When he demanded more of the drug, the physician protested: “We must not be careless. It is a habit-forming drug, you know.”
But pain was a habit-forming poison, too. The operation was too late to do more than prolong the day of execution.
All over the world men were delving into the ancient mystery. But nobody knew. Nobody could find out a why or a wherefore. Some day somebody would surely stumble on the cause and then the cure would turn up. The answer would be simple perhaps.
But it would be too late for Patty.
What followed was unspeakable, too cruel to recount, beyond the reach of sympathy. Minutes seemingly unbearable heaped up into hours, hours into mornings, afternoons, slow evenings, eternal, lonely nights. Days and nights became weeks, months.
The doctor, weary of the spectacle of Patty’s woe, gave the drug recklessly. It had passed the point of mattering whether it were habit-forming or not.
And then immunity began. As the disease itself was the ironic parody of life, so the precious gift of immunity became the hideous denial of relief.
The solace in drugs lost all potency. The poor wretch was naked before the fiends. The hell the Bible pronounced upon the non-elect was brought up to earth before its time.
Dr. Chirnside slept now with his fathers, but his successor called upon Patty to minister comfort. He was a stern reversion to the Puritan type that deified its own granite. When he was gone, Patty was in dismay indeed. For now the torture was perfected by a last exquisite subtlety, the only thing left to increase it: the feeling that it was deserved. Remorse was added to the weapons of this invisible Torquemada.
From Patty’s blenched, writhen lips, between her gnashing teeth slipped the words: