My wife said, “Maybe you didn’t know it, but that’s exactly what you
did come here for. I know a lot of things that you know nothing about.
And it’s much better you shouldn’t know.”
She had kept in touch with my diagnostician, and I wondered if he had
initiated her into some of the clinical secrets in order to punish me
for insubordination. I didn’t ask what it was she knew, nor did it
make much difference. Whatever a woman may know, it does not alter the
fact that she wants what she wants. And if her wants call for no more
than the loss of a kidney, it’s easier to accommodate her than it is to
oppose her wishes. Therefore, with the family and the clinical staff
arrayed against me there wasn’t much use arguing. Nobody supported my
side: I was like a lone defendant facing a “packed” jury, solid for
conviction.
The women were convinced that it was such a trivial affair, that they
all wished they could take the job off my hands. They were astonished
that under the circumstances I should be so obstinate in refusing this
opportunity of having Doctor Will Mayo operate on me. The result was,
I was made to feel more like a slacker than a hero. What a pity it is,
I thought, that those who like such things cannot have their tastes
gratified! I wished the kidney would kick up again so I could get
thoroughly sore and disgusted with it; but it lay there as quiet as a
mouse in the corner--as if it heard what was going on. I could almost
hear it whisper, “Stick to your guns, old pal, I’ll be a good kidney
in future.” But in a moment of weakness I asked the doctor how long it
would take.
“It means only ten days to two weeks in bed and one more to convalesce.
Yes, Doctor ‘Will’ can operate on you day after tomorrow morning.” That
settled it. At four o’clock the next afternoon, with the mercury thirty
below zero, my family accompanied me to the hospital.
“ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE--”
Have you ever been left at a strange hospital in the afternoon or
evening of a cold, gloomy day, to be prepared for an operation early
next morning? It starts the goose flesh on me even now when I recall
seeing the door close behind my family as they left the room when the
visitors’ hours were over. I was alone--and lonesome. Here is where
the stern realities of life press down hard upon you and you call in
all the reserves of your courage to meet them. It is a case where a
fellow is almost justified in feeling sorry for himself. I felt as I
imagine poor old Philoctetes must have felt when his companions sailed
away and abandoned him on the deserted Island of Lemnos, there to nurse
his snake-bitten ankle in painful solitude. I was even worse off than
Philoctetes: I didn’t have so much as a pain to keep me company.
In a few minutes an attractive nurse came in and looked me over with a
quick appraising eye.
“I’m to be your day nurse,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said; “I hope you’ll like me.” She said she’d be on duty
till seven, and come back at seven in the morning. For my “supper” she
said I might have a “light tray”; then she went out. Presently she
returned, bringing a tray with a miniature dish of light cereal. That
was all the rules permitted me to have. It was carefully concealed
beneath a white napkin, probably to keep the aerial bacilli from
nesting in it on the way in. When I had eaten it I glanced up with an
eager, hungry look, in comparison with which Oliver Twist must have
appeared contentedly well fed.
“Next course,” I said, with a maudlin attempt at facetiousness.
She shook her head. “You’ve had all the rules allow. I’m sorry, but--”
“But you’re not sorry enough to give me any more--is that it?”
“Your next course will be castor oil.”
“But I’ve already had it--bottles of it!” I protested. “It’s all
they’ve fed me the past ten days.” That made no difference; the orders
called for it, and there was no alternative but to take it.
“I _hate_ the damn stuff!--Haven’t you some substitute?” I pleaded.
“There is no substitute,” she said with an air of finality that closed
the argument.
She removed the tray, then set to work getting me ready for the night.
She unfastened my shoes, took them off, unbuttoned me and shunted me
into a suit of hospital pajamas, as if I were already an invalid. It
was hours before my usual bedtime, but I made no protest. In fact my
powers of opposition had been worn down to a point where it no longer
seemed worth while objecting to anything. Once before I had been in
a hospital a few days and learned my lesson in submissiveness. In a
hospital one soon learns to obey everybody, for every attendant, even
down to the meanest orderly, is clothed with an authority not to be
questioned by any invalid intruder. A man may be a czar in his own home
(that is, if he’s single), but let him fall into the clutches of the
doctors, nurses and hospital authorities and he becomes the most humble
milk-fed subject on earth. The moment he undertakes to assert himself
he is sure to run afoul of some iron-clad rule, and like a captive bird
beating its head against the bars of its cage he learns the utter
futility of resistance.
I lay there trying to chirk up my spirits by contemplating the future
joys of convalescence--when a fellow can sit up in an easy chair with
a consciousness of restored sovereignty over himself; when he can
fearlessly declare his mind and tell them all to go to the--but just
then the nurse reminded me it was seven o’clock, and she was leaving
for the night. She surprised me by saying the _barber_ would soon
be in.
“But I haven’t sent for any barber--I don’t want one.”
“No, but that’s all been arranged for you. Good night.” And out she
went.
It all reminded me of the newspaper accounts where we read of people
being fed, shaved and groomed for hanging or electrocution at daybreak,
except that they don’t have to take castor oil; and they are always
given plenty to eat.
Shortly after the nurse left the barber arrived. He unwrapped his kit
and took out an old-fashioned razor. “I’ve come to shave you.”
“Thank you, but I’m not an invalid, and I always shave myself.”
“Yes--your face--but that ain’t where they’re goin’ to operate,” he
laughed. He cupped his palms and blew his breath on them.--“I’ll have
to thaw the frost out of these joints before I can hold a razor.”
He was a youngish man and went about his task in a clumsy way. He
shaved--or rather scraped--my back from the waist down to the hips,
talking volubly the while. Then having turned me over, as he was
working industriously on the most ticklish part of my midsection he
confided to me that he was new at the barber business. He said he had
tried his hand on three or four ex-patients in an “undertaker’s shop,”
but I was the second “live one” he had ever “worked on.”
“But then I’ve got to learn sometime,” he remarked carelessly, while
he tested the edge of the razor on his thumbnail. “There’s one good
thing about shaving a ‘deader,’--if you cut him he can’t holler....
There ain’t much to shave right here,” he observed, rubbing his cold,
rough hand over the pit of my stomach, “but I’m supposed to run over it
just the same.” He hoped I would excuse him if he accidentally “cut”
or “pulled” a little. “But then I guess even if I’d nip you a bit it
wouldn’t be a thing to what they’ll do to you when they get you on the
table tomorrow morning,” he added with a snicker.
From that on to the end of the shaving operation my feelings can
better be imagined than described. My only grain of comfort was that
his razor was so dull that if it slipped it wouldn’t cut very deep.
When he had finished he sat down on the edge of the bed and proceeded
to regale me with anecdotes and personal experiences. He had recently
been a cab driver, but business in that line was dull in winter, and
the old barber at the hospital having suddenly died he applied for
the position and the Sisters had accepted him without questioning his
qualifications.
“I guess the old girls here think a barber’s a barber,” he laughed.
“Maybe you’ll think I’ve got a hell of a nerve, but you know when a
fellow’s up against it he can’t be choosey about a job.”
“My friend,” said I, “you have nothing on me. A hospital patient has no
choice between a barber and a blacksmith.”
He looked at me anxiously. “You wouldn’t squeal on me, would you?”
“Squeal? No--I’m glad you didn’t apply for the job of house surgeon.”
He drew a deep breath of relief. “Thanks. I hope I can get by for a few
days till I sort of get the hang o’ things.”
At length he got up, stretched his arms and yawned. “Well, I’ll be
going. Good luck to you, old scout,” he said; “I hope by the next time
you’re operated on I’ll have the barber business down pat.”
Next morning I was awakened at seven o’clock by my day nurse, who set
about decorating me for the operation. Those who have been through
these dismal preliminaries will need no rehearsal of the sensations;
and those who have not, had best be left in ignorance, with the hope
that they may never know.
I wondered if I were going to meet the famous Doctor Will, or if, like
a cold-blooded executioner, he would appear and after performing his
work, disappear like a phantom at daybreak. I had heard that operating
was such an impersonal affair with him that he paid no attention
whatever to the identity of the individual he operated on, either
before or after the act; that he simply came to the operating room at
the appointed time, and with his several assistants and all the facts
in the case before him he proceeded with his work as one would carve a
roast of beef without knowing or caring anything about the critter to
which it had belonged.
But I discovered that the Mayo brothers are not mere mechanical
butchers. On the contrary they are genial, sentimental, and
tenderhearted, to the last degree. My nurse declared that Doctor Will
was “all business”; but that “Doctor Charles makes more fun than a
circus clown.” They make the rounds at the hospital early in the
morning, meet the new patients and spend a few moments of cheerful
conversation with each one, which goes a long way toward counteracting
the dread of the trip to the operating room.
These calls are attended with a considerable amount of impressive
ceremony. About eight o’clock the first morning I heard a tramping of
many feet in the hall outside, then suddenly, without any warning,
the door was opened, my overhead light was flashed on and the nurse
in suppressed excitement whispered, “Doctor Will!” She immediately
took her position at the head of my bed. Two men--Doctor Will’s
first assistant and the house physician--came in and took their
positions across the room, facing the entrance. Then appeared Doctor
Will, followed by two other assistants. As he approached my bed
with outstretched hand he smiled and called me by name. After a few
good-natured remarks he said, “Don’t be alarmed, we’ll have you out
in a few days.” At this he left the room, with the other four, none
of whom had spoken a word. He had a firm, quick step, strong handsome
features, and a most engaging personality. After meeting and talking
with him you feel that you have entrusted yourself to competent hands.
An hour or so later the nurse came hurrying in with the news that
we’d been “called.” After being assured that I had no false teeth or
portable bridgework to leave behind, she hastily gave me a hypodermic
of morphine, bustled me into a wheel chair and hurried me up to the
operating room on the top floor. There under a great dome thickly
studded with electric lights, in the presence of Doctor Will and a
dozen or more gowned and masked assistants and attendants I climbed up
on the operating table, my arms were quickly folded across my chest,
and while my legs were being strapped into position the cone was placed
over my face and an angel-voiced creature murmured softly in my ear,
“Now take long deep breaths, please; it will only be a few seconds.”
I wondered if she were as beautiful as her voice. At any rate I would
gladly have postponed the operation and breathed an hour or more for
her, just to hear her talk. Her soft, musical voice seemed to move
farther away, and in the distance she was saying how nicely I was
getting on. I was about to call to her, not to go off and leave me,
but--
The next I knew I was back in my room looking drowsily up into the
anxious faces of my family who assured me that it was “all over.”
“No,” I said--“they’ve just sent for me; I have to go and be operated
on.” At that I closed my eyes and slept again. I afterwards learned
that the kidney required a great deal of excavating and curetting, and
that I had been on the operating table nearly two hours.