Free Each Man's Son by Hugh Maclennan

’im.”
    Ainslie turned to a freckle-faced youth with sandy hair and a telltale line of coal dust circling his neck. After a series of sharp questions a story came together.
    Tom and the injured boy had arrived in North Sydney the week before on a schooner from St. John’s. There they had decided to leave their ship. Two days later they found a job breaking coal at the pithead of McCuen’s colliery, and for the first time in their lives they encountered machinery more complicated than a motorboat engine. There was a steel cable in the engine house which fascinated them in particular. It seemed to come out of the floor very fast with a perpetual motion as though there were no end to it. Near the roof it disappeared into a wooden housing, then it appeared againabout a foot and a half away and ran down again into the floor with what seemed to be the same perpetual motion. Tom was sure it was not just one cable but two, because one ran up and the other ran down. Bill thought it was a single cable. All week they argued about it, then Bill bet Tom a quarter that it was one cable and said he would prove it. Late this afternoon they had seen the foreman leave the engine house and both of them had sneaked in. They were alone inside and Bill was ready to win the quarter. He grabbed the upgoing cable to find out where it was bound for, and it swept him to the roof. Before he knew what was happening, his hands were crushed against the housing, and if Tom had not been underneath when he fell he might have killed himself. Tom tore off his shirt and bound up Bill’s wrists as soon as he caught his breath and then he tried to wipe up the floor because they were afraid of getting into trouble with the foreman. But no one saw them and they had sneaked out the gate together and walked half a mile to the house of the two friends who were here with Tom. Everyone had taken some rum to help them think it over and then Bill fainted. So they finally carried him out to a coal cart and brought him to the hospital.
    Except for questions now and then to keep the story from drifting off into aimless legend-making, Ainslie listened in grim silence. When he decided they had told him everything, he said shortly to the one called Tom, “Come with me.”
    The boy followed him down the corridor, his nostrils twitching with apprehension at the fear-inspiring smells of the hospital, and Ainslie turned him over to Miss MacKay with instructions to question him again and make out a report for the company.
    After he had changed his gown and settled himself into his dark suit, Ainslie’s tension began to ease. He went upstairs to see his OB case and then to pacify an anxious and indignant husband. When he returned to Mrs. Morton’s room he found her in a state of manic talkativeness, so he sat down andforced himself to be calm in order to calm her. Dr. Weir went out and returned, and by the time Ainslie left, her fears had been submerged by her interest in the details of her own case as Ainslie had outlined them for her.
    Once again Ainslie beat his way down the corridor, down the stairs and along another corridor to the doctors’ common room.

 
    Seven
    T HE ROOM WAS EMPTY when he closed the door behind him, for Grant had already gone home. It had the heavy smell of rooms where tired men relax and smoke their pipes. No curtains were at the windows and there were no pictures on the walls, but the floor was carpeted and two walls were covered by shelves of medical books and journals. A large oak table stood in the center of the room, a shaded lamp rested in the middle of it, two worn armchairs faced each other on either side of an empty hearth, and other chairs lurked in the shadows. The founder of the hospital had intended the room as a library. It still served that purpose, but few of the doctors ever found time to study a portion of the books on its shelves.
    Ainslie dropped into one of the armchairs beside the hearth. He was