The Last Gentleman

of kilter.
    All along he had known it would come to this and that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the pulse. The thread of artery stirred fitfully under his finger but there was no profit in it. Which stirrings to count?
    Without knowing how he came there, he had fetched up again at the nurses’ cage where reigned bald Queen Bess. Once again he made noises and motions and once again she annihilated him, rendered him invisible and of no account.
    â€œNurse,” he said sternly, four feet away. He actually raised a forefinger.
    She answered the telephone.
    All at once time fell in, bent, and he was transported over the Dutch sort of door—it didn’t seem to open—flew over it like a poltergeist and found himself inside the station. He seemed to be listening. “You hear me, goddamn it,” thundered a voice terrible and strange. It was for the two of them to listen as the voice went on. “—or else I’m going to kick yo’ ass down there.” An oddly Southern voice, then not his surely. Yet her glossy eyes were on him, round as a dollar watch, the lids nictitating from below like a lizard’s. Her smile, stretching open the rugae, the troughs of which he noticed were bare of lipstick, proffered a new ghastly friendship for him. Now as he watched, dreaming, she was using the phone again.
    â€œYes sir. But Mr. Barrett seems a little upset. Yes, good.” She knew him! Perhaps she had known him all along. On the other hand, there seemed to have sprung up between them a brand-new friendship, a species of roguish fondness.
    Again segments of time collapsed, fell away, and he was transported magically into the corridor, she at his side, squeezing his arm in a love-joke. Doors flew open. Elevators converged on the floor.
    The next thing he knew he was speaking in a businesslike and considered manner to the resident and chaplain outside Jamie’s closed door. He had survived the hiatus of his rage. There remained only the smell of it, strong as burnt meat; he hugged his arms close to his armpits.
    The resident had just come out of Jamie’s room. He spoke seriously but in a measured, relaxed way. That’s what I wanted, thought the engineer, sighing—someone to give measure and form to time itself. Was that the worst of dying, dying without permission, license, so to speak?
    The engineer nodded and turned to the chaplain. He explained the commission.
    â€œTherefore it seemed proper to me,” he concluded, “to pass along to you the request of his sister, who is a religious of your faith.”
    â€œI see,” said the priest, who, however, instead of listening to what the engineer said, was eyeing this strange young man himself. Evidently he could not make out what kind of bird he was dealing with. Three times he asked the engineer where he came from, as if this might shed some light.
    â€œDo you know Father Gillis from Conway, Arkansas?” the priest asked him. If only he could get a fix on him!
    â€œNo sir.” Damnation, did they have to hit upon a mutual friend?
    They were a curious pair, the resident and the priest. The resident was hollow-eyed and green-skinned and sunken of cheek. His hair grew down his neck in ringlets like a hyacinth. There was a rash on his throat under his loose collar. But unhealthy as he was he affected the easy nonchalance of an athlete and swung his fist softly. The priest was a neat chunky man whose thick auburn hair had been freshly cut and combed, exposing a white healthy scalp in the wide part. The gold stems of his bifocals pressed snugly against muscular temples. His hand, which he gave the engineer in a tentative interrogatory clasp (what sort of a bird are you, asked the hand), was thick through the palm and heavily freckled.
    â€œHe’s fibrillating,” said the haggard resident, first addressing the engineer. Then, not quite getting hold of him either, he turned to the priest, all the while making a few soft swings of fist to hand. “A heavy presystolic murmur. Temperature one-o-five point three, lungs filled up to the seventh interspace, spleen down to here.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” asked the frowning engineer.
    The resident shrugged, squared off with his fist for a combination punch but didn’t throw it. “Pulmonary edema, for one thing. He’s drowning in his own fluids.”
    â€œWill he regain consciousness?”
    The resident frowned. There