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Page 23
Promptly the operation was begun; there was no delay, no hesitation;
what there was to be done had been carefully planned beforehand, even to
the minutest details. Street, a master of his profession, thoroughly
familiar with every difficulty that might present itself during the
course of the work in hand, foreseeing every contingency, prepared for
every emergency, calm, watchful, self-contained, set about the exsecting
of the joint with no trace of compunction, no embarrassment, no
misgiving. His assistants, as well as he himself, knew that life or
death hung upon the issue of the next ten minutes. Upon Street alone
devolved the life of the little girl. A second's hesitation at the wrong
stage of the operation, a slip of bistoury or scalpel, a tremor of the
wrist, a single instant's clumsiness of the fingers, and the
Enemy--watching for every chance, intent for every momentarily opened
chink or cranny wherein he could thrust his lean fingers--entered the
frail tenement with a leap, a rushing, headlong spring that jarred the
house of life to its foundations. Lowering close over her head Lloyd
felt the shadow of his approach. He had arrived there in that
commonplace little room, with its commonplace accessories, its
ornaments, that suddenly seemed so trivial, so impertinent--the stopped
French clock, with its simpering, gilded cupids, on the mantelpiece; the
photograph of a number of picnickers "grouped" on a hotel piazza gazing
with monolithic cheerfulness at this grim business, this struggle of the
two world forces, this crisis in a life.
Then abruptly the operation was over.
The nurse and surgeons eased their positions immediately, drawing long
breaths. They began to talk, commenting upon the operation, and Lloyd,
intensely interested, asked Street why he had, contrary to her
expectations, removed the bone above the lesser trochanter. He smiled,
delighted at her intelligence.
"It's better than cutting through the neck, Miss Searight," he told her.
"If I had gone through the neck, don't you see, the trochanter major
would come over the hole and prevent the discharges."
"Yes, yes, I see, of course," assented Lloyd.
The incision was sewn up, and when all was over Lloyd carried Hattie
back to the bed in the next room. Slowly the little girl regained
consciousness, and Lloyd began to regard her once more as a human being.
During the operation she had forgotten the very existence of Hattie
Campbell, a little girl she knew. She had only seen a bit of mechanism
out of order and in the hands of a repairer. It was always so with
Lloyd. Her charges were not infrequently persons whom she knew, often
intimately, but during the time of their sickness their personalities
vanished for the trained nurse; she saw only the "case," only the
mechanism, only the deranged clockwork in imminent danger of running
down.
But the danger was by no means over. The operation had been near the
trunk. There had been considerable loss of blood, and the child's power
of resistance had been weakened by long periods of suffering. Lloyd
feared that the shock might prove too great. Farnham departed, but for a
little while the surgeon remained with Lloyd to watch the symptoms. At
length, however, he too, pressed for time, and expected at one of the
larger hospitals of the City, went away, leaving directions for Lloyd to
telephone him in case of the slightest change. At this hour, late in the
afternoon, there were no indications that the little girl would not
recover from the shock. Street believed she would rally and ultimately
regain her health.
"But," he told Lloyd as he bade her good-bye, "I don't need to impress
upon you the need of care and the greatest vigilance; absolute rest is
the only thing; she must see nobody, not even her father. The whole
system is numbed and deadened just yet, but there will be a change
either for better or worse some time to-night."
For thirty-six hours Lloyd had not closed an eye, but of that she had no
thought. Her supper was sent up to her, and she prepared herself for her
night's watch. She gave the child such nourishment as she believed she
could stand, and from time to time took her pulse, making records of it
upon her chart for the surgeon's inspection later on. At intervals she
took Hattie's temperature, placing the clinical thermometer in the
armpit. Toward nine in the evening, while she was doing this for the
third time within the hour, one of the house servants came to the room
to inform her that she was wanted on the telephone. Lloyd hesitated,
unwilling to leave Hattie for an instant. However, the telephone was
close at hand, and it was quite possible that Dr. Street had rung her up
to ask for news.
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