Northern Neighbours: Stories of the Labrador People by Wilfred T. Grenfell Wilfred T. Grenfell

Author:Wilfred T. Grenfell, Wilfred T. Grenfell [Wilfred T. Grenfell, Wilfred T. Grenfell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Nonfiction
ISBN: 4064066369903
Google: zGFBEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2021-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

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In a little hospital like this, with a meager staff of one nurse and one doctor, when a serious case makes night watches a necessity, even a roving doctor can know what a quiet hour means. At sea, in the short season of open water, all is life and action on a night watch. The rolling vessel—the swinging compass—the changing courses—the straining of the eyes for ice and hidden dangers—all keep every faculty alert, and crowd every swiftly passing moment.

Here in the dim light, in the silent house surrounded by the even greater stillness of the intense cold outside, so that one can hear the frost at work under the chilly stars, the domination of the senses by the bustle of things is relieved, and one’s imagination goes aroaming.

A bed had been moved temporarily into our smart white-enameled operating theater. A boy was in it. It was nearly four in the morning, and I was sitting by his side. He was a fisherman’s only son, ten years old. After a severe operation on the abdomen he was making a brave fight for life.

Hard by, in a neighbor’s little cottage, an anxious mother was waiting for the first streak of daylight, to get the news of her child. She had left her home, far away on the shores of the Straits of Belle Isle, to bring her only boy, Willie, hauled by a trusty dog team over these miles of snow—to the knife.

It was a new world to her, for never before had she seen a hospital, nay, scarcely heard of one; even a doctor was a new experience. Hoping against hope, she had lingered long before at length she ventured forth to what, in her mind, might be death to her only son. It was a supreme effort of faith.

The telltale thermometer warned me that the temperature of the boy had risen one degree—and there was a slight flush about the cheek—the pulse rate had reached a hundred. The boy was drowsy from a dose of morphine, given because he must not move at any cost. In spite of it, he was restless between short snatches of sleep. He had to be closely watched.

A patient coughing noisily in the next ward—there was only a wooden partition between us—had awakened him. He asked for a drink. Two teaspoonfuls of cold water was all I dared give him for the next twenty-four hours. He must have no more at one time—Thank God, he was asleep again.

After all, what did it matter? He was only a fisherman’s boy from the wilds. Who would care if a hundred such were carried seaward to-morrow, as they go seal-hunting on the ice floes? Who would care in the busy world outside, steeped in its own anxiety and cares—mindful only of its own joys and sorrows? It was cut off from us by wastes of ice and snow from this lone land, so that even the story could only reach their ears after the event was almost forgotten.

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