The Doctor Takes a Wife by Elizabeth Seifert Read Free Book Online Page A

doing anything except realizing his dreams.”
    Dr. Chappell pushed his soup bowl away from him. “What is it you plan, Scoles?” he asked courteously. I ’ ll never attain his ability to conceal his own feelings, or even opinions, until he gets all the facts.
    Phil told him, repeating the terms that he ’ d used on me. They didn ’ t sound any better this time, and when he ’ d finished I said so. “Did you ever hear such foolishness?” I demanded.
    Dr. Chappell let his eyes go to the open door of the-staff dining room. Out in the hall, a few people were already sitting on the chairs and benches. An anxious young man holding his wife ’ s pocketbook, two women gossiping cheerfully, another woman talking urgently to a nurse ...
    “There are some doctors,” he said thoughtfully, “ who are better at ideas and theory than they are at practice. I wouldn ’ t have said Scoles was one of them, but I ’ ve been wrong many times in my seventy years. Medicine, as we practice it here in our Clinic, would not be what it is today if it were not for the researchers. Pasteur and Semmelweis, Fleming and Wachtman, Koch and Wasserman. But on the other hand, of course, research needs a goal. Your Dr. Koch did a lot for t.b. but the best expression of his theories has been afforded by a surgeon in your same St. Louis who first ventured to excise a diseased lung.” He shot a keen glance at Phil.
    “Research,” he went on, “takes a certain type of doctor. He needs patience, imagination—an ability to take disappointment and failure. For one Koch there must have been a thousand men who lived and worked and died without recognition.”
    “But they were doing the work they wanted to do!” Phil broke in.
    “Presumably, yes. And if the work alone was their goal, they fulfilled their possibilities. But so was I, working here in Berilo for forty-five years, though I ’ ve not contributed one thing to the science of medicine.”
    “You ’ ve built this clinic and hospital,” I cried.
    “Yes, Whitley, I have. But one might ask, what is one more hospital among thousands?”
    “The fellow to answer that question is the man who ’ s been able to bring his wife and his child here for care! You could even ask brother Philip here whether it was o.k. to have Berry and Chappell where it was on the night of December 18th?”
    “Oh, Whit...” groaned Phil.
    “Well, I think you should face a few facts like that instead of going off on a tangent—walking out on a job you know you can do because of a crazy notion your name is Koch!”
    “Now, now!” said the Old Man soothingly. “For all we know, his name is Koch, Larry. It ’ s my opinion that Scoles should leave here.”
    Phil was fully as startled as I was.
    Dr. Chappell, seemingly unaware of this, carefully put three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “Don ’ t coax him to stay with us, Whitley,” he said gravely. “If he doesn ’ t believe in the sort of work we do here—in the importance of our preventive medicine as well as the cures we effect — why, he ’ s no good for us, and the sooner he goes away, the better!”
    Phil resented that, I could see and he argued with the Old Man. “You don ’ t quite understand, sir ...”
    “Oh, yes! I understand completely.”
    “I ’ ve no wish—nor need—to belittle the surgery I ’ ve been doing here.”
    “You ’ re a capable surgeon, Scoles. And I ’ ve always thought you had a real talent for people, but if you ’ ve lost that feeling—and you must have lost it, to consider the research end more important—”
    “You can ’ t deny that a bit of research could be done in the matter of blood clots!”
    “I don ’ t deny it. I ’ m not arguing with you at all. I give you credit for knowing what it is you want to do. I was just pointing out to Whitley that our work here is too exacting, we ’ re entirely too busy, to appeal to a man ready to give up practicing medicine.
    “I understand your larger ideal