That was just a natural reaction to your Walter Mitty personality fantasizing you're John Galt, man of mystery ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketapocketa.
"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Hmm?" said Sdgla. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.
"You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five."
Walter Mitty drove on toward Oahu in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind.
"You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."
Sdgla stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Sdgla. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer."
Sdgla raced the engine of his ancient T-Bird a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Sdgla reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.
. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Sdgla, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary.
Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Sdgla. In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Sdgla. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Sdgla." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands.
"A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Sdgla. "Didn't know you were in the States,
Sdgla," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary."
"You are very kind," said Sdgla. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in Hawaii who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Sdgla, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials.
"Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Sdgla saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .
"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Sdgla jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Sdgla closely.
"Gee. Yeh," muttered Sdgla. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Sdgla got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.
They're so damn cocky, thought Sdgla, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. |
