2. A Villain Unmasked
Jack was lying face down on his cot when Ted and Mr. and Mrs. Craig came into his room. He turned his head with a grimace and looked up at them listlessly. Ted walked quickly over to him and sat down on the floor beside his bed.
“Just let your head down, Jack,” Ted said as Jack tried to look up at his mother and father. “Now tell me where you hurt.”
“All over,” Jack whispered.
Ted nodded. “Does it hurt to talk?”
Jack nodded.
Ted looked up at Mrs. Craig. “How long has he been feeling this way?”
Mrs. Craig said helplessly, “I don’t think it’s ever been this bad. He’s been sort of listless ever since he had a cold last month.”
Ted picked up Jack’s arm gently. He pressed against the elbow. Jack winced.
“What kind of cold was it?” Ted asked.
Mrs. Craig smoothed Jack’s forehead. “Well, he first had the sniffles, and then a sore throat and then a cough. Pretty much like all his colds. Then, a while later, he got another sore throat. He ran some fever.”
“Uh huh,” Ted said, nodding his head.
“Mother, my head aches,” Jack moaned.
Ted sighed and stood up. “Well, we can’t do anything here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to run him over to the clinic and let Dr. Barsch and Dr. Jenkins have a look at him. I came on a social call, and I don’t even have a stethoscope with me.”
Mrs. Craig straightened up. “Is it serious, Ted?” she asked.
Ted hesitated and then nodded. “It might be, Mrs. Craig,” he said. He picked up Jack’s wrist and looked at it. “There’s some swelling here. You see?”
Mr. and Mrs. Craig both nodded.
“Well, let’s get him to the hospital,” Ted said. “If we can wrap him up in blankets, we don’t need to bother him with clothes.”
Mrs. Craig picked up Jack’s blankets and wrapped them around the bewildered boy. Ted smiled at him and said, “Cheer up, son. These things happen to the best of us. We probably won’t keep you at the clinic very long.”
Mrs. Craig started for the door. “I’ll get my coat,” she said.
Mr. Craig caught her arm. “Let me take the boy over, Marge,” he said. “The girls will need you for their party.”
Mrs. Craig whirled around. “I can’t leave him now!” she cried. “My boy is sick, and I’m going to stay with him!”
Mr. Craig put his arm around his distraught wife. “Of course, dear,” he said. “And please don’t worry.”
“Get your car ready,” Mrs. Craig said to Ted. “Mr. Craig can carry him downstairs. We’ll be ready when you are.”
Mrs. Craig ran downstairs and took her coat from the hall closet. She looked into the living room where the party was in full swing. After a minute she caught Jean’s eye.
“Jean,” she said softly, as her daughter came to the doorway. “Jack is sick, and Ted and I are going over to the clinic with him. Don’t tell the others. I don’t want to break up their fun. But you’ll have to manage without me.”
Jean gasped. “Oh, Mother! I’ll go over with you!” she cried.
“No, dear,” Mrs. Craig said firmly. “You stay with your guests. I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”
Mr. Craig bundled Jack into the car, and Mrs. Craig and Ted started off with him toward town. Ted drove slowly, avoiding the bumps in the country road. Mrs. Craig supported Jack tenderly, trying to brace him against the swaying of the car. She noticed that Ted was scowling angrily, and she suddenly felt cold with fright. As if he could sense her terror, Ted reached over and patted her hand.
“I think everything’s going to be all right, Mrs. Craig,” he said reassuringly.
Dr. Barsch was at the desk when they came into the hospital. Ted exchanged a few words with him. The head doctor nodded gravely and came over to Mrs. Craig and the boy.
“So you’ve caught yourself a bug, Jack,” Dr. Barsch said. “Well, let’s get you upstairs, and Dr. Jenkins and I’ll go over you, and see just what is the matter. If Dr. Loring will take over at the desk, I’ll have an orderly take you right up.”
“May I go, too, Doctor?” Mrs. Craig asked.
Dr. Barsch hesitated, and then Mrs. Craig said, “No, I’ll wait here. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”
Dr. Barsch nodded. “It’s all right, Mrs. Craig. I know you’re worried. I’ll let you see Jack as soon as I can.”
After the orderly had taken Jack upstairs, Ted sat down behind the desk facing Mrs. Craig, who paced nervously back and forth.
“Please sit down, Mrs. Craig,” he begged her. “You’ll just wear yourself out.”
Mrs. Craig smiled and sat down in an easy chair across the desk from Ted. “I must seem like a foolish mother hen,” she said apologetically.
Ted looked at her in wonder. “I wish there were more mothers in the world like you. Some of the mothers I’ve seen wouldn’t be this anxious about their own children, let alone an adopted son.”
Mrs. Craig thought a moment. “I wonder why people don’t understand,” she said softly. “Jack is every bit as much my own child as if I had given birth to him.”
Ted nodded. “Of course I’ve always thought of him as your own, because he’s been with you as long as I’ve known you. But I’ve often wondered, Mrs. Craig, why you and Mr. Craig adopted another child. I mean, when your family is as large as it is.”
Mrs. Craig smiled softly as she remembered Jack when he first came to her house. “We didn’t exactly adopt Jack. He adopted us. He turned up one day looking for work. When he was just a bit of a thing. His mother was dead. And his father!” she made a face as she remembered the distasteful man. “He was frightful! He dragged that mite of a child along with him on box cars! He ... he rode the rails, I think the expression is. And then he found that Jack was too much of a nuisance, thank God! And he dumped him off at Elmhurst.”
“You mean he ran away from his own son?”
Mrs. Craig nodded. “And so Jack came to us. Then, just about two years ago, his father turned up again. I suppose that was fortunate, too. He wanted Jack back. You see, Jack and Tommy make quite a bit of money from their chickens. So he wanted Jack’s money. Mr. Craig made a settlement with him, and he gave us permission to adopt Jack. So, you see, Jack is our very own child. And that dreadful man has no claim to him, whatsoever!”
Ted smiled. “Jack was lucky,” he said quietly.
“And so were we. I can’t imagine how, but that boy, brought up in filth and horrible conditions, was as fine a boy as you can imagine. Right from the very start. Oh, Ted, if anything happened to Jack, we’d be lost!”
Ted smiled again. “Nothing will happen, Mrs. Craig,” he reassured her.
“What ... what do you think it is?” she asked timidly.
Ted hesitated. “I don’t know, of course,” he said.
“You mean, you don’t want to tell me?” she asked.
He drew a long breath. “Very well,” he said. “I’m afraid it may be rheumatic fever.”
Mrs. Craig drew a long sigh of relief. “Oh, good heavens. And here I’ve been really worried. I was so afraid of polio. I know it isn’t the right season for polio, but you don’t know how a mother worries about such things!”
Ted ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t think you understand, Mrs. Craig. Do you know what rheumatic fever is?”
Mrs. Craig shook her head. “A sort of rheumatism, isn’t it? That would explain the aching and the tiredness and swelling of the joints.”
Ted sighed. “It’s a type of rheumatism, all right. But compared to rheumatic fever, polio is a pink tea party.”
Mrs. Craig gasped. “Oh, no!” she cried.
Ted drummed his fingers against the desk. “I don’t mean to under-rate the seriousness of polio. But almost always polio can be diagnosed ... at least the mother knows the child is really sick. But this mean villain of a germ which Jack may have is one of the slickest criminals of the medical world. Rheumatic fever doesn’t cripple outwardly ... doesn’t disfigure a person the way polio does. But it can cripple and kill.”
Mrs. Craig caught Ted’s hand. “Oh, Ted!” she cried.
Ted covered her hand with his. “Now, it’s not going to kill Jack. I can promise you that.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “But you have no idea how many youngsters contract the disease and no one ever knows it.”
“How does it work, Ted?” she asked.
“It usually starts in the form of a strep throat. You remember you told me Jack had not one but two sore throats with his cold? Probably he caught the infection while his resistance was low from his cold. Then, after a while, the throat heals and the patient is presumably well. Only he doesn’t really feel good. He hasn’t much appetite. He’s listless. He aches in the joints. He isn’t exactly sick, but he isn’t well, either. Lots of people ignore these symptoms. So the strep then attacks the heart. If the patient is lucky, after that, he manages to fight off the infection, or arrest it, and survives with a badly damaged heart.”
Mrs. Craig covered her mouth with her hand. “And if the patient isn’t lucky?” she asked.
Ted shook his head. “Let’s not talk about it any more,” he said.
“You mean, he dies?”
Ted nodded. “But you must remember this. Jack doesn’t fit either case. Thanks to you, we’ve caught the villain. Jack’s going to have help in his fight.”
Dr. Jenkins came down into the lobby and nodded to them. “I think we’ve found the root of the trouble,” he said calmly.
Mrs. Craig shook her head as if to fight off a bad dream. “Dr. Jenkins,” she said slowly, “your specialty is heart trouble, isn’t it?”
Dr. Jenkins smiled. “Of course I’m just past my internship, Mrs. Craig. Someday I hope to be a heart specialist, though. But for right now, I’d like to call in a specialist from Boston. We want to be very sure to do exactly the right things.”
Ted looked at the other doctor. “I was right, Fred?” he asked.
Dr. Jenkins nodded. “And if Mrs. Craig wants to see Jack now....”
“Oh, please!” Mrs. Craig cried. “Ted, will you call Mr. Craig and tell him? But please don’t let him tell the girls till the party is over.”
Jack was lying flat on his back in a small single room near the pediatric ward. He managed a grin as Mrs. Craig came into the room.
“Jeepers, you should see all the things they did to me,” he said as gaily as he could. “Mother, it sorta makes a guy feel important with a couple of doctors fussing over him.”
Mrs. Craig knelt beside his bed. “All right, baby, everything is going to be fine.”
Jack grimaced. “I’m not a baby,” he protested weakly. “They gave me some aspirin and stuff. My head doesn’t ache so much. Hey, will you ask Tommy if he ever had a car—cardio—you know what I mean?”
“A cardiograph? I’m sure Tommy never had one. You’ll be able to tell him all about it in a few days,” Mrs. Craig smiled.
“They gave me a pill. I feel sorta dopey. But don’t hang around all night or anything, because I’m gonna be okay.”
Mrs. Craig caressed his forehead gently. “Of course you are, Jack.”
Jack dozed off. But as he relaxed, a spasm of pain hit him, and he cried, “Mother!” Too near to sleep to act like a man any longer, he whimpered like a young child. Mrs. Craig stroked his black hair tenderly.
Dr. Barsch appeared in the doorway. “I think he’s asleep, Mrs. Craig. If you want to stay here tonight, there is a room next to this one....”
“Is it all right if I stay right with him?” she asked. “I’m not very sleepy.”
Dr. Barsch came in and sat down beside the bed. “You’re a wonderful woman, Mrs. Craig,” he said softly. “This boy is so lucky. And what a boy he is! The exam we gave him wasn’t very pleasant for him. He’s in a lot of pain. But he joked and grinned and ...” he turned his head away a little. “I don’t know. Sometimes a youngster like this can make one proud to be part of the human race!”