The anesthetist answered, “It’s been seventy minutes.”

Lucy returned the rasp. “All right,” she said; “now we can begin to sew up.” With the end in sight she found herself thinking gratefully of the coffee which would be waiting in the surgeons’ room down the hall.

Mike Seddons had, quite literally, sweated out the period while Vivian was undergoing surgery. With the Loburtons—Vivian’s parents had remained in Burlington and planned to stay on for the time being—he had gone to one of the small waiting rooms reserved for relatives of surgical patients. Before that, in the early morning and with the hospital only just beginning to come awake, he had met them at the main doorway and taken them to visit Vivian in her hospital room. But there had seemed little to say, and Vivian, already drowsy from sedation, appeared hardly aware that they were with her. Then, a few minutes after they had come, she was wheeled away to the surgical floor.

Now, in the uneasy backwater of the sparsely furnished room with its uncomfortable leatherette chairs and varnished tables, the three of them had run out of even the most perfunctory conversation. Henry Loburton, tall and heavily built, his thinning hair iron gray, his face creased and weathered from years spent in the open air, stood by a window, looking down at the street below. Mike Seddons could predict that in a moment or two Vivian’s father would turn from the window, go back to one of the leatherette chairs, then after a while get up and cross to the window again. It was a sequence the older man had been following for more than an hour, a slow-fire nervousness that caused Seddons to wish desperately that he would vary it a little—either move more quickly or, once in a while, change the interval of time between the two positions.

In contrast, Vivian’s mother had remained still—almost, it seemed, unmoving since they had come here. She had chosen a straight-backed chair in preference to some of the others which appeared more comfortable and held herself upright in a way that suggested a habit of conscious self-discipline. As she had for some time now, Angela Loburton was looking directly ahead, her eyes, it seemed, on infinity, her hands crossed delicately in her lap. Today her color was paler than usual, but the high cheekbones, which accented a natural dignity and poise, were as noticeable as ever. At one and the same time she seemed a woman fragile but indestructible.

Since their first meeting a few days before Mike Seddons had wondered several times about Mrs. Loburton. Her emotion, her fears about Vivian, had been much less transparent than those of her husband; and yet, as the days went by, Seddons sensed that they were as deep, perhaps deeper. He also suspected that, despite the apparent masculinity of Vivian’s father, her mother possessed by far the stronger character of the two and that she was the rock on which, over the years of their marriage, her husband had come to depend.

Seddons found himself wondering how it would be between himself and Vivian in the time ahead. Which of them would prove, in the end, more resolute and more enduring? He knew that no two people were ever quite equal, either in strength of character or in leadership, or even in the capacity to love. He knew, too, that difference in sex had little to do with it, that women were often stouter than men in mind and heart, and that apparent masculinity was sometimes a hollow pose designed to camouflage internal weakness.

Was Vivian stronger than himself, her character finer, her courage higher? The question had come to him last night and had remained with him since. He had gone to see her, knowing the decision had been made to amputate and aware that Vivian knew it too. He had found her, not in tears, but smiling. “Come in, Mike darling,” she had said, “and please don’t look so glum. Dr. Grainger’s told me, and I’ve done my crying, and it’s over now—or at least it will be in the morning.”

At the words he had felt his love for her deepen, and he had held her and kissed her passionately. Afterward she had twisted his hair affectionately and, holding his head back, had looked directly into his eyes.

“I’m going to have just one leg, Mike,” she had said, “for all the rest of my life. I won’t be the girl you met—not as you met me, and not as you know me now. If you want out, I’ll understand.”

He had answered emphatically, “Don’t talk like that!”

“Why?” she had said. “Are you afraid to talk about it?”

“No!” It was a loud, firm protest, but even as he made it he had known it to be a lie. He was afraid, just as he sensed that Vivian was not—not now, not any more.

It was a reflection of Vivian, he realized, that he could see now in her mother—or, he supposed, the other way around. The sense of strength was there, unmistakable, in both. Could he match it with his own? For the first time a feeling of uneasy doubt assailed him.

Mr. Loburton had broken his routine. He had stopped halfway between the window and the chair. “Michael,” he said, “it’s been an hour and a half. Can they be very much longer?”

Seddons found Vivian’s mother looking at him too. He shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Dr. Grainger said she’d come here . . . immediately after.” He paused, then added, “We should all know something—very soon.”

Nineteen

Reaching into the incubator through the two porthole-like apertures in its side, Dr. Dornberger carefully examined the Alexander baby. Three and a half days had gone by since birth, a fact which, of itself, might normally be taken as a hopeful sign. But there were other symptoms, increasingly apparent, which Dornberger knew must be looked on with disquiet.

He took his time about completing the examination, then stood back thoughtfully, weighing the available evidence in his mind, filtering it through his long years of experience and the countless other cases now behind him. At the end his reasoning confirmed what instinct had already told him; the prognosis was extremely poor. “You know,” he said, “I thought for a while he was going to make it.”

The young nurse in charge of the premature nursery—the same nurse whom John Alexander had seen a few days before—had been looking at Dornberger expectantly. She said, “His breathing was quite steady until an hour ago, then it became weak. That was when I called you.”

A student nurse around the other side of the incubator was following the conversation closely, her eyes above her gauze mask darting from Dornberger to the charge nurse and back again.

“No, he’s not breathing well,” Dornberger said slowly. He went on, thinking out loud, trying to be sure there was nothing he had missed, “There’s more jaundice than there should be, and the feet seem swollen. Tell me again—what was the blood count?”

The charge nurse consulted her clip board. “R.B.C. four point nine million. Seven nucleated red cells per hundred white.”

There was another pause, the two nurses watching while Dornberger digested the information. He was thinking: There’s altogether too much anemia, though of course it might be an exaggerated normal-type reaction. Aloud he said, “You know, if it weren’t for that sensitivity report I’d suspect this child had erythroblastosis.”

The charge nurse looked surprised. She said, “But surely, Doctor,” then checked herself.

“I know—it couldn’t happen.” He motioned to the clip board. “All the same, let me see that lab report—the original one on the mother’s blood.”

Turning over several sheets, the charge nurse found the form and extracted it. It was the report which Dr. Pearson had signed following the altercation with David Coleman. Dornberger studied it carefully, then handed it back. “Well, that’s definite enough—negative sensitivity.”

It should be definite, of course; but at the back of his mind was a nagging thought: Could the report be wrong? Impossible, he told himself; the pathology department would never make a mistake like that. All the same, he decided, he would drop in and talk with Joe Pearson after rounds.