The Final Diagnosis

One thing he was sure of though. He would not hang on if he found himself weakening. Right now he knew he was as good as ever. His mind was clear, his hands steady and eyes sharp. He always watched himself carefully because he knew that at the first sign of failing he would not hesitate. He would clear his desk and go. He had seen too many others try to stay the course too long. That would never be for him.

But as for the present, well, maybe he would let things go another three months, then think it over.

By this time he had packed the tobacco tightly in his pipe and now he reached for a folder of matches. He was about to strike one when the telephone rang. Putting down pipe and matches, he answered it. “Dr. Dornberger speaking.”

It was one of his patients. She had begun labor pains an hour ago. Now her membranes had ruptured and she had discharged water. She was a young girl in her early twenties, and it would be her first baby. She sounded breathless, as if nervous but trying not to be.

As he had so many times before, Dornberger gave his instructions quietly. “Is your husband at home?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Then get your things together and have him drive you to the hospital. I’ll see you after you’ve arrived.”

“Very well, Doctor.”

“Tell your husband to drive carefully and stop at all the red lights. We’ve plenty of time. You’ll see.”

He could sense, even over the phone, that he had helped her to relax. It was something he did often, and he considered it as much a part of his job as any course of treatment. Nevertheless he felt his own senses quickening. A new case always had that effect. Logically, he thought, he should have lost the feeling long ago. As you grew older in medicine you were supposed to become impervious, mechanical and unsentimental. It had never worked that way for him, though—perhaps because, even now, he was doing what he loved to do most.

He reached for his pipe, then changed his mind and picked up the telephone again. He must let Obstetrics know that his patient was coming in.

Eight

“I’m not even sure that defeating polio was a good or necessary thing.”

The speaker was Eustace Swayne—founder of a department-store empire, millionaire philanthropist, and member of the board of directors of Three Counties Hospital. The background was the shadowed, oak-paneled library of Swayne’s aging but imposing mansion, set alone in fifty acres of parkland and near the eastern fringes of Burlington.

“Come now, you can’t be serious,” Orden Brown said lightly. The hospital-board chairman smiled at the two women in the room—his own wife, Amelia, and Swayne’s daughter, Denise Quantz.

Kent O’Do

“I am serious.” Swayne put down his brandy glass and leaned forward to make his point. “Oh, I admit—show me a child in leg braces and I’ll cringe with the rest and reach for my checkbook. But I’m talking of the grand design. The fact is—and I challenge anyone to deny it—we’re busily engaged in weakening the human race.”

It was a familiar argument. O’Do

“You couldn’t do it,” Swayne said. “You couldn’t do it any more than you could have stopped the Gadarene swine jumping off their cliff.”

O’Do

“Why?” Swayne banged a fist on the arm of his chair. “Because you can still deplore something, even though there’s nothing you can do to force a change.”

“I see.” O’Do

Swayne’s married daughter, Denise Quantz, was sitting forward, listening intently.

At di

But, in contrast, Denise Quantz was gentle and softly spoken. She had a trick of taking the edge from a remark of her father’s by adding a word or two to what he had said. She was beautiful too, O’Do

His thoughts were interrupted by Denise. Leaning toward him, she said, “Surely you’re not going to give up so easily, Dr. O’Do

The old man snorted. “There’s nothing to get away with. It’s a perfectly clear situation. For years the natural balance of nature kept populations in check. When the birth rate became too great there were famines to offset it.”

Orden Brown put in, “But surely some of that was political. It wasn’t always a force of nature.”

“I’ll grant you that in some cases.” Eustace Swayne waved his hand airily. “But there was nothing political in the elimination of the weak.”