“Oh—of course. Do what you think proper, sir. I know we don’t signify.”
Murchison abandoned Mrs. Baxter to her prejudices, and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where Dr. Inglis dabbled scalpels and artery forceps in surgical trays. The assistant’s thin face welcomed his superior with a worried yet grateful smile. No heroine of romance had listened more eagerly for the sound of her lover’s gallop than had Dr. Inglis for the panting of Murchison’s car.
On the bed with its white chintz valance and side curtains lay the farmer, skin ashy, eyes sunken, the typical facies of acute abdominal obstruction. A sickly stench rose from a basin full of brown vomit beside the bed. The man hiccoughed and groaned as he breathed, each spasm of the diaphragm drawing a quivering gulp of pain.
Murchison, his eyes noting each significant detail, seated himself on the edge of the bed. He had hoped that Inglis might have been mistaken, and that he should find the case less grave than Dr. Hicks had suggested. Murchison dreaded the thought of an operation, even as a tired man dreads the duty he cannot justify. He felt unequal to the nerve strain that the ordeal demanded, for his hand was not the steady hand of the master for the night. Slowly and with the uttermost care he examined the man, realizing with each sign and symptom that Hicks’s diagnosis appeared too true. There was no escaping from the gravity of the crisis. Unless relieved, Thomas Baxter would surely die.
Murchison rose with a tired sigh, and pressing his eyes for a moment with the fingers of his right hand, went to the table where Inglis had been arranging the instruments and dressings.
“You have anæsthetics?”
“Yes. Are you going to operate?”
“Yes, I must. It is our only chance.”
“And the bed, it is a regular feather pit.”
“We have to put up with these things in the country. I have performed tracheotomy with a pair of scissors and a hair-pin.”