Produced by Susan Skinner, Eric Eldred and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
"Hear from the spirit world this mystery:
Creation is summed up, O man, in thee;
Angel and demon, man and beast, art thou,
Yea, thou art all thou dost appear to be!"
The young surgeon examined the man as he lay on the hospital chair in whichward attendants had left him. The surgeon's fingers touched him deftly,here and there, as if to test the endurance of the flesh he had to dealwith. The head nurse followed his swift movements, wearily moving anincandescent light hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languidinterest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band," watchedthe surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chasedthemselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheerweariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close andstuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, solong delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury the last week in March, and nowat ten o'clock not a capful of air strayed into the room, even through theopen windows that faced the lake.
The patient groaned when the surgeon's fingers first touched him, thenrelapsed into the spluttering, labored respiration of a man in liquor or inheavy pain. A stolid young man who carried the case of instruments freshlysteaming from their antiseptic bath made an observation which the surgeonapparently did not hear. He was thinking, now, his thin face set in afrown, the upper teeth biting hard over the under lip and drawing up thepointed beard. While he thought, he watched the man extended on the chair,watched him like an alert cat, to extract from him some hint as to what heshould do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupantsof the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurseheld the lamp carelessly, resting her hand over one hip thrown out, herfigure drooping into an ungainly pose. She gazed at the surgeon steadily,as if puzzled at his intense preoccupation over the common case of a man"shot in a row." Her eyes travelled over the surgeon's neat-fitting eveningdress, which was so bizarre here in the dingy receiving room, redolent ofbloody tasks. Evidently he had been out to some dinner or party, and whenthe injured man was brought in had merely donned his rumpled linen jacketwith its right sleeve half torn from the socket. A spot of blood hadalready spurted into the white bosom of his shirt, smearing its way overthe pearl button, and running under the crisp fold of the shirt. The headnurse was too tired and listless to be impatient, but she had been calledout of hours on this emergency case, and she was not used to the surgeon'spreoccupation. Such things usually went off rapidly at St. Isidore's, andshe could hear the tinkle of the bell as the hall door opened for anothercase. It would be midnight before she could get back to bed! The hospitalwas short-handed, as usual.
The younger nurse was not watching the patient, nor the good-looking youngsurgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in herfew months