Then to the nurse, “And you?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said the Harvester, “all of you are useless. Get out of here. I
don't want your atmosphere. If you can believe only in death, leave us!
She is my wife, and if this is the end she belongs to me, and I will do
as I choose with her. All of you go!”
The Harvester stepped to the bathroom door and called Granny Moreland.
“Granny,” he said, “science has turned tail, and left me in extremity.
Fill your hot-water bottles and come in here with your heart big with
hope and help me save my Dream Girl. She is breathing Granny; we've got
to make her keep it up, that's all----just keep her breathing.”
He returned to the sunshine room, placed a small table beside the bed,
and on it a glass of water, spoon, and a hypodermic syringe. When Granny
Moreland came he said: “Now you begin on her feet and rub with long,
sweeping, upward strokes to drive the blood to her heart.”
Around the Girl he piled hot-water bottles and breathlessly hung over
her, rubbing her hands. He wiped the perspiration from her forehead, and
then dropped by her bed and for a second laid his face on her cold palm.
“If I am wrong, Heaven forgive me,” he prayed. “And you, oh, my darling
Dream Girl, forgive me, but I am forced to try----God helping me! Amen.”
He arose, took a small bottle from his pocket, filled the spoon with
water, and measured into it three drops of liquid as yellow as gold.
Then he held the spoon to the blue lips, and with his fingers worked
apart the set teeth, and poured the medicine down her throat. Then they
rubbed and muttered snatches of prayer for fifteen minutes when the
Harvester administered another three drops. It might have been fancy,
but it seemed to him her jaws were not so stiff. Faster flew his hands
and he sent Granny Moreland to refill the hot bottles. When he gave the
Girl the third dose he injected some of the liquid over her heart and of
the glycerine the doctors had left, in the extremities. He released more
air and began rubbing again.
The second hour started in the same way, and ended with slowly relaxing
muscles and faint tinges of colour in the white cheeks. The feet were
not so cold, and when the Harvester held the spoon he knew that the
Girl made an effort to swallow, and he could see her eyelids tremble.
Thereupon he pointed these signs to Granny, and implored her to rub and
pray, and pray and rub, while he worked until the perspiration rolled
down his gray face. At the end of the second hour he began decreasing
the doses and shortening the time, and again he commenced in a
low rumble his song of life and health, to encourage the Girl as
consciousness returned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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