"We don't dare anesthetize him until we know just the lie of those broken ribs," said Warren gravely to his wife, "and yet the little chap is so exhausted that the strain of trying to touch it may--may be too much for him. There's no time for an X-ray. Some of these fellows think it is too great a risk. I believe it may be done. If there are internal injuries, we can't hope to--" He paused. "But otherwise, I believe--"
Again his voice dropped. He stood looking at the little boy with eyes that were not a surgeon's now; all a father's.
"Good little chap," he said softly. "Do you remember how he used to watch Jim, through the bars of his crib, when he was about eight months old, and laugh as if Jim was the funniest thing in the world?"
Rachael looked up and nodded with brimming eyes. She could not speak.
They carried Derry away, and Rachael followed them up to the head of the stairway outside of the operating-room, and sat there, her hands locked in her lap, her head resting against the wall. Alice dared not join her, she kept her seat by the library fire, and with one hand pressed tight against her eyes, tried to pray.
Rachael did not pray. She was unable even to think clearly. Visions drifted through her tired brain, the panorama of the long day and night swept by unceasingly. She was in Eighth Avenue again, she was in the hot train, with the rain beating against the windows, and tears running down her hot cheeks. She was entering the house--"Where's my boy?" And then she was driving the car through that cruel world of water and wind. She would have saved him if she could! She had done her share. Instantly, unflinchingly, she had torn through blackness and storm; a battered ship beating somehow toward the familiar harbor. Now he must be saved. Rachael knew that madness would come upon her if these hideous hours were only working toward the moment when she would know that she had been too late. For the rest of her life she would only review them: the Bar, the wet roads, the detour, and the frightful seconds on the bridge. There had been something expiatory, something symbolic in this mad adventure, this flight through the night. The fires that had been burning in her heart for the past terrible hours were purged, she must be changed forevermore after to-night. But for the new birth, Derry must not be the price! The strain had been too great, the delicate machinery of her brain would give, she could not take up life again, having lost him--and lost him in this way--
They were torturing him; the child's cry of utter agony reached her where she sat. It came to her, in a flash, that Warren had said there might be no merciful chloroform. Cold water broke out on her forehead, she covered her ears with her hands, her breath coming wild and deep. Derry!
"Oh, no--Daddy! Oh, no, Daddy! Oh, Mother--Mother--!"
"Oh, my God! this is not right," Rachael said half aloud. "Oh, take him, take him, but don't let him suffer so!"
She was writhing as if the suffering were her own. For perhaps five horrible moments the house rang, then there was sudden silence.