The Doctor Takes a Wife (15 page)

“Agggh
...
”

She looked at Phil with wide and limpid gray eyes. “That was five years ago, Philip. And in that time I
’
ve come to think that Carl was right. Men don
’
t want a woman
’
s brain at all, not in a marrying way. And they want such beauty as she has for one reason only—a very selfish reason.”

“Oh, my,” groaned Phil. “You poor girl
...”

She misunderstood him. “Carl was sorry for me, too. He said he was. And I can
’
t blame him—when I consider the girl I was then, easy, eager to be fooled
...”

The cool, impersonal attitude with which she had once encased herself seemed to have evaporated, and she was talking to him much as any pretty girl talks to a sympathetic man. A very sympathetic one. Her story was trite, of course, but—

“I wouldn
’
t consider that girl at all, if I were you,” he advised. “Or that man. The thing is well over. You
’
re lucky that you didn
’
t get tied down to him.”

Her eyes studied his face. “Tied?”

“Yes. This way, the thing
’
s over. You
’
ll find some decent man—”

She shook her head from side to side, her pale hair clinging to the gray frieze of the chair cushion. “Not for me, thank you. No more men. Ever.”

“Oh, that
’
s silly! You
’
ll see. When the right man comes around, you
’
ll marry him, and—”

“Naturally,” she said coldly, “the word
marriage
is not even in my vocabulary.”

He looked at her angrily, and then just curiously. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“And what is your plan of life, if—”

She shrugged. “I
’
ve set myself one plan—to prove Carl wrong. To show him that he had no cause to pity me.” She seemed to have regained full control of herself now. “I
’
m going to prove to anyone who
’
s interested that a brain can be enough for a woman.”

“It can be, I suppose. But has it been, up to now?”

“I
’
ve done rather well—”

“I mean, enough for
you
.”

Her firm chin lifted. “Yes! And it will be enough!”

“Do you like the prospect of that future?” His brown eyes were dancing.

“Of course. I like my work—”

“But life has to have a purpose, Page. Does yours? As a woman, I mean.”

“I
’
ve told you the purpose. To prove—”

“But you
’
re a pretty woman! You dress like one who knows she
’
s pretty.”

“I do that for my Own pride. And to make my point stronger.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “A brain
has
to be enough for a goon. But you still are presenting a gruesome aspect of womanhood. A brain without a body. Like Carrel
’
s heart. You might as well be one of those convoluted specimens over in the anatomy lab. A brain, labeled Page
Arning
, pickled at the particular stage when your heelish boy friend walked out on you, preserved in a lab jar, not able to learn anything, not even the lesson to be had from that experience. And, I ask you, what good is such a brain? What good is such a woman?”

He was, suddenly, very angry at this stupid young female. She could be appealingly girlish, could act as warmly as her prettiness promised—this evening had shown that!—but she would also deliberately waste her youth trying to prove that a brain
—
Oh, forgod
’
ssake! He slammed to his feet and paced around the room.

“I don
’
t understand you, Page! You pride yourself on being clever! Yes, you do!
And
clever as a biologists Yet, you set yourself to prove that a woman can live without biological love—and some female creatures do so live. Girls before puberty—women undergoing the natural processes of aging and decay
—
Natural, I said! Not induced aging. But, Page, look at yourself! Your hair is soft and silky—but it clings to no man
’
s fingers. Your full pink lips mean nothing because they talk only of viruses and nuclei
.
Y
o
ur arms never hold a man close to your heart, so they only
seem
to be soft and white and round. Your body, so far as you respect its living purpose, might as well lie dark and leathery over in an anatomy vat!
You
’
ve had a very short life in a biological sense, Dr.
Arning
!

“And you
’
re useless this way. No good to anyone, not even to yourself! The book of life has a lot of pages. You
’
ve set yourself to memorize only one. What difference does it make if that page is filled with difficult scientific data? It
’
s still only one page, and the life you lead is as small a part of living as one of your mosquitoes is of the whole universe.

“You
’
re alive—but you don
’
t live—so you
’
re a useless creature, Page
Arning
. You did live—for twenty-three years—and then you stopped living. And when a body stops being alive, it decays. You know that! One may embalm it, one may mummify it—and paint its cheeks, and wrap its limbs in bright silk—but it still is a dead body. And so far as I
’
m concerned—or any of those normal men you profess to despise—you
’
re no warmer and no more desirable! You—”

Softly, the hall door closed behind his guest. She
’
d walked out on him. Phil went over, picked up the medical book and carefully set it between the book ends on his desk.

He shouldn
’
t have been so harsh, and specific—but he
’
d had his own shock. This evening—when he
’
d rescued her from the lab and found that she could be as frightened and as clinging as any girl—he
’
d thought
—
Well, he
’
d been wrong.

She might not be quite as dead as he
’
d described her, but certainly she was a badly crippled young woman. Of course, it was too bad that her Carl had been such a heel
—
but she must have been something of a fool herself, without common sense or womanly instinct attached to her Ph.D. brain. And the really pitiful aspect of her story
—
which, after all, was the story of hundreds of girls, just as hundreds of men put their trust in the wrong women!
—
the really pitiful aspect was the girl it had revealed.

She thought she was showing that Carl chap—but actually, she wasn
’
t showing
him
a thing he didn
’
t know! He knew she was a
brain,
and had walked out on her as such.

And Page—had continued to be a
brain.
Because there was no more to her? Ever? Past, present and future?

Certainly a woman of any character-strength would have survived the experience, would have learned the lesson within it, and gone on to evaluate each man separately and deal with him according to his worth. She would have grown
...

Telling himself that he wanted no part of a Zombie, he was barely pleasant to Page when he met her in the hotel lobby or on the many walks of the big medical center.

He had made other friends and now devoted his time and interest to them; he felt, with some chagrin, that Page was not aware of his withdrawal from her company; then he told himself sternly that her aloof indifference only confirmed the wisdom of his chosen behavior.

One Sunday in September he drove out to Florissant to call on Dr. Lowry and his charming wife. Dr. McNaire, the day before, had said that Old Doc wondered what had become of Phil
...

“I see him frequently,” said Phil in surprise.

“That isn
’
t enough for the old autocrat; he expects homage, you know.”

Phil had chuckled and said he would go out. So he did go, and to his delight found no other guests. Old Doc took him to the rose garden; tall, cool drinks were served, and, with Mrs. Lowry busy over an album and a heap of snapshots, the two doctors enjoyed an hour of shop-talk.

Phil told, amusingly, of his experiences with the TV cameras. “I
’
m trying my best to call it research
...”
His eyebrow lifted.

“
It is. Not what you came here to do, but then—”

“Yes,” said Phil, “that picture involved a rank of microscopes, test tubes and retorts glittering about me—”

Old Doc snorted. “I saw a couple of your broadcasts, or whatever they
’
re called. You
’
ve a nice, clean hand—”

“Thank you,” sir. My father rather dinned into me the fact that the patient on the table was a suffering bundle of nerves, that economy of tissue and nerve trauma was of prime importance.”

Old Doc sat up straight in his chair and shook a fist at his startled wife. “You see that!” he demanded. “You hear that? I told you the boy was an operating-surgeon—not a research man. Now you listen to me, Phil Scoles! You go back to your hospital and get to work!”

“Sam
...”
murmured Mrs. Lowry.

‘
They
’
re two different breeds,” fumed the volcano in crisp seersucker. “Researchers think of humanity as a whole; practicing surgeons
’
whole interest is for the patient on the table, or in the chair beside his desk! This boy
’
s wasting his God-given talent and heart in a dream of another man
’
s work! That
’
s why I say
...”

“I
’
m doing a certain amount of surgical work here, Dr. Lowry,” Phil reminded him.

“I know you are. A certain amount. Things the o.b. and gc. staff parcel out to you. Don
’
t have any chance for diagnosis and treatment of your own, do you?”

“The o.b. director has been assigning cases to me for care, and follow-up. A few. I have one Rh. And I
’
ve been lecturing to Seniors on insemination.”

“Process?”

“The whole thing. Legal, moral hazards. I call my lectures
‘
Rules and Repercussions.
’
” His brown eyes were shining, and Mrs. Lowry smiled appreciatively.

Old Doc snorted. “You
’
d have all the women deciding you were the father
...”

“Oh, yes. The husbands, too. I
’
ve pointed out that hazard to the class.”

“Do you favor the practice, Dr. Scoles?” asked Mrs. Lowry. At his quick glance, she smiled in apology and said, “Philip.”

“I
’
m for it, and against it, both,” he said in his deep, attractive drawl. “That is, I certainly do not believe that it should be available to all who ask for it. I think it primely important that the doctor know the donor
and
the recipient well. Physically, mentally, morally
...
”

“Is it frequently practiced?”

“Oh, no. I
’
ve done only one—none here in the Group, because I
’
ve not been here long enough to know any such patients. I
’
d say a specialist might do as many as fifty over a period of ten years. A busy, popular specialist.”

“Are they always successful?”

Phil
’
s smooth head shook slowly from side to side. “Only a little better than fifty per cent.”

Dr. Lowry shot a fierce blue look at his wife. “You see, my dear? He knows his subject.”

“A teacher should, Sam.”

Old Doc subsided, muttering, into the depths of his cane chair.

Mrs. Lowry continued to probe Phil on the-subject, her questions intelligent, his replies becoming ever more detailed. No, the patient and donor, he felt, must have no knowledge of each other. And he thought the suggestion of insemination should
never
come first from the doctor! (I
’
ve heard Phil talk on the subject so often that I can easily reconstruct his half of that conversation.) He felt that both husband and wife should come to the agreement without persuasion, or ideally, suggestion. Certainly there should be no urging or forcing.