There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one.
I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it.
Van Horn advises operation--unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that
with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he
considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening.
He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however
things come out I'm in the hole."
"Not if the patient gets well."
"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten,
at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And
if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he
advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but
in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so
mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."
"Would he have liked to operate himself?"
Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his
lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he
first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I
know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table
alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or
rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was
probably digging my own grave.
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