Speaking of Operations | Page 9

a spirit of due appreciation of the magnitude of the
undertaking, and after proper consideration and thought and reflection,
and all that sort of thing.
If this were true as regards a mere duck, why not all the more so as
regards the carving of a person of whom I am so very fond as I am of
myself? Thus I reasoned. And finally, had not Doctor Z spoken of the
coming operation as a small matter? Well then?
Thursday at noon I received from Doctor Z's secretary a note stating
that arrangements had been made for my admission into St. Germicide
that same evening and that I was to spend the night there. This hardly
seemed necessary. Still, the tone of the note appeared to indicate that

the hospital authorities particularly wished to have me for an overnight
guest; and as I reflected that probably the poor things had few enough
bright spots in their busy lives, I decided I would humor them along
and gladden the occasion with my presence from dinner-time on.
About eight o'clock I strolled in very jauntily. In my mind I had the
whole programme mapped out. I would stay at the hospital for, say,
two days following the operation--or, at most, three. Then I must be up
and away. I had a good deal of work to do and a number of people to
see on important business, and I could not really afford to waste more
than a weekend on the staff of St. Germicide's. After Monday they must
look to their own devices for social entertainment. That was my idea.
Now when I look back on it I laugh, but it is a hollow laugh and there is
no real merriment in it.
Indeed, almost from the moment of my entrance little things began to
come up that were calculated to have a depressing effect on one's spirits.
Downstairs a serious-looking lady met me and entered in a book a
number of salient facts regarding my personality which the previous
investigators had somehow overlooked. There is a lot of bookkeeping
about an operation. This detail attended to, a young man, dressed in
white garments and wearing an expression that stamped him as one
who had suffered a recent deep bereavement came and relieved me of
my hand bag and escorted me upstairs.
As we passed through the upper corridors I had my first introduction to
the hospital smell, which is a smell compounded of iodoform, ether,
gruel, and something boiling. All hospitals have it, I understand. In
time you get used to it, but you never really care for it.
The young man led me into a small room tastefully decorated with four
walls, a floor, a ceiling, a window sill and a window, a door and a
doorsill, and a bed and a chair. He told me to go to bed. I did not want
to go to bed--it was not my regular bedtime--but he made a point of it,
and I judged it was according to regulations; so I undressed and put on
my night clothes and crawled in. He left me, taking my other clothes
and my shoes with him, but I was not allowed to get lonely.

A little later a ward surgeon appeared, to put a few inquiries of a
pointed and personal nature. He particularly desired to know what my
trouble was. I explained to him that I couldn't tell him-- he would have
to see Doctor X or Doctor Z; they probably knew, but were keeping it a
secret between themselves.
The answer apparently satisfied him, because immediately after that he
made me sign a paper in which I assumed all responsibility for what
was to take place the next morning.
This did not seem exactly fair. As I pointed out to him, it was the
surgeon's affair, not mine; and if the surgeon made a mistake the joke
would be on him and not on me, because in that case I would not be
here anyhow. But I signed, as requested, on the dotted line, and he
departed.
After that, at intervals, the chief house surgeon dropped in, without
knocking, and the head nurse came, and an interne or so, and a ward
nurse, and the special nurse who was to have direct charge of me. It
dawned on me that I was not having any more privacy in that hospital
than a goldfish.
About eleven o'clock an orderly came, and, without consulting my
wishes in the matter, he undressed me until I could have passed almost
anywhere for September Morn's father, and gave me a clean shave,
twice over, on one of my most prominent plane surfaces. I must confess
I enjoyed that part of it. So far as I am able to recall,