Read Ebook: Humoristische Erinnerungen aus meinem academischen Leben Erstes Bändchen in Heidelberg und Kiel in den Jahren 1817-1819 by Kobbe Theodor Von

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 357 lines and 12818 words, and 8 pages

A BORN SURGEON

DR. FRED GRANT, recalled in haste from his daily round of professional visits by a telephone message from his nephew, leaped out of his carriage over the yet moving wheel, and, stuffing an open letter into his pocket, rushed up the walk and into his office, which occupied a wing of his commodious house.

A sight met his eyes which was not uncommon, situated as he was in the midst of the coal fields of Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Stretched out on the leather couch lay a man from the mines, black and grimy, his right arm crushed. Two other miners, also blackened with coal-dust, sat on the edges of their chairs, their eyes following the movements of Ross Grant, the doctor's nephew and self-constituted assistant.

Those movements had been rapid and effective. Again and again had this seventeen-year-old boy been brought face to face with such cases as this, and he handled it promptly and wordlessly. Words, indeed, would have been wasted, as none of his callers spoke English. He had quieted the sufferer with a hypodermic injection of morphine, stripped the injured arm, cleansed it, and treated it with a temporary dressing.

Then, with the bandages firmly in place, he had gone to the telephone and patiently called up house after house until he found his uncle.

When Dr. Grant entered the office, he found Ross calmly taking the temperature of the wounded man.

"He must have met with the accident at least an hour before they got him here," the boy explained, "for he was suffering awfully. I thought I ought to fix him up before trying to find you."

His uncle nodded with satisfaction, and bent over the man. "All right," he commended briefly, but his tone said more. Words were not always necessary to an understanding between uncle and nephew.

The younger man was an abridged edition of the older in form and feature. In movements the two were alike only so long as Ross was aiding the doctor on such an occasion as this. Then there were in both the same alertness and quiet intentness, the same compression of the lips and narrowing of the eyes. But when the strain of the hour was past and the miners gone, the boy's manner changed. The alert quality which characterized the uncle at all times seemed to desert the nephew, and his movements became slow. From the born surgeon in embryo he became a rather awkward, self-conscious boy.

Throwing himself into a chair behind the table, he drew toward him Gray's "Anatomy," and began reading at a line marked by a paper-cutter, his closely cropped head grasped in both hands.

The older man moved around the room restlessly, occasionally glancing with troubled eyes at the figure behind the table. Standing finally in front of the window, he drew the letter from his pocket, smoothed it out, and read it again.

In front of him, in the valley, lay Pittston and Wilkes-Barre, with Scranton in the distance, and beyond, the sun-burned hills, almost hidden now by the smoke from a hundred coal-breakers, and by the late August haze.

"Ross," began Dr. Grant abruptly, without turning, "I'm afraid you are going to meet disappointment--to a certain extent. I have a letter from your father."

"No,"--the doctor turned slowly,--"not exactly. He expects to send for you in a few days, and will tell you himself."

Ross's chin came up. "And I shall not be twenty-one for nearly four years yet!" he exclaimed aggressively.

Ross interrupted hotly, looking longingly at the letter. "I don't owe him as much as I do you and Aunt Anne."

Dr. Grant made no reply, nor did he share the letter. Putting it into an inner pocket, he left the office, and presently Ross heard the sound of wheels on the drive. Dr. Grant was starting again on his interrupted round of calls.

The boy leaned back and drew a deep breath. His father was going to send for him, and would then tell him--what? That he could not enter a medical college? That he could not become a surgeon? That he must fit himself for a business career? His chin came up again. He looked around the office lingeringly. It had been the heart of his home for seven years. It represented to him all that he wished to become. His father was almost a stranger to him; his uncle had stood in the place of a father since he, a sickly boy of ten, had been sent from the city to gain health on the hills which girdle Wyoming Valley.

He had gained health. In so far he had fulfilled his father's wishes. But, in addition, he had gained a knowledge and been settled in a desire extremely displeasing to Ross Grant, Senior, who expected to train his only son to continue his own business.

"Grant & Grant" was the father's ambition; "Dr. Grant" the son's.

Presently Dr. Grant's wife appeared in the doorway of the office. She was a short, round woman, with a laughing face and a pretty, bustling air of authority. Stopping abruptly, she shook a chubby forefinger at Ross.

"All day to-day," she accused, "you have bent over that book."

Ross, his elbows planted on the table and his chin resting on his fists, shook his head. He did not look up.

"I've been studying Gray on Anatomy, Aunt Anne. Got to master him."

Aunt Anne bobbed energetically across the room, and slammed the volume shut. "There!" she cried triumphantly. "Get out and walk five miles, and strengthen your own anatomy!"

Under her light tones and in the affectionate touch of her hand as she ran her fingers through his hair, Ross detected an undercurrent of solicitude, which brought forth a counter-accusation. Rising hastily, he laid both hands on her shoulders, and looked down from an altitude of five feet ten.

"Aunt Anne, you know what father wrote to uncle, don't you?"

Mrs. Grant's eyes fell. "Better take a good run over the mountain, Ross," she parried.

Ross's hands slipped from her shoulders. "I see there's no use asking either of you what he wrote."

Mrs. Grant flecked some dust from the table. "Sometimes, Ross," was her only reply, "disappointment is the very best and most strengthening tonic we can take."

She turned away, adding without glancing back as she left the room: "I do wish, Ross, that you'd get out and exercise more. You would conquer Gray's 'Anatomy'--and all other difficulties--more quickly if you would."

"I guess you're right, Aunt Anne," assented Ross.

"Yes," scolded Aunt Anne to her sister in the living-room--but the scolding rested on a very apparent foundation of love--"Ross always agrees with me about taking vigorous exercise--and then never takes it. Now watch him walk, will you?" she fretted, looking out of the window.

Her sister, busily sewing, paused with suspended needle, and glanced out. Ross was going slowly down the drive, his head bent forward, his youthful shoulders carelessly sagging, his long arms aimlessly hanging, giving him a curiously helpless appearance at variance with his large frame.

"It's Ross's own fault," declared Aunt Anne. "He doesn't like to exert himself physically. Not that he's lazy," defensively, "for he isn't. He would work all night over a patient, and never think of himself; but to get out and exercise for the sake of exercising, and straightening himself up, and holding himself, somehow--well, I've talked myself hoarse about it, and then found that he had been reading some medical book or other all the time I was talking!"

Here Aunt Anne laughed silently, and ran her shears through a length of gingham, adding, as if the addition were a logical sequence to her monologue:

"It's a mystery to me how his father can feel so disappointed in him."

"Disappointed in Ross?" exclaimed the sister in a tone of wonder.

Mrs. Grant nodded. "His father sends for him once a year, sees him for a day or two when Ross is at the greatest disadvantage in unaccustomed surroundings--you know the stepmother is a woman of fashion; and the result is that he is so awkward and slow and tongue-tied that his father--well," Mrs. Grant bit off her thread energetically, "of course, we feel tender on the subject because we have had Ross now for seven years, and we think a better boy never lived. But now the time has come," her voice trembled, "when we must give him up."

"Will his father forbid his going to medical college?" asked the sister.

Mrs. Grant hesitated. "No, I don't think he will forbid it; but he will prevent it--if he is able," she added significantly.

Two days later the summons from Ross Grant, Senior, arrived in the shape of a telegram brief and to the point. "Take night-train," it read, "September first. Reach office at nine."

"Ross," worried Aunt Anne as she straightened his tie and hovered around him anxiously the afternoon of September first, "you'd better get a new hat in Scranton. This one is--well, I think you better appear before Mrs. Grant in a new one."

"All right, aunt."

Dr. Grant extended his hand, and gripped Ross's. "Remember, my boy, that the telegram appointed nine A. M. as the time for your appearing."

Ross laughed. "Don't you worry, uncle," he returned confidently. "I shall be at the office before father gets there."

But, despite his confidence, it was nearly ten the morning following before he stepped out of the elevator of a Broadway office building and presented himself hesitatingly before the clerk in his father's outer office.

His hesitation was due to his appearance. His hat, new the afternoon before, was soiled and pierced by the calk of a horse's shoe. His shirtfront was also soiled and then smeared over by a wet cloth in a vain effort to remove the dirt. His right coat-sleeve was wrinkled, and bore marks of a recent wetting. About his clothes lingered a subtle "horsy" odor, which caused the clerk to sniff involuntarily as he curiously looked over the heir to the house of Grant before disappearing into the inner office.

When he returned he bore the crisp message that Ross was to wait until his father had time to see him.

Ross waited. He retreated to a window through which the sunshine streamed, and there sat, industriously drying his wet sleeve. He pulled it, and smoothed it, and stretched it, only to see it shrivel and shrink while he waited. The clerk occasionally glanced with no abating of curiosity from the boy to the clock. Two hours passed. Others waiting in that outer office grew restless. They read. They took quick turns about the room. They went out into the corridor, and returned. At last, one by one, they were ushered into the inner office, while Ross still waited.

It was past twelve before his father sent for him, and the first glance the boy encountered was one of displeasure.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet