The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

hadn't responded well to the transfusion.
    He hadn't been able to find the Holcombs' whiskey, and Bernie Edmonds, who had been sobering up nicely, would be getting drunk all over again.
    Jeff Sloan wasn't reacting as he should to the antabuse, nor-and this could be of even greater importance-to the psychological cold shoulder. Sloan had seemed to need a good hard punch in his ego. He had-it seemed-needed to be shown that a man loses everything, including the respect and consideration of others, in succumbing to alcohol. But what had seemed like a good idea, was, in Jeff's case, apparently a bad one. He'd got angry, stubborn, but in the wrong way.
    Instead of getting sore at himself, Sloan was angry with him, Murphy.
    Well-Doc Murphy nodded casually as Miss Baker entered the office-he'd have to try another angle… if he had the time. Meanwhile, here was an even more serious problem.
    She came briskly across the room, and laid the bed charts on the desk, waited, standing, respectfully, as he turned through them.
    "Umm"-he looked up and motioned to a chair-"sit down, Miss Baker. I'd like to talk to you about… what about Sloan, anyway? How did the drink set with him?"
    Lucretia Baker hesitated, fear spreading through her stomach. "It theemed to-uh-stagger him, doctor."
    "How about his pulse?"
    "Well… it didn't theem to be very irregular."
    "I don't get it," said Doc Murphy. "I just don't get it. Well"-he shook his head-"we'll have to keep an eye on him. You know there's no antidote for antabuse?"
    "Yeth, thir. I know."
    Miss Baker had begun to relax. The doctor hadn't said a word about-about anything; he was being just as sweet as anyone could be, and he still trusted her and depended on her. So, doubtless, before it was too late, she had better state her suspicions concerning Mr. Sloan.
    "Nurse! Miss Baker!"
    "Wha-thir?" said Miss Baker.
    He was frowning, almost scowling at her. Obviously, she had been guilty of the one sin which a doctor considers well nigh unforgivable in a nurse: inattention while he is talking.
    "I beg your pardon, doctor. I was-was-"
    "Skip it," said Doctor Murphy curtly. "I asked you if you weren't on duty yesterday evening when the Holcombs checked in?"
    "Yeth, thir," said Miss Baker, a trifle breathlessly. "I checked them in myself."
    "That's what I thought. Did you happen to notice the whiskey they brought in with them?"
    "Why-of courth, not! If I'd theen-"
    "But you didn't thee-see-" Doctor Murphy faltered and corrected himself. "You didn't because you didn't stay in the room with them while they undressed. Why not?"
    Lucretia Baker dropped her eyes. She couldn't explain why it was possible for her to view a patient undressed, but impossible to watch him undressing.
    "I'm thorry, doctor," she said. "I'll be more careful hereafter."
    "Well…" Doc Murphy took a resolute grip on his temper. "That's about all we can do, I guess. I wouldn't mind so much, if it wasn't for Sloan. It's useless, naturally, to ask them to cooperate with me. After the amount of whiskey he's taken and survived, they wouldn't believe I'd given him antabuse. They'd figure the same as he would that I was just trying to keep him from having a drink…"
    "Yeth, thir."
    "For that matter," fretted the doctor, "if there's any way of scaring an alcoholic out of a drink, I'd like to know what it is. They're scare-proof when it comes to whiskey. You can tell 'em one more drink will stop their clock, but they'll go right ahead and take it. They'll have it no matter how much it costs them. Why we had a patient here-it was a few months before you joined us-who…"
    His voice trailed off into silence, and he sat staring straight into Miss Baker's eyes-into their thousand-miles-away blankness.
    He waited and watched, his thin face tightening with annoyance. And the thought of what she had done was tinder for the fuel of his disappointments and frustrations, a bone-dry fuse needing only one tiny spark to ignite.
    A man could only take so