I said, "You don't mind my waiting with you, do you? I'd like to."
It was such a silly thing to say that he tried to laugh at me.
I thought they would give him the chloroform here at the door of the operating room and that I would run when he was once under. But they threw open the doors, and wheeled the stretcher cart in, and called to me to help lift him to the table. And then to help with this, with that, quickly. And I stayed and helped through it all. They thought he was going to die there on the table. Afterwards I realized how horrible it had been. When we got back to the ward, the patronne was there with Madame Marthe.
The patronne is a wonderful nurse. If any one can get a man through it, she can. She is dreadful. She screams from one end of the ward to the other and stamps her foot, and uses hideous words. But she can storm a man back into life. And suddenly all the rage will be a coaxing, and you know that she cares about it. "J'ai cela dans la peau," she says.
She shouted the "cinq lettres" at me, "What are you staring at? Get on with your work. He's through that, and he's not going to die."
Number 14
Sunday, December 5th
The mother of little 14, Louis, has come to see him.
When I came into the ward this morning, I was frightened to see that there were people about the bed of little Louis.