Reasoning in this manner, if it can be said to be reasoning, I took my way to the hospital as fast as possible. I did not happen to find a cab; and I gave myself the unusual experience of hailing a horse-car. The car did not stop for my signal, and I flung myself aboard as best I might; for a man so recently shaken up, with creditable ease, I thought.
Trusting to this circumstance, when we reached the hospital I leaped from the car, which was going at full speed; it was not till I was well up the avenue that I recalled having forgotten to offer my fare, which the conductor had forgotten to demand.
"My head is not straight yet," I said. The little incident annoyed me.
In the hospital I found, as I expected, a professional cyclone raging. The staff were all there except myself, and so hotly engaged in discussion that my arrival was treated with indifference. This was undoubtedly good for me, but it was not, therefore, agreeable to me; and I entered at once with some emphasis upon the dispute in hand.
"You are entirely wrong," I began, turning upon my opponents. "This institution had seven hundred more applicants than it could accommodate last year. We are not chartered to turn away suffering. We exist to relieve it. It is our business to find the means to do so, as much as it is to find the true remedy for the individual case. It is"—
"It is an act of financial folly," interrupted my most systematic professional enemy, a certain Dr. Gazell. He had a bland voice which irritated me like sugar sauce put upon horse-radish. "It cannot be done without mortgaging ourselves up to our ears—or our eaves. I maintain that the hospital can better bear to turn off patients than to turn on debt."
"And I maintain," I cried, tempestuously, "that this hospital cannot bear to do either! If the gentlemen gathered here to-night—the members of this staff, representing, as they do, the wealthiest and most influential clientèles in the city—if we cannot among us pledge from our patients the sum needed to put this thing through, I say it is a poor show for ourselves. I, for one, am ready to raise fifteen thousand dollars within three months. If the rest of you will do your share in proportion"—
"Dr. Thorne has always been a little too personal, in this matter," said Gazell, reddening; he did not look at me, for embarrassment, but addressed the chairman of the meeting with a vague air of being in earnest, if any one could be got to believe it.
"No doubt about that," said one of the staff in an undertone. "Thorne is"—I thought I caught the added words, "unreasonable fellow," but I would not give myself the appearance of having done so.
"But we can't afford to quarrel with him altogether," suggested Chirugeon, still in a tone not meant for me to overhear. And with this they went at it again, till the discussion reached such warmth, and the motion to leave the subject with the trustees, such favour, that, in disgust, I seized my hat and strode out of the room.