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The Web of Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part 1 - Chapter 13 |
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_ Part I Chapter XIII Dr. Lindsay's offices were ingeniously arranged on three sides of the Athenian Building. The patient entering from the hall, just beside the elevators, passed by a long, narrow corridor to the waiting room, and thence to one of the tiny offices of the attending physicians; or, if he were fortunate enough, he was led at once to the private office of the great Lindsay, at the end of the inner corridor. By a transverse passage he was then shunted off to a door that opened into the public hall just opposite the elevator well. The incoming patient was received by a woman clerk, who took his name, and was dismissed by another woman clerk, who collected fees and made appointments. If he came by special appointment, several stages in his progress were omitted, and he passed at once to one of the smaller offices, where he waited until the machine was ready to proceed with his case. Thus in the office there was a perpetual stream of the sick and suffering, in, around, out, crossed by the coming and going through transverse passages of the "staff," the attendants, the clerks, messengers, etc. Each atom in the stream was welling over with egotistic woes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted with the great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated this mystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subdued place, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electric annunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to another, vibrated in the tense atmosphere. Into this hive poured the suffering, mounting from the street, load after load, in the swiftly flying cages; their visit made, their joss-sticks burned, they dropped down once more to the chill world below, where they must carry on the burden of living. The attending physicians arrived at nine. The "shop," as they called it, opened at ten; Lindsay was due at eleven and departed at three. Thereafter the hive gradually emptied, and by four the stenographers and clerks were left alone to attend to purely business matters. Sommers came late the day after his return from New York. The general door being opened to admit a patient, he walked in and handed his coat and hat to the boy in buttons at the door. The patient who had entered with him was being questioned by the neat young woman whose business it was to stand guard at the outer door. "What is your name, please?" Her tones were finely adjusted to the caste of the patient. Judging from the icy sharpness on this occasion, the patient was not high in the scale. "Caroline Ducharme," the woman replied. "Write it out, please." The patient did so with some difficulty, scrawling half over the neat pad the clerk pushed toward her. "You wish to consult Dr. Lindsay?" "The big doctor,--yes, mum." "Did he make an appointment with you?" "What's that?" "Have you been here before?" "No, mum." "You will have to pay the fee in advance." "What's that, please?" "Ten dollars." "Ten?" The clerk tapped irritably on her desk with her pencil. "Yes, _ten_ dollars for the first visit; five after that; operations from fifty to five hundred." The woman clutched tightly a small reticule. "I hain't the money!" she exclaimed at last. "I thought it would be two dollars." "You'll have to go to the hospital, then." The clerk turned to a pile of letters. "Don't he see nobody here without he pays ten?" the woman asked. "No." "Where is the hospital?" "St. Isidore's--the clinic is every other Saturday at nine." "But my head hurts awful bad. The doctor up our way don't know anything about it." The clerk no longer answered; she had turned half around in her swivel-chair. Sommers leaned over her desk, and said,-- "Show her into my room, No. 3, Miss Clark." "Dr. Lindsay is _very_ particular," the clerk protested. "I will be responsible," Sommers answered sharply, in the tone he had learned to use with hospital clerks when they opposed his will. He turned to get his mail. The clerk shrugged her shoulders with a motion that said, 'Take her there yourself.' Sommers beckoned to the woman to follow him. He took her to one of the little compartments on the inner corridor, which was lined with strange devices: electrical machines, compressed air valves, steam sprays--all the enginery of the latest invention. "Now what is it?" he asked gruffly. He was vexed that the matter should occur at this time, when he was on rather cool terms with Lindsay. The case proved to be an interesting one, however. There were nervous complications; it could not be diagnosed at a glance. After spending half an hour in making a careful examination, he gave the woman a preliminary treatment, and dismissed her with directions to call the next day. "You will lose your eyesight, if you don't take care," he said. "We'll see to-morrow." "No," the woman shook her head. "I've had enough of her lip. You'se all right; but I guess I'll have to go blind. I can't stand your prices. Here's two dollars, all I got." She held out a dirty bill. "In the world?" Sommers added smilingly. It was a familiar formula. "Just about," she admitted defiantly. "And if my eyes go back on me, I guess 'twill be St. Isidore, or St. Somebody. You see I need my eyes pretty bad just now for one thing." "What's that?" the doctor asked good-naturedly, waving the money aside. "To look for _him_. He's in Chicago somewheres, I know." "Ducharme?" the doctor inquired carelessly. The woman nodded, her not uncomely broad face assuming a strange expression of determined fierceness. At that moment an assistant rapped at the door with a summons from Dr. Lindsay. "Turn up this evening, then, at the address on this card," Sommers said to Mrs. Ducharme, handing her his card. He would have preferred hearing that story about Ducharme to charging old P. F. Wort with electricity. He went through the treatment with his accustomed deftness, however. As he was leaving the room, Dr. Lindsay asked him to wait. "Mr. Porter is about to go abroad, to try the baths at Marienbad. I have advised him to take one of our doctors with him to look after his diet and comfort in travelling,--one that can continue our treatment and be companionable. It will just take the dull season. I'd like to run over myself, but my affairs--" Lindsay completed the idea by sweeping his broad, fleshy hand over the large office desk, which was loaded with letters, reports, and documents of various kinds. "What d'ye say, Sommers?" "Do you think Porter would want me?" Sommers asked idly. He had seen in the paper that morning that Porter was out of town, and was going to Europe for his health. Porter had been out of town, persistently, ever since the Pullman strike had grown ugly. The duties of the directors were performed, to all intents and purposes, by an under-official, a third vice-president. Those duties at present consisted chiefly in saying from day to day: "The company has nothing to arbitrate. There is a strike; the men have a right to strike. The company doesn't interfere with the men," etc. The third vice-president could make these announcements as judiciously as the great Porter. "I have an idea," continued Sommers, "that Porter might not want me; he has never been over-cordial." "Nonsense!" replied the busy doctor. "Porter will take any one I advise him to. All expenses and a thousand dollars--very good pay." "Is Porter very ill?" Sommers asked. "I thought he was in fair health, the last time I saw him." Lindsay looked at the young doctor with a sharp, experienced glance. There was a half smile on his face as he answered soberly: "Porter has been living rather hard. He needs a rest--fatty degeneration may set in." "Brought on by the strike?" Lindsay smiled broadly this time. "Coincident with the strike, let us say." "I don't believe I can leave Chicago just now," the young doctor replied finally. Lindsay stared at him as if he were demented. "I've a case or two I am interested in," Sommers explained nonchalantly. "Nothing much, but I don't care to leave. Besides, I don't think Porter would be an agreeable companion." "Very well," Lindsay replied indifferently. "French will go--a jolly, companionable, chatty fellow." The young doctor felt that Lindsay was enumerating pointedly the qualities he lacked. "Porter's connection will be worth thousands to the man he takes to. He's in a dozen different corporations where they pay good salaries to physicians. Of course, if you've started a practice already--" "I don't suppose my cases are good for ten dollars." Lindsay's handsome, gray-whiskered face expressed a polite disgust. "There's another matter I'd like to speak about--" "The patient Ducharme?" Sommers asked quickly. "I don't know her name,--the woman Miss Clark says you admitted against my rules. You know there are the free dispensaries for those who can't pay, and, indeed, I give my own services. I cannot afford to maintain this plant without fees. In short, I am surprised at such a breach of professional etiquette." Sommers got up from his seat nervously and then sat down again. Lindsay undoubtedly had the right to do exactly what he pleased on his own premises. "Very well," he replied shortly. "It shan't occur again. I have told the Ducharme woman to call at my rooms for treatment, and I will give Miss Clark her ten dollars. She was an exceptionally interesting and instructive case." Lindsay elevated his eyebrows politely. "Yes, yes, but you know we specialists are so liable to be imposed upon. Every one tries to escape his fee; no one would employ Carson, for example, unless he had the means to pay his fee, would he?" "The cases are not exactly parallel." "All cases of employment are parallel," Lindsay replied with emphasis. "Every man is entitled to what he can get, from the roustabout on the wharf to our friend Porter, and no more." "I have often thought," Sommers protested rather vaguely, "that clergymen and doctors should be employed by the state to do what they can; it isn't much!" "There are the hospitals." Lindsay got up from his chair at the sound of an electric bell. "And our very best professional men practise there, give their time and money and strength. You will have to excuse me, as Mr. Carson has an appointment, and I have already kept him waiting. Will you see Mrs. Winter and young Long at eleven thirty and eleven forty-five?" As Sommers was leaving, Lindsay called out over his shoulder, "And can you take the clinic, Saturday? I must go to St. Louis in consultation. General R. P. Atkinson, president of the Omaha and Gulf, an old friend--" "Shall be delighted," the young doctor replied with a smile. As he stepped into the corridor, one of the young women clerks was filling in an appointment slip on the long roll that hung on a metal cylinder. This was an improved device, something like a cash-register machine, that printed off the name opposite a certain hour that was permanently printed on the slip. The hours of the office day were divided into five-minute periods, but, as two assisting physicians were constantly in attendance beside Sommers, the allotted time for each patient was about fifteen minutes. "Mrs. Winter is in No. 3," the clerk told him. "Long in No. 1, and Mr. Harrison and a Miss Frost in the reception room." So the machine ground on. Even the prescriptions were formularized to such an extent that most of them were stencilled and went by numbers. The clerk at the end of the corridor handed the patient a little card, on which was printed No. 3033, No. 3127, etc., as he circled by in the last turn of the office. There was an apothecary store on the floor below, where the patient could sit in an easy-chair and read the papers while the prescription called for by his number was being fetched by an elegant young woman. Sommers hurried through with Mrs. Winter, who was a fussy, nervous little woman from the West Side; she resented having "a young feller" thrust on her. "I knew Dr. Lindsay when he was filling prescriptions on Madison Street," she said spitefully. Sommers smiled. "That must have been a good while ago, before Chicago was a big place." "Before you was born, young man; before all the doctors who could came down here in a bunch and set up offices and asked fees enough of a body to keep 'em going for a year!" Then young Long; then one, two, three new patients, who had to have physical examinations before being admitted to Lindsay. Once or twice Lindsay sent for Sommers to assist him in a delicate matter, and Sommers hurried off, leaving his half-dressed patient to cool his heels before a radiator. After the examinations there was an odd patient or two that Lindsay had left when he had gone out to lunch with some gentlemen at the Metropolitan Club. By two o'clock Sommers got away to take a hasty luncheon in a bakery, after which he returned to a new string of cases. To-day "the rush," as the clerks called it, was greater than usual. The attendants were nervous and irritable, answered sharply and saucily, until Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, was giving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions and mechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious,--they would do no harm,--and they might do good, ought to do good,--if the cursed human system would only come up to the standard. At last he seized his coat and hat, and escaped. The noiseless cage dropped down, down, past numerous suites of doctors' offices similar to Lindsay's, with their ground-glass windows emblazoned by dozens of names. This building was a kind of modern Chicago Lourdes. All but two or three of the suites were rented to some form of the medical fraternity. Down, down: here a druggist's clerk hailing the descending car; there an upward car stopping to deliver its load of human freight bound for the rooms of another great specialist,--Thornton, the skin doctor. At last he reached the ground floor and the gusty street. Across the way stood a line of carriages waiting for women who were shopping at the huge dry-goods emporium, and through the barbaric displays of the great windows Sommers could see the clerks moving hither and thither behind the counters. It did not differ materially from his emporium: it was less select, larger, but not more profitable, considering the amount of capital employed, than his shop. Marshall Field decked out the body; Lindsay, Thornton, and Co. repaired the body as best they could. It was all one trade. On State Street the sandwich men were sauntering dejectedly through the crowd of shoppers: "_Professor Herman Sorter, Chiropodist._" "_Go to Manassas for Spectacles_";--it was the same thing. Across the street, on the less reputable western side, flared the celluloid signs of the quacks: "_The parlors of famous old Dr. Green_." "_The original and only Dr. Potter. Visit Dr. Potter. No cure, no charge. Examination free._" The same business! Lindsay would advertise as "old Dr. Lindsay," if it paid to advertise,--paid socially and commercially. Dr. Lindsay's offices probably "took in" more in a month than "old Dr. Green" made in a year, without the expense of advertising. Lindsay would lose much more by adopting the methods of quackery than he could ever make: he would lose hospital connections, standing in the professional journals, and social prestige. Lindsay was quite shrewd in sticking to the conventions of the profession. _ |
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