A Warning

Dr. Forster was just sitting down to dinner with his wife when a frantic rapping on the front door diverted his attention from the steaming mashed potatoes already beckoning him. He paused, thinking it some salesman who would move along, but shoved back his chair and headed to the entryway when the rapping got louder and more insistent.

"What is so important that you need to interrupt my dinner hour?" he demanded of the thin, pale girl whose glowing eyes gazed intently back at him.

"I'm so sorry to disturb you, sir. It's my mother -- she lives just down the block and around the corner -- she's taken ill so suddenly and I thought you might help her."

Dr. Forster peered more closely into the the girl's determined eyes, oddly non-reflective of any light. He felt pulled into some inner dark pool as he pondered his response.

"If she's feverish, young lady, just put a cool cloth on her forehead and open the windows. These things pass and she should be fine by morning."

"No, sir. It's far more serious.  She will die if you don't come right now."

Forster could only shake his head and grudgingly comply. He quickly grabbed his black leather bag near the door and hastily stepped back to the dining room and whispered the state of affairs to his wife, who had already started the mashed potatoes and was ready to eat his portion.

Following the girl down the dimly lit street, wisps of fog rising from near the street lamps, he pulled up his collar and looked grimly ahead. These sudden house calls were becoming more frequent and were usually a waste of time, he thought impatiently. But such was the duty of a town doctor. The girl turned at the next road, stopped in front of the red door of a simple row house. She beckoned him to go on in.

Confused to be letting himself in, he turned the knob and looked back at her for direction. She nodded urgently, her eyes widening with a certain desperation, so he stepped in and made his way toward the only source of light in the small house.