The Operation.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 8, 23 August 1911, Page 60

The Operation.

I had been told, when I made my ap , rangements in the afternoon, that I need not put in an appearance before ten o’clock. The surgeon had even surested a little dinner, and a theatre before my incarceration. As to my luggage plenty of pyjamas and plenty of to’ bacco was his genial suggestion. When I drove up at 9.30 a.m. I felt as if f were entering a rather ambitious board-ing-house. However, I was somewhat slimly accoutred for a month’s star with my single bag containing the pyjamas and tobacco. The door, too seemed to close jyith an ominous decision. I should not have been surprised to hear the rattling of bolts. I mounted slippery, uncarpeted stairs to the general crowd of the nursing-home. It held something, so it seemed to me, of the hotel, and something of the hospital, In its day it had been a drawing-room of considerable amplitude, and still betrayed its alien origin in the marks of the great chandelier and decorative mantel. In its four corners were four narrow beds, two empty and two occupied. Almost tlie only furniture of the room was a large wardrobe and some half-dozen adjustable screens. I began to experience the discomfort of a novitiate. I no longer felt the defensive arrogance of the new-comer in a hotel, I was as nervous and new as a passenger who joins, between ports, the already settled society of a liner. I had the sense of intrusion of the schoolboy on his first evening at a new school. I found a corner for my clothe- in the great wardrobe and undressed quickly. I hung up my suit almost tenderly. It was to be my “going away” costume, when and how it was difficult to Jetermine. I was going to bed for such x long time. I thought, with a sudden rush of self-pity, how the coat would drape shrunken shoulders, and the trousers sag round shrunken calves. I was conscious, as I walked to my lied in the corner, of feeling quite tolerably fit, and looking even fitter. It seemed not only silly, but savouring of imposture, to take me there solemnly to bed at ten o’clock in the evening. In the bed opposite was a large man, smoking a large pipe. He seemed to stir some faint Dickensian reminiscence, and the shade of the prison-house closed around me. He was so domesticated, so placidly “chez soi” with his large pipe, that I felt a miserable inadequacy in my cigarette. XV e took stock of one another with the armed neutrality of cabin mates on the first night of a voyage that may be long. But his nativo geniality soon had the upper hand of a natural resentment of intrusion. As doyen of the -ward, he extended his welcome and initiation to the novice, sometimes he would appeal to the third occupant, a German, with—as I learned afterwards—a Teutonic capacity for tears. Introductions were made in due form, and we bowed from our beds. I fancied I heard the click of Teutonic heels. In an hour the lights leapt out. and I ■was reminded that, the great pipe no • ■withstanding, we were under a certain discipline. The night nurse enured, starched and rustling, and placed <". be bv my bedside. The fire-light flickered, grotesque faces formed on the stucco that had bedded the vanished chandelier, and I fell asleep. Next day I felt more of an iiupostou than ever.” I smoked, I ate with an appetite which I had given me on this day of rest and purgation as the surgeon pleasantly termed it. It was to be nex morning at eight o’clock —that I Anew. There was almost consolation in tad thought that, in 24 hours, I should be an invalid “pour le bon.” I began to take an interest in my pulse, and regard tna cipher of mv daily consumption of cl ?p’ ettes with a regret not untinged witn

fear. Besides, eight was so abominably 'matutinal in the north at this time of the year. The gentleman of the pipe was consolatory. He made light of such trivial occurrence as operations, and yet a certain very human pride in past sufferings would keep breaking through his philosophy. 1 was a little depressed, and so too was my temperature—l had a chart now like a musical score. Briefly, the overture had begun. It was unfortunate, it was tactless, that there should have been two deaths under anaesthetics in that morning’s paper. I felt quite distress 1 when I thought how it might affect my wife. That was no doubt the reasv.i that the ward-nurse had to begin her s ore beneath the bold black line' in the chart. I felt rather chilled, rather outside the warm comity of my fellows, when I was Wakened next morning at five and received. in place of breakfast, a bowl of soup. It was. as it were, the sacrificial fillet—not. alas' of sole. When next I wakened —for I fell asleep—a particularly cheeile-s dawn was filtering through the utters. There was a cheerful animation in the voice of the ward-nurse as she gave good-morning. She told me afterwards that she took a professional plea re in operations. She carried a pail of woollen stockings in her hand —in credibly thick and woolly. They mounted thigli-high. and made it difficult for me to s' ;> into bedroom slippers. I slouched up tii stairs to the operating-room as clown at heel as at mouth. In my vague forefigurings of the scene I had imn lined a certain leisureliness of procedure. time for the display of an elab nate nonchalance, for a pun. perhaps, or a preciosity. T was disappointed. No sor>i- t was ] suitably disposed on the ta? l than the mask was over my face, an J was inhaling through every pore the ’-4 and vilest of draughts. These doctors have no palate. What a boon \ aid be if they could serve their fh 'form dry! Voices, distant and yet incr dibly near, rippled and roared, and the world contracted to a semicircle of th" 1 loudest green speckled with scarlet. Tlip.i once more I was in my bed. I was SWfl ed in bands of iron. A voice—my voi —thick and tribulant, asked the no.”. The answer came from a mistv and thr Lbing distance. It was ten o’clock. 1 must lip ciniet. At least, I was no r an impostor.