Merely the patient

Have you ever been left at a strange hospital in the afternoon or evening of a cold, gloomy day, to be prepared for an operation early next morning? It starts the goose flesh on me even now when I recall seeing the door close behind my family as they left the room when the visitors’ hours were over. I was alone—and lonesome. Here is where the stern realities of life press down hard upon you and you call in all the reserves of your courage to meet them. It is a case where a fellow is almost justified in feeling sorry for himself. I felt as I imagine poor old Philoctetes must have felt when his companions sailed away and abandoned him on the deserted Island of Lemnos, there to nurse his snake-bitten ankle in painful solitude. I was even worse off than Philoctetes: I didn’t have so much as a pain to keep me company.

In a few minutes an attractive nurse came in and looked me over with a quick appraising eye.

“I’m to be your day nurse,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said; “I hope you’ll like me.” She said she’d be on duty till seven, and come back at seven in the morning. For my “supper” she said I might have a “light tray”; then she went out. Presently she returned, bringing a tray with a miniature dish of light cereal. That was all the rules permitted me to have. It was carefully concealed beneath a white napkin, probably to keep the aerial bacilli from nesting in it on the way in. When I had eaten it I glanced up with an eager, hungry look, in comparison with which Oliver Twist must have appeared contentedly well fed.

“Next course,” I said, with a maudlin attempt at facetiousness.

She shook her head. “You’ve had all the rules allow. I’m sorry, but—”

“But you’re not sorry enough to give me any more—is that it?”

“Your next course will be castor oil.”

“But I’ve already had it—bottles of it!” I protested. “It’s all they’ve fed me the past ten days.” That made no difference; the orders called for it, and there was no alternative but to take it.

“I hate the damn stuff!—Haven’t you some substitute?” I pleaded.

“There is no substitute,” she said with an air of finality that closed the argument.

She removed the tray, then set to work getting me ready for the night. She unfastened my shoes, took them off, unbuttoned me and shunted me into a suit of hospital pajamas, as if I were already an invalid. It was hours before my usual bedtime, but I made no protest. In fact my powers of opposition had been worn down to a point where it no longer seemed worth while objecting to anything. Once before I had been in a hospital a few days and learned my lesson in submissiveness. In a hospital one soon learns to obey everybody, for every attendant, even down to the meanest orderly, is clothed with an authority not to be questioned by any invalid intruder. A man may be a czar in his own home (that is, if he’s single), but let him fall into the clutches of the doctors, nurses and hospital authorities and he becomes the most humble milk-fed subject on earth. The moment he undertakes to assert himself he is sure to run afoul of some iron-clad rule, and like a captive bird beating its head against the bars of its cage he learns the utter futility of resistance.

I lay there trying to chirk up my spirits by contemplating the future joys of convalescence—when a fellow can sit up in an easy chair with a consciousness of restored sovereignty over himself; when he can fearlessly declare his mind and tell them all to go to the—but just then the nurse reminded me it was seven o’clock, and she was leaving for the night. She surprised me by saying the barber would soon be in.

“But I haven’t sent for any barber—I don’t want one.”

“No, but that’s all been arranged for you. Good night.” And out she went.

It all reminded me of the newspaper accounts where we read of people being fed, shaved and groomed for hanging or electrocution at daybreak, except that they don’t have to take castor oil; and they are always given plenty to eat.

Shortly after the nurse left the barber arrived. He unwrapped his kit and took out an old-fashioned razor. “I’ve come to shave you.”

“Thank you, but I’m not an invalid, and I always shave myself.”

“Yes—your face—but that ain’t where they’re goin’ to operate,” he laughed. He cupped his palms and blew his breath on them.—“I’ll have to thaw the frost out of these joints before I can hold a razor.”

He was a youngish man and went about his task in a clumsy way. He shaved—or rather scraped—my back from the waist down to the hips, talking volubly the while. Then having turned me over, as he was working industriously on the most ticklish part of my midsection he confided to me that he was new at the barber business. He said he had tried his hand on three or four ex-patients in an “undertaker’s shop,” but I was the second “live one” he had ever “worked on.”

“But then I’ve got to learn sometime,” he remarked carelessly, while he tested the edge of the razor on his thumbnail. “There’s one good thing about shaving a ‘deader,’—if you cut him he can’t holler.... There ain’t much to shave right here,” he observed, rubbing his cold, rough hand over the pit of my stomach, “but I’m supposed to run over it just the same.” He hoped I would excuse him if he accidentally “cut” or “pulled” a little. “But then I guess even if I’d nip you a bit it wouldn’t be a thing to what they’ll do to you when they get you on the table tomorrow morning,” he added with a snicker.

From that on to the end of the shaving operation my feelings can better be imagined than described. My only grain of comfort was that his razor was so dull that if it slipped it wouldn’t cut very deep. When he had finished he sat down on the edge of the bed and proceeded to regale me with anecdotes and personal experiences. He had recently been a cab driver, but business in that line was dull in winter, and the old barber at the hospital having suddenly died he applied for the position and the Sisters had accepted him without questioning his qualifications.

“I guess the old girls here think a barber’s a barber,” he laughed. “Maybe you’ll think I’ve got a hell of a nerve, but you know when a fellow’s up against it he can’t be choosey about a job.”

“My friend,” said I, “you have nothing on me. A hospital patient has no choice between a barber and a blacksmith.”

He looked at me anxiously. “You wouldn’t squeal on me, would you?”

“Squeal? No—I’m glad you didn’t apply for the job of house surgeon.”

He drew a deep breath of relief. “Thanks. I hope I can get by for a few days till I sort of get the hang o’ things.”

At length he got up, stretched his arms and yawned. “Well, I’ll be going. Good luck to you, old scout,” he said; “I hope by the next time you’re operated on I’ll have the barber business down pat.”

Next morning I was awakened at seven o’clock by my day nurse, who set about decorating me for the operation. Those who have been through these dismal preliminaries will need no rehearsal of the sensations; and those who have not, had best be left in ignorance, with the hope that they may never know.

I wondered if I were going to meet the famous Doctor Will, or if, like a cold-blooded executioner, he would appear and after performing his work, disappear like a phantom at daybreak. I had heard that operating was such an impersonal affair with him that he paid no attention whatever to the identity of the individual he operated on, either before or after the act; that he simply came to the operating room at the appointed time, and with his several assistants and all the facts in the case before him he proceeded with his work as one would carve a roast of beef without knowing or caring anything about the critter to which it had belonged.

But I discovered that the Mayo brothers are not mere mechanical butchers. On the contrary they are genial, sentimental, and tenderhearted, to the last degree. My nurse declared that Doctor Will was “all business”; but that “Doctor Charles makes more fun than a circus clown.” They make the rounds at the hospital early in the morning, meet the new patients and spend a few moments of cheerful conversation with each one, which goes a long way toward counteracting the dread of the trip to the operating room.

These calls are attended with a considerable amount of impressive ceremony. About eight o’clock the first morning I heard a tramping of many feet in the hall outside, then suddenly, without any warning, the door was opened, my overhead light was flashed on and the nurse in suppressed excitement whispered, “Doctor Will!” She immediately took her position at the head of my bed. Two men—Doctor Will’s first assistant and the house physician—came in and took their positions across the room, facing the entrance. Then appeared Doctor Will, followed by two other assistants. As he approached my bed with outstretched hand he smiled and called me by name. After a few good-natured remarks he said, “Don’t be alarmed, we’ll have you out in a few days.” At this he left the room, with the other four, none of whom had spoken a word. He had a firm, quick step, strong handsome features, and a most engaging personality. After meeting and talking with him you feel that you have entrusted yourself to competent hands.

An hour or so later the nurse came hurrying in with the news that we’d been “called.” After being assured that I had no false teeth or portable bridgework to leave behind, she hastily gave me a hypodermic of morphine, bustled me into a wheel chair and hurried me up to the operating room on the top floor. There under a great dome thickly studded with electric lights, in the presence of Doctor Will and a dozen or more gowned and masked assistants and attendants I climbed up on the operating table, my arms were quickly folded across my chest, and while my legs were being strapped into position the cone was placed over my face and an angel-voiced creature murmured softly in my ear, “Now take long deep breaths, please; it will only be a few seconds.” I wondered if she were as beautiful as her voice. At any rate I would gladly have postponed the operation and breathed an hour or more for her, just to hear her talk. Her soft, musical voice seemed to move farther away, and in the distance she was saying how nicely I was getting on. I was about to call to her, not to go off and leave me, but—

The next I knew I was back in my room looking drowsily up into the anxious faces of my family who assured me that it was “all over.”

“No,” I said—“they’ve just sent for me; I have to go and be operated on.” At that I closed my eyes and slept again. I afterwards learned that the kidney required a great deal of excavating and curetting, and that I had been on the operating table nearly two hours.