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→Then came a man with jaundice, a woman with varicose veins like swollen purple plums on her legs, a child with mastoid, another with rickets, a third with pus-filled oozing eyes. A boy with a humped back and swollen throat, a man with diabetes, a woman with cancer of the breast, another with a dropped womb, a third with fatty heart. Two men with radiation sores and one with gangrene of the arm. A girl with milky white cataracts in her eyes and another with puerperal fever. A family suffering from tuberculosis, then a man with acute appendicitis...

→An old man was next, twisted and crippled with arthritis, ill-tempered through pain and hunger, truculent as he compared present conditions with his memories of snug, warm hospitals with their attentive nurses, sympathetic doctors, and the endless treatments which had made his illness a thing to while away the lengthening hours.

→The drugs hadn't been invented to cure the condition. The schools to train spastics had vanished with their staffs and all he could do was to sympathize with the mother and express his regret. She left, carrying her cross, her eyes bitter with frustrated hope.

→A mother entered with a bundle in her arms. It wasn't a baby she carried, but a ten-year-old boy, lank haired, loose mouthed, dangling limbed. Not an idiot; that would have been kinder; an idiot would have been taken care of in the old days and would have died as the rest had died. Her son was a spastic, one of those unfortunates who, while mentally sound, had such poor control of their bodies as to be a constant burden on those around them.

→There was nothing John could do.

→It hurt to see him go. It hurt not to be able to give the lying words of comfort, the useless injections, the bottle of colored water. Nothing could prevent the man's death, but now, devoid of the trappings of faith, he would die cursing the "doctors" who had refused to help him. Slowly John pulled the bell and signaled for the next patient.

→"I'm sorry."

→"But..."

→"Nothing I can give you will do any good. Rest and food are all that can help you. I'm sorry."

→"Aren't you going to give me something?"

→"I'm sorry." John hesitated at the naked panic in the man's eyes. "You'll have to take things very quietly from now on. Rest as much as you can, sleep all you want to, eat plenty of good food and get out in the sun." He reached for the bell wire.

→"Can you cure me, doctor?" The man leaned forward with pathetic faith in the power of the man in charge. "I feel sick and can't work as hard as I did."

→The first man was a victim of his own ignorance. He was dying and didn't know why, but John could tell that he had blandly disregarded the overall command never to enter a contaminated area. He shook his head as he finished the tests.

→* * *

→"Yes," agreed John shortly. He reached for the bell wire. "Let's get back to work."

→"We should have a priest," said Collins cynically. "They used to be pretty good at that sort of thing."

→"We must tell them the truth. We're only wasting their time and arousing false hopes by offering something to them we can't accomplish." John flushed as he saw the expression in the other's eyes. "I, too, can be a realist, Collins, but there is a big difference between handing a man a gun and telling him to shoot himself, and helping him to accept the inevitable with kindness and understanding. We can tell them the truth, but we needn't be sadistic about it."

→"What about them?" Collins jerked his thumb towards the waiting room. "You think that they will get less?"

→"Forget it." With victory came lassitude and a craving for peace and quiet away from the clash of wills and the storms of emotion. "We're all overworked, but things may get better soon. When the midwives are trained and the visiting nurses established we should be able to take things a little easier. Anyway, I want to get started on the medical school as soon as possible; the quicker we train some new blood the happier I will be."

→"Sorry, John. I suppose that I'm just too tired to think straight."