# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 61

I was at this time unable to walk a block without feeling the most inexpressible sensations of fatigue. I would waken in the morning, always being able to sleep all right—a sort of heavy, dead sleep—and could not stand on my feet unless I immediately had something to eat. At last I decided if I could but get into a hospital, anywhere, where I would not be allowed to get out of bed for weeks, and where I would be waited upon hand and foot, I might regain some of my lost strength. There was a minor operation which I had contemplated having for some time, and I thought I would go ahead and have it and thus get into a hospital. I consulted doctors about it and was headed definitely in that direction. I wrote to Mr. Harding. He sent me $450 for my expenses. He sent this of course in a plain envelope, as usual, enclosing it several times in smaller envelopes.
Elizabeth, however, who had tried all along to persuade me not to go to a hospital, finally did influence me to see her friend and family doctor, Dr. Frederic L. Barbour, a physician whom Scott had known for several years and who had skilfully treated Scott early in January of 1920, when the latter was seriously ill. Dr. Barbour had two offices; one on the South Side and one in the Marshall Field Building downtown. It was to the latter office that Elizabeth took me one noon. I shall never forget how I looked those days. My eyes were weak as a direct result of my general run-down condition and I wore tortoise-shell glasses most of the time. I was extremely thin, and I had no smile except certain times when I had been lying down for awhile and felt comparatively rested.
Dr. Barbour was young and cheerful. I think it did me good to look at him. He examined me thoroughly, took an X-Ray of my chest, and in the end told me I was in a very excellent condition to pass on under any anesthetic, refusing to treat me at all if I even so much as considered an operation of any kind. I ​became Dr. Barbour's patient at once, giving up all thought of an operation, and remained under his care for many months. And he became one of my best friends. He was obliged among other things to treat me for a very weak condition resulting from lack of recuperation after my baby's birth, and he himself guessed intuitively the whole of my story with very little information from me, even to the identity of Elizabeth Ann's illustrious father.
My sister Janet was living with us at that time, and my brother "Doc" was also in Chicago and at our apartment frequently. It was difficult for us to hear each other correct Elizabeth Ann, who was now approaching the age when she had to be told right from wrong. It annoyed Scott, my brother-in-law, fully as much as it annoyed me, I am sure, to suffer her to be reprimanded first by one of us and then by the other, though I felt I was naturally the one to give orders in her behalf and the one whom she should obey above all others. This created a state of continual dissension and superinduced an added nervous condition in me which I was trying desperately with Dr. Barbour's treatment to overcome. Therefore, I determined the only thing for me to do was again to yield my baby to the care of others and return to New York for the oncoming winter, allowing the Willits home to regain normal composure. I am sure this must have brought a great sense of relief to Scott and I know it made things far easier of accomplishment for my sister Elizabeth, in regard to both the baby and Scott.