Warren had told her to get into dry clothing, and then to take a
stimulant, and have something to eat. And eager to save him what she
could, she was warm and dry now. She sat in Derry's room, and
presently, when they came to stand beside him, Warren and George, they
found her agonized eyes, bright with questions, facing them. But she
knew better than to speak.
Neither man spoke for a few dreadful moments. Warren looked at the
child without a flicker of change in his impassive look; George bit his
lip, and almost imperceptibly shook his head. And in their faces
Rachael read the death of her last faint hope.
"We don't dare anesthetize him until we know just the lie of those
broken ribs," said Warren gravely to his wife, "and yet the little chap
is so exhausted that the strain of trying to touch it may--may be too
much for him. There's no time for an X-ray. Some of these fellows think
it is too great a risk. I believe it may be done. If there are internal
injuries, we can't hope to--" He paused. "But otherwise, I believe--"
Again his voice dropped. He stood looking at the little boy with eyes
that were not a surgeon's now; all a father's.
"Good little chap," he said softly. "Do you remember how he used to
watch Jim, through the bars of his crib, when he was about eight months
old, and laugh as if Jim was the funniest thing in the world?"
Rachael looked up and nodded with brimming eyes. She could not speak.
They carried Derry away, and Rachael followed them up to the head of
the stairway outside of the operating-room, and sat there, her hands
locked in her lap, her head resting against the wall. Alice dared not
join her, she kept her seat by the library fire, and with one hand
pressed tight against her eyes, tried to pray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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