In a while he washed his hands and face, put on his coat and walked into the bedroom. The blind was down; the place was almost dark; the atmosphere was laden with the smell of ether. He could see the form of his wife on the bed, but she was so still and seemed so thin. The coverlet appeared so flat, except where the points of her feet raised a little ridge. Her face was as white as marble. Although the room was very silent, he could not hear her breathe. On one side of the bed stood the nurse, and on the other side the anæsthetist. Both were motionless. They said nothing. Indeed, there was nothing to say. They did not even look up when he came in. He touched his wife’s hand, but it was cold and he could feel no pulse.

In about two hours Heron, the surgeon, arrived. The young doctor saw him in an adjacent bedroom, gave him an incoherent, spasmodic account of the operation, laid emphasis on unsurmountable difficulties, gabbled something about an accident, tried to excuse himself, maintained that the fault was not his, but that circumstances were against him.

The surgeon’s examination of the patient was very brief. He went into the room alone. As he came out he closed the door after him. The husband, numb with terror, was awaiting him in the lobby. The surgeon put his hand on the wretched man’s shoulder, shook his head and, without uttering a single word, made his way down the stairs. He nearly stumbled over a couple of shrinking, white-faced maids who had crept up the stairs in the hope of hearing something of their young mistress.

As he passed one said: “Is she better, doctor?” but he merely shook his head, and without a word walked out into the sunny street where some children were dancing to a barrel-organ.

The husband told me that he could not remember what he did during these portentous hours after the operation. He could not stay in the bedroom. He wandered about the house. He went into his consulting room and pulled out some half-dozen works on surgery with the idea of gaining some comfort or guidance; but he never saw a word on the printed page. He went into the dispensary and looked over the rows of bottles on the shelves to see if he could find anything, any drug, any elixir that would help. He crammed all sorts of medicines into his pocket and took them upstairs, but, as he entered the room, he forgot all about them, and when he found them in his coat a week later he wondered how they had got there. He remembered a pallid maid coming up to him and saying: “Lunch is ready, sir.” He thought her mad.

He told me that among the horrors that haunted him during these hours of waiting not the least were the flippant and callous thoughts that would force themselves into his mind with fiendish brutality. There was, for example, a scent bottle on his wife’s table—a present from her aunt. He found himself wondering why her aunt had given it to her and when, what she had paid for it, and what the aunt would say when she heard her niece was dead. Worse than that, he began composing in his mind an obituary notice for the newspapers. How should he word it? Should he say “beloved wife,” or “dearly loved wife,” and should he add all his medical qualifications? It was terrible. Terrible, too, was his constant longing to tell his wife of the trouble he was in and to be comforted by her.

Shortly after the surgeon left the anæsthetist noticed some momentary gleam of consciousness in the patient. The husband hurried in. The end had come. His wife’s face was turned towards the window. The nurse lifted the blind a little so that the light fell full upon her. She opened her eyes and at once recognized her husband. She tried to move her hand towards him, but it fell listless on the sheet. A smile—radiant, grateful, adoring—illumined her face, and as he bent over her he heard her whisper: “Wonderful boy.”

XI
BREAKING THE NEWS

AMONG the more painful experiences which haunt a doctor’s memory are the occasions on which it has been necessary to tell a patient that his malady is fatal and that no measure of cure lies in the hands of man. Rarely indeed has such an announcement to be bluntly made. In the face of misfortune it is merciless to blot out hope. That meagre hope, although it may be but a will-o’-the-wisp, is still a glimmer of light in the gathering gloom. Very often the evil tidings can be conveyed by the lips of a sympathetic friend. Very often the message can be worded in so illusive a manner as to plant merely a germ of doubt in the mind; which germ may slowly and almost painlessly grow into a realization of the truth. I remember being present when Sir William Jenner was enumerating to a friend the qualities he considered to be essential in a medical man. “He needs,” said the shrewd physician, “three things. He must be honest, he must be dogmatic and he must be kind.” In imparting his dread message the doctor needs all these qualities, but more especially the last—he must be kind. His kindness will be the more convincing if he can, for the moment, imagine himself in the patient’s place and the patient in his.