LITMIR.BIZ

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Come at once; stop for nothing; urgent operation; must have you. Benedict.

      The doctor pursed his lips into a “Whee-e-ew!” of annoyed surprise, and shoved back his canvas hunting cap. His curly hair—he hated it—lay heavily clustered on his forehead; his eyes ached with the sunlight and the glare of the Lower Bay; he was dog-tired all over. Decidedly this message did not please him. He turned it over meditatively, as if he might find on the other side some solution to the difficulties of a twenty-mile train-ride and a delicate operation at the other end, without even so much as a change of raiment; but the blank yellow paper offered him no counsel.

      “Hang this!” he grumbled, striking the paper with his big left hand. “Hang it! Can’t a fellow clear out for a couple of weeks to shoot ducks and try to for­get a girl”—he groaned at certain memories—“without this sort of thing yanking him back to work again? If I was what she called me—a coward—I’d fake up some excuse, or say I never got the message; Merle, here, isn’t above money and without price—but no, guess I’ll have to cut for town.”

      Out came his watch. Twelve minutes to train-time—no, the electrics couldn’t possibly do it.

      “Here, Merle, you blackbird!” he commanded, weighing a half-dollar suggestively in his broad palm. “You bring me a telegraph-blank and rustle me up a cab the quickest you ever did in your life! While it’s coming, fix me a basket with sandwiches and a bottle of—no, I can’t even have that if I’m to operate! Well, make it, Pollinaris! Scoot, now, you calcined charcoal!”

      II.

      Dr. Miller’s entrance into the oper­ating room of the Trail Hospital, clad in full khaki hunting-togs, with even his revolver and cartridges girded around his equator like the rings of Saturn, caused a flutter of consternation among the three prim nurses waiting beside the little glass and iron table. The Trail Hospital, private, sedate, conservative, maintained its dignity even in the face of life and death emergencies. Dr. Miller was, at times, a disturbing factor in its routine, though an absolutely indis­pensable one. The three nurses, not having been informed regarding the sit­uation, exchanged scandalized glances.

      “Where’s Benedict?” demanded Miller curtly of Miss Willett, quelling the young women with a sweep of his eye—an eye which never yet had been dis­obeyed.

      “Hullo, there, doctor!” answered a voice from the sterilizing-room. “I’m washing up. Say, but I’m glad you’re here, though! Come on and scrub.”

      Miller strode through the door.

      “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

      “Trouble enough—patient’s just be­ing etherized now. I was never so re­lieved in all my life as when I got your wire saying you’d be here. Everything’s figured out to a T. If you’d been late, though—”

      Benedict looked around with a grimace as he soused his hands in the third solution, preparatory to drying them on a sterilized towel.

      “Who is it? What is it?” Miller persisted, the while he slipped his oper­ating-tunic over his coat and took a handful of green soap. He glanced sharply at the younger man, his class­mate of five years ago, now his assistant at the Trail.

      “Young woman, about twenty-five or so,” answered Benedict. “Didn’t get the name very well, but I think she’s from Hillingdon. No matter—she’s a stranger here, anyway.”

      “Well, what’s the difficulty?” inter­rogated Miller, a shade of impatience rising in his voice. The word “Hilling­don” recalled the bitter quarrel, the shame of being misunderstood, the curt dismissal—all the miserable affair which his hunting-trip had so signally failed to obliterate. “Well, what is it?”

      “Aneurysm of the left jugular.”

      “So?”

      “Yes—rather unusual, eh?”

      “I should say so. Badly distended?”

      “Liable to end fatally any hour—been coming on for some time, but diag­nosed as neuralgia or some such foolish­ness—very unfortunate error of some local doctor down there.”

      “Why didn’t you call in Ferrell, or go ahead with it yourself?”

      Benedict shook his head.

      “No, no,” he answered, “I thought we’d better wait for you. Don’t want to throw bouquets, you know, but—”

      “There now, that’ll do!” grumbled Miller, rinsing his hands. Miller was impervious to compliments. Not even the fact that at twenty-nine, only four years out of college, he was already some­thing of an authority on aneurisms could upset his strictly impersonal at­titude toward his own skill. “Every­thing all ready?” he went on. “Hemostats? Scalpels? Silver wire? Must have it very fine, you know—can’t wrap a jugular with ship’s cable!”

      “You’ll find everything correct,” Benedict assured him. “There, she’s being brought in now!”

      The quiet opening of a door and the roll of rubber-tired wheels, joined with a sickish whiff of ether, heralded the in­troduction of the patient into the bright glare of the operating room. Miller heard a whispering and a shuffle of feet as the orderly and nurses laid the woman on the table; then a slight scraping noise told that they were dragging the instrument-stands into position. Bene­dict walked out to take his place; Miller gave his hands a last dip, a final drying, and followed him.

      For a moment he did not see the face of the woman; then Miss Willett drew from it the sterilized cloth, and—Miller’s heart gave a sick jump; all the blood in him seemed rushing to it, leaving his ruddy face as gray as winter’s dawn. His stout knees trembled; and that steady hand of his, which had so often held the even balance between life and death—where was now its cunning? Little glistening diamonds of sweat came prickling out all over his forehead.

      He stepped back into the sterilizing-room, shaking like a frightened child.

      “Oh, Lord!” he gasped. “You—Isabelle! Benedict,” he called a mo­ment later, in a choking voice, “come out here!”

      The assistant surgeon came to him.

      “Say, Benedict, I—I—” stam­mered Miller. “Say, what does this mean? How did Isa—she—this patient get here? She—she—why—” He choked, stared, remained speechless.

      “What in time’s the matter with you?” questioned Benedict, alarmed. “Touch of sun?”

      “No—nothing! Just tell me the—the circumstances, can’t you?”

      “Why, there’s nothing much to tell. Got a telephone from Mrs. Dill, up there on Benton Avenue, you know, last night. Went up. Found she had a friend vis­iting from Hillingdon—this woman here. Pain in throat, abnormal pulsa­tion, and all that sort of thing—made the examination—found the aneurysm, that’s all. Had her kept quiet till this morning—then brought here. Consulta­tion. Decided to wire you on the chance—you said you’d be at the Dorian to­day. Well, you’re here, and so’s the pa­tient—everything all right so far. Get it? Anything outof order? . . .”

      “No, no, but—”

      “But what? Here’s your patient all anesthetized and waiting. It’s up to you now. If there’s any irregularity anywhere, let it go till later. Profes­sional etiquette—if that’s it—can’t stand in the way now! What’s up, eh? You look like a cadaver, and that’s a fact! Pull up, Miller, and come along out here!”

      The assistant seemed to have taken control; Miller was, for a moment, as clay in his hands. But only for a mo­ment; then he elbowed Benedict out through the door.

      “All right,” he said. “Get every­thing ready; I’ll be there in a minute.” He gripped his strong, sterile hands to­gether so tight that the knuckles whitened under the tan; he clinched his teeth till the big jaw-muscles bunched like cordage. “Now, boy!”

      III.

      Dr.

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