The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-07-20
CHAPTER XII

What makes you say that? I mear that he-how do you know?"
 "Oh, that?" said Tran briskly
 That's one set of symptoms yo, don't have to be registered nurs, to recognize. You'd see it your. self if you weren't so scared O. acting and feeling like a human being Oh, do go along befor, you have time to dry offI If you could only keep yourself looking that way - you're so sweet, al bright-eyed and drippy like that"
 Without another word Mis-. Miller amazingly turned and went almost running down the corri- dor.
 Tran sat down stifly on the edge of chair.
 If the worst happened - if Ste phen Sargent were really never to operate again, then she had nothing left. For the first time she realized how inseparably her enthusiasm for her work had been bound up in the thought of work ing with him For if her
 youthful visions-Tran was only 20-had ever held a more per- sonal significance, 1t had long ago been sublimated in the rest.
 Finally she got up heavily and wandered out into the corridor. She hardly knew how or why she made her way to the instrument room except that suddenly she wanted very much to cry, and its unfrequented sterility offered an admirable privacy for that pur- pose Or perhaps it was the nostalgia memory of that other day-was it less than two years ago?-when she had stood there, a mere child it seemed to Tran now, yearning over the shiny in- struments in their glass cases.
 Curled up in a limp little gray heap on a wide window ledge, she was going about the business for which she had come in a thor oughly workmanlike manner when g door opened, and mans voice said:
 Good Lord! Hasn't anyone warned you yet that floods don't do surgical instruments any good?"
 Bob Benchley sauntered across the room and stood, leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, prinninp down at her
 In her passion of loneliness, Tran was so glad to see him that she sobbed all the more loudly.
 T had an idea you'd be letting your hair down somewhere, he went on cheerfully. You would pick a nice festive little nook like this for it.
 So he had been hunting for her.
 T just thought you might like to know"-he was lighting ciga- ret as he spoke, frowning down at it, carefully not looking at her it isn't so bad as we thought at first-about Old Sarge, I mean. The paralysis was mostly due to shock. The tendons and nerves will probably be all right: Barring infection, which doesn't seem likely, your god will soon be hurling his thunderbolts at one and all again in his best Jovian form"
 Tran grasped, "Oh, Bob are you sure?"
 "As sure" he said dryly, "as mere junior surgeon is ever pre- sumed to be about anything. But it may reassure you to know that the Lord High Executioner him. self, is pretty sure, too. Wed hardly got the bleeding stopped, by the way, before he assumed charge of the case, himself"
 Remembering the surgeon in her historic nursing care report on the mythical case of X, Tran giggled through her tears.
 "He wouldn't" she asked, "have been taking his own pulse, would he?"
 He was leading up to that when Miss Miller came in. She soon put a stop to it There's never any question about who's in charge of a case when the per- feet nurse steps into the room"
 "So she's nursing him, then?"
 "Very much so :. And it may interest you to know that she asked for you as her relief"
 "Well," Tran said cryptically, 1she certainly wouldn't want me around if things hadn't gone of according to schedule"
 He stared at her as if trying to Ind in her tear-stained face the answer to question that was him.
 "That depends on what you call according to schedule" he said 1t last. When I opened the door ! few minutes ago, the perfect nurse was weeping into her pa ,ients pillow, while he patted her shoulder with his good hand, and Iooked-well, respect for the red man-eater old Sarge used 70 be makes me hate to use the ,nly term that aptly describes the way he was looking don't .now what the discipline of this hospitals coming to-"
 "Well, we've still got you to lphold the good old traditions" Tran observed wickedly.
 Then, at thought of Stephen batting Katherine Miller's ,houlder while she wept into his pillow, her own loneliness swept ,ver her in an engulfing tidal wave, and she sobbed anew.
 Young Dr. Benchley took his hands out of his pocket; then, as f alarmed by his own impulse, .hrust them hastily back again.
 Gosh, kid, I'm sorry!" he said liter a moment. I'd been think ng all this time that you were ust off me because my frivolous .ompanionship interfered with the seriousness business of life. I iidn't know it was because you were in love with him."
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