“She is wandering,” he said. I hardly knew to whom he spoke, but felt the necessity of protest.
“I’m not wandering. Is Ella there?”
“Of course I am. Is there anything you want?” She came over to me.
“I needn’t write any more, need I? I’m so tired.” Ella looked at him as if for instructions, or guidance, and he answered soothingly, as one speaks to a child or an invalid:
“No, no, certainly not. You need not write until you feel inclined. She has been dreaming,” he explained.
It did not seem worth while to contradict him again. I was not wide-awake yet, but swayed on the borderland between dreams and reality. Three people were in the dusk of the well-known room. They disentangled themselves gradually; Nurse Benham, Dr. Kennedy, Ella in the easy-chair, Margaret’s easy-chair. It was evening and I heard Dr. Kennedy say that I was better, stronger, that he did not think it necessary to give me a morphia injection.
“Or hyoscine.”
I am sure I said that, although no one answered me, and it was as if the words had dissolved in the twilight of the room. Incidentally I may say I never had an injection of morphia since that evening. I knew how easy it was to make a mistake with drugs. So many vials look alike in that small valise doctors carry. I was either cunning or clever that night in rejecting it. Afterwards it was only necessary to be courageous.
I found it difficult in those first few twilight days of recovering consciousness to separate this Dr. Kennedy who came in and out of my bedroom from that other Dr. Kennedy, little more than a boy, who had wept by the woman he released, the authoress whose story I had just written. And my feelings towards him fluctuated considerably. My convalescence was very slow and difficult, and I often thought of the solution Margaret Capel had found, sometimes enviously, at others with a shuddering fear. At these times I could not bear that Dr. Kennedy should touch me, his hand on my pulse gave me an inward shiver. At others I looked upon him with the deepest interest, wondering if he would do as much for me as he had done for her, if his kindness had this meaning. For he was kind to me, very kind, and at the beck and call of my household by night and day. Ella sent for him if my temperature registered half a point higher or lower than she anticipated, any symptom or change of symptom was sufficient to send him a peremptory message, that he never disregarded. Ella, I could tell, still suspected us of being in love with each other, and she dressed me up for his visits. Lacy underwear, soft chiffony tea-gowns, silken hose and satin or velvet shoes diverted my weakness into happier channel and kept her in her right milieu.
Then, not all at once, but gradually and almost incredibly the whole circumstances changed. Dr. Kennedy came one day full of excitement to tell us that a new treatment had been found for my illness. Five hundred cases had been treated, of which over four hundred had been cured, the rest ameliorated. Of course we were sceptical. Other consultants were called in and, not having suggested the treatment, damned it wholeheartedly. One or two grudgingly admitted a certain therapeutic value in selected cases, but were sure that mine was not one of them! The medical world is as difficult to persuade to adventure as an old maid in a provincial town. My own tame general practitioner, whom I had previously credited with some slight intelligence, was moved to write to Dr. Kennedy urging him vehemently to forbear. He was fortunate enough to give his reasons, and for me at least they proved conclusive!