A MODERN MIRACLE
"I don't know. He was here when you came, but I saw him going up the
mountain into the woods. But I'll answer for him; I'll take that chance,
doctor. She is nearly as dear to me as she is to him, and I know that
she is going to die, unless ... unless ..."
"I knew you'd say it. Well, we'll operate, Miss Merriman."
Donald's voice was calm, impersonal again, and his tone had a steely
quality, as though his lancet or scalpel had become endowed with a
voice, and spoken.
Silently, and with practised hands, the nurse began to unpack his bag
and lay out upon a sheet, which she obtained from Rose and spread over
the rough table, the many strange instruments, bottles, rolls of
bandages and sponges in their sterile packages.
"Have you any baking soda--saleratus, Rose?"
She nodded.
"Good. Put about a teaspoonful in the smaller kettle, and boil these
instruments for ten minutes, while we are making the final preparations.
I want some hot water, too."
He turned away, and for a moment stood looking up at the calm heavens in
which the stars made openings for the white eternity beyond to shine
through. Something in the scene bore his thoughts back to that summer
evening when the mountain man of God had tried so earnestly to minister
to his own disease. Snatches of sentences re-echoed in his memory. Then
he stepped back to Smiles' side and his voice was soft, as he said, "I
suppose that, whenever a surgeon begins an operation like this one, he
has an unformed prayer deep in his heart, though he may not realize to
whom he prays. There was never more occasion for one than to-night,
Rose. I know that the Great Healer is nearer to you than to me. Ask Him
that my hand may not falter."
She nodded again, sweetly serious.
Once more his accustomed bluntness of manner returned, and he snapped,
"Oh, why in the devil didn't I have sense enough to bring another
assistant?"
"I am here, doctor," answered the girl.
"Yes, yes, I know." He regarded her with the old, searching look. Then,
to the nurse, "It's only one of the many chances we have got to take.
When you put the patient under the anaesthetic you will show Rose exactly
how it is administered, for she will have to keep her unconscious
without any further aid from you after I begin to operate. We have _got_
to trust her, Miss Merriman," he added shortly, as he caught the
expression of grave doubt which the nurse could not keep from appearing
on her countenance. "See that she washes and sterilizes her hands
thoroughly. That hot water, Rose. I want a basinful."
She supplied it, then departed to do the rest of his bidding, and for
some moments was kept so busy that she did not realize what the other
two were doing at the bedside, other than to note that Donald had raised
the head of the bed by blocking up the legs with firelogs, and covered
it with a rubber sheet such as she had never seen before.
When she did, however, return to the side of the little sufferer, whose
face was far whiter than the clean, but coarse, sheet which covered the
emaciated body, a low cry of protest and grief was wrung from her lips.
Already most of the lovely ringlets of spun gold, which had won for the
baby Donald's characterization of "Little Buttercup," gleamed on the
rough floor, and the ruthless but necessary sacrifice was being
continued.
There were tears on her cheeks as she aided the doctor to scrub the
shorn scalp, until the child moaned and turned her head from side to
side.
"He is my commanding officer. He told me that I must always remember
that, and obey," whispered Rose to herself, as Donald, in his
abstraction, began to snap forth his orders in a manner and tone which,
for a moment, made her shrink and quiver. His words were often
unintelligible to her, until Miss Merriman, silent-footed and efficient,
translated them into action, as, before the wide eyes of the mountain
child, there began to unfold the swift drama of modern surgical science
at its pinnacle, amid that fantastic setting.
Strange words, indeed, were those which now fell on her attentive ears,
many of them far outside the bounds of her limited vocabulary; yet,
stranger still, she soon began to grasp their meaning intuitively, and
her quick native perception, keyed high by emergency, led her often to
anticipate the physician's wish, and act upon it. More than once she won
a look of surprise from the older woman.
Donald's directions to Miss Merriman were curt and incisive; but soon he
did not limit his speech to them. Rather he seemed to be uttering his
thoughts aloud; the old habit of making a running explanation for the
benefit of a clinic or the better understanding of an assistant was
subconsciously asserting itself, and it was to Rose as though she were
listening to the outpouring of a fountain of knowledge, whose waters
engulfed her mind and made it gasp, yet carried her along with them. It
was all a dream, a weird, impossible nightmare to her; the familiar room
began to assume a strange aspect, and the man's words came to her as do
those heard in a sleeping vision--real, yet tinctured with unreality.
"In this case the elastic tourniquet will stop the blood flow as
effectively as the Heidenhain backstitch suture method, I think, Miss
Merriman, and it will be much simpler. I'm glad I brought it. Have you
the saline solution, and the gauze head-covering ready?"
"Yes, doctor."
"Then you may administer the ether--use the drop method, and don't
forget to show her just how to regulate it.
"No blood-pressure machine," he muttered. "Oh, well, we've just got to
trust to her being able to stand it, and ..."
"And to God," whispered Rose.
He glanced quickly up, as though he had already forgotten her presence,
and added, gently, "Of course."
The small pad of gauze, which Miss Merriman laid over the baby's face,
grew moist; a strange, pungent odor began to fill the room. As she bent
over to watch intently what the nurse was doing, Rose suddenly found
herself beginning to get dizzy.
"Stand up, Smiles," came the sharp command. "Here, hold this
handkerchief over your mouth and nose. Now, take the bottle yourself ...
so ... a drop on the pad ... now. Yes, that's right, just as Miss
Merriman has been doing. Little Lou is wholly unconscious, we must keep
her so.
"Remember, now your test is beginning, and I expect you not to fail me.
A great deal depends on you, Rose. You are a soldier on the firing-line
now, and you are going to keep up, whatever happens. It may be for half
an hour, but you will keep up, for me, for Lou, whatever happens.
Remember! _Whatever happens!_"
He looked fixedly into the unnaturally big eyes which were turned up to
his like two glorious flowers, and she nodded. With a pang of regret he
noticed how thin her face was, and how white,--so pale that the color
had fled even from the sweet, sensitive lips which smiled ever so
faintly at him, and then at the nurse, as the latter made the quiet
suggestion that she try to keep her eyes always fixed on the pad of
gauze, and not let them be drawn away from it if she could possibly help
it.
But at first she could not, and so she saw the pitiful little head,
stripped of its golden crown, first covered with a clinging veil of wet
cloth, over which, from behind the ears to the top of the forehead, a
circular band of rubber tubing was adjusted and drawn tight into the
flesh--"to stop the blood, like I did for grandpappy when he cut his
arm," she thought. Then the head was gently raised and settled into
position on the sand-filled pillow, which cradled it firmly.
Only the gurgling breath of the mercifully unconscious baby, and the
crackling of the fire, broke the silence as the surgeon adjusted and
posed his patient's head, as an artist would his model's.
A piercing light flashed before the girl's eyes, and she saw that now
Miss Merriman held a strange-looking black tube, which shed a circle of
concentrated sunshine on the gauze-covered head. It was her first
experience with a flashlight, and she marvelled at its power.
Now there came another dart of light, thin and fleeting, and she knew
that a knife was poised in mid-air. Involuntarily she closed her eyes
tight; a shudder ran through her. Donald's voice spoke impersonally, and
steadied her.
"I shall expose the third left frontal convolution of the brain through
the fronto-parietal bone, and, in making the osteoplastic flap, I intend
to leave a wide working margin above the size of the opening which may
actually be necessary in order to reach the growth. It has got to be
fully exposed at once. I can't afford to delay, under the
circumstances."
The gleam of the scalpel held her unwilling gaze with the fascination of
horror; she drew her breath with a sound between a shudder and a sigh as
it descended....
"I _must_ keep my eyes on the ether pad," came the command from her
whirling brain.
Many nights thereafter, Rose was to start up from troubled sleep with
strange sounds and stranger words echoing in her brain--words like
"bevelled trephines," "Hudson forceps," "elevators," "Horsley's wax,"
"rongeurs," "clips" and "sponges,"--but during the actual operation she
was scarcely conscious of them, and her principal feeling was one of
dumb rebellion which grew until she found herself almost hating _this_
Donald, who could speak with such unconcern and apparent callousness, at
such a time. As well as she could, she willed her swimming gaze to
remain fixed on the pad which she must keep moist. The difficulty of the
task had suddenly become increased, for the pad seemed to become an
animate thing. Now it appeared to retreat into the distance, and again
it came floating back until it seemed about to smother her. There was a
droning note in her ears; the words spoken by the other two sounded
mixed and indistinct.
Of only one sentence, repeated monotonously in Miss Merriman's clear
voice, was she really conscious. "Rose, a drop of ether ... a drop of
ether ... a drop of ether."
She wanted to speak, to ask them if the room were not frightfully hot;
but she could not.
Rose had never fainted in her life, but she had once seen a neighbor
swoon, and she realized vaguely that, as the minutes passed, her
consciousness was slowly slipping from her. The air was close and heavy
with strange smells. She felt as though she were swaying like a
pendulum. The old, familiar objects grew grotesquely large and hazy; the
deep shadows in the corners multiplied, and began to dance a solemn
minuet, advancing, retreating; advancing, retreating....
"Another drop of ether."
She took a fresh mental grasp on herself, and held Duty, like a visible
thing, before her eyes.
Again that queer, far-away voice.
"Look, Miss Merriman. Can you see that neoplasm under the membrane? Ah
... now the flat dissector ... no, the blunter one ..."
The voice trailed away into nothing, and another recalled her failing
senses, with the battle cry:
"Rose, another drop of ether."
Then it began again, "Thank heaven, there is no infiltration, the growth
is well localized and encapsulated. Steady, steady.... Ah, very pretty."
The word caught her flickering thoughts, and angered her. How could any
one use it about anything so awful?
There was another misty moment. Then, "The operation is, in itself, a
success, I think.... Now if the child's vitality ... I never did a
better one ... another sponge ... excellent ... Are the sutures
ready?... Quick, take the ether bottle, Miss Merriman!"
Suddenly the girl felt a painful grasp on her arm. Some one was shaking
her roughly.
"Rose," came the same strange voice, "we need some more wood for the
fire. Go out to the woodpile, and get some."