The Web of Life | Page 2

was not watching the patient, nor the good-looking
young surgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior.
Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm
and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing
out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad
yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in
the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly
on the nurse's ear. That was the voice of the engine on the ten-thirty
through express, which was waiting to take its train to the east. She
knew that engine's throb, for it was the engine that stood in the yards
every evening while she made her first rounds for the night. It was the
one which took her train round the southern end of the lake, across the
sandy fields, to Michigan, to her home.
The engine puffed away, and she withdrew her gaze and glanced at the
patient. To her, too, the wounded man was but a case, another error of
humanity that had come to St. Isidore's for temporary repairs, to start
once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished,
remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling
out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and
hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew
new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled
from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by
them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair.
This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must be some one who
had come in with the patient, and had stayed unobserved in the disorder
of a night case.
Suddenly the surgeon spoke; his words shot out at the head nurse.
"We will operate now!"
The interne shrugged his shoulders, but he busied himself in selecting
and wiping the instruments. Yet in spite of his decisive words the
surgeon seemed to hesitate.

"Was there any one with this man,--any friend?" he asked the head
nurse.
In reply she looked around vaguely, her mind thrown out of gear by
this unexpected delay. Another freak of the handsome surgeon!
"Any relative or friend?" the surgeon iterated peremptorily, looking
about at the attendants.
The little nurse at the foot of the patient, who was not impressed by the
irregularity of the surgeon's request, pointed mutely to the figure
behind the ward tenders. The surgeon wheeled about and glanced
almost savagely at the woman, his eyes travelling swiftly from her head
to her feet. The woman thus directly questioned by the comprehending
glance returned his look freely, resentfully. At last when the surgeon's
eyes rested once more on her face, this time more gently, she answered:
"I am his wife."
This statement in some way humanized the scene. The ward tenders
and the interne stared at her blankly; the nurses looked down in
unconscious comment on the twisted figure by their side. The surgeon
drew his hands from his pockets and stepped toward the woman,
questioning her meanwhile with his nervous, piercing glance. For a
moment neither spoke, but some kind of mute explanation seemed to be
going on between them.
She kept her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly.
Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to
the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife,
the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a
saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new preoccupation,
seemed to reply: 'Yes, I know! You need not pain yourself by telling
me.'
The patient groaned again, and the surgeon came back at once to the
urgent present--the case. He led the way to one side, and turning his
back upon the group of assistants he spoke to the woman in low tones.

"This man, your husband, is pretty badly off. He's got at least two
bullets in bad places. There isn't much chance for him--in his
condition," he explained brusquely, as if to reconcile his unusual
procedure with business-like methods.
"But I should operate," he continued; "I shall operate unless there are
objections--unless you object."
His customary imperious manner was struggling with a special feeling
for this woman before him. She did not reply, but waited to hear where
her part might come in. Her eyes did not fall from his face.
"There's a chance," the surgeon went on, "that a certain operation now
will bring him around all right. But to-morrow will be too late."
His words thus far had something foolish in them, and her eyes