“It’s my stomach,” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “I tell you I’m not hurt; I’m just—squashed. I’m paralyzed. If I can’t get this car off me—”
“Yes, that’s just it,” beamed the White Linen Nurse’s face—“that’s just what I crawled in here to find out—how to get the car off you. That’s just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course; only I couldn’t run, ’cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take hours, and the car might start or burn up or something while I was gone. But you don’t seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery,” she added more brightly; “it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could only get the car off you! But it’s so heavy. I had no idea it would be so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?”
“Take it apart—hell!” groaned the Senior Surgeon.
A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse’s face.
“All the same,” she asserted stubbornly, “if some one would only tell me what to do, I know I could do it.”
Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little tremor quickened suddenly, and was hushed again.
“Get out of here—quick!” stormed the Senior Surgeon.
“I won’t,” said the White Linen Nurse, “until you tell me what to do.”
Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray eyes battled each other.
“Can you do what you’re told?” faltered the Senior Surgeon.