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The pharmacy clerk had been shaving–his own bedroom was dark–and he saw the Senior Surgical Interne in the little mirror hung on the window frame.

“Hello,” he said, over the soap. “Shut the door.”

The Senior Surgical Interne shut the door, and then sniffed. “Smells like a bar-room,” he commented.

The pharmacy clerk shaved the left angle of his jaw, and then turned around.

“Little experiment of mine,” he explained. “Simple syrup, grain alcohol, a dash of cochineal for colouring, and some flavouring extract. It’s an imitation cordial. Try it.”

The Senior Surgical Interne was not a drinker, but he was willing to try anything once. So he secured a two-ounce medicine glass, and filled it.

“Looks nice,” he commented, and tasted it. “It’s not bad.”

“Not bad!” said the pharmacy clerk. “You’d pay four dollars a bottle for that stuff in a hotel. Actual cost here, about forty cents.”

The Senior Surgical Interne sat down and stretched out his legs. He had the glass in his hand.

“It’s rather sweet,” he said. “But it looks pretty.” He took another sip.

After he had finished it, he got to thinking things over. He felt about seven feet tall and very important, and not at all like a voice crying in the wilderness. He had a strong inclination to go into the Superintendent’s office and tell him where he went wrong in running the institution–which he restrained. And another to go up to H and tell Jane Brown the truth about Johnny Fraser–which he yielded to.

On the way up he gave the elevator man a cigar.

He was very explicit with Jane Brown.

“Your man’s wrong, that’s all there is about it,” he said. “I can’t say anything and you can’t. But he’s wrong. That’s an operative case. The Staff knows it.”

“Then, why doesn’t the Staff do it?”

The Senior Surgical Interne was still feeling very tall. He looked down at her from a great distance.

“Because, dear child,” he said, “it’s your man’s case. You ought to know enough about professional ethics for that.”

He went away, then, and had a violent headache, which he blamed on confinement and lack of exercise. But he had sowed something in the Probationer’s mind.

For she knew, suddenly, that he had been right. The Staff had meant that, then, when they looked at Johnny and shook their heads. The Staff knew, the hospital knew. Every one knew but Doctor Willie. But Doctor Willie had the case. Back in her little town Johnny’s mother was looking to Doctor Willie, believing in him, hoping through him.

That night Twenty-two slept, and Jane Brown lay awake. And down in H ward Johnny Fraser had a bad spell at that hour toward dawn when the vitality is low, and men die. He did not die, however. But the night nurse recorded, “Pulse very thin and iregular,” at four o’clock.

She, too, was not a famous speller.

During the next morning, while the ward rolled bandages, having carefully scrubbed its hands first, Jane Brown wrote records–she did it rather well now–and then arranged the pins in the ward pincushion. She made concentric circles of safety-pins outside and common pins inside, with a large H in the centre. But her mind was not on this artistic bit of creation. It was on Johnny Fraser.

She made up her mind to speak to Doctor Willie.

Twenty-two had got over his sulking or his jealousy, or whatever it was, and during the early hours, those hours when Johnny was hardly breathing, he had planned something. He thought that he did it to interest the patients and make them contented, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it was to see more of Jane Brown. He planned a concert in the chapel.

So that morning he took Elizabeth, the plaster cast, back to H ward, where Jane Brown was fixing the pincushion, and had a good minute of feasting his eyes on her while she was sucking a jabbed finger. She knew she should have dipped the finger in a solution, but habit is strong in most of us.