As she let the ether drip, nervously trying to keep
the rhythm that Kennicott had indicated, Carol stared
at her husband with the abandon of hero-worship.
He shook his head. “Bad light—bad
light. Here, Mrs. Morgenroth, you stand right
here and hold this lamp. Hier, und dieses—dieses
lamp halten—so!”
By that streaky glimmer he worked, swiftly, at ease.
The room was still. Carol tried to look at him,
yet not look at the seeping blood, the crimson slash,
the vicious scalpel. The ether fumes were sweet,
choking. Her head seemed to be floating away
from her body. Her arm was feeble.
It was not the blood but the grating of the surgical
saw on the living bone that broke her, and she knew
that she had been fighting off nausea, that she was
beaten. She was lost in dizziness. She heard
Kennicott’s voice—
“Sick? Trot outdoors couple minutes.
Adolph will stay under now.”
She was fumbling at a door-knob which whirled in insulting
circles; she was on the stoop, gasping, forcing air
into her chest, her head clearing. As she returned
she caught the scene as a whole: the cavernous
kitchen, two milk-cans a leaden patch by the wall,
hams dangling from a beam, bats of light at the stove
door, and in the center, illuminated by a small glass
lamp held by a frightened stout woman, Dr. Kennicott
bending over a body which was humped under a sheet—the
surgeon, his bare arms daubed with blood, his hands,
in pale-yellow rubber gloves, loosening the tourniquet,
his face without emotion save when he threw up his
head and clucked at the farmwife, “Hold that
light steady just a second more—noch blos
esn wenig.”
“He speaks a vulgar, common, incorrect German
of life and death and birth and the soil. I read
the French and German of sentimental lovers and Christmas
garlands. And I thought that it was I who had
the culture!” she worshiped as she returned
to her place.
After a time he snapped, “That’s enough.
Don’t give him any more ether.” He
was concentrated on tying an artery. His gruffness
seemed heroic to her.
As he shaped the flap of flesh she murmured, “Oh,
you are wonderful!”
He was surprised. “Why, this is a cinch.
Now if it had been like last week——Get
me some more water. Now last week I had a case
with an ooze in the peritoneal cavity, and by golly
if it wasn’t a stomach ulcer that I hadn’t
suspected and——There. Say, I
certainly am sleepy. Let’s turn in here.
Too late to drive home. And tastes to me like
a storm coming.”
They slept on a feather bed with their fur coats over
them; in the morning they broke ice in the pitcher—the
vast flowered and gilt pitcher.
