CHAPTER XII.
DR. HOFFMAN.
The girls and boys crowded around her with frightened faces. "Is shekilled?" they asked each other in terrified tones.
"It's all my fault," said Dick Albright, nearly beside himself; "Ishould have known better than to let her go. She didn't think of thedanger, but I did, and I should have prevented her. Was there ever sucha fool as I?"
Gladys and Migwan were kneeling beside Sahwah and opening her coat. "Sheis not dead," said Gladys, feeling her pulse. "We must get her home. Sheis possibly only stunned." Sahwah moved slightly and groaned, but shedid not open her eyes. A passing automobile was hailed and she wascarried 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 befixed all right, but the concussion may be worse than it looks. That isan ugly contusion on her head." The next few days were anxious ones inthe Brewster home. Sahwah gave no sign of returning consciousness, andher fever rose steadily. Mrs. Brewster felt her hair turning gray withthe suspense, and the Winnebagos could neither eat nor sleep. Poor Dickwas frantic, yet he dared not show himself at the house for fear everyone would point an accusing finger at him as the one responsible for themisfortune.
But Sahwah, true to her usual habit of always doing the unexpectedthing, progressed along just the opposite lines from those prophesied bythe physician. After a few days her fever abated and the danger from theconcussion was over. Sahwah's head had demonstrated itself to be of asuperior solidness of construction. But the hip, which at first had notgiven them a moment's uneasiness, steadfastly refused to mend. Dr.Benson looked puzzled; then grave. The splintered end of that hip bonebegan to be a nightmare to him. He called in another doctor forconsultation. The new doctor set it in a different way, nearly killingSahwah with the pain, although she struggled valiantly to be brave andbear it in silence. Nyoda never forgot that tortured smile with whichSahwah greeted her when she came in after the process was over. A weekor two passed and the bones still made no effort to knit. Anotherconsulting physician was called in; a prominent surgeon. He orderedSahwah removed to the hospital, where he made half a dozen X-raypictures of her hip. The joint was so badly inflamed and swollen that itwas impossible to tell just where the trouble lay. Sahwah fumed andfretted with impatience at having to stay in bed so long. Surgeon aftersurgeon 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 havediscovered," said Dr. Lord, a man high up in the profession who wasconsidered the final authority, "that the ball joint of your daughter'ship has been fractured in such a way that it can never heal. There isone inevitable result of this condition, and that is tuberculosis of thebone. If not arrested this will in time communicate itself to the bonesof the upper part of the body and terminate fatally. There is only oneway to prevent this outcome and that is amputation of the limb beforethe 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 knewlittle about disease and it seemed wildly impossible to her that thislimb of hers which had been so strong and supple a month ago wouldbecome 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 anddance! Always to go about on crutches! Before the prospect of beingcrippled for life her active nature shrank in unutterable horror. Deathseemed preferable to her. She buried her face in the pillow in suchanguish 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 rearits head and she made up her mind that if this terrible thing had to bedone she might as well go through with it as bravely as possible. Sheresigned herself to her fate and urged her parents to give their consentto the operation. Poor Mrs. Brewster was nearly out of her mind withworry over the affair.
"When will you do it?" asked Sahwah, struggling to keep her voicesteady.
"In about a week," said Dr. Lord, "when you get a little stronger."
Nyoda went home heartsick from the hospital that day. Sahwah had askedher to write to Dr. Hoffman, her old friend in camp, and tell him thenews. 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 Sahwahis hurt and he can do nothing to help her."
Sahwah had never dreamed how many friends she had until this misfortuneovercame 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 sympathyand present a potted tulip. Stiff and precise Miss Muggins came to sayhow she missed her from the Latin class. Aunt Phoebe forgave all thejokes she had made at her expense and sent over a crocheted dressingjacket made of fleecy wool.
"Don't feel so badly, Nyoda dear," she said one day as Nyoda sat besideher in the depths of despair. The usual jolly teacher had now no cheeryword to offer. The prospect of the gay dancing Sahwah on crutches forthe remainder of her life was an appalling tragedy. "I can act out 'TheLittle Tin Soldier' quite realistically--then," went on Sahwah, her mindalready at work to find the humor of the situation. But Nyoda satstaring 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 forthe envelope. She tore it open eagerly and read, "Don't operate until Icome. 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! PoorDoctor, 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 soominously still on the bed, "you haf not been trying to push somevonacross de top of Lake Erie, haf you?" Sahwah smiled faintly. A ray ofsunlight seemed to have entered the room with the doctor, also a gust ofwind. He had thrown his hat right into a bouquet of flowers and his hairstood on end and his tie was askew with the haste he had made in gettingto the hospital from the train. "Now about this hip, yes?" he said in abusinesslike tone. Without any ceremony he brushed the nurse aside andunwrapped the bandages. "Ach so," he said, feeling of the joint with apractised hand, "you did a good job, Missis Sahvah. You make out of yourbone a splinter. But vot is dis I hear about operating?" he suddenlyexclaimed. "De very idea! Don't you let dem amputate your leg off! Suchfool doctors! It's a vonder dey did not cut your head off to cure debump!" His voice rose to a regular roar. Dr. Lord, coming in at thatmoment, stopped in astonishment at the sight of this strange doctorstanding over his patient. "For vy did you want to amputate her legoff?" shouted Dr. Hoffman at him, dancing up and down in front of himand shaking his finger under his nose. "It is no more diseased dan yoursis. And you call yourself a surgeon doctor! Bah! You go out and play inde sunshine and let me take care of dis hip."
"Who the dickens are you?" asked Dr. Lord, looking at him as though hethought he were an escaped lunatic.
"Dis is who I am," replied Dr. Hoffman, handing him a card. "I vas ineighteen-ninety-five by de _Staatsklinick_ in Berlin." Dr. Lord fellback 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 shevill 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 plastercast." When Mrs. Brewster came in the afternoon she found a strangedoctor in command and Dr. Lord and the nurses obeying his orders as ifhypnotized. When she went home that night, hope had come to life againin her heart,
where it had been dead for more than a week. Dr. Hoffmanspent the afternoon having X-ray photographs of the joint made, and satup all night trying to figure out how those bones could be set so theywould knit and still not leave the joint stiff. By morning he had thesolution.
The next day--the day the limb was to have been amputated--an operationof a very different nature took place. Dr. Hoffman, looking more like apastry cook in his operating clothes than anything else, bustled aroundthe operating room keeping the nurses and assisting physicians on thejump.
"Who's the Dutchman that's doing the bossing?" asked a pert younginterne 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 wasProfessor of Anatomy in the _Staatsklinick_ '95-'96, don't youremember?" he said, turning to one of the other doctors. "He's a wizardat bonesetting. He performed that operation on Count Esterhazy'syoungest son that kept him from being a cripple." The younger doctorlooked at Dr. Hoffman with a sudden respect. The case in question was afamous one in surgical annals.
Dr. Lord, angry as he was at Dr. Hoffman's arraignment of him before thenurses and visitors, was yet a big enough man to realize that he had achance to learn something from this sarcastic intruder who had sounceremoniously taken his case out of his hands, and swallowing hiswrath, asked permission to witness the operation. "Ach, yes, to besure," said Dr. Hoffman, with his old geniality. "You must not mind thatI vas so cross yesterday," he went on, "it vas because I vas soimpatient ven I hear you vanted to amputate dot girl's leg off. But Iforget," he said magnanimously, "you do not know how to set de badlysplintered bones so dey vill knit, as I do. Bring all de doctors in youvant to, and all de nurses too. Ve vill haf a _Klinick_."
Thus it was that the large operating room of the hospital was crowded tothe very edge of the "sterile field" with eager medical men, glad of thechance to watch Dr. Hoffman at work. "Who is that young girl in here?"asked Dr. Lord impatiently, as the anaesthetic was about to beadministered.
"Some friend of the patient," explained the head nurse. "Hoffman let herin himself." The young girl in question was Medmangi. Dr. Hoffman knewall about her ambition to become a doctor and allowed her to come intothe operating room. So she began her career by witnessing one of themost inspired operations of a widely famed surgeon.
When Sahwah came out of the ether she felt as if she were held in avise. "What's the matter?" she asked dreamily. "I feel so stiff andqueer."
"It's the cast they put you in," answered her mother.
Sahwah moved her arms carefully to see if they were in working orderyet. Lightly she touched the hard substance that surrounded her hipbone. "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 handsemphatically. "Dot limb is still vere it belongs, and vill be as good asever ven de cast comes off."
The watchers around the bed that day wore very different expressionsfrom what they had worn all week. Just since yesterday despair had givenway to hope and hope to assurance. Her mother and father and Nyodahovered over the bed with radiant faces, and the Winnebagos, afterseeing Sahwah's favorable condition with their own eyes, retired toGladys's barn to celebrate. The rules of the hospital forbade the amountof noise they felt they must make. Dick Albright smiled his first smilethat day since the night of the accident.
The Camp Fire Girls at School; Or, The Wohelo Weavers Page 12