Read Online Elephant Man by Christine Sparks - Free Book Online Page B

managed to get it all down. Treves’ mind went back to the potatoes and water he’d seen spilled on the cellar floor. Doubtless that was what the Elephant Man lived on. Here at least was something that could be remedied quickly. The kitchen would be just serving up breakfast now; though whether the hospital’s breakfast would do him much more good than Bytes’ potatoes and water was something Treves wryly doubted. He wondered what would happen if he abandoned all medical etiquette and gave the man good, strong whisky. Probably perk him up like nothing else.
    At the door he stopped and looked back. There was something he had to say.
    “I don’t know if you will understand this,” he said slowly and clearly, “but you will never go back to that man again. You’re safe now. No one will ever harm you. Do you understand?”
    He had his answer in the blank eyes that met his unseeingly. He sighed as he closed the door behind him. It was hopeless; hopeless. But he felt better forhaving said it, as though somehow he had safeguarded himself against temptation.
    His arrival in the kitchen caused a pleasurable stir. He was a favorite with the nurses, for both his personable looks and his pleasant manners. He always said “please” and “thank you” to nurses whom other doctors, especially the older ones, often treated like skivvies. Nor did he mind cracking an odd joke with them. There were smiles when he picked up a bowl and advanced toward the nurse ladeling porridge out of the huge urn.
    “Breakfasting with the patients this morning, Mr. Treves?” she said archly, allowing a big dollop of the unappetizing stuff to flop into his bowl.
    “It’s for a patient,” he told her.
    He felt self-conscious making his way down the corridors clutching a bowl of porridge, and when he saw Carr-Gomm approaching him he tried to be inconspicuous. But without success.
    “Mr. Treves, come over here a moment, won’t you?” Carr-Gomm’s voice was as genial and courteous as it ever was, but Treves did not make the mistake of failing to recognize an order for what it was. He had seen other men underestimate Carr-Gomm, who positively invited underestimation by hiding a shrewd and often ruthless mind behind a smile as bland and ingenuous as a baby’s. Those men had always regretted their blindness. Carr-Gomm was fifty-four, a tough medical administrator who made sure he knew everything that was going on in the little world under his rule.
    Treves intended to approach the Chairman about the Elephant Man himself, but later, when he’d had some time to improve the man’s condition and do some thinking. In the meantime he wanted to keep his presence in the hospital a secret. He knew it would be difficult to hide anything from those deceptively guileless eyes, and impossible if he gave himself away by creeping round the hospital corridors clutching bowls of porridge. He silently cursed his luck, andmade foolish, clumsy efforts to hide the bowl, which were abandoned when he realized Carr-Gomm was regarding him satirically. There was nothing to do but brazen it out.
    “Good morning, Treves.”
    “Good morning, sir.”
    Carr-Gomm pointed at the bowl. “You’ve acquired a taste for this?”
    “It’s quite nutritious, sir,” Treves hedged.
    “Don’t be mad. This muck can kill you,” Carr-Gomm declared robustly. He signaled to Nurse Nora Ireland, who had just come into view further down the corridor, relieved Treves of the bowl, and gave it into her hands, requesting in a smooth voice, “Take this up to the man in the Isolation Ward when you have a moment, won’t you?” He cast a humorously malicious look at Treves’ stunned face.
    “Yes, sir.” Nora looked nervously between the two of them.
    “Don’t be frightened,” Treves told her. “He won’t hurt you.”
    “Indeed.” Carr-Gomm’s eyebrows were raised a fraction and he made a gesture toward his office door.
    Nora watched the two men enter the office, then she set off