THE SURGICAL FIRING LINE
"Len, I've something great to tell you," announced Red Pepper Burns, one
evening in August, as he came out from his office where he had been
seeing a late patient, and joined his wife, who was wandering about her
garden in the twilight. "To-day I've had the compliment of my life. Whom
do you think I'm to operate on day after to-morrow?"
She looked up at him as he stood, his hands in his pockets, looking down
at her. In her sheer white frock, through which gleamed her neck and
arms, her hands full of pink and white snapdragon, she was worth
consideration. Her eyes searched his face and found there a curious
exultation of a very human sort. "How could I guess? Tell me."
"Who should you say was the very last man on earth to do me the honour
of trusting me in a serious emergency?"
She turned away her head, gazing down at a fragrant border of
mignonette, while he watched her, a smile on his lips. She looked up
again. "I can't think, Red. It seems to me everybody trusts you."
"Not by a long shot, or the rest of the profession would stand idle. But
there's one man who I should have said, to use a time-honoured phrase,
wouldn't let me operate on a sick cat. And he's the man who is going to
put his life in my hands Wednesday morning at ten o'clock. Len, if I am
ever on my mettle to do a perfect job, it'll be then!"
"Of course. But who--"
"I should think the name would leap to your lips. Who's mine ancient
enemy, the man who has fought me by politely sneering at me, and
circumventing me when he could, ever since I began practice, and whom
I've fought back in my way? Why, Len--"
Her dark eyes grew wide. "Red! Not--Doctor Van Horn?"
"Even so."
"Oh, Red! That is a compliment--and more than a compliment. But I should
never have thought of him somehow because, I suppose--"
"Because nobody ever thinks of a doctor's being sick or needing an
operation. But doctors do--sometimes--and usually pretty badly, too,
before they will submit to it. Van Horn's in dreadful shape, and has
been keeping it dark--until it's got the upper hand of him completely.
Mighty plucky the way he's been going on with his work, with trouble
gnawing at his vitals."
"How did he come to call you?"
"That's what I'm wondering. But call me he did, yesterday, and I've seen
him twice since. And when I told him what had to be done he took it like
a soldier without wincing. But when he said he wanted me to do the trick
you could have knocked me down with a lead pencil. My word, Len, I have
been doing Van an injustice all these years! The real stuff is in him,
after all, and plenty of it, too."
"It is he who has done you the injustice," Ellen said with a little lift
of the head.
"I know I have given you reason to think so--the times I've come home
raving mad at some cut of his. But, Len, that's all past and he wipes it
out by trusting me now. The biggest thing I've had against him was not
his knifing me but his apparent toadying to the rich and influential.
But there's another side to that and I see it now. Some people have to
be coddled, and though it goes against my grain to do it, I don't know
why a man who can be diplomatic and winning, like Van Horn, hasn't his
place just as much as a rough rider like me. Anyhow, the thing now is to
pull him through his operation, and if I can do it--well, Van and I
will be on a new basis, and a mighty comfortable one it will be."
His voice was eager and his wife understood just how his pulses were
thrilling, as do those of the born surgeon, at the approach of a great
opportunity.
"I'm very, very glad, dear," Ellen said warmly. "It's a real triumph of
faith over jealousy, and I don't wonder you are proud of such a
commission. I know you will bring him through."
"If I don't--but that's not to be thought of. It's a case that calls for
extremely delicate surgery and a sure hand, but the ground is plainly
mapped out and only some absolutely unforeseen complication is to be
dreaded. And when it comes to those complications--well, Len, sometimes
I think it must be the good Lord who works a man's brain for him at such
crises, and makes it pretty nearly superhuman. It's hard to account any
other way, sometimes, for the success of the quick decisions you make
under necessity that would take a lot of time to work out if you had the
time. Oh, it's a great game, Len, no doubt of that--when you win. And
when you lose"--he stopped short, staring into the shadows where a row
of dark-leaved laurel bushes shut away the garden in a soft
seclusion--"well, that's another story, a heartbreaking story."
He was silent for a minute, then, in another tone, he spoke
confidently: "But--this isn't going to be a story of that kind. Van Horn
has a big place in the city and he's going to keep it. And I'm going to
spend the rest of this evening making a bit of a tool I've had in mind
for some time--that there's a remote chance I shall need in this case.
But if that remote chance should come--well, there's nothing like a
state of preparedness, as the military men say."
"That's why you succeed, Red; you always are prepared."
"Not always. And it's in the emergency you can't foresee that heaven
comes to the rescue. You can't expect it to come to the rescue when you
might have foreseen. 'Trust the Lord and keep your powder dry' is a
pretty good maxim for the surgical firing line, too--eh?"
With his arm through his wife's he paced several times up and down the
flowery borders, then went away into the small laboratory and machine
shop where he was accustomed to do much of the work which showed only in
its final results. Through the rest of the hot August evening, his
attire stripped to the lowest terms compatible with possible unexpected
visitors, he laboured with all the enthusiasm characteristic of him at
tasks which to another mind would have been drudgery indeed.
To him, at about ten o'clock, came his neighbour and friend, Arthur
Chester. Standing with arms on the sill outside of the lighted window,
clad in summer vestments of white and looking as cool and fresh as the
man inside looked hot and dirty, Chester attempted to lure the worker
forth.
"Win's serving a lot of cold, wet stuff on our porch," he announced.
"Ellen's there, and the Macauleys, and Jord King has just driven up and
stopped for a minute. He's got Aleck with him and he's pleased as Punch
because he's rigged a contrivance so that Aleck can drive himself with
one hand. What do you think of that?"
"Good work," replied Burns absently after a minute, during which he
tested a steel edge with an experimental finger and shook his head at
it.
"Did you expect Jord to keep Aleck, when he's got to have another man
besides for the things Aleck can't do now?"
Burns nodded. "Expect anything--of him."
"Put down that murderous-looking thing and come along over. Ellen said
you were here, and Win sent word to you not to bother to change your
clothes."
"Thanks--I won't."
"Won't bother--or won't come?"
"Both."
Chester sighed. "Do you know what you remind me of when you get in this
hole of a workshop? A bull pup with his teeth in something, and only
growls issuing."
"Better keep away then."
"I suppose that's a hint--a bull-pup hint."
Silence from inside, while the worker stirred something boiling over a
flame, poured a dark fluid from one retort into another, dropped in a
drop or two of something from a small vial inflammatorily labelled, and
started an electric motor in a corner. Chester could see the shine of
perspiration on the smooth brow below the coppery hair, and drops
standing like dew on the broad white chest from which the open shirt was
turned widely back.
"It must be about a hundred and fifty Fahrenheit in there," he
commented. Burns grunted an assent. "It's only eighty-four on our porch,
and growing cooler every minute. The things we have to drink are just
above thirty-two, right off the ice." Chester's words were carefully
chosen.
"Dangerous extremes. But I wouldn't mind having a pint or two of
something cold. Go, bring it to me."
"Well, I like that."
"So'll I, I hope."
Chester laughed and strolled away. When he returned he carried a big
crystal pitcher filled with a pleasantly frothing home-made amber brew
in which ice tinkled. With him came Jordan King. Chester shoved aside
the screen and pushed the pitcher inside, accompanied by a glass which
Winifred had insisted on sending.
Burns caught up the pitcher, drank thirstily, drew his arm across his
mouth and grinned through the window, meeting Jordan King's smiling gaze
in return.
"Company manners don't go when your hands are black, eh?" remarked the
man inside.
"Mechanics and surgeons seem a good deal alike at times," was the
laughing reply.
"Can't tell 'em apart. Your lily-handed surgeon is an anomaly. I hear
Aleck came out under his own steam to-night. How does it go?"
"First rate. It was great fun. He's like a boiling kettle full of steam,
with the lid off just in time."
"Good. Be on your guard when he's driving, though, for a while. Don't
let him stay at the wheel down Devil's Hill just yet."
"Why not? He has absolute control the way I've fixed it. You see the
spark and gas are right where--"
"I don't want you to take one chance in a million on that back of yours
yet. See? Or do I have to drive that order in and spike it down?"
"He seems to have a lot of conversation in him--for you," observed
Chester to King as the two outside laughed at this explosion from
within.
"Such as it is," replied King with an audacious wink. "I thought I'd got
about through taking orders."
"I'll give you both two minutes to clear out," came from inside the
window as Burns caught up a piece of steel and began narrowly to examine
it. Over it he looked at Jordan King, and the two exchanged a glance
which spoke of complete understanding.
"Come again, boy," Burns said with a sudden flashing smile at his
friend.
"I will--day after to-morrow in the afternoon," King returned, and his
eyes held Burns's.
"What? Do you know?"
King nodded, with a look of pride. "You bet I do."
"Who told you?"
"Himself."
"Didn't know you knew him well enough for that."
"Oh, yes, through mother; they're old friends. She sent me to see him
for her."
"I see. Well, wish me luck!"
"I wish you--your own skill at its highest power," said Jordan King
fervently.
"Thanks, youngster," was Burns's answer, and this time there was no
smile on the face which he lifted again for an instant from above the
tiny piece of steel which held in it such potentialities--in his hands.
"You seem to have got farther in under his skin than the rest of us,"
observed Chester to King as they walked slowly away. There was a touch
of unconscious jealousy in his tone. He had known R.P. Burns a long
while before Jordan King had reached man's estate. "I never knew him to
say a word about a coming operation before."
"He didn't say it now; I happened to know. Come out and see the rigging
we've put on the car so Aleck can work everything with one hand and two
feet."
"And a few brains, I should say," Chester supplemented.
* * * * *
Though Burns had plenty of other work to keep him busy during the
interval before he should lay hands upon Doctor Van Horn, his mind was
seldom off his coming task. In spite of all that Ellen knew of the past
antagonism between the two men she was in possession of but
comparatively few of the facts. Except where his fiery temper had
entirely overcome him Burns had been silent concerning the many causes
he had had to dislike and distrust the older man.
As what is called "a fashionable physician," having for his patients
few outside of the wealthy class, Dr. James Van Horn had occupied a
field of practice entirely different from that of R.P. Burns. Though
Burns numbered on his list many of the city's best known and most
prosperous citizens, he held them by virtue of a manner of address and a
system of treatment differing in no wise from that which he employed
upon the poorest and humblest who came to him. If people liked him it
was for no blandishments of his, only for his sturdy manliness, his
absolute honesty, and a certain not unattractive bluntness of speech
whose humour often atoned for its thrust.
As for his skill, there was no question that it ranked higher than that
of his special rival. As for his success, it had steadily increased.
And, as all who knew him could testify, when it came to that "last
ditch" in which lay a human being fighting for his life, Burns's
reputation for standing by, sleeves rolled up and body stiff with
resistance of the threatening evil, was such that there was no man to
compete with him.
It was inevitable that in a city of the moderate size of that in which
these two men practised there should arise situations which sometimes
brought about a clash between them. The patient of one, having arrived
at serious straits, often called for a consultation with the other. The
very professional bearing and methods of the two were so different,
strive though they might to adapt themselves to each other at least in
the presence of the patient, that trouble usually began at once, veiled
though it might be under the stringencies of professional etiquette.
Later, when it came to matters of life and death, these men were sure to
disagree radically. Van Horn, dignified of presence, polished of speech,
was apt to impress the patient's family with his wisdom, his restraint,
his modestly assured sense of the fitness of his own methods to the
needs of the case; while Burns, burning with indignation over some
breach of faith occasioned by his senior's orders in his absence, or
other indignity, flaming still more hotly over being forced into a
course which he believed to be against the patient's interest, was
likely to blurt out some rough speech at a moment when silence, as far
as his own interests were concerned, would have been more discreet--and
then would come rupture.
Usually those most concerned never guessed at the hidden fires, because
even Burns, under bonds to his wife to restrain himself at moments of
danger, was nearly always able to get away from such scenes without open
outbreak. But more than once a situation had developed which could be
handled only by the withdrawal of one or the other physician from the
case--and then, whether he went or stayed, Burns could seldom win
through without showing what he felt.
Now, however, he was feeling as he had never dreamed he could feel
toward James Van Horn. The way in which the man was facing the present
crisis in his life called for Burns's honest and ungrudging admiration.
With that same cool and unflurried bearing with which Van Horn was
accustomed to hold his own in a consultation was he now awaiting the
uncertain issue of his determination to end, in one way or the other,
the disability under which he was suffering.