It was Three, begging for a bromide, and it took me a few moments to convince her of the fact that she didn’t in the least need it.
Then I sat down at the desk, which is at the north end of the corridor, opposite the south door, with all the shadowy length of gray-white walls and dark doors of the corridor intervening. A shaded light over this desk is the sole illumination and a person seated at the desk faces the chart rack and has her back turned to the corridor. It remained hot and very still and I wondered if the wind that accompanies our western thunder storms would not soon rise.
I had not more than entered Three’s pulse and the time—one thirty—when a sudden sound, dull and heavy, brought me standing, facing the corridor and unaccountably startled. Only the bare walls met my eyes. Perhaps the south door had blown shut. It had sounded like the muffled bang of a door—or possibly like a window that had dropped to the sill. The chart in my hand, I walked quickly through the corridor to the south door. It was still open and I felt no breeze.
As near as I could tell the sound that had aroused me had come from this end of the wing. The door of Room 17 was open and a glance assured me that the window was still open for I could see the dim shadow of the sash. The door of Eighteen was closed, however, so I opened it cautiously in order not to wake Mr. Jackson. I did not enter the room; I stood there only for a moment, holding the door half open and peering through the dim light from the corridor. The patient was lying quiet and the window seemed to be open, so I closed the door as gently as I had opened it and took my way down the corridor again.
And when I reached the chart desk I found that my knees were trembling and there was a little damp beading under my cap.
“It is the night,” I assured myself. “It is a nerve-racking night. I shall suffocate if I don’t get some air.”
But nevertheless I felt nervous and ill at ease. I forced myself to study the charts, and in the middle of Eleven’s temperature chart I recalled the small flat object I had found in the orchard. I was in the very act of drawing it from my pocket when, with a swoop of wind through the corridor, a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, the storm broke.
I ran the whole length of the corridor. The wind was sweeping along it with such fury that my skirts were pulled back tight around me, my cap slipped back on my head, and several top-heavy vases of flowers must have blown over for we found them so later. With some difficulty I closed the door. As I fastened it, leaving the key in the lock in my haste, I could see through the panes of glass the first great spatters of rain, and down below the hospital on the little back road shone the lights of a hurrying automobile. Then they were gone and another flash of lightning nearly blinded me and there was a sharp crackle and sputter. Simultaneously the light went out as if by black magic, leaving me alone in the dark with eighteen windows to get down and eighteen patients to reassure.
I knew in an instant what had occurred; the power line from the city had been struck and the fuses burnt out or some such matter. Where was Maida? The rain was coming in torrents by the time I had felt my way into Room 17 and closed the window. Occasional lightning aided me as I groped my way to Room 18, crossed it and pulled down that window. As I turned toward the door again a bright flash of lightning lit up the whole room and in the brief second I saw that the patient had not roused in spite of the tumult of the storm. He lay still. Too still.
Then the light was gone and, scarcely knowing what I did, I reached the bed and put my hand on his face and sought his pulse.
A seasoned nurse knows when death has come. Even in the gibbering darkness with the storm outside crashing against the window I knew at once that our patient was dead.
Standing there for what seemed an eternity, but what was actually not more than a moment or two, my mind raced over the situation and strove to comprehend it. There was no reason for his death of which I knew. Barring the affliction for which he was being treated and which in its present stage had not been critical, our patient had been in good health only an hour or so ago. What had caused this? It could not have been heart failure for his heart had been sound.
I must have a light. I must call Dr. Letheny. I must—There was the sound of windows being lowered. I found my way to the door. If I could make Maida hear me—but, of course, I couldn’t through the confusion of patients calling out from fright as they found the lights failing to go on, and the constant roll of thunder and crashing of rain. The flashes of lightning were frequent and I caught a fleeting glimpse of Maida crossing the corridor farther down the hall.
It would be of no use to call her; furthermore, she was busy. I disliked leaving Eighteen with no one in the room, but I must have a light. I ran down the length of the corridor—it seemed long and unfamiliar—groped in a drawer of the cupboard in the diet kitchen, found the burnt end of
