Laura did not relish having to see Dr. Goodwin, but his secretary had insisted on the telephone that there were things he felt it necessary to discuss. “There will be time enough for doctors later on,” Laura thought, “but of course he has me over a barrel because he knows so much that I don’t know.” Suddenly she remembered her father’s saying in his dry way, “Of course, when you see a doctor, you take your life into your hands.” But the awful thing was that one simply had to trust. Doubting Jim Goodwin would be like walking into quicksand. There had to be somebody to care for her crumbling body.
She was tense, when she sat down opposite Jim Goodwin and saw that he was looking at a sheet of X-rays.
“Well?” she asked, “what’s all this about?” She couldn’t keep the hostility out of her voice.
Jim coughed. “I want you to arrange for someone to be in the house. It’s not a good idea to wait till you are feeling too weak to cope.”
“Will that be soon? I feel remarkably well. Only, when I lie down, there is a sensation of stifling, but quite bearable so far. I hate the idea of a stranger hovering about.”
“The alternative is the hospital, Mrs. Spelman.”
Laura swallowed.
“I’m sorry to be brutal about this, but you must understand that I am your physician.”
“Meaning that I have given my life into your power—what is left of it.”
“Meaning,” he said gently, “that I have some experience about such things. I want to help you all I can.”
“Very well, I’ll try to find a housekeeper.”
“We may be able to help. Miss Albright has a list of possible people—of course they may all be employed at the moment. What you need is a practical nurse. Then, I would be glad if you would agree to a few days in the hospital. I would like to have a consultation with a surgeon, to be quite sure, frankly, that surgery is impossible, as I believe it to be from the X-rays.”
“No,” Laura said quietly. “I don’t want to be interrupted.”
“Interrupted?”
“Well,” she sat up straight, “I’m living just now. I’m learning in a queer way how to live, what is important, and what isn’t. I don’t want to be interrupted.”
“You’re just like your mother,” Jim Goodwin said with a smile.
“God forbid!”
“She was a great woman, a great personality.”
“Yes, she was.” For the first time Laura was close to tears. “I’m not a personality. I’m just trying to be human.”
“Mrs. Spelman, would you like me to have a talk with your son Brooks?”
Laura was startled. “Why Brooks?”
“Someone in the family has to be alerted.”
“Oh, not yet, please! I must have a little time. You’re making it all seem so near, so close—I’m not ready!” She was unashamedly weeping now. “All right, tell him, if you must.” She got up and blew her nose. “Tell him I want to die at home.” But then she sat down again and recovered herself. “On second thought, don’t tell Brooks. Aunt Minna knows. I went over there just after you told me what was what last week. You’ll be glad to hear that she too insisted I get someone to be with me in the house.”
“Very well—but there will be decisions—”
“I’ll tell Brooks myself when I feel the time has come when …” there was a pause. Then she smiled. “You see, I don’t want to abdicate until I have to. If you tell Brooks, it’s as though …”
“It would have been only to spare you.”
“I realize that. Thank you. But the real thing is this sense I have that I need a little time just to live, as long as I am able, not to be impinged on by other people’s feelings. Yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “that’s it. That’s the point—to be free of other people’s sense of doom, their fears, if you will.”
“Very well, I won’t insist. There’s one other thing, however. Your lungs are filling up, and the time will come fairly soon, I fear, when we shall have to drain out the fluid, at regular intervals, so you can breathe more easily.”
“Oh,” Laura said in a dull voice.
“I’ll be glad to come and do it for you—after all, I live nearby.”
“That’s awfully kind of you.”
For the second time Laura’s eye filled with tears.
“I’ll do everything I can, Mrs. Spelman.”
“There’s really no hope, is there?”
“There’s always hope,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “There are remissions, very mysterious because we really don’t know why. There are sometimes remissions of a month or more, although with a malignancy in the lung—in your case in both lungs—well, as I say, it would be foolish to be too sure of anything. I’ll tell you something. It’s surprising that you feel as well as you say that you do, so, you see, one never knows.”
Before Laura left the office Miss Albright called several possible practical nurses. One was willing to come in ten days. Laura had begged for that interval so passionately that Jim Goodwin had agreed to it. Mary O’Brien was to come and see her in Concord the next day, and they would talk things over.
“She’s a very sweet woman,” Miss Albright said, “a widow whose children are grown up. I’m sure you’ll like her.”
Laura sighed, then said, “I’ll do my best.” She hurried away then, compelled by some inner need so urgent that she hardly took time to button her coat.