eternity.Leo Buscaglia
I shall call him Dr. Case. He was an old-school country doctor, and a close friend of mine
twenty years ago. In the years that followed, I often stopped in his little Colorado town to
see him when I went west, and sometimes he would tell me stories about people we both
had known. He told me about John and Louise.
John was a ranchman, big, quiet, unlettered and strong as a horse. He had begun with
fifty head of sheep. Ambitious and frugal, in ten years he owned two thousand ewes and
ample pasture for them. Next, he bought an alfalfa farm at the edge of town and fattened
his lambs. By the time he was forty-five he was a prosperous man.
Then he married. Louise was a local girl who had finished high school and gone to work
as a waitress in the restaurant in town. John met her there the summer she was twenty.
Soon he began driving in from his alfalfa farm every day for a ten o'clock cup of coffee.
You could set
your watch by the time he drove up and parked in front of the restaurant. John was
methodical as a windmill, dependable as the seasons.
Louise chattered to him about the weather, the crops and harmless local gossip. John
merely watched her and smiled and nodded his head; finally he would say, "Got to get to
work. So long."
This went on for three months. Then one morning-Doc Case had stopped in for coffee
after a call and heard it—John said, "Louise, I want you to marry me." Louise caught her
breath and almost spilled the coffee. Doc said it was as though the two of them, John and
Louise, were all alone. Louise said, "John, maybe I will. But I want a day
or two to think about it." John nodded and drank his coffee and said, "Got to get to work.
So long."
They were married two weeks later. After a honeymoon in Colorado Springs they settled
down on the alfalfa farm, and Louise had the house painted and papered and refurnished
with things from Denver. All that first year John had workmen out there, putting in a new
kitchen, building a screened porch.
But Doc Case knew things weren't going right. Twice John called him out to see Louise,
and he discovered that Louise wasn't happy. She wasn't well, either; she said she had
frightful headaches, but there was nothing that Doc could put his finger on. The second
time he went out to see her he asked her if John was treating her right. Louise answered
that John was the best husband any woman could ask for, only—well, he didn't say much,
and a woman wants to be talked to. After that things seemed to straighten out. When Doc
saw her in town a few weeks later, Louise said, "I guess I was just imagining a lot of
aches and pains. I've decided to be big and strong, like John!"
It was not until eighteen months later that Doc heard from them again. At 3:30 one
morning, a banging on his
door wakened him. John was there, his car out front with the motor running. "Doc," he
said, "Louise is awful sick. You got to do something quick!" Louise was in the car,
almost fainting with pain. They had been out at John's sheep ranch for a few days and the
pain had struck her late that evening. She tried to shrug it off, but it got so bad she
couldn't stand it. She fainted on the thirty-mile drive
to town.
The doctor took her over to his four-bed hospital and operated. Her appendix had burst,
but she rallied by dawn and Doc Case thought he had won. He told John they wouldn't
know for twenty-four hours, but it looked as if the worst was over. John cried like a baby.
"She's got to get well, Doc," he said. "She's got to!"
By evening her condition was worse. Doc gave her two plasma transfusions during the
night, yet she weakened steadily. "I'm just not strong enough," she whispered to the
doctor.
"What do you mean?" Doc demanded. "I thought you were going to be big and strong
like John."
Louise smiled wanly. "John is so strong he doesn't need me. If he did he'd say so,
wouldn't he?"
"Louise," Doc told her, "John does need you, whether he says so or not." She shook her
head and closed her eyes.
In the office, Doc said to John, "She doesn't want to get well."
"She's got to get well!" John exclaimed. "Look, Doc, how about a transfusion?"
The doctor explained that he had given her plasma.
"I mean my blood, Doc. I'm strong enough for both of us!"
The doctor led him down the hall. "Do you love that girl, John?" he asked. "Wouldn't
have married her if I didn't," John said.
"Have you ever told her so?"
John's eyes were baffled. "Haven't I given her every-thing I could? What more can a man
do?"
"Talk to her," Doc said.
"I'm not a talking man, Doc. Hell, she knows that!" He gripped Doc's shoulders. "Give
her some of my blood!"
The doctor thought a moment. Then he led John to the little laboratory, took a blood
sample and typed it. At last he said, "All right, John. In ten minutes."
The doctor went to Louise's room and told her that John wanted to give her a transfusion,
and there was a flicker of interest. He took her pulse. It was weak and fluttering slightly.
He knew there was only a slim chance. Calling the nurse into the hall, he told her what he
was going to do.
In a few moments he led John into Louise's room. The operating table had been placed
beside her bed, and a curtain rigged up between bed and table. The nurse held the curtain
aside as John lay down on the table. He put out a big, awkward hand and took Louise's
hand and said, "Now I'm going to make you well, Louise."
Without looking at him, she whispered, "Why?" "Why do you suppose?" John exclaimed.
"I don't know," she said.
"You're my wife, ain't you?"
There was no answer. The nurse lowered the curtain, swabbed John's arm and inserted a
needle. John flexed the muscle proudly. "Here it comes," he said to Louise. A moment
later he asked, "How's she taking it, Doc?"
Beyond the curtain, Doc Case had inserted a needle in Louise's wrist and relaxed the
clamp on the tube. His fingers were on the pulse in her other wrist.
"Okay, John," he said.
"How does it feel, Louise?" John asked. "All right," she whispered.
"Get a gallon of this blood in you," John said, "and you'll talk as loud as I do." Her pulse
seemed to strengthen slightly.
"John," she whispered. "Yes?"
"I love you, John."
There was a moment of silence. Then John said, "Louise! You got to get well!"
"Why?" she whispered.
"You've got to do it for me. I need you." John hesitated, and his voice choked. "I love
you."
Her pulse almost surged.
"You never told me," she said.
He said, "I never thought I had to." The pulse was steady now.
"John," she said, "tell me again."
He hesitated, then repeated the words: "I love you, Louise. More than anything in the
world. I love you and I need you, and by God, I'm going to make you well!" The doctor
removed the needle from her wrist and took the plasma bottle from the rack beneath the
towel and set them aside. He checked her pulse again. It was impossible, but there it
was—steady and strong.
"How you doing over there?" John asked, his voice under control again. But Louise
couldn't answer. She was
weeping.
"She's coming along fine," Doc Case said. "You've done it, John!" He signaled to the
nurse, who pulled the needle from John's arm, removed the jar from beside the operating
table and drew the curtain aside. Then she and the doctor went out into the hall.
When the doctor returned several minutes later, John was sitting with both of Louise's
hands in his, talking to
her.
"She was still a mighty sick girl," Doc said when he told me the story, "but I knew she
was going to get well. And she did."
Doc shook his head. "It was enough that the miracle happened. John's blood was the
wrong type for her, probably would have killed her. What did it matter if she got another
pint of plasma while his blood went into a glass jar? What that girl needed was John. And
she got him."
