Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  For the moment, at the prospect of action, even her haunting fear drew off and stood away from her. She was absorbed in her work upon the instant — alert, watchful, self-reliant. What the case was she could only surmise. How long she would be away she had no means of knowing — a week, a month, a year, she could not tell. But she was ready for any contingency. Usually the doctors informed the nurses as to the nature of the case at the time of sending for them, but Dr. Street had not done so now.

  However, Rownie called up to her that her coupé was at the door. Lloyd caught up her satchels and ran down the stairs, crying good-bye to Miss Douglass, whom she saw at the farther end of the hall. In the hallway by the vestibule she changed the slide bearing her name from the top to the bottom of the roster.

  “How about your mail?” cried Miss Douglass after her.

  “Keep it here for me until I see how long I’m to be away,” answered Lloyd, her hand upon the knob. “I’ll let you know.”

  Lewis had put Rox in the shafts, and while the coupé spun over the asphalt at a smart clip Lloyd tried to remember where she had heard of the address before. Suddenly she snapped her fingers; she knew the case, had even been assigned to it some eight months before.

  “Yes, yes, that’s it — Campbell — wife dead — Lafayette Avenue — little daughter, Hattie — hip disease — hopeless — poor little baby.”

  Arriving at the house, Lloyd found the surgeon, Dr. Street, and Mr. Campbell, who was a widower, waiting for her in a small drawing-room off the library. The surgeon was genuinely surprised and delighted to see her. Most of the doctors of the City knew Lloyd for the best trained nurse in the hospitals.

  “Oh, it’s you, Miss Searight; good enough!” The surgeon introduced her to the little patient’s father, adding: “If any one can pull us through, Campbell, it will be Miss Searight.”

  The surgeon and nurse began to discuss the case.

  “I think you know it already, don’t you, Miss Searight?” said the surgeon. “You took care of it a while last winter. Well, there was a little improvement in the spring, not so much pain, but that in itself is a bad sign. We have done what we could, Farnham and I. But it don’t yield to treatment; you know how these things are — stubborn. We made a preliminary examination yesterday. Sinuses have occurred, and the probe leads down to nothing but dead bone. Farnham and I had a consultation this morning. We must play our last card. I shall exsect the joint to-morrow.”

  Mr. Campbell drew in his breath and held it for a moment, looking out of the window.

  Very attentive, Lloyd merely nodded her head, murmuring:

  “I understand.”

  When Dr. Street had gone Lloyd immediately set to work. The operation was to take place at noon the following day, and she foresaw there would be no sleep for her that night. Street had left everything to her, even to the sterilising of his instruments. Until daylight the following morning Lloyd came and went about the house with an untiring energy, yet with the silence of a swiftly moving shadow, getting together the things needed for the operation — strychnia tablets, absorbent cotton, the rubber tubing for the tourniquet, bandages, salt, and the like — and preparing the little chamber adjoining the sick-room as an operating-room.

  The little patient herself, Hattie, hardly into her teens, remembered Lloyd at once. Before she went to sleep Lloyd contrived to spend an hour in the sick-room with her, told her as much as was necessary of what was contemplated, and, by her cheery talk, her gentleness and sympathy, inspired the little girl with a certain sense of confidence and trust in her.

  “But — but — but just how bad will it hurt, Miss Searight?” inquired Hattie, looking at her, wide-eyed and serious.

  “Dear, it won’t hurt you at all; just two or three breaths of the ether and you will be sound asleep. When you wake up it will be all over and you will be well.”

  Lloyd made the ether cone from a stiff towel, and set it on Hattie’s dressing-table. Last of all and just before the operation the gauze sponges occupied her attention. The daytime brought her no rest. Hattie was not to have any breakfast, but toward the middle of the forenoon Lloyd gave her a stimulating enema of whiskey and water, following it about an hour later by a hundredth grain of atropia. She braided the little girl’s hair in two long plaits so that her head would rest squarely and flatly upon the pillow. Hattie herself was now ready for the surgeon.

  Now there was nothing more to be done. Lloyd could but wait. She took her place at the bedside and tried to talk as lightly as was possible to her patient. But now there was a pause in the round of action. Her mind no longer keenly intent upon the immediate necessities of the moment, began to hark back again to the one great haunting fear that for so long had overshadowed it. Even while she exerted herself to be cheerful and watched for the smiles on Hattie’s face her hands twisted tight and tighter under the folds of her blouse, and some second self within her seemed to say:

  “Suppose, suppose it should come, this thing I dread but dare not name, what then, what then? Should I not expect it? Is it not almost a certainty? Have I not been merely deceiving myself with the forlornest hopes? Is it not the most reasonable course to expect the worst? Do not all indications point that way? Has not my whole life been shaped to this end? Was not this calamity, this mighty sorrow, prepared for me even before I was born? And one can do nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, but wait and hope and fear, and eat out one’s heart with longing.”

  There was a knock at the door. Instead of calling to enter Lloyd went to it softly and opened it a few inches. Mr. Campbell was there.

  “They’ve come — Street and the assistant.”

  Lloyd heard a murmur of voices in the hall below and the closing of the front door.

  Farnham and Street went at once to the operating-room to make their hands and wrists aseptic. Campbell had gone downstairs to his smoking-room. It had been decided — though contrary to custom — that Lloyd should administer the chloroform.

  At length Street tapped with the handle of a scalpel on the door to say that he was ready.

  “Now, dear,” said Lloyd, turning to Hattie, and picking up the ether cone.

  But the little girl’s courage suddenly failed her. She began to plead in a low voice choked with tears. Her supplications were pitiful; but Lloyd, once more intent upon her work, every faculty and thought concentrated upon what must be done, did not temporise an instant. Quietly she gathered Hattie’s frail wrists in the grip of one strong palm, and held the cone to her face until she had passed off with a long sigh. She picked her up lightly, carried her into the next room, and laid her upon the operating-table. At the last moment Lloyd had busied herself with the preparation of her own person. Over her dress she passed her hospital blouse, which had been under a dry heat for hours. She rolled her sleeves up from her strong white forearms with their thick wrists and fine blue veining, and for upward of ten minutes scrubbed them with a new nail-brush in water as hot as she could bear it. After this she let her hands and forearms lie in the permanganate of potash solution till they were brown to the elbow, then washed away the stain in the oxalic-acid solution and in sterilised hot water. Street and Farnham, wearing their sterilised gowns and gloves, took their places. There was no conversation. The only sounds were an occasional sigh from the patient, a direction given in a low tone, and, at intervals, the click of the knives and scalpel. From outside the window came the persistent chirping of a band of sparrows.

  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 minut
es. 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.

  But it was the agency that had called, and Miss Douglass informed her that a telegram had arrived there for her a few moments before. Should she hold it or send it to her by Rownie? Lloyd reflected a moment.

  “Oh — open it and read it to me,” she said. “It’s a call, isn’t it? — or — no; send it here by Rownie, and send my hospital slippers with her, the ones without heels. But don’t ring up again to-night; we’re expecting a crisis almost any moment.”

  Lloyd returned to the sick-room, sent away the servant, and once more settled herself for the night. Hattie had roused for a moment.

  “Am I going to get well, am I going to get well, Miss Searight?”

  Lloyd put her finger to her lips, nodding her head, and Hattie closed her eyes again with a long breath. A certain great tenderness and compassion for the little girl grew big in Lloyd’s heart. To herself she said:

  “God helping me, you shall get well. They believe in me, these people— ‘If any one could pull us through it would be Miss Searight.’ We will ‘pull through,’ yes, for I’ll do it.”

  The night closed down, dark and still and very hot. Lloyd, regulating the sick-room’s ventilation, opened one of the windows from the top. The noises of the City steadily decreasing as the hours passed, reached her ears in a subdued, droning murmur. On her bed, that had for so long been her bed of pain, Hattie lay with closed eyes, inert, motionless, hardly seeming to breathe, her life in the balance; unhappy little invalid, wasted with suffering, with drawn, pinched face and bloodless lips, and at her side Lloyd, her dull-blue eyes never leaving her patient’s face, alert and vigilant, despite her long wakefulness, her great bronze-red flame of hair rolling from her forehead and temples, the sombre glow in her cheeks no whit diminished by her day of fatigue, of responsibility and untiring activity.

  For the time being she could thrust her fear, the relentless Enemy that for so long had hung upon her heels, back and away from her. There was another Enemy now to fight — or was it another — was it not the same Enemy, the very same, whose shadow loomed across that sick-bed, across the frail, small body and pale, drawn face?

  With her pity and compassion for the sick child there arose in Lloyd a certain unreasoned, intuitive obstinacy, a banding together of all her powers and faculties in one great effort at resistance, a steadfastness under great stress, a stubbornness, that shut its ears and eyes. It was her one dominant characteristic rising up, strong and insistent the instant she knew herself to be thwarted in her desires or checked in a course she believed to be right and good. And now as she felt the advance of the Enemy and saw the shadow growing darker across the bed her obstinacy hardened like tempered steel.

  “No,” she murmured, her brows levelled, her lips compressed, “she shall not die. I will not let her go.”

  A little later, perhaps an hour after midnight, at a time when she believed Hattie to be asleep, Lloyd, watchful as ever, noted that her cheeks began alternately to puff out and contract with her breathing. In an instant the nurse was on her feet. She knew the meaning of this sign. Hattie had fainted while asleep. Lloyd took the temperature. It was falling rapidly. The pulse was weak, rapid, and irregular. It seemed impossible for Hattie to take a deep breath.

  Then swiftly the expected crisis began to develop itself. Lloyd ordered Street to be sent for, but only as a matter of form. Long before he could arrive the issue would be decided. She knew that now Hattie’s life depended on herself alone.

  “Now,” she murmured, as though the Enemy she fought could hear her, “now let us see who is the stronger. You or I.”

  Swiftly and gently she drew the bed from the wall and raised its foot, propping it in position with half a dozen books. Then, while waiting for the servants, whom she had despatched for hot blankets, administered a hypodermic injection of brandy.

  “We will pull you through,” she kept saying to herself, “we will pull you through. I shall not let you go.”

  The Enemy was close now, and the fight was hand to hand. Lloyd could almost feel, physically, actually, feel the slow, sullen, resistless pull that little by little was dragging Hattie’s life from her grip. She set her teeth, holding back with all
her might, bracing herself against the strain, refusing with all inborn stubbornness to yield her position.

  “No — no,” she repeated to herself, “you shall not have her. I will not give her up; you shall not triumph over me.”

  Campbell was in the room, warned by the ominous coming and going of hushed footsteps.

  “What is the use, nurse? It’s all over. Let her die in peace. It’s too cruel; let her die in peace.”

  The half-hour passed, then the hour. Once more Lloyd administered hypodermically the second dose of brandy. Campbell, unable to bear the sight, had withdrawn to the adjoining room, where he could be heard pacing the floor. From time to time he came back for a moment, whispering:

  “Will she live, nurse? Will she live? Shall we pull her through?”

  “I don’t know,” Lloyd told him. “I don’t know. Wait. Go back. I will let you know.”

  Another fifteen minutes passed. Lloyd fancied that the heart’s action was growing a little stronger. A great stillness had settled over the house. The two servants waiting Lloyd’s orders in the hall outside the door refrained even from whispering. From the next room came the muffled sound of pacing footsteps, hurried, irregular, while with that strange perversity which seizes upon the senses at moments when they are more than usually acute Lloyd began to be aware of a vague, unwonted movement in the City itself, outside there behind the drawn curtains and half-opened window — a faint, uncertain agitation, a trouble, a passing ripple on the still black pool of the night, coming and going, and coming again, each time a little more insistent, each time claiming a little more attention and notice. It was about half past three o’clock. But the little patient’s temperature was rising — there could be no doubt about that. The lungs expanded wider and deeper. Hattie’s breathing was unmistakably easier; and as Lloyd put her fingers to the wrist she could hardly keep back a little exultant cry as she felt the pulse throbbing fuller, a little slower, a little more regularly. Now she redoubled her attention. Her hold upon the little life shut tighter; her power of resistance, her strength of purpose, seemed to be suddenly quadrupled. She could imagine the Enemy drawing off; she could think that the grip of cold fingers was loosening.