The Last Gentleman

good as said and the visitor agreed, a small sunny corner where we can play a game and undertake small tasks, nothing very serious can go amiss. For the first time the engineer understood how men can spend a week playing poker, women a lifetime at bridge. The game was the thing. One became impatient with non-game happenings—a nurse coming in to empty the urinal. Time disposed itself in short tolerable stretches between the bright beads of the games. The score itself, toted up and announced, had the cheerful workaday effect of a small tidy business.
    It came to be understood too that one was at the other’s service and that any service could be required. As it sometimes happens between two young men, a kind of daredevil bargain was struck in which the very outrageousness of a request is itself grounds for obeying.
    â€œGo out and buy me a quart of Monarch applesauce,” said Jamie at the end of a game.
    â€œAll right.”
    Sutter came later in the evening. He was both affable and nervous and told them half jokingly of his two new patients, “noble intelligent women who still read Lawrence and still believed in the dark gods of the blood, why make a god of it, that was the Methodist in him, anyhow can you imagine anyone still reading Lawrence out here now, ” etc. How uneasy and talkative Sutter had become! It suddenly dawned on the engineer that Sutter, strange as it seemed, could not stand the sickroom. A hospital, of all places, made him nervous. Jamie, he noticed too, became irritable because Sutter’s coming broke the golden circle of the card games. They both wished Sutter would leave. And when Jamie frowned and picked up the deck of cards, Sutter took the hint and did leave. He made a sign to the engineer, who followed him to the solarium.
    â€œAgain I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here,” he said, placing his feet carefully inside the black and white tiles. The hospital was old and well preserved. It looked like an army hospital from the days of Walter Reed. “He doesn’t want to see me and there is no one else. Or was.”
    The engineer looked at him curiously. “I thought that was what you and he wanted.”
    â€œI didn’t want him to be—sunk. I thought he might do better, though I was afraid of this all along—” Sutter trailed off.
    â€œIsn’t he sunk?”
    â€œYour showing up has meant a great deal,” said Sutter hurriedly and looked at his watch.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with him? Why does he have those spells?”
    â€œHeart block,” said Sutter absently. “With some right-sided failure and pulmonary edema. And you see, he can’t read for long. His retina is infiltrated. You can read to him.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, heart block? Is that serious?”
    Sutter shrugged. “Do you mean will he die today or next week?” He eyed the other. “Can you take a pulse?”
    â€œI suppose so.”
    â€œI can’t get a private nurse. If you are here when he has a syncope, take his pulse. It will almost certainly start up in a few seconds. Now I’ve got—”
    â€œWait. Good God. What are you talking about?”
    â€œIf then his pulse is steady, O.K. If it is fibrillating, call the resident.”
    â€œGood God, what do you mean, fibrillating?”
    â€˜Try to nod your head in time with his pulse. If you can’t, he’s fibrillating.”
    â€œWait.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing.”
    Sutter eyed him and, shoving his hands in his pockets, began to step off the tiles in an absent-minded hopscotch. With his Curlee pants down around his hips and his long-waisted shirt, Sutter looked like Lucky Lindy in the 1930’s, standing in a propeller wash.
    â€œI tell you what you do,” said Sutter.
    â€œWhat,” said the engineer gloomily.
    â€œCall Val. Tell her how sick Jamie is. He likes Val and wants to see her but doesn’t want to send for her himself.”
    â€œWhy don’t you—” began the engineer.
    â€œNo, I tell you what you do,” said Sutter, drawing him close in an odd little bantering confidence. “Call Rita.”
    â€œRita,” repeated the puzzled engineer.
    â€œYes, call Rita and Val and tell them to keep it to themselves and come on out.” He held the younger man by the arm in an awkward little burlesque of Lamar Thigpen’s old-buddy style.
    â€œWhy don’t you