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 as strong as a horse. He had begun with fifty head of sheep. Ambitious and frugal, in ten years he owned 2,000 ewes and ample pasture for them. Next, he bout an alfalfa farm at the edge of town and fattened his lambs. By the time he was 45 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. Son 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 as methodical as a windmill, dependable as the season. 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 by for three months. Then one morning Doc Case had stopped in for a 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 at 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 an new kitchen and 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 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 wasn't until eighteen months later that Doc heard from them again. At 3:30 one morning, a banging at 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 to so bad she couldn't stand it. She fainted on the 30-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 thought she had won. He told John they wouldn't know for 24 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 big and 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 the 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 everything I could? What more can a man do?"

"Talk to her," Doc said.

"I'm not a talking man, Doc. Well, she knows that!" He gripped Doc's shoulder "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 flicker of interest. He took her pulse. It was weak and fluttering. He knew there was only a slim chance. Calling the nurse into the hall, he told her what he was going to do. "Neither of them has seen a transfusion."

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 the bed and the 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 and said, "Now I'm going to make you well again, Louise."

Without looking at him she whispered, "Why?"

"Why don't 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 had inserted a needle into 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."

Her 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 need you, and I'm going to make you well!" The doctor removed the needle from her wrist and took the plasma rack from beneath the towel and set them aside. He checked her pulse again. It was impossible, but it was – steady and strong.

"How are you doing over there?" John asked, his voice under control again. But Louise didn't answer. She was weeping.

"She's coming along fine," Doc 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 the story, "but I knew she was going to get well, and she did.

"Did you ever tell them the truth?" I asked. 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. She needed John...and she got him"