“Young man, I don’t allow anybody to talk to me like that-least of all, a young whippersnapper just out of school …” he shouted.
By this time Kenneth’s patience was at an end. He seized the lapels of the other doctor’s coat in one hand and thrust his clenched fist under the nose of the now thoroughly alarmed Dr. Williams.
“Are you going to help—or aren’t you?” he demanded.
The situation was becoming too uncomfortable for the older man. He could stand Kenneth’s opposition but not the ridicule which would inevitably follow the spreading of the news that he had been beaten up and made ridiculous by Kenneth. He swallowed—a look of indecision passed over his face as he visibly wondered if Kenneth really dared hit him—followed by a look of fear as Kenneth drew back his fist as though to strike. Discretion seemed the better course to pursue he could wait until a later and more propitious date for his revenge—he agreed to help. A look of relief came over Jim Bradley’s face. A grin covered Bob’s as he saw his brother showing at last some signs of fighting spirit. Without further words Kenneth prepared to operate. …
The patient under the ether, Kenneth with sure, deft strokes made an incision and rapidly removed the appendix. Ten—twelve—fifteen minutes, and the work was done. He found Mrs. Bradley’s peritoneum badly inflamed, the appendix swollen and about to burst. A few hours’ delay and it would have been too late. …
The next morning Mrs. Bradley’s temperature had gone down to normal. Two weeks later she was sufficiently recovered to be removed to her home. Three weeks later she was on her feet again. Then Kenneth for the first time in his life had no fault to find with the vigour with which Mrs. Bradley could use her tongue. Glorying as only such a woman can in her temporary fame at escape from death by so narrow a margin, she went up and down the streets of the town telling how Kenneth had saved her life. With each telling of the story it took on more embellishments until eventually the simple operation ranked in importance in her mind with the first sewing-up of the human heart.
Kenneth found his practice growing. His days were filled with his work. One man viewed his growing practice with bitterness. It was Dr. Williams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in the episode in Kenneth’s office, which had become known all over Central City. Of a petty and vindictive nature, he bided his time until he could force atonement from the upstart who had so presumptuously insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel, the leading physician, the prominent coloured citizen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the hatred in the man’s heart, was supremely oblivious of it.
The morning after his operation on Mrs. Bradley, he added another to the list of those who did not wish him well. He had taken the bottle of alcohol containing Mrs. Bradley’s appendix to Dr. Bennett to show that worthy that he had been right, after all, in his diagnosis. He found him seated in his office, Dr. Bennett, with little apparent interest, glanced at the bottle.
“Humph!” he ejaculated, aiming at the cuspidor and letting fly a thin stream of tobacco juice which accurately met its mark. “You never can tell what’s wrong with a nigger anyhow. They ain’t got nacheral diseases like white folks. A hoss doctor can treat ’em better’n one that treats humans. I always said that a nigger’s more animal than human. …”
Kenneth had been eager to discuss the case of Mrs. Bradley with his fellow practitioner. He had not even been asked to sit down by Dr. Bennett. He realized for the first time that in spite of the superiority of his medical training to that of Dr. Bennett’s, the latter did not recognize him as a qualified physician, but only as a “nigger doctor.” Making some excuse, he left the house. Dr. Bennett turned back to the local paper he had been reading when Kenneth entered, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the plug in his hip pocket, grunted, and remarked: “A damned nigger telling me I don’t know medicine!”