“Don’t think.” It was all he said, but his tone, and my silence, were tacit acknowledgment—we understood each other better then, and after that he did not chide me, as he had before, for not caring that he was so soon to go away.
Those last days of his stay were very hard, and when the day came when he assisted at operations for the last time, and we were clearing up afterward as usual, we laughed a sort of hollow laughter, laughed at anything and everything; at the awkwardness of the stuttering little student, his successor—we tried to find funny things to talk about—anything so long as we kept away from what was uppermost in our minds, and allowed no silences.
When Laidlaw left, James was away on his vacation, and a likeable little German student, who was acting as substitute, was very acceptable to both of us, we three being very congenial. When Laidlaw put out his hand to the German to bid him farewell, he attempted to be jocose, but failed sadly; then,
“Take good care of Little Arnold, Old Boy,” he said, and, turning to me, drew me to him and would have kissed me; but, fond as I was of him, I couldn’t do that. He looked pained. By this time I could no longer control my tears; this surprised and perplexed him:
“Why, why, why—Little Arnold, why, you do care!” and standing dumb for an instant, he wrung my hand and went slowly out and down the steps; and I—I felt I had lost my last friend.
I had to give way and weep in spite of the presence of the little German. He was very good to me then, and always. I think he then thought that it was a more serious attachment than it was; he chided me for not bidding Laidlaw a more affectionate farewell—could not seem to understand why I did not, since I cared so much about his going. That evening, picking up a copy of Emerson’s essays I had been reading, and seeing it was the essay on Friendship, with a searching look he asked, “And is it only friendship that I see between you and Laidlaw?” When I stoutly maintained that it was, he seemed half credulous, half doubtful, but in his naïve foreign way said appealingly, “Then, Little Racker, be my friend, too.” And we were warm friends after that.
In a few days came Laidlaw’s first letter; it gave me a thrill of joy, but I am bound to confess that even before it came (after the acuteness of the grief was over) I had grown surprisingly cheerful, so much so that I was ashamed of myself for not continuing to feel as wretched as when he went away. I reproached myself, but all to no purpose. Every day brought its duties; added responsibilities now fell on me; the new interne had to be taught “the ropes”; and, while I missed my good friend at every turn, I could not mope and pine. But I could not understand myself—how such wretchedness, such utter wretchedness, could be so short-lived!
A few weeks before my own term of service expired I had a hard time with septic infection—a serious inflammation in my thumb, probably contracted while assisting at an operation. I was tired out, and the thing took a severe hold on me. They temporized for a time, but finally decided I must take an anesthetic and have the nail removed and the deeper tissues thoroughly cleansed. As we were short-handed at the Hospital, I dragged around when I should have been in bed.
I shall not soon forget the feeling I had on learning that I had actually to surrender myself to an anesthetic, to submit voluntarily to that which would rob me of consciousness. It was horrible to contemplate. It seemed such a momentous thing—not the operation, of course, but the taking of chloroform. I wrote a letter home the night before, to be posted in case I did not survive. One would have thought my year in the hospital would have made me more callous to such things. I myself can hardly understand why it was so painful to me to face this experience—just like any other patient. Somehow, I had always felt outside of such things, a mere spectator, though considering myself a sympathetic one. But, until then, I had not dreamed what dread consumed the souls of the patients whom I had so lightly encouraged to submit to the inevitable.
Extracting a promise from “Polly,” the nurse, that if I showed any tendency to loquacity she would send everyone from the room, and would remember to tell me all I said, I braced for the ordeal. That morning, omitting breakfast, visiting my patients as usual, I put up prescriptions, and helped prepare the amphitheatre for an operation that was to precede mine. Then, looking in on the young patient before he went to the anesthetizing room, I told him I was going to give the surgeon a chance at me after his operation. He said afterward that my cheery way of speaking made him ashamed of his trepidation, so that he went to his operation with more courage than he had believed himself capable of. He little knew how I quaked internally—it was awful—that thought of having the chloroform steal away my senses!