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Page 9
"Is he going to live?" he inquired. He could see that the ward nurse
had an eye on him, and was preparing for retreat.
"O yes," said Jane Brown. "I think so now. The _interne_ says they
have had a message from Doctor Willie. He is coming." There was a
beautiful confidence in her tone.
Things moved very fast with the Probationer for the next twenty-four
hours. Doctor Willie came, looking weary but smiling benevolently.
Jane Brown met him in a corridor and kissed him, as, indeed, she had
been in the habit of doing since her babyhood.
"Where is the young rascal?" said Doctor Willie. "Up to his old
tricks, Nellie, and struck by a train." He put a hand under her
chin, which is never done to the members of the training school in a
hospital, and searched her face with his kind old eyes. "Well, how
does it go, Nellie?"
Jane Brown swallowed hard.
"All right," she managed. "They want to operate, Doctor Willie."
"Tut!" he said. "Always in a hurry, these hospitals. We'll wait a
while, I think."
"Is everybody well at home?"
It had come to her, you see, what comes to every nurse once in her
training--the thinness of the veil, the terror of calamity, the fear
of death.
"All well. And----" he glanced around. Only the Senior Surgical
Interne was in sight, and he was out of hearing. "Look here,
Nellie," he said, "I've got a dozen fresh eggs for you in my
satchel. Your mother sent them."
She nearly lost her professional manner again then. But she only
asked him to warn the boys about automobiles and riding on the backs
of wagons.
Had any one said Twenty-two to her, she would not have known what
was meant. Not just then, anyhow.
In the doctors' room that night the Senior Surgical Interne lighted
a cigarette and telephoned to the operating room.
"That trephining's off," he said, briefly.
Then he fell to conversation with the Senior Medical, who was rather
worried about a case listed on the books as Augustus Baird,
coloured.
Twenty-two did not sleep very well that night. He needed exercise,
he felt. But there was something else. Miss Brown had been just a
shade too ready to accept his explanation about Mabel, he felt, so
ready that he feared she had been more polite than sincere. Probably
she still believed there was a Mabel. Not that it mattered, except
that he hated to make a fool of himself. He roused once in the night
and was quite sure he heard her voice down the corridor. He knew
this must be wrong, because they would not make her work all day and
all night, too.
But, as it happened, it _was_ Jane Brown. The hospital provided
plenty of sleeping time, but now and then there was a slip-up and
somebody paid. There had been a night operation, following on a busy
day, and the operating-room nurses needed help. Out of a sound sleep
the night Assistant had summoned Jane Brown to clean instruments.
At five o'clock that morning she was still sitting on a stool beside
a glass table, polishing instruments which made her shiver. All
around were things that were spattered with blood. But she looked
anything but fluttery. She was a very grim and determined young
person just then, and professional beyond belief. The other things,
like washing window-sills and cutting toe-nails, had had no
significance. But here she was at last on the edge of mercy. Some
one who might have died had lived that night because of this room,
and these instruments, and willing hands.
She hoped she would always have willing hands.
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