The younger nurse was not watching the patient, nor the good-looking young surgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly on the nurse's ear. That was the voice of the engine on the ten-thirty through express, which was waiting to take its train to the east. She knew that engine's throb, for it was the engine that stood in the yards every evening while she made her first rounds for the night. It was the one which took her train round the southern end of the lake, across the sandy fields, to Michigan, to her home.
The engine puffed away, and she withdrew her gaze and glanced at the patient. To her, too, the wounded man was but a case, another error of humanity that had come to St. Isidore's for temporary repairs, to start once more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling out through the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and hearty pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must be some one who had come in with the patient, and had stayed unobserved in the disorder of a night case.
Suddenly the surgeon spoke; his words shot out at the head nurse.
"We will operate now!"
The interne shrugged his shoulders, but he busied himself in selecting and wiping the instruments. Yet in spite of his decisive words the surgeon seemed to hesitate.
"Was there any one with this man—any friend?" he asked the head nurse.
In reply she looked around vaguely, her mind thrown out of gear by this unexpected delay. Another freak of the handsome surgeon!
"Any relative or friend?" the surgeon iterated peremptorily, looking about at the attendants.
The little nurse at the foot of the patient, who was not impressed by the irregularity of the surgeon's request, pointed mutely to the figure behind the ward tenders. The surgeon wheeled about and glanced almost savagely at the woman, his eyes travelling swiftly from her head to her feet. The woman thus directly questioned by the comprehending glance returned his look freely, resentfully. At last when the surgeon's eyes rested once more on her face, this time more gently, she answered:
"I am his wife."
This statement in some way humanized the scene. The ward tenders and the interne stared at her blankly; the nurses looked down in unconscious comment on the twisted figure by their side. The surgeon drew his hands from his pockets and stepped toward the woman, questioning her meanwhile with his nervous, piercing glance. For a moment neither spoke, but some kind of mute explanation seemed to be going on between them.
She kept her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new preoccupation, seemed to reply: 'Yes, I know! You need not pain yourself by telling me.'
The patient groaned again, and the surgeon came back at once to the urgent present—the case. He led the way to one side, and turning his back upon the group of assistants he spoke to the woman in low tones.
"This man, your husband, is pretty badly off. He's got at least two bullets in bad places. There isn't much chance for him—in his condition," he explained brusquely, as if to reconcile his unusual procedure with business-like methods.
"But I should operate," he continued; "I shall operate unless there are objections—unless you object."
His customary imperious manner was struggling with a special feeling for this woman before him. She did not reply, but waited to hear where her part might come in. Her eyes did not fall from his face.
"There's a chance," the surgeon went on, "that a certain operation now will bring him around all right. But to-morrow will be too late."
His words thus far had something foolish in them, and her eyes seemed to say so. If it was the only chance, and his custom was to operate in such cases—if he would have operated had she not been there, why did he go through this explanation?
"There may be——complications in his recovery," he said at last, in low tones. "The recovery may not be complete."
She did not seem to understand, and the surgeon frowned at his failure, after wrenching from himself this frankness. The idea, the personal idea that he had had to put out of his mind so often in operating in hospital cases—that it made little difference whether, indeed, it might be a great deal wiser if the operation turned out fatally—possessed his mind. Could she be realizing that, too, in her obstinate silence? He tried another explanation.
"If we do not operate, he will probably have a few hours of consciousness—if you had something to say to him?"
Her face flushed. He humiliated her. He must know that she had nothing to say to him, as well as if he had known the whole story.
"We could make him comfortable, and who knows, to-morrow might not be too late!" The surgeon ended irritably, impatient at the unprofessional frankness of his words, and disgusted that he had taken this woman into his confidence. Did she want him to say: 'See here, there's only one chance in a thousand that we can save that carcass; and if he gets that chance, it may not be a whole one—do you care enough for him to run that dangerous risk?' But she obstinately kept her own counsel. The professional manner that he ridiculed so often was apparently useful in just such cases as this. It covered up incompetence and hypocrisy often enough, but one could not be human and straightforward with women and fools. And women and fools made up the greater part of a doctor's business.
Yet the voice that said, "I am his wife," rang through his mind and suggested doubts. Under the miserable story that he had instinctively imaged, there probably lay some tender truth.
"There's a chance, you see!" he resumed more tenderly, probing her for an evidence. "All any of us have, except that he is not in a condition for an operation."
This time her mouth quivered. She was struggling for words. "Why do you ask me?" she gasped. "What—" but her voice failed her.
"I should operate," the surgeon replied gently, anticipating her question.
"I, we should think it better that way, only sometimes relatives object."
He thought that he had probed true and had found what he was after.
"It is a chance," she said audibly, finding her voice. "You must do what you think—best. I have nothing to say to him. You need not delay for that."
"Very well," the surgeon replied, relieved that his irregular confidence had resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought on himself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into the office. You can do no good here."
Then, dismissing the unusual from his mind, he stepped quickly back to the patient. The younger nurse was bathing the swollen, sodden face with apiece of gauze; the head nurse, annoyed at the delay, bustled about, preparing the dressings under the