Part 4

My wife said, “Maybe you didn’t know it, but that’s exactly what you did come here for. I know a lot of things that you know nothing about. And it’s much better you shouldn’t know.”

She had kept in touch with my diagnostician, and I wondered if he had initiated her into some of the clinical secrets in order to punish me for insubordination. I didn’t ask what it was she knew, nor did it make much difference. Whatever a woman may know, it does not alter the fact that she wants what she wants. And if her wants call for no more than the loss of a kidney, it’s easier to accommodate her than it is to oppose her wishes. Therefore, with the family and the clinical staff arrayed against me there wasn’t much use arguing. Nobody supported my side: I was like a lone defendant facing a “packed” jury, solid for conviction.

The women were convinced that it was such a trivial affair, that they all wished they could take the job off my hands. They were astonished that under the circumstances I should be so obstinate in refusing this opportunity of having Doctor Will Mayo operate on me. The result was, I was made to feel more like a slacker than a hero. What a pity it is, I thought, that those who like such things cannot have their tastes gratified! I wished the kidney would kick up again so I could get thoroughly sore and disgusted with it; but it lay there as quiet as a mouse in the corner--as if it heard what was going on. I could almost hear it whisper, “Stick to your guns, old pal, I’ll be a good kidney in future.” But in a moment of weakness I asked the doctor how long it would take.

“It means only ten days to two weeks in bed and one more to convalesce. Yes, Doctor ‘Will’ can operate on you day after tomorrow morning.” That settled it. At four o’clock the next afternoon, with the mercury thirty below zero, my family accompanied me to the hospital.

“ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE--”

Have you ever been left at a strange hospital in the afternoon or evening of a cold, gloomy day, to be prepared for an operation early next morning? It starts the goose flesh on me even now when I recall seeing the door close behind my family as they left the room when the visitors’ hours were over. I was alone--and lonesome. Here is where the stern realities of life press down hard upon you and you call in all the reserves of your courage to meet them. It is a case where a fellow is almost justified in feeling sorry for himself. I felt as I imagine poor old Philoctetes must have felt when his companions sailed away and abandoned him on the deserted Island of Lemnos, there to nurse his snake-bitten ankle in painful solitude. I was even worse off than Philoctetes: I didn’t have so much as a pain to keep me company.

In a few minutes an attractive nurse came in and looked me over with a quick appraising eye.

“I’m to be your day nurse,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said; “I hope you’ll like me.” She said she’d be on duty till seven, and come back at seven in the morning. For my “supper” she said I might have a “light tray”; then she went out. Presently she returned, bringing a tray with a miniature dish of light cereal. That was all the rules permitted me to have. It was carefully concealed beneath a white napkin, probably to keep the aerial bacilli from nesting in it on the way in. When I had eaten it I glanced up with an eager, hungry look, in comparison with which Oliver Twist must have appeared contentedly well fed.

“Next course,” I said, with a maudlin attempt at facetiousness.

She shook her head. “You’ve had all the rules allow. I’m sorry, but--”

“But you’re not sorry enough to give me any more--is that it?”

“Your next course will be castor oil.”

“But I’ve already had it--bottles of it!” I protested. “It’s all they’ve fed me the past ten days.” That made no difference; the orders called for it, and there was no alternative but to take it.

“I hate the damn stuff!--Haven’t you some substitute?” I pleaded.

“There is no substitute,” she said with an air of finality that closed the argument.

She removed the tray, then set to work getting me ready for the night. She unfastened my shoes, took them off, unbuttoned me and shunted me into a suit of hospital pajamas, as if I were already an invalid. It was hours before my usual bedtime, but I made no protest. In fact my powers of opposition had been worn down to a point where it no longer seemed worth while objecting to anything. Once before I had been in a hospital a few days and learned my lesson in submissiveness. In a hospital one soon learns to obey everybody, for every attendant, even down to the meanest orderly, is clothed with an authority not to be questioned by any invalid intruder. A man may be a czar in his own home (that is, if he’s single), but let him fall into the clutches of the doctors, nurses and hospital authorities and he becomes the most humble milk-fed subject on earth. The moment he undertakes to assert himself he is sure to run afoul of some iron-clad rule, and like a captive bird beating its head against the bars of its cage he learns the utter futility of resistance.

I lay there trying to chirk up my spirits by contemplating the future joys of convalescence--when a fellow can sit up in an easy chair with a consciousness of restored sovereignty over himself; when he can fearlessly declare his mind and tell them all to go to the--but just then the nurse reminded me it was seven o’clock, and she was leaving for the night. She surprised me by saying the barber would soon be in.

“But I haven’t sent for any barber--I don’t want one.”

“No, but that’s all been arranged for you. Good night.” And out she went.

It all reminded me of the newspaper accounts where we read of people being fed, shaved and groomed for hanging or electrocution at daybreak, except that they don’t have to take castor oil; and they are always given plenty to eat.

Shortly after the nurse left the barber arrived. He unwrapped his kit and took out an old-fashioned razor. “I’ve come to shave you.”

“Thank you, but I’m not an invalid, and I always shave myself.”

“Yes--your face--but that ain’t where they’re goin’ to operate,” he laughed. He cupped his palms and blew his breath on them.--“I’ll have to thaw the frost out of these joints before I can hold a razor.”

He was a youngish man and went about his task in a clumsy way. He shaved--or rather scraped--my back from the waist down to the hips, talking volubly the while. Then having turned me over, as he was working industriously on the most ticklish part of my midsection he confided to me that he was new at the barber business. He said he had tried his hand on three or four ex-patients in an “undertaker’s shop,” but I was the second “live one” he had ever “worked on.”

“But then I’ve got to learn sometime,” he remarked carelessly, while he tested the edge of the razor on his thumbnail. “There’s one good thing about shaving a ‘deader,’--if you cut him he can’t holler.... There ain’t much to shave right here,” he observed, rubbing his cold, rough hand over the pit of my stomach, “but I’m supposed to run over it just the same.” He hoped I would excuse him if he accidentally “cut” or “pulled” a little. “But then I guess even if I’d nip you a bit it wouldn’t be a thing to what they’ll do to you when they get you on the table tomorrow morning,” he added with a snicker.

From that on to the end of the shaving operation my feelings can better be imagined than described. My only grain of comfort was that his razor was so dull that if it slipped it wouldn’t cut very deep. When he had finished he sat down on the edge of the bed and proceeded to regale me with anecdotes and personal experiences. He had recently been a cab driver, but business in that line was dull in winter, and the old barber at the hospital having suddenly died he applied for the position and the Sisters had accepted him without questioning his qualifications.

“I guess the old girls here think a barber’s a barber,” he laughed. “Maybe you’ll think I’ve got a hell of a nerve, but you know when a fellow’s up against it he can’t be choosey about a job.”