Hotel

17

From Tulane Avenue, the sky-blue and white police ambulance, its distinctive blue light flashing, swung into the emergency entrance driveway of Charity Hospital. The ambulance stopped. Swiftly its doors were opened.

The stretcher bearing Dodo was lifted out, then, with practiced speed, wheeled by attendants through a doorway marked ADMISSION OUTPATIENTS WHITE.

Curtis O'Keefe followed close behind, almost running to keep up.

An attendant in the lead called, "Emergency! Make way!" A busy press of people in the admitting and discharge lobby fell back to let the small procession pass. Curious eyes followed its progress. Most were on the white, waxen mask of Dodo's face.

Swinging doors marked ACCIDENT ROOM opened to meet the stretcher. Inside were nurses, doctors, activity, other stretchers. A male attendant barred Curtis O'Keefe's way. "Wait here, please."

O'Keefe protested, "I want to know .."

A nurse, going in, stopped briefly. "Everything possible will be done.

A doctor will talk to you as soon as he can." She continued inside. The swinging doors closed.

Curtis O'Keefe remained facing the doors. His eyes were misted, his heart despairing.

Less than half an hour ago, after Dodo's leavetaking, he had paced the suite living room, his thoughts confused and troubled. Instinct told him that something had gone from his life that he might never find again.

Logic mocked him. Others before Dodo had come and gone. He had survived their departure. The notion that this time might be different was absurd.

Even so, he had been tempted to follow Dodo, perhaps to delay their separation for a few hours, and in that time to weigh his feelings once again. Rationality won out. He remained where he was.

A few minutes later he had heard the sirens. At first he had been unconcerned. Then, conscious of their growing number and apparent convergence on the hotel, he had gone to the window of his suite. The activity below made him decide to go down. He went as he was - in shirtsleeves, without putting on a coat.

On the twelfth-floor landing, as he waited for an elevator, disquieting sounds had drifted up. After almost five minutes, when an elevator failed to come and other guests were milling on the landing, O'Keefe decided to use the emergency stairs. As he went down, he discovered others had had the same idea. Near the lower floors, the sounds becoming clearer, he employed his athlete's training to increase his speed.

In the lobby he learned from excited spectators the essential facts of what had occurred. It was then he prayed with intensity that Dodo had left the hotel before the accident. A moment later he saw her carried, unconscious, from the elevator shaft.

The yellow dress he had admired, her hair, her limbs, were a mess of blood. The look of death was on her face.

In that instant, with searing, blinding insight, Curtis O'Keefe discovered the truth he had shielded from himself so long. He loved her.

Dearly, ardently, with a devotion beyond human reckoning. Too late, he knew that in letting Dodo go, he had made the greatest single error of his life.

He reflected on it now, bitterly, surveying the accident room doors. They opened briefly as a nurse came out. When he approached her, she shook her head and hurried on.

He had a sense of helplessness. There was so little he could do. But what he could, he would.

Turning away, he strode through the hospital. In busy lobbies and corridors, he breasted crowds, followed signboards and arrows to his objective. He opened doors marked PRIVATE, ignored protesting secretaries. He stopped before the Director's desk.

The Director rose angrily from his chair. When Curtis O'Keefe identified himself, the anger lessened.

Fifteen minutes later the Director emerged from the accident room accompanied by a slight, quietly spoken man whom he introduced as Dr. Beauclaire. The doctor and O'Keefe shook hands.

"I understand that you are a friend of the young lady - I believe, Miss Lash."

"How is she, Doctor?"

"Her condition is critical. We are doing everything we can. But I must tell you there is a strong possibility she may not live."

O'Keefe stood silent, grieving.

The doctor continued, "She has a serious head wound which appears superficially to be a depressed skull fracture. There is a likelihood that fragments of bone may have entered the brain. We shall know better after X rays."

The Director explained, "The patient is being resuscitated first."

The doctor nodded. "We have transfusions going. She lost a good deal of blood. And treatment has begun for shock."

"How long .."

"Resuscitation will be at least another hour. Then, if X rays confirm the diagnosis, it will be necessary to operate immediately.

Is the next-of-kin in New Orleans?"

O'Keefe shook his head.

"It makes no dffference, really. In this kind of emergency, the law permits us to proceed without permission."

"May I see her?"

"Later, perhaps. Not yet."

"Doctor, if there's anything you need - a question of money, professional help ..."

The Director interrupted quietly. "This is a free hospital, Mr. O'Keefe.

Its for indigents and emergencies. All the same, there are services here that money couldn't buy. Two university medical schools are next door.

Their staffs are on call. I should tell you that Dr. Beauclaire is one of the leading neurosurgeons in the country."

O'Keefe said humbly, "I'm sorry."

"Perhaps there is one thing," the doctor said.

O'Keefes head came up.

"The patient is unconscious now, and under sedation. Earlier, there were some moments of lucidity. In one of them she asked for her mother. If it's possible to get her mother here ... "

"It's possible." It was a relief that at least there was something he could do.

From a corridor pay phone, Curtis O'Keefe placed a collect call to Akron, Ohio. It was to the OKeefe-Cuyahoga, Hotel. The manager, Harrison, was in his office.

O'Keefe instructed, "Whatever you are doing, leave it. Do nothing else until you have completed, with the utmost speed, what I am about to tell you."

"Yes, sir." Harrison's alert voice came down the line.

"You are to contact a Mrs. Irene Lash of Exchange Street, Akron. I do not have the number of a house." O'Keefe remembered the street from the day that he and Dodo had telegraphed the basket of fruit. Was it only last Tuesday?

He heard Harrison call to someone in his office, "A city directory - fast!"

O'Keefe continued, "See Mrs. Lash yourself. Break the news to her that her daughter, Dorothy, has been injured in an accident and may die. I want Mrs. Lash flown to New Orleans by the fastest possible means. Charter if necessary. Disregard expense."

"Hold it, Mr. O'Keefe." He could hear Harrison's crisp commands. "Get Eastern Airlines - the sales department in Cleveland - on another line.

After that, I want a limousine with a fast driver at the Market Street door." The voice returned, more strongly. "Go ahead, Mr. O'Keefe."

As soon as the arrangements were known, O'Keefe directed, he was to be contacted at Charity Hospital.

He hung up, confident that the instructions would be carried through. A good man, Harrison. Perhaps worthy of a more important hotel.

Ninety minutes later, X-rays confirmed Dr. Beauclaire's diagnosis. A twelfth-floor operating room was being readied. The neurosurgery, if continued to a conclusion, would take several hours.

Before Dodo was wheeled into the operating room, Curtis O'Keefe was permitted to see her briefly. She was pale and unconscious. It seemed to his imagination as if all her sweetness and vitality had flown.

Now the O.R. doors were closed.

Dodo's mother was on her way. Harrison had notified him. McDermott of the St. Gregory, whom O'Keefe had telephoned a few minutes ago, was arranging for Mrs. Lash to be met and driven directly to the hospital.

For the moment there was nothing to do but wait.

Earlier, O'Keefe had declined an invitation to rest in the Director's office. He would wait on the twelfth floor, he decided, no matter for how long.

Suddenly, he had a desire to pray.

A door close by was labeled LADIES COLORED. Next to it was another marked RECOVERY ROOM STORAGE. A glass panel showed that it was dark inside.

He opened the door and went in, groping his way past an oxygen tent and an iron lung. In the semidarkness he found a clear space where he knelt.

The floor was a good deal harder on his knees than the broadloom he was used to. It seemed not to matter. He clasped his hands in supplication and lowered his head.

Strangely, for the first time in many years, he could find no words for what was in his heart.