"You're looking pretty fit, now," he said, "but that night when I saw you I ticketed you for the dead pile. You didn't look like you could live till morning."
His statement gave me some satisfaction. There is always joy in fooling the doctor.
Hartzell, who still accompanied me, apparently rescued me from the "dead pile" and we started on another motor trip, this time on a stretcher in a large, easier-riding ambulance. In this I arrived shortly after dawn at the United States Military Base Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris.
There were more hurried examinations and soon I was rolled down a corridor on a wheeled table, into an elevator that started upward. Then the wheeled table raced down another long corridor and I began to feel that my journeyings were endless. We stopped finally in a room where I distinctly caught the odour of ether. Some one began removing my boots and clothes. As that some one worked he talked to me.
"I know you, Mr. Gibbons," he said. "I'm from Chicago also. I am Sergeant Stephen Hayes. I used to go to Hyde Park High School. We're going to fix you up right away."
I learned from Hayes that I was lying in a room adjoining the operating chamber and was being prepared for the operating table. Some information concerning the extent of my injuries and the purpose of the operation would have been comforting and would have relieved the sensation of utter helpless childishness that I was experiencing.
I knew I was about to go under the influence of the anesthetic and that something was going to be done to me. I had every confidence that whatever was done would be for the best but it was perfectly natural that I should be curious about it. Was the operation to be a serious one or a minor one? Would they have to remove my eye? Would they have to operate on my skull? How about the arm? Would there be an amputation? How about the other eye? Would I ever see again? It must be remembered that in spite of all the examinations I had not been informed and consequently had no knowledge concerning the extent of my injuries. The only information I had received had been included in vague remarks intended as soothing, such as "You're all right, old man." "You'll pull through fine." "You're coming along nicely." But all of it had seemed too professionally optimistic to satisfy me and my doubts still remained.
They were relieved, however, by the pressure of a hand and the sound of a voice. In the words spoken and in the pressure of the hand, there was hardly anything different from similar hand pressures and similar spoken phrases that had come to me during the night, yet there was everything different. This voice and this hand carried supreme confidence. I could believe in both of them. I felt the hand pressure on my right shoulder and the mild kindly voice said:
"Son, I am going to operate on you. I have examined you and you are all right. You are going to come through fine. Don't worry about anything."
"Thank you, very much," I said, "I like your voice. It sounds like my father's. Will you tell me your name?"