Under the desert stars

by Frank Koester

Grace was young and very attractive, as Carl soon noticed. Carl was attractive, too, it seemed, as from the outset complaints were made that she paid more attention to him than was necessary.

Carl was much interested in the sights about him, and particularly in the behavior of several men, who, still under the influence of the ether, were brought back to the ward from the operating room. One of these was a young Englishman who, coming out of the ether became very restless and talkative. So restless was he that two nurses had to hold him down, but all the while he kept talking of and to his sweetheart. This made Carl wonder whether he, when coming back from the plane of unconsciousness, would talk of Sana, his beloved, for whom his heart was crying bitterly. He hoped not, after hearing the jeers that greeted the words of the soldier. Furthermore, he could not reconcile himself to the thought of having Grace hear anything of Sana. But he reasoned to himself, that if what he had heard from others was true, he would talk. Much of this talking on the part of a patient he had been told was induced by suggestion on the part of the nurses at hand.

Friday night, much to his embarrassment, he was shaved and prepared for the operation the following morning. Grace, he noticed, was also visibly embarrassed, although he thought this strange, as it must have been a usual occurrence in the line of duty. He could not account for it, but he was too tired and hungry to bother much about her feelings toward him. Hungry he was, and much to his chagrin had to be satisfied with half a roll and a glass of water.

Early the next morning Grace again came to his side to make him ready for the ordeal. Another coat of iodine, “war paint” she called it, was applied to his side, a white woolen shirt and a pair of long woolen stockings put on him and he was placed upon a wheel stretcher. Blankets were put over him with his arms beneath them, and his body tightened down with two strong belts. A victim, trussed for the slaughter, Carl mused bitterly.

In the operating room Carl was turned over to three women nurses; the history of his case being given them. Without further ado he was transferred to the operating table.

A young French doctor was attending to the ether apparatus while a nurse came up to Carl with a book in her hand and requested his signature. Asking what this meant, he was told that it was but a matter of routine. Anticipating that he was expected to sign his life away before the operation, in case he died from it, the nurse confirmed his belief. Reluctantly Carl signed the book, knowing that he had no alternative.

The doctor was having some trouble with the ether bottles and the attachment of the gas mask. While fixing things, he laughingly told a story of two boys, who were bragging about their fathers—the one had said that his father had electricity in his hair to which the other retorted that his father had gas on his stomach.

Disgusted beyond words at this lack of consideration on the doctor’s part for his patient, Carl heard him say, “Come, you had better take some gas now.”

The mask was adjusted over his face and the ether turned on. A sweet sickening odor entered Carl’s nostrils followed by a light-headed feeling. The stuff was doing its work fast. Making up his mind that he would not say a word of Sana, when coming out of the ether, he began to count. The possibility of his never coming out of it did not occur to him. He had reached the count of nine when sparks of all colors and shades, radiated from his brain, with a tremendous noise, to all corners of the room and beyond. They were like sparks from a huge induction coil of a wireless station. The count was thirteen when Carl suddenly exclaimed, “Oh no—I am not in an electric chair!”

Through his mind ran the argument he had so often propounded to the men of his profession. He was firmly convinced a person electrocuted in an electric chair, was not dead and that he could be revived with a high frequency apparatus. Many an electrical equipment operator has been successfully revived after receiving equally as heavy or even more powerful electrical shocks from high tension apparatus in electrical central stations. These operators lay on the ground as though really dead; their hearts do not beat and any doctor would pronounce them dead; yet many of them are brought to life again.