Hilda Wade | Page 8

through the operation. The work of
removing the growth was long and ghastly, even for us who were well
seasoned to such sights; but at the end Nielsen expressed himself as
perfectly satisfied. "A very neat piece of work!" Sebastian exclaimed,
looking on. "I congratulate you, Nielsen. I never saw anything done
cleaner or better."
"A successful operation, certainly!" the great surgeon admitted, with

just pride in the Master's commendation.
"AND the patient?" Hilda asked, wavering.
"Oh, the patient? The patient will die," Nielsen replied, in an
unconcerned voice, wiping his spotless instruments.
"That is not MY idea of the medical art," I cried, shocked at his
callousness. "An operation is only successful if--"
He regarded me with lofty scorn. "A certain percentage of losses," he
interrupted, calmly, "is inevitable, of course, in all surgical operations.
We are obliged to average it. How could I preserve my precision and
accuracy of hand if I were always bothered by sentimental
considerations of the patient's safety?"
Hilda Wade looked up at me with a sympathetic glance. "We will pull
her through yet," she murmured, in her soft voice, "if care and skill can
do it,--MY care and YOUR skill. This is now OUR patient, Dr.
Cumberledge."
It needed care and skill. We watched her for hours, and she showed no
sign or gleam of recovery. Her sleep was deeper than either Sebastian's
or Hilda's had been. She had taken a big dose, so as to secure
immobility. The question now was, would she recover at all from it?
Hour after hour we waited and watched; and not a sign of movement!
Only the same deep, slow, hampered breathing, the same feeble, jerky
pulse, the same deathly pallor on the dark cheeks, the same corpse-like
rigidity of limb and muscle.
At last our patient stirred faintly, as in a dream; her breath faltered. We
bent over her. Was it death, or was she beginning to recover?
Very slowly, a faint trace of colour came back to her cheeks. Her heavy
eyes half opened. They stared first with a white stare. Her arms
dropped by her side. Her mouth relaxed its ghastly smile. . . . We held
our breath. . . . She was coming to again!

But her coming to was slow--very, very slow. Her pulse was still weak.
Her heart pumped feebly. We feared she might sink from inanition at
any moment. Hilda Wade knelt on the floor by the girl's side and held a
spoonful of beef essence coaxingly to her lips. Number Fourteen
gasped, drew a long, slow breath, then gulped and swallowed it. After
that she lay back with her mouth open, looking like a corpse. Hilda
pressed another spoonful of the soft jelly upon her; but the girl waved it
away with one trembling hand. "Let me die," she cried. "Let me die! I
feel dead already."
Hilda held her face close. "Isabel," she whispered--and I recognised in
her tone the vast moral difference between "Isabel" and "Number
Fourteen,"--"Is-a-bel, you must take it. For Arthur's sake, I say, you
MUST take it."
The girl's hand quivered as it lay on the white coverlet. "For Arthur's
sake!" she murmured, lifting her eyelids dreamily. "For Arthur's sake!
Yes, nurse, dear!"
"Call me Hilda, please! Hilda!"
The girl's face lighted up again. "Yes, Hilda, dear," she answered, in an
unearthly voice, like one raised from the dead. "I will call you what you
will. Angel of light, you have been so good to me."
She opened her lips with an effort and slowly swallowed another
spoonful. Then she fell back, exhausted. But her pulse improved within
twenty minutes. I mentioned the matter, with enthusiasm, to Sebastian
later. "It is very nice in its way," he answered; "but . . . it is not
nursing."
I thought to myself that that was just what it WAS; but I did not say so.
Sebastian was a man who thought meanly of women. "A doctor, like a
priest," he used to declare, "should keep himself unmarried. His bride is
medicine." And he disliked to see what he called PHILANDERING
going on in his hospital. It may have been on that account that I
avoided speaking much of Hilda Wade thenceforth before him.

He looked in casually next day to see the patient. "She will die," he said,
with perfect assurance, as we passed down the ward together.
"Operation has taken too much out of her."
"Still, she has great recuperative powers," Hilda answered. "They all
have in her family, Professor. You may, perhaps, remember Joseph
Huntley, who occupied Number Sixty-seven in the Accident Ward,
some nine months since--compound fracture of the arm--a dark,
nervous engineer's assistant--very hard to restrain--well, HE was her
brother; he caught typhoid fever in the hospital, and you commented at
the time