needles had stopped jabbing at my temples and my dizziness was practically gone.

Sometimes when you awake suddenly from a deep sleep your eyes feel glued shut, and it takes an effort just to open them. You let it ride for a moment, while you pull yourself together ... especially if it’s a nightmare you’ve just awakened from. There’s a kind of pleasure in it.

He was talking again. “I’ve yet to meet a woman who doesn’t think that clinical self-analysis will keep a man guessing about her. But that kind of candor will get you nowhere with me, kiddo. I know you too well. Are you convinced?”

“Yes,” she said, with a meekness that surprised me.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but I could hear him moving about and a metallic click, as if he were folding up his stethoscope or returning a hypodermic to its case.

A sound like that is always a little unnerving and an operating table and a long row of gleaming instruments flashed evanescently across my mind. I wondered how bad it was and if Martian hospitals were well-equipped, and had just the right facilities to take care of an emergency case requiring major surgery.

But he’d said I was out of danger, hadn’t he ... that I didn’t even need more sedation? Sure he had. I’d been stabbed with a poisoned dart, but that didn’t mean I’d have to go on the operating table. They would never have let the dart stay inside me. If an operation had been needed, it would have been performed immediately...

Perhaps it had. Well, to hell with it. I was out of danger now and beginning to mend and that was the only thing that counted. It had been touch and go, she’d said. And Joan loved me so much that...

Hold on tight to that, Ralphie boy. It’s the best news you’ll ever hear, even though you knew it all along, were sure of it on the day you married her. What they didn’t know and would have to guess about was the feeling of oneness we had whenever we were together.