Dr. Burrell caught the nurse’s eye. The latter gave a gulpy sort of smile and turned away. With a grunt Schriftman bent over the thin frame. His fingers, which at times seemed endowed with five senses, played up and down her spine, to the right, to the left, then back again up and down. Though at times he stopped to probe deep, he did not hurt her much. It seemed to her that some of the strength of his broad back ran out of his finger tips and for a moment checked the biting ache which had gnawed at her for a twelvemonth. Once, at a certain spot, he made her cringe, but she understood that this was not done intentionally.
Schriftman, his brow knitted, called for Burrell’s stethoscope. He placed it over Gretzel’s wobbly heart and listened. One of his big hands lay on the coverlet. Suddenly he felt his thumb in the clutch of a warm, tight grip. He found it difficult to listen after this, for the sturdy pound of his own heart became curiously intermingled with this other jerky beat. Extricating his thumb, he glared at Burrell.
“Transfer this patient to a private ward,” he ordered.
In the luxurious seclusion of a room to herself, with everything to eat that her fickle palate craved, with bright-colored German picture books to look at, with a nurse whose sole duty it was to attend to her alone, Gretzel felt like an invalid princess. But all these things were as nothing compared with the joy of the frequent visits of the big doctor himself. Had it not been for him Gretzel would have looked with suspicion on the whole arrangement; she would have lain awake all night worrying about what might grow out of this. She had learned that every sweet was only a mask of something bitter—like her pills. Whenever anyone had been especially nice to her at home, it was sure to be followed by something terrible. When her father died, her mother had brought her a doll, and when her mother died the landlady had brought her an apple.
But this was different. When she felt Schriftman’s hand close over hers she knew that now no more harm could come to her. He was big enough to take quick revenge on anyone who should hurt her. The consequent relaxation of her tense nerves brought even some surcease of pain, so that at night she frequently slept two or three hours at a time. But the best thing about these naps was the excitement of waking up and finding this shaggy-bearded Santa Claus by the side of her bed. It might be eleven at night or two in the morning or four in the morning that he came, but always he came between the dusk and the dawn. Always his greeting was the same:
“How it goes, kleine mädchen?”
Always she answered:
“I’m partickly comfy, Mister Santy.”
Then he would seat himself by the bed, she would take a tight grip on his thumb, and they were off in a jiffy to some glorious German fairyland.
The wonder was where the Herr Doctor found these stories. They certainly were not in any of his scientific treatises and he had read nothing else for forty years.