“I’m puzzled, Roy, mighty puzzled,” he said, turning to Ewing. “I might as well tell you the truth. Looks like t’ me she c’n hardly last till mornin’.” It was gall and wormwood for him to admit his impotency, but he did it.
“Dr. Bennett, you’ve got to do somethin’! You’ve got to! You’ve got to!”
It was Mrs. Ewing who cried out in her agony—the piteous cry of a mother who sees her firstborn dying before her eyes. Her face was as blanched as Mary’s—every drop of blood seemed to have been drained from it. She looked pleadingly at him, chill terror gripping her heart as she realized from his words that her Mary, who had been so happy and well that morning, was about to die.
“If you—all wasn’t such good friends of mine, I’d try it anyhow,” Dr. Bennett answered her, his voice as agonized as hers. “But I’m skeered to op’rate or do anythin’ that might hasten her on.”
Ewing walked over to the doctor, grasped the older man’s shoulders so fiercely that he winced in pain.
“By God,” he shouted at Dr. Bennett, “you’ve got to operate! I can’t see my little Mary die right here befo’ my eyes! Go ahead and do what you think best. It’ll be better’n seein’ her die while we stand here doin’ nothin’!”.
“Roy,” Dr. Bennett groaned, “you know there ain’t anythin’ I wouldn’t do for you—’cept this.” He waved his hand vaguely towards the bed. As he did so, he looked with keen appraisement at Ewing in the dim light. He seemed to be debating in his mind whether or not he dared take a very long chance. If the chance would not be more disastrous. If Mary’s life might not be better lost than that! Ewing almost stopped breathing as he saw the momentary indecision in the physician’s face. Mrs. Ewing saw none of this byplay, for she had sunk down on the bed, where her body was shaken with the sobs she could not restrain.
“There’s jus’ one chance t’ save her,” Dr. Bennett hesitatingly began. Ewing leaned forward in his eagerness.
“There’s jus’ this one hope,” Dr. Bennett repeated, “but I don’t know if you’d be willin’ to take that chance.”
“I don’t give a damn what it is!” Ewing shouted in his anxiety. “I’ll take it! What is it, Doc? I don’t care what it costs! What is it?” He quivered as with a chill in his excitement—the excitement of the drowning man who sees a possible rescuer as he is about to go down for the third time. Mrs. Ewing had stopped crying—she seemed as though she had forgotten to breathe. They both waited eagerly for the older man to speak. At last he did. He paused after each word.
“Th’only—man—I know—near enough—to op’rate—in time—is—a—nigger-doctor—here—named—Harper!”
“Oh, my God!” groaned Ewing as he sank to his knees beside the bed and buried his face in his hands. “A nigger—seein’ my Mary—operatin’ on her—Good God! I’d rather see her dead than have a nigger put his hands on her! No! No! No!” He fairly screamed the last in his fury.
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” said Dr. Bennett miserably. “I jus’ felt I oughter tell you. He’s jus’ out of school—studied in one of the bes’ schools up No’th—and in France. He might save Mary—but I can’t blame you none for not havin’ him.”
While he was speaking, Ewing jumped to his feet and paced up and down the room like a caged and wounded tiger. On the one hand was the life of his daughter—on the other his inherent, acquired, environmental prejudice. None but those who know intimately the depth and passion of that prejudice as it flourishes in the South can know what torture what a hell—what agony Ewing was going through. Prejudice under almost any circumstances is hard enough to bear—in Ewing’s case his very soul was tormented at such an unheard-of thing as a Negro operating on his daughter.
“Roy!”
He turned abruptly at the sound of his wife’s voice, having forgotten for the time everything—wife, surroundings, all—as he struggled with the problem he faced.
“Roy!” Her voice was weak because of the ordeal through which she was passing. She ran to him, seizing his arm and looking up at him pleadingly.
“Roy! I can’t see our Mary die! I can’t let her die!”
“Would you have a nigger see her naked?” he demanded of her fiercely. “Would you? Would you?”
Her head went back sharply at the roughness of his tone. In her eyes flashed that brilliant, burning look of mother love that submits to no dangers, no obstacles.
“I’d do anything to save her!” she cried.
“No, no, Mary,” Ewing pleaded, “we can’t do that! We can’t!”
She did not hear him. Brushing past him, she caught Dr. Bennett by the arm as he rose to his feet. “Get that doctor here quick!” she demanded of him. …
When Dr. Bennett telephoned him to come to Roy Ewing’s home as quickly as he could, Kenneth was somewhat puzzled. He went at once, deciding that one of the servants was sick. When told that it was Mary Ewing he was to treat, he could not conceal his amazement. He followed Roy Ewing and the doctor to her room, the while he was trying to make himself realize that he, Kenneth Harper, a Negro doctor, had been called to treat a white person—a white woman—in the South. Reaching the bedside, though, he put aside his bewilderment and began at once the diagnosis to discover what the trouble was. He listened without speaking to Dr. Bennett as the old man told him the symptoms Mary had shown and what he thought was the matter. Ewing was sent from the room. Kenneth rapidly examined the patient—and decided that she was having severe internal haemorrhages. It looked like an acute and dangerous case.
Immediate
