But I tell
you now because I've got to have the speed. All right; that's all."
He gave her one quick smile, then his face was set and stern again, as
always at this moment, for it was the moment when he caught sight of his
patient, quietly asleep, being brought to him. And it was the moment
when one swift echo of the prayer he had already made upon his knees
leaped through his mind--to be gone again as lightning flashes through a
midnight sky. After that there was to be no more prayer, only action.
* * * * *
The watching surgeons unconsciously held their breath as the operation
began. For the patient on the table was James Van Horn, and the man who
had taken Van Horn's life into his hands was not a great surgeon from
New York or Boston, as was to have been anticipated, but their everyday
colleague Burns. And at that moment not one of them envied him his
chance.
Ellen had seldom waited more anxiously for the word her husband always
sent her at such times. He fully recognized that the silent partner in
crises like these suffered a very real and trying suspense, the greater
that there was nothing she could do for him except to send him to his
work heartened by the thought of her and of her belief in him.
It was longer than usual, on this more than ordinarily fateful morning,
before Ellen received the first word from the hospital. When it came it
was from an attendant and it was not reassuring:
"Doctor Burns wishes me to tell you that the patient has come through
the operation, but is in a critical condition.
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