The Web of Life | Page 4

of puppets. 'You understand; you understand. It is terrible!'
The surgeon's brown eyes answered hers, but he was puzzled. Had he
probed her aright? It was one of those intimate moments that come to
nervously organized people, when the petty detail of acquaintanceship
and fact is needless, when each one stands nearly confessed to the other.
And then she left the room.
The surgeon proceeded without a word, working intently, swiftly,
dexterously. At first the head nurse was too busy in handling bowls and
holding instruments to think, even professionally, of the operation. The

interne, however, gazed in admiration, emitting exclamations of delight
as the surgeon rapidly took one step after another. Then he was sent for
something, and the head nurse, her chief duties performed, drew herself
upright for a breath, and her keen, little black eyes noticed an
involuntary tremble, a pause, an uncertainty at a critical moment in the
doctor's tense arm. A wilful current of thought had disturbed his action.
The sharp head nurse wondered if Dr. Sommers had had any wine that
evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against
the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the
languid summer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve.
But the head nurse understood well that such a wavering of will or
muscle must not occur again, or the hairbreadth chance the drunken
fellow had----
She watched that bared arm, her breath held. The long square fingers
closed once more with a firm grip on the instrument. "Miss Lemoris,
some No. 3 gauze." Then not a sound until the thing was done, and the
surgeon had turned away to cleanse his hands in the bowl of purple
antiseptic wash.
"My!" the head nurse exclaimed, "Dr. Trip ain't in it." But the surgeon's
face wore a preoccupied, sombre look, irresponsive to the nurse's
admiration. While she helped the interne with the complicated dressing,
the little nurse made ready for removal to the ward. Then when one of
the ward tenders had wheeled the muffled figure into the corridor, she
hurried across to the office.
"It's all over," she whispered blithely to the wife, who sat in a dull
abstraction, oblivious of the hospital flurry. "And it's going to be all
right, I just know. Dr. Sommers is so clever, he'd save a dead man. You
had better go now. No use to see him to-night, for he won't come out of
the opiate until near morning. You can come tomorrow morning, and
p'r'aps Dr. Sommers will get you a pass in. Visitors only Thursdays and
Sunday afternoons usually."
She hurried off to her duties in the ward. The woman did not rise at
once. She did not readjust her thoughts readily; she seemed to be
waiting in the chance of seeing some one. The surgeon did not come

out of the receiving room; there was a sound of wheels in the corridor
just outside the office door, followed by the sound of shuffling feet.
Through the open door she could see two attendants wheeling a
stretcher with a man lying motionless upon it. They waited in the hall
outside under a gas-jet, which cast a flickering light upon the
outstretched form. This was the next case, which had been waiting its
turn while her husband was in the receiving room,--a hand from the
railroad yards, whose foot had slipped on a damp rail; now a pulpy,
almost shapeless mass, thinly disguised under a white sheet that had
fallen from his arms and head. She got up and walked out of the room.
She was not wanted there: the hospital had turned its momentary swift
attention to another case. As she passed the stretcher, the bearers
shifted their burden to give her room. The form on the stretcher moaned
indistinctly.
She looked at the unsightly mass, in her heart envious of his condition.
There were things in this world much more evil than this bruised flesh
of what had once been a human being.

CHAPTER II
The next morning Dr. Sommers took his successor through, the surgical
ward. Dr. Raymond, whose place he had been holding for a month, was
a young, carefully dressed man, fresh from a famous eastern hospital.
The nurses eyed him favorably. He was absolutely correct. When the
surgeons reached the bed marked 8, Dr. Sommers paused. It was the
case he had operated on the night before. He glanced inquiringly at the
metal tablet which hung from the iron cross-bars above the patient's
head. On it was printed in large black letters the patient's name,
ARTHUR C. PRESTON; on the next line in smaller letters, Admitted
March 26th. The remaining space on the card was left blank to receive
the statement of regimen, etc.