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“You see how it is,” she finished. “I can’t go to the Staff, and they wouldn’t do anything if I did–except possibly put me out. Because a nurse really only follows orders. And–I’ve got to stay, if I can. And Doctor Willie doesn’t believe in an operation and won’t see that he’s dying. And everybody at home thinks he is right, because–well,” she added hastily, “he’s been right a good many times.”

He listened attentively. His record, you remember, was his own way some ninety-seven per cent of the time, and at first he would not believe that this was going to be the three per cent, or a part of it.

“Well,” he said at last, “we’ll just make the Staff turn in and do it. That’s easy.”

“But they won’t. They can’t.”

“We can’t let Johnny die, either, can we?”

But when at last she was gone, and the room was incredibly empty without her,–when, to confess a fact that he was exceedingly shame-faced about, he had wheeled over to the chair she had sat in and put his cheek against the arm where her hand had rested, when he was somewhat his own man again and had got over the feeling that his arms were empty of something they had never held–then it was that Twenty-two found himself up against the three per cent.

The hospital’s attitude was firm. It could not interfere. It was an outside patient and an outside doctor. Its responsibility ended with providing for the care of the patient, under his physician’s orders. It was regretful–but, of course, unless the case was turned over to the Staff—-

He went back to the ward to tell her, after it had all been explained to him. But she was not surprised. He saw that, after all, she had really known he was going to fail her.

“It’s hopeless,” was all she said. “Everybody is right, and everybody is wrong.”

It was the next day that, going to the courtyard for a breath of air, she saw a woman outside the iron gate waving to her. It was Johnny’s mother, a forlorn old soul in what Jane Brown recognised as an old suit of her mother’s.

“Doctor Willie bought my ticket, Miss Nellie,” she said nervously. “It seems like I had to come, even if I couldn’t get in. I’ve been waiting around most all afternoon. How is he?”

“He is resting quietly,” said Jane Brown, holding herself very tense, because she wanted to scream. “He isn’t suffering at all.”

“Could you tell me which window he’s near, Miss Nellie?”

She pointed out the window, and Johnny Fraser’s mother stood, holding to the bars, peering up at it. Her lips moved, and Jane Brown knew that she was praying. At last she turned her eyes away.

“Folks have said a lot about him,” she said, “but he was always a good son to me. If only he’d had a chance–I’d be right worried, Miss Nellie, if he didn’t have Doctor Willie looking after him.”

Jane Brown went into the building. There was just one thing clear in her mind. Johnny Fraser must have his chance, somehow.

In the meantime things were not doing any too well in the hospital. A second case, although mild, had extended the quarantine. Discontent grew, and threatened to develop into mutiny. Six men from one of the wards marched en masse to the lower hall, and were preparing to rush the guards when they were discovered. The Senior Surgical Interne took two prisoners himself, and became an emergency case for two stitches and arnica compresses.

Jane Brown helped to fix him up, and he took advantage of her holding a dressing basin near his cut lip to kiss her hand, very respectfully. She would have resented it under other circumstances, but the Senior Surgical Interne was, even if temporarily, a patient, and must be humoured. She forgot about the kiss immediately, anyhow, although he did not.

Her three months of probation were drawing to a close now, and her cap was already made and put away in a box, ready for the day she should don it. But she did not look at it very often.