Shaken and diminished, Missy did as she was told.
The right way up he turned out to have a very pleasant face, and his light blue eyes were kind and interested.
“Well, Miss Wright, you may return home today,” he said, fingering a letter that lay on his desk along with quite a number of other papers.
“Am I all right?” asked Missy.
“Perfectly all right. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your heart. You’ve got a badly pinched nerve near the top of your spine, and those vigorous walks of yours kinked it into a vigorous protest, that’s all.”
“But – I couldn’t breathe!” whispered Missy, aghast.
“Panic, Miss Wright, panic! When the nerve kinks the pain is very severe, and it is just possible that in your case it inhibits some of the respiratory musculature. But there’s really no need to worry. I manipulated your spine myself now, and that should fix it up as long as you slow down the pace of your walking a little when you’re going some distance. If it doesn’t clear up, I suggest you rig yourself up a sort of chinning bar, have someone tie a couple of house-bricks to each of your feet, and then try to lift yourself up to your chin on the bar against the weight of the bricks.”
“And there’s nothing else wrong with me?”
“Disappointed, eh?” asked Dr. Parkinson shrewdly. “Come now, Miss Wright! Why on earth would you prefer to have heart trouble instead of a kinked spinal nerve?”
It was a question Missy had no intention of answering aloud; how could one die in John Smith’s arms of a kinked spinal nerve? It was as romantic as pimples.
Dr. Parkinson sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully, tapping his pen on the blotter. It was obviously his habit to do this, for the blotter was pocked with many little blue dots, and at times, perhaps from boredom, he had begun to join up the more scattered dots into a meaningless cat’s cradle.
“Periods!” he said suddenly, apparently feeling he ought to cheer her up a little by investigating every avenue. “How often do you have a period, Miss Wright?”
She blushed, and hated herself for blushing. “About every six months.”
“Lose much?”
“No, very little.”
“Pain? Cramps?”
“No.”
“Hmmmm.” He began to join up some dots. “Headaches?”
“No.”
“Are you a fainter?”
“No.”
“Hmmmm.” He pursed his lips so successfully that the top one actually managed to caress the tip of his nose. “Miss Wright,” he said at last, “what really ails you can only be effectively cured if you find yourself a husband and have a couple of babies. I doubt you’d ever have more than a couple, because I don’t think you’ll fall easily, but at your age it’s high time you got started.”
“If I could find someone willing to start me, Doctor, believe me I would start!” said Missy tartly.
“I beg your pardon.”
At this precise and uncomfortable moment Dr. Parkinson’s nurse thrust her head around the door and wiggled her brows.
He rose immediately, semaphored away. “Excuse me.”
For perhaps a minute Missy sat immobile in her chair wondering whether she ought to get up and tiptoe out, then she decided she had better wait for a formal dismissal. Dr. Neville Hurlingford’s name leaped at her from the top of a letter on the desk, midway between a constellation of joined dots and a globular cluster of unjoined dots. Quite independently of her brain, Missy’s hand reached out, picked up the letter.
“Dear George,” it said,
“Odd that I should have to send you two patients within the same week, when I haven’t sent you any in six months. But such is life – and my practice – in Byron. This letter is to introduce Missy Wright, a poor little old maid who has had at least one attack of chest pain and breathlessness following on a long, brisk walk. The single attack witnessed was rather suggestive of hysteria except that the patient was grey and sweating. However, her return to normal was dramatically sudden, and when I examined her not long afterwards, I could find no sequelae of any kind. I do indeed suspect hysteria, as her life’s circumstances would make it a most likely diagnosis. She leads a stagnant, deprived existence (vide her breast development). But to be on the safe side, I would like you to see her with a view to excluding any serious illness.”
Missy put the letter down and closed her eyes. Did the whole world see her with pity and contempt? And how could pride contend with so much pity and contempt when it was so well-meaning? Like her mother, Missy was proud. “Stagnant”. “Deprived”. “A poor little old maid”. “With a view to excluding any serious illness”, as if stagnation and deprivation and old maidenhood were not serious illnesses within themselves!
She opened her eyes, surprised to discover that they contained not one tear. Instead, they were bright and dry and angry. And they began searching through the litter on Dr. Parkinson’s desk to see if among the pieces of paper there might be at least the start of a report on her condition. She found two reports, neither distinguished by a name; one had a list of findings on it that all said “normal”, the other was a technical litany of disaster, all to do with the heart. And she discovered the beginning of a letter to Dr. Hurlingford.
“Dear Neville,” the letter said,
“Thank you for referring Mrs. Anastasia Gilroy and Miss ? Wright, whose Christian name I am afraid I do not know, as everyone including yourself seems to add a ‘y’ to her marital status and leave it at that. I am sure you will not object if I send you my opinion about both patients in this one” –
And there it ended. Mrs. Anastasia Gilroy? After sifting through a few of the non-Hurlingford faces in Byron, she came up with a sickly-looking woman of about her own age who lived in a rundown cottage beside the bottling plant with a drunken husband and several small, neglected children.
Was the second clinical report about Mrs. Gilroy, then? Missy picked it up and tried to decipher the jargon and symbols which filled the top half of the sheet. Though the bottom half was clear enough, even to her.
It said, “I can offer no course of treatment able to change or modify this prognosis. The patient is suffering from an advanced form of multiple valvular disease of the heart. If no further cardiac deterioration takes place, I give her six months to one year of life. However, I can see no point in recommending bed rest, as I imagine this patient would simply ignore the directive, given her nature and home situation.”
Mrs. Gilroy? If only there was a name on it! But it would be hers, saved to put in with the letter to Dr. Hurlingford. There were no other reports amid the confusion. Oh, why wasn’t Missy Wright’s the bad report? Death, snatched from her, seemed suddenly very sweet and desirable. It wasn’t fair! Mrs. Gilroy had a family who needed her desperately. Where Missy Wright had no one to need her desperately.
Voices sounded on the other side of the door; Missy folded up the report still in her hand neatly and swiftly, and stuffed it into her purse.
“My dear Miss Wright, I am so sorry!” cried Dr. Parkinson, breezing in with sufficient flurry to send the papers on his desk flying in all directions. “You can go, you can go! Leave it a week before you go back to see Dr. Hurlingford, eh?”
Sydney was warmer and moister than the Blue Mountains, and the day was fine and clear. Emerging onto Macquarie Street with Una at her side, Missy blinked in the brightness.
“Nearly half past eleven,” said Una. “Shall we go and sell our share certificates first? The address is in Bridge Street, which is only round the corner from here.”
So they did that, and it was remarkably easy. However, the small office and its surly clerk offered no clue as to the identity of the mystery buyer; the most intriguing aspect of the sale was that they were paid in gold sovereigns rather than in paper money. And four hundred gold coins were very heavy, as Missy discovered once she had put them in her bag.
