fifteen minutes later, the physician made a pair of injections into the girl's upper arm. then he swished oxygen into her face until she recovered consciousness.
"wonderful stuff, this new anesthetic," he told her placidly. "it works fast, wears off just as fast, doesn't leave the patient retching. now, you can sit up slowly. if you don't try anything strenuous for the next day or two, you'll never know that you've had an operation."
miss tillett's eyes widened. "operation! i came here for a diagnosis. i didn't authorize—"
"i'm sorry. i operated without your consent. but i had a good reason. it wasn't even a benign tumor that you had. it was only a cyst. if i had merely diagnosed, and told you the truth, you would have kept clinging to the hope that it might be a malign tumor. you wouldn't have let me take it out. it would have grown big enough to disfigure you, not big enough to cause you any physical damage. you would have gone through the years with a new trouble, that of deformity, and you might have been mentally warped in the delusion that you had a fatal disease. you're as sound as a rock."
something inside the girl seemed to turn into liquid. she sat with slumped shoulders, arms dangling limply at her side, and head sunk so far that her chin rested against her chest.
after a moment, she rose and walked slowly into the dressing cubicle. when she emerged, she ignored the doctor, unlocked the door with her own hands, and walked into the reception room, sobbing softly.
dr. needzak cleaned up rapidly, and hustled into his main office to see his next patient. no one was there. he grumbled to himself and opened the door into the reception room. blinking, he saw that it was empty. it had been filling rapidly, not a half-hour earlier.
the doctor had heard no noises indicating a commotion on the street outside; and that was the only reason he could think of for the sudden disappearance of his patients. to make sure, he strode through the reception room, walked briskly down the short hall, and stuck his head through the door leading into the street. everything appeared normal in the bustling business district, until a large, black sedan ground to a stop at the curb in a no-parking zone. the receptionist climbed from the vehicle, two men behind her.
"miss waters!" dr. needzak exploded, when she reached the building's entrance. "what do you mean by leaving without my permission? all my patients have left. they must have thought that office hours were over."
the receptionist gave him one baleful look, and shoved past him into the building. and dr. needzak suddenly recognized the two men.
"bill carson! and pop manville! what brings you big doctors down here to see a small-time pill-dealer like me?"
"let's go into your office," pop said, softly. he was old, tall and gaunt with a perpetual look of worry. dr. carson, younger and bustling, evaded dr. needzak's eyes.
miss waters was shoveling personal belongings from her desk into a giant handbag, when they reached the reception room. dr. needzak felt her eyes upon him, as the other two physicians kept him moving by the sheer impetus of their bodies into his consultation room.
"where is it, walt?" dr. manville asked, looking gloomily around the consultation room.
"where's what, pop? the drinks? i keep them—"
"the door to your operating room," dr. carson interrupted, hurriedly. "let's not drag this thing out. it's going to be painful enough, among old friends. your private office has been wired for sight and sound for the past three weeks. you shouldn't have tried to get away with that kind of practice in a big city."
dr. needzak felt the blood draining from his face. he reached for a drawer. dr. manville grabbed his arm with a tight, claw-like grasp, before it could touch the handle.
"it's all right, pop," he said. "nothing but gin in there. i'm not the violent type."
dr. carson pulled open the drawer toward which he had reached. he pulled out the tall bottle, slipped off the patent top, and sniffled. handing it to dr. needzak, he said:
"okay. you need some. then save the rest for us. we'll feel like it, too, when we're done."
dr. needzak coughed after three large swallows. he looked at the other two doctors. "who ratted?"
dr. carson nodded toward the reception room. dr. needzak instinctively clenched his fists. he half-rose from his chair, then sank back slowly. "i thought you guys were my friends," he said.
"we are, walt," dr. manville said thoughtfully. "but this is business. when someone charges violation of medical ethics, we're the investigation committee. it looks like a simple investigation this time, with those tapes on file."
"what does she have against you, anyway?" dr. carson asked. "usually a receptionist will go through hell to cover up little flubs for her boss. were you mixed up with her in a personal way?"
"mixed up with her?" dr. needzak laughed mirthlessly. "she's worked for me fifteen years. i've never made a pass at her."
dr. manville nodded sadly. "that was your mistake, walt. frustration. disappointment. worse than jealousy. now, why not tell us everything?"
"there's nothing to tell. those tapes give a false impression, sometimes. i just take difficult cases back there where i'm sure there won't be any disturbance."
"no use," dr. carson interrupted. "things will be harder for you, if we lose patience with you. we know you've been curing illness against the patient's wishes, time after time. we just saw you take out a tumor. the poor kid will probably drag through another hundred years before she develops anything else serious. you prescribed anticoagulants to a man with an obvious blood clot. you even talked a couple with weak lungs into moving to denver."
"all right, it was a tumor," dr. needzak admitted. "it was malign and it would have killed her in two or three years. but she's too young to make a decision for herself. five years from now, she may have a different outlook on her personal problems. i have ethics, and i can't help it if they don't correspond in some details with the association's ethics."
"you were given your medical license under an oath to respect the ethics of the profession," dr. manville said slowly, emphatically. "the license did not give you the right to practice under ethics of your own invention."
"ethics!" dr. needzak looked as if he wanted to spit. "ethics is just a word. there was a time when physicians spent their time curing diseases and preventing them. they called that ethics. now that there aren't enough illnesses left to give us work, now that people live long past the time when they want to go on living, now that we make our money helping people commit suicide the legal way, we call that ethics."
"you can't annihilate a concept simply by thinking it's only a word," dr. manville said. "there was a time when physicians used leeches for almost every patient. they fitted that nasty habit into their ethics. you wouldn't want to introduce leeches into this century, would you? but you should, if you're so consistently opposed to anything that sounds like changes in ethics."
"but i've done my part to get rid of human miseries," dr. needzak said, nodding toward a filing cabinet. "i can show you the data on hundreds of my patients. old folks, who just got tired of living; i helped them die legally. even younger people, who had a genuine reason for being tired of life. i couldn't have my fine home or pay rent in this building, if i went around curing every patient. there's no money in that."
"you wouldn't keep a filing cabinet for the times you disobeyed the medical code," dr. carson broke in. "but we have some of those cases on tape. you didn't refuse to handle the cases. you went ahead and played god, going directly against the direct will of your patients. did you follow up all of the patients who aren't in your file cabinets? we traced the later records of some of them. several suicided right out in the open. their families haven't gotten back on their feet from the disgrace yet."
dr. needzak took two more deep swallows from the bottle. he looked glumly at the low level of the liquid through its dark side, saying:
"you fellows are enjoying this conversation more than old friends should enjoy the job of taking action against a fellow-doctor. and i'll tell you why you aren't too unhappy about it. you're jealous of me. you're jealous of the fact that i've been following a physician's natural instincts and healing people. you're angry with me for doing the things that you'd really love to do yourselves, if you had the guts. you aren't worried about that girl; you're peeved because you'd give your shirts for a chance to take out a genuine tumor yourself."
"admitted," dr. carson said cheerfully. "i haven't seen a live tumor in three or four years. they're scarce. but we can't sit here chatting. we don't want to end up arguing."
dr. needzak rose. "what do i do, then?"
"the best action would be to come along with us to the association headquarters," dr. manville advised, avoiding dr. needzak's eyes. "in a half-hour or so, you can sign enough statements to avoid weeks of hearings. otherwise, we'll be forced to bother lots of other physicians, hunt up your old patients, endure newspaper publicity, and have a general mess."
"after that, i start pounding the pavements, hunting a job." dr. needzak flexed his long, lean fingers. "is it hard to learn how to operate ditch diggers?"
dr. carson stood up and slapped him on the back. "it isn't that bad. you can find a place in any pharmacy in the country, if we get through this disbarment without publicity. you'll never be rich, handing out irritants and hyper-stimulants, but—"
dr. needzak was already striding toward the street. the other two doctors trailed after him, waiting while he locked up carefully. they glanced at one another significantly, noting that he had unconsciously brought along his little black bag. dr. needzak explained as they began the two-block walk to association headquarters:
"the kids are married and away from home. i suppose that i can get enough income from sub-leasing the office to keep the wife and me eating until i find—"
a grating crash broke into his sentence. the three doctors whirled simultaneously. thin wails drifted through the constant rumble of traffic, from somewhere around a corner. people erupted from buildings, running toward the source of the noise. the doctors instinctively trotted after them.
