He opened his eyes with the light of understanding in them, and they told him from his surrounding that he was in a hospital. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, and in a little park, just beyond, birds were singing and the breeze brought him the sound of children at play.
“Awake at last, are you?” asked the white-capped nurse who came into the room just then.
“Yes,” said Blalock, in a rasping whisper. He did not know it then, but the calm, soothing voice he once had boasted was his best asset in a sick room, was gone forever. The terrific strain to which he had put his vocal cords in his paroxysms in the dark cell had shattered them.
“You are doing splendidly,” the nurse assured him brightly. “You have been seriously ill, but you are recovering rapidly now.”
“No,” said Blalock positively, as one who knows. “I shall never get well. Give me a mirror, please.”
“I don’t believe there is one handy,” she evaded, loath to let him see the havoc in his face.
But he insisted.
“Please,” he begged, “I am prepared and I do not think I will be overcome. I will be brave.”
Reluctantly, then, she started to place the silvered glass in his hand. As he reached out to take it, he stopped, his hand half-way. The hand he was accustomed to see, with its tapering fingers and well-kept nails, the hand that so deftly had performed delicate operations, was gone. Instead was a slim, clawlike thing, with distorted knuckles and joints.
Blalock finally extended it, took the mirror and, slowly but steadily, brought it into line with his eyes. He had expected some changes, but not the sight that greeted him. The black, wavy hair had given place to locks of snowy white. His face was drawn and wrinkled, and lack-luster eyes stared back at him from cavernous sockets. Long he gazed at this apparition, then silently he let the mirror fall upon the cover and closed his eyes.