WHAT HESTER DID
Dr. Agnew was very much troubled over his little patient down in the
tenements, and he told Nellie about it one evening after supper.
"I have had to insist that the child be taken to the hospital," said
the good doctor. "That almost broke his mother's heart; but their
rooms were not sufficiently airy. And then, the child is suffering
from pernicious anaemia, and unless he mends he will die, anyway."
"That is an awful hard name to call little Johnny, Daddy Doctor," said
Nellie.
"It is awfully hard for little Johnny, that's a fact," said the
doctor, thoughtfully. "It is awfully hard for his mother, who, like
the plucky widow she is, has struggled so hard to bring those children
to where they are. Bill, of course, has helped her; but Bill isn't
much smarter in some ways than silly Rufe. The widow's done it all;
and she's just wrapped up in Johnny."
"How cruel for anything to happen to him!" sighed Nellie.
"It looks so. We can't see things in their true light very often, I
suppose. It takes a Divine Eye to see straight," and the doctor wagged
his head. "Here's this poor woman would give her heart's blood--that's
the expression she uses--to save the little fellow. But her blood won't
do. She is not in a healthy condition herself. And Johnny needs
perfectly healthy, normal blood----"
"My goodness, Daddy Doctor!" exclaimed Nellie, with a shiver. "How you
do talk!"
"Eh?"
"As though anybody's blood could help poor Johnny."
"Ah! but that's just it, Nellie. Somebody's blood _would_ help poor
little Johnny. A pint or so of somebody's healthy, red blood----"
"How horrid!" cried the girl, trying to jump off the chair; but her
father's big hand held her.
"Wait. Don't be a ridiculous Miss Nancy!" he said, with a chuckle.
"You are as much a surgeon's daughter as a doctor's daughter, I hope."
"I'm proud that you heal folk of diseases, Daddy Doctor," she said,
laughing faintly. "But you talk now just like a butcher."
"No. The transfusion of blood is one of the most wonderful and blessed
discoveries of recent years. Perhaps not a discovery; but the proper
way to do it is a recent discovery. And that is what we want to try on
little Johnny at the hospital."
"Oh, Daddy!" gasped Nellie, at last seeing that he was in earnest.
"Johnny's condition is such that he needs good, red corpuscles pumping
through his veins, and without a proper amount or a proper quality of
blood, he cannot live. The nourishment he can take is insufficient to
make this blood. What he must have is now in the possession of some
other person. We must find that person very quickly--or not at all."
"Oh, Daddy Doctor!" she whispered. "_I_ could never do a thing like
that!"
"I should say not," responded her father, quickly. "Don't make this a
personal matter, Kitten. You need every ounce of blood you've got for
yourself. You have been perilously near the anaemic state yourself in
times past. This athletic business and the resultant hearty appetite
you maintain has been the salvation of you, Nellie girl.
"Ah! we need a robust, healthy young person who would be willing to
give a quantity of blood and not miss it. And I venture to say it's
healthy blood that gives her that color, despite the fact that you
Miss Namby-pambies consider it 'coarse' and 'horrid' to have a red
face."
"Hester!" exclaimed Nellie.
The doctor nodded, then fell into silence again.
It was the next afternoon that they proposed taking little Johnny
Doyle to the hospital. The good doctor was at the widow's waiting for
the ambulance when Hester Grimes came in. The widow was wailing as
though her heart were broken; for with people of this degree of
intelligence, to take a patient to the hospital is equal to signing
his death warrant.
"Ochone! Ochone! I'll never see me little Johnny runnin' around the
flure again," she said to Hester. "He's goin' jest like his poor
feyther."
"What nonsense you're talking, Mrs. Doyle!" cried Hester, cheerfully.
"He'll come back to you as chipper as a sparrow. Won't he, Dr. Agnew?"
"So I tell her--if God wills," added the physician in a lower tone.
Hester glanced at him sharply and then walked to the front room window
where Dr. Agnew sat.
"What is it he needs, Doctor?" she asked, in a low voice. "His
mother's always talking so wild I cannot make head nor tail of it. She
says you want to put new blood in him."
"That is it exactly," said Dr. Agnew, his eyes twinkling. "A pint of
blood such as your veins carry in such abundance might save Johnny's
life."
"Do you mean that, Doctor?"
"Yes, Miss Hester."
"Then he can have it," returned the girl, quietly. "You can take it
now, for all I care."
The doctor jumped up and walked back and forth across the room. Then
he saw Hester stripping up her sleeve.
"No, no," he said. "It isn't as easy as all that. And I'm not sure I'd
be doing right to let you do it----"
"I guess you're not _my_ conscience, Dr. Agnew," said Hester, in her
usual brusque way.
"No; but I have a conscience of my own," said the doctor, grimly.
"This isn't a thing to be done in a minute, or in a corner, young
lady. It includes one of the very nicest of surgical operations. It
will keep you out of school for some time. It will keep you at the
hospital. It will, indeed, keep you in bed longer than you care to
stay, perhaps."
"Is it dangerous?"
"To you? No. Not in any appreciable degree. You are a full-blooded
girl. You can spare much more than Johnny needs----"
"Then let it be done," said Hester, firmly.
"We'll have to see what your mother and father say."
"You leave that to me," said Hester. "I know how to manage them."
Dr. Agnew looked at her for a moment with his brow wrinkled and his
lips pursed up. "I'm not sure whether, if you were my daughter, I
should be most proud of you, or afraid for you," he said.
She only looked puzzled by his speech. "What do you want me to do?"
she asked, finally.
"Come here to the light," the doctor said, rummaging in his kit for a
tiny instrument. He held her thumb firmly. "It will only be a needle
prick."
"Go ahead," said Hester.
He shot the needle into the ball of her thumb and drew out a drop or
two of blood in the glass bulb of the syringe.
"We'll just find out what _this_ tells about you in the laboratory,"
said the doctor. "I'm much mistaken if it doesn't tell a good story,
Hester Grimes. Then I'll come and see your father and mother this
evening."
"You needn't bother if you're going to be busy," observed Hester,
coolly. "They will give their permission. When will you want me at the
hospital?"
"You will sleep there to-night under the care of one of our very
nicest nurses--Miss Parraday," said the doctor, smiling again. "And our
little boy here--God willing--shall have a chance for life."