Leerie Part 6

Hennessy, however, shook a positive head. "That's no kid. Can't ye see for yourself it's noways human? Accordin' to the Sunday papers it's all the style for blond dancers an' society belles to be fetchin' one o' them little apes about. They're thinkin' if they hang a bit o' live ugliness furninst, their beauty will look all the more ravishin'."

"Live ugliness," repeated Flanders; then he laughed. "You've struck it, Hennessy."

Meanwhile Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez--Pancho, for short--and his mother had pa.s.sed into the hands of the sanitarium porter.

He had handed them on to the business office, which in turn had handed them over to the superintendent. The superintendent had shared the pleasure with the house staff, the staff had retired in favor of the baby specialist, and at half past seven o'clock that night neither he nor the superintendent of nurses had been able to coax, argue, command, or threaten a nurse into taking the case.

"I'm afraid you will have to do with an undergraduate and make the best of it." Miss Maxwell acknowledged her helplessness with a faint smile.

But Doctor Fuller shook his head. "Won't do. It means skilled care and watching for days. A nurse without experience would be about as much good as an incubator. Think if you dismissed the four who've refused, you could frighten a fifth into taking it?"

This time the superintendent of nurses shook her head. "Not this case.

They all feel about it the same way. Miss Jacobs tells me she didn't take her training to nurse monkeys."

The old doctor chuckled. "Don't know as I blame her; thought it was a new species myself when I first clapped eyes on it. But shucks! I've seen some of our North American babies look like Lincoln Imps when they were down with marasmus. Give me a few weeks and a good nurse and his own mother wouldn't recognize--" He interrupted himself with a pounding fist on the desk. "Where's Leerie?"

"You can't have her--not this time." Miss Maxwell's lips became a fraction more firm, while her eyes sharpened into what her training girls had come to call her "forceps expression."

"Why not?"

"The girl's just off that case for Doctor Fritz; she's tired out. Remember she's been through three unbroken years of hospitals, and we've worked her on every hard case we've had since she came back. I'm going to see that she gets forty-eight hours of rest now."

"Let her have them next time." Doctor Fuller put all his persuasive charm into the words. "I need Leerie--some one who can roll up her sleeves and pitch in. Let me have her just this once."

But Miss Maxwell was obdurate. "She's asleep now, and she's going to sleep as long as she needs to. I'll give you Miss Grant--she's had a month at the Maternity at Rochester."

"A month!" Scorn curled up the ends of the doctor's mustache. The next instant they were almost touching in a broad grin. "Leerie likes cases like this--just eats them up. I'm going after her." And before the superintendent of nurses could hold him he was down the corridor on his way to the nurses' dormitory.

Ten minutes later he was back, grinning harder than ever. He had only time to thrust his head in the door and wave a triumphant arm. "She's dressing--as big a fool about babies as I am! Said she'd slept a whole hour and felt fresh as a daisy. How's that for s.p.u.n.k?"

"I call it nerve." Miss Maxwell smiled a hopeless smile. "What am I going to do with you doctors? You wear out all my best nurses and you won't take--" But Doctor Fuller had fled.

In spite of his boast of her, the baby specialist saw Sheila O'Leary visibly cringe when she took her first look at Pancho. He lay sprawling on his mother's bed in a room littered with hastily opened bags and trunks out of which had been pulled clothing of all kinds and hues. He had been relieved of the lace and pink ribbons and was swathed only in shirt and roundabout, his arms and legs projected like licorice sticks; being of the same color and very nearly the same thickness. He was dozing, tired out with the combination of much travel, screaming, shaking, and loss of breath. So wasted was he that the skin seemed drawn tight over temple and cheek-bones; the eyes were pitifully sunken, and colorless lips fell back over toothless gums.

"How old is--it?" Sheila whispered at last.

"About nine months."

Sheila shuddered. "Just the adorable age. Ought to be all pink cheeks, dimples, and creases--and look at it!"

"I know, but wait. Give us time and we'll get some of those things started." Doctor Fuller wagged his head by way of encouragement.

Sheila answered with a deprecatory shake. "This time I don't believe you.

That would be a miracle, and you can do about everything but miracles.

Honestly, it doesn't seem as if I could touch it; looks about a thousand years old and just human enough to be horrible."

The old doctor eyed her askance. "Not going back on me, are you?"

"Of course I'm not, but there's no use in making believe it will be any joy-game. I'll be hating it every minute I'm on the case."

"Hate it as much as you like, only stick to it. h.e.l.lo there, bub!" This to the brown atom, who was opening his eyes.

The eyes were large and brown and as soft and appealing as a baby seal's.

For a moment they looked with strange, wondering intensity at the two figures bending over it, then with sudden doubling and undoubling of fists, a frantic upheaval of brown legs, the atom opened volcanically and poured forth scream after scream. It writhed, it clawed the air, it looked every whit as horrible as Sheila had claimed.

"Going to run?" the old doctor asked, anxiously.

For answer Sheila bent down lower and picked up the writhing ma.s.s. With a firm hand she braced it against her shoulder, patting it gently and swaying her body rhythmically to the patting. "Some eyes and some temper!"

laughed Sheila. "Where's the mother?"

The screaming brought the corridor nurse to the door. "Where's the mother?" Sheila repeated.

The corridor nurse pointed to the strewn luggage and gave a contemptuous shrug. "Gone down to dinner looking like a bird of paradise. She said if the baby cried I was to stir up some of that milk from that can, mix it with water from that faucet, put it in that bottle, and feed it to him."

Words failed to convey the outraged disgust in her voice.

The milk indicated was condensed milk in a half-emptied can; the bottle was the regulation kind for babies and as filthy as dirty gla.s.s could look. Sheila and Doctor Fuller exchanged glances.

"Plenty of fight in the little beggar or he wouldn't be outlasting--" The doctor swallowed the remainder of the sentence, cut short by a startled look on Sheila's face.

The screams had stopped a minute before, and Sheila believed the atom had dropped asleep. But instead of feeling the tiny body relax as a sleeping baby's will, it was growing slowly rigid. With this realization she strode to the bed and put the atom down. Before their eyes the body stiffened, while the head rolled slowly from side to side and under the half-closed lids the eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled with it.

"Convulsions!" announced the corridor nurse, with an anxious look toward the door. Then, as a bell tinkled, she voiced her relief in a quick breath. "That's sixty-one. I'm hiking--"

"No, you don't!" The doctor jerked her back; he wanted to shake her.

"You'll hustle some hot water for us, and then you'll stand by to hustle some more. See?" He was shedding all unnecessary clothing as he spoke, and Sheila was peeling the atom free of shirt and roundabout as fast as skilled fingers could move.

It is a wonderful thing to watch the fight between human skill and death for the life of a baby. So little it takes to swing the victory either way, so close does it border on the miraculous, that few can stand and see without feeling the silent, invisible presence of the Nazarene. A life thus saved seems to gather unto itself a special significance and value for those who have fought for it and those who receive it again. It creates new feelings and a clearer vision in blind, unthinking motherhood; it awakens to a vital response hitherto dormant fatherhood. And even the callous outsider becomes exalted with the wonder and closeness of that unseen presence.

As the brown atom writhed from one convulsion into another, Sheila and the old doctor worked with compressed lips and almost suspended breath; they worked like a single mind supplied with twice the usual amount of auxiliaries. They saw, without acknowledging it, the gorgeous, tropical figure that came and stood half-way between the door and the bed; lips carmined, throat and cheeks heavy with powder, jewels covering ears, neck, fingers, and wrists, she looked absurdly unreal beside the nurse in her uniform and the doctor in his shirt-sleeves. Occasionally Sheila glanced at her. If they won, would the mother care? The question came back to her consciousness again and again. In her own experience she knew how often the thing one called motherhood would come into actual existence after a struggle like this when birth itself had failed to accomplish anything but a physical obligation. Believing this, Sheila fought the harder.

After an hour the convulsions subsided. A few more drops of brandy were poured down the tiny throat, and slowly the heart took up its regulation work. Sheila wrapped the atom in a blanket, put it back on the bed, and beckoned to the mother.

Curiosity seemed to be the one governing emotion of the senora. She looked without any trace of grief, and, having looked, she spoke impa.s.sively: "I theenk eet dead. Yes?"

Doctor Fuller, with perspiration pouring from him, transfixed her with a stare. "No! That baby's going to get well now, and you're going to let Miss O'Leary teach you how to take proper care of it. Understand?" Then clapping his fellow-fighter on the back, he beamed down upon her.

"Leerie, you're one grand soldier!"

The monotone of the gorgeous senora broke up any response Sheila might have given. "I theenk eet die, all the same," came the impa.s.sive voice.

"The _padre_ on the ship make it all ready for die--I theenk yes pret'

soon."

"No!" The doctor fairly thundered it forth.

She stooped and pulled away a fold of the blanket with the tips of her fingers. "Eet look ver' ugly--like eet die. I theenk--all the same."

The doctor caught up his cast-off clothing and flung himself out of the room. Sheila watched him go, a faint smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Strange! He had so evidently reached the end of his self-control, optimism, and patience, while she was just beginning to find hers. In the sweep of a second things looked wonderfully clear and hopeful. She thought she could understand what was in the mind and heart of the senora; what was more significant, she thought she could understand the reason for it.

And what you can understand you can cope with.

She watched the senora searching in this trunk and that; she saw her jerk forth a diminutive dress of embroidery and fluted lace; while she thought the whole thing through to the finish and smiled one of her old inscrutable smiles.