DR. HOFFMAN.
The girls and boys crowded around her with frightened faces. "Is she
killed?" they asked each other in terrified tones.
"It's all my fault," said Dick Albright, nearly beside himself; "I
should have known better than to let her go. She didn't think of the
danger, but I did, and I should have prevented her. Was there ever such
a fool as I?"
Gladys and Migwan were kneeling beside Sahwah and opening her coat. "She
is not dead," said Gladys, feeling her pulse. "We must get her home. She
is possibly only stunned." Sahwah moved slightly and groaned, but she
did not open her eyes. A passing automobile was hailed and she was
carried to it as carefully as possible and taken home.
"A slight concussion of the brain," said the hastily summoned doctor,
after he had made his examination, "and a fractured hip. The hip can be
fixed all right, but the concussion may be worse than it looks. That is
an ugly contusion on her head." The next few days were anxious ones in
the Brewster home. Sahwah gave no sign of returning consciousness, and
her fever rose steadily. Mrs. Brewster felt her hair turning gray with
the suspense, and the Winnebagos could neither eat nor sleep. Poor Dick
was frantic, yet he dared not show himself at the house for fear every
one would point an accusing finger at him as the one responsible for the
misfortune.
But Sahwah, true to her usual habit of always doing the unexpected
thing, progressed along just the opposite lines from those prophesied by
the physician. After a few days her fever abated and the danger from the
concussion was over. Sahwah's head had demonstrated itself to be of a
superior solidness of construction. But the hip, which at first had not
given them a moment's uneasiness, steadfastly refused to mend. Dr.
Benson looked puzzled; then grave. The splintered end of that hip bone
began to be a nightmare to him. He called in another doctor for
consultation. The new doctor set it in a different way, nearly killing
Sahwah with the pain, although she struggled valiantly to be brave and
bear it in silence. Nyoda never forgot that tortured smile with which
Sahwah greeted her when she came in after the process was over. A week
or two passed and the bones still made no effort to knit. Another
consulting physician was called in; a prominent surgeon. He ordered
Sahwah removed to the hospital, where he made half a dozen X-ray
pictures of her hip. The joint was so badly inflamed and swollen that it
was impossible to tell just where the trouble lay. Sahwah fumed and
fretted with impatience at having to stay in bed so long. Surgeon after
surgeon examined the fracture and shook their heads.
At last a long consultation was held, at the close of which Mr. and Mrs.
Brewster were called into the council of physicians. "We have
discovered," said Dr. Lord, a man high up in the profession who was
considered the final authority, "that the ball joint of your daughter's
hip has been fractured in such a way that it can never heal. There is
one inevitable result of this condition, and that is tuberculosis of the
bone. If not arrested this will in time communicate itself to the bones
of the upper part of the body and terminate fatally. There is only one
way to prevent this outcome and that is amputation of the limb before
the disease gets a hold on the system."
"You mean, cut her leg off?" asked Mrs. Brewster faintly.
"Yes," said Dr. Lord shortly. He was a man of few words.
Sahwah was stunned when she heard the verdict of the surgeons. She knew
little about disease and it seemed wildly impossible to her that this
limb of hers which had been so strong and supple a month ago would
become an agent of death if not amputated. She was in an agony of mind.
Never to swim again! Never to run and jump and slide and skate and
dance! Always to go about on crutches! Before the prospect of being
crippled for life her active nature shrank in unutterable horror. Death
seemed preferable to her. She buried her face in the pillow in such
anguish that the watchers by the bedside could not stand by and see it.
After a day of acute mental suffering her old-time courage began to rear
its head and she made up her mind that if this terrible thing had to be
done she might as well go through with it as bravely as possible. She
resigned herself to her fate and urged her parents to give their consent
to the operation. Poor Mrs. Brewster was nearly out of her mind with
worry over the affair.
"When will you do it?" asked Sahwah, struggling to keep her voice
steady.
"In about a week," said Dr. Lord, "when you get a little stronger."
Nyoda went home heartsick from the hospital that day. Sahwah had asked
her to write to Dr. Hoffman, her old friend in camp, and tell him the
news. With a shaking hand she wrote the letter. "Poor old Dr. Hoffman,"
she said to herself, "how badly he will feel when he hears that Sahwah
is hurt and he can do nothing to help her."
Sahwah had never dreamed how many friends she had until this misfortune
overcame her. Boys and girls, as well as old people and little children,
horrified at the calamity, came by the dozen to offer cheer and comfort.
Her room was filled to overflowing with flowers. Even "old Fuzzytop,"
whom Sahwah had tormented nearly to death, came to offer his sympathy
and present a potted tulip. Stiff and precise Miss Muggins came to say
how she missed her from the Latin class. Aunt Phoebe forgave all the
jokes she had made at her expense and sent over a crocheted dressing
jacket made of fleecy wool.
"Don't feel so badly, Nyoda dear," she said one day as Nyoda sat beside
her in the depths of despair. The usual jolly teacher had now no cheery
word to offer. The prospect of the gay dancing Sahwah on crutches for
the remainder of her life was an appalling tragedy. "I can act out 'The
Little Tin Soldier' quite realistically--then," went on Sahwah, her mind
already at work to find the humor of the situation. But Nyoda sat
staring miserably at the flowers on the dresser.
"Telegram for Miss Brewster," said the nurse, appearing in the doorway.
"A telegram for me?" asked Sahwah curiously, stretching out her hand for
the envelope. She tore it open eagerly and read, "Don't operate until I
come. Dr. Hoffman." "He's coming!" cried Sahwah. "Dr. Hoffman is coming!
He said if I ever broke a bone again he would come and set it! Poor
Doctor, how disappointed he'll be when he finds he can't 'set it'!"
Dr. Hoffman arrived the next day.
"Vell, vell, Missis Sahvah," he said anxiously as he saw her lying so
ominously still on the bed, "you haf not been trying to push somevon
across de top of Lake Erie, haf you?" Sahwah smiled faintly. A ray of
sunlight seemed to have entered the room with the doctor, also a gust of
wind. He had thrown his hat right into a bouquet of flowers and his hair
stood on end and his tie was askew with the haste he had made in getting
to the hospital from the train. "Now about this hip, yes?" he said in a
businesslike tone. Without any ceremony he brushed the nurse aside and
unwrapped the bandages. "Ach so," he said, feeling of the joint with a
practised hand, "you did a good job, Missis Sahvah. You make out of your
bone a splinter. But vot is dis I hear about operating?" he suddenly
exclaimed. "De very idea! Don't you let dem amputate your leg off! Such
fool doctors! It's a vonder dey did not cut your head off to cure de
bump!" His voice rose to a regular roar. Dr. Lord, coming in at that
moment, stopped in astonishment at the sight of this strange doctor
standing over his patient. "For vy did you want to amputate her leg
off?" shouted Dr. Hoffman at him, dancing up and down in front of him
and shaking his finger under his nose. "It is no more diseased dan yours
is. And you call yourself a surgeon doctor! Bah! You go out and play in
de sunshine and let me take care of dis hip."
"Who the dickens are you?" asked Dr. Lord, looking at him as though he
thought he were an escaped lunatic.
"Dis is who I am," replied Dr. Hoffman, handing him a card. "I vas in
eighteen-ninety-five by de _Staatsklinick_ in Berlin." Dr. Lord fell
back respectfully.
"I know someting about dot Missis Sahvah's bones," went on Dr. Hoffman,
"and I know dey vill knit if you gif dem a chance. If all goes vell she
vill valk again in t'ree months."
"I'd like to see you do it," said Dr. Lord.
"Patience, my friend," said Dr. Hoffman, "first ve make a little plaster
cast." When Mrs. Brewster came in the afternoon she found a strange
doctor in command and Dr. Lord and the nurses obeying his orders as if
hypnotized. When she went home that night, hope had come to life again
in her heart, where it had been dead for more than a week. Dr. Hoffman
spent the afternoon having X-ray photographs of the joint made, and sat
up all night trying to figure out how those bones could be set so they
would knit and still not leave the joint stiff. By morning he had the
solution.
The next day--the day the limb was to have been amputated--an operation
of a very different nature took place. Dr. Hoffman, looking more like a
pastry cook in his operating clothes than anything else, bustled around
the operating room keeping the nurses and assisting physicians on the
jump.
"Who's the Dutchman that's doing the bossing?" asked a pert young
interne of one of the doctors.
"Shut up," answered the doctor addressed, "that's Hoffman, of the
_Staatsklinick_ in Berlin, and the Royal College of Vienna. He was
Professor of Anatomy in the _Staatsklinick_ '95-'96, don't you
remember?" he said, turning to one of the other doctors. "He's a wizard
at bonesetting. He performed that operation on Count Esterhazy's
youngest son that kept him from being a cripple." The younger doctor
looked at Dr. Hoffman with a sudden respect. The case in question was a
famous one in surgical annals.
Dr. Lord, angry as he was at Dr. Hoffman's arraignment of him before the
nurses and visitors, was yet a big enough man to realize that he had a
chance to learn something from this sarcastic intruder who had so
unceremoniously taken his case out of his hands, and swallowing his
wrath, asked permission to witness the operation. "Ach, yes, to be
sure," said Dr. Hoffman, with his old geniality. "You must not mind that
I vas so cross yesterday," he went on, "it vas because I vas so
impatient ven I hear you vanted to amputate dot girl's leg off. But I
forget," he said magnanimously, "you do not know how to set de badly
splintered bones so dey vill knit, as I do. Bring all de doctors in you
vant to, and all de nurses too. Ve vill haf a _Klinick_."
Thus it was that the large operating room of the hospital was crowded to
the very edge of the "sterile field" with eager medical men, glad of the
chance to watch Dr. Hoffman at work. "Who is that young girl in here?"
asked Dr. Lord impatiently, as the anaesthetic was about to be
administered.
"Some friend of the patient," explained the head nurse. "Hoffman let her
in himself." The young girl in question was Medmangi. Dr. Hoffman knew
all about her ambition to become a doctor and allowed her to come into
the operating room. So she began her career by witnessing one of the
most inspired operations of a widely famed surgeon.
When Sahwah came out of the ether she felt as if she were held in a
vise. "What's the matter?" she asked dreamily. "I feel so stiff and
queer."
"It's the cast they put you in," answered her mother.
Sahwah moved her arms carefully to see if they were in working order
yet. Lightly she touched the hard substance that surrounded her hip
bone. "They didn't cut it off, did they?" she asked in sudden terror.
She could not tell by the feeling whether she had two legs or one.
Dr. Hoffman, coming in in time to hear the question, snorted violently.
"Don't talk such nonsense, Missis Sahvah," he said, waving his hands
emphatically. "Dot limb is still vere it belongs, and vill be as good as
ever ven de cast comes off."
The watchers around the bed that day wore very different expressions
from what they had worn all week. Just since yesterday despair had given
way to hope and hope to assurance. Her mother and father and Nyoda
hovered over the bed with radiant faces, and the Winnebagos, after
seeing Sahwah's favorable condition with their own eyes, retired to
Gladys's barn to celebrate. The rules of the hospital forbade the amount
of noise they felt they must make. Dick Albright smiled his first smile
that day since the night of the accident.