Ether (Mumford)

by Ethel Watts Mumford

 

Ether

SHOWING THAT, AFTER ALL, A DELUSION MAY NOT BE WHOLLY A DELUSION

By Ethel Watts Mumford

CONVALESCENCE is so slow, so irritating! It's a broken leg this time—a nasty, twisted break, where the bone is slit, not decently cracked through and through. Weeks and weeks, and now they tell me it will take five more weeks! This is the fourth cast I've had. They call it light, but it weighs a ton, and I feel insecure on my crutches, even if they have rubber tips.

Time—I never knew there was so much time in the world! A day has a thousand hours, and the nights have more. That's one reason why I'm writing this—it's something to do. There's another reason—I keep thinking of the dream, and wondering what it means.

It comes whenever I take ether, and this is the third time. It's always the same, and always just a little different; but it is more real than life. These dream people are so definitely impressed on my mind that I know I can write a far more accurate description of them than I could of my most intimate friends.

In the vision there are two doctors and two nurses. First, the nurse, who has her back turned to me, and is just going out of the room and shutting the door. I've never seen her face, but she is small, and has a nice figure. The hair below her cap is light brown, straight, and a bit oily. Her hand, resting on the door knob, is rather red, and she wears a wedding ring. She's in white, of course, but there is a dark stain on the bottom of her skirt, like spilled iodine.

One doctor stands by a tall, white piece of furniture, which has innumerable little drawers in it, with glass button knobs. He is young. I think he must be a house physician—an interne. He, too, wears white, and it contrasts sharply with his very black hair, which has blue high lights. He is putting something away, rolling it very deftly. I can't see what it is, because I'm in bed, and the angle is too great to permit me to satisfy my curiosity.

I don't know what's the matter with me on these occasions. I have never found out, but I think I must be a surgical case—as, of course, I am in reality. I know that sounds queer, but so is the situation. It's a dream, which I dream every time I take ether. Never once has it come to me in my normal sleep.

I have the most difficulty in visualizing the nurse who stands close by my pillow, because she towers above me; but I know every wrinkle in her uniform where my eye can rest. I know she wears a silver watch on her breast, fastened there by a fleur-de-lis pin. Her face is so foreshortened that I don't know the color of her eyes, but she has beautiful smooth skin, and a round young chin. Her hands are nice. I like the touch of the one that holds my wrist, taking my pulse.

The room is a hospital room, which has an unusually large window. There are three doors. The other nurse goes out by one of them—which leads to the hall, apparently, because the unimportant doctor leaves shortly by that same exit. I don't know into what the other doors open—a bathroom, perhaps, or maybe a hanging closet.

A large framed photograph faces the bed. It's the picture of a man I have never seen, photographed from an excellent painting, the handling of which suggests Sargent at his best. There is a bureau on the right, between my bed and the window. I can't see the floor, but I think, from the sound they make in walking, that it is of tile. I know it is broad day outside, because the light is strong and very white, as if reflected from a sun-washed wall.

The dominant figure in the room is the Japanese doctor. He stands at the foot of the bed and looks straight at me. His brows are drawn, and he seems deeply troubled. He is short and stocky, unmistakably a Japanese. His face is pitted by smallpox—I have never seen a face so badly pitted. His hair stands straight up like a brush, and his very black, tilted eyes glitter as if they were made of glass.

He has a large mouth, a square jaw, and an exceptionally wide forehead. One side of his face seems to be more deeply scarred than the other. He stands there looking at me. I feel horribly frightened, not of him, but of something that I know he is going to say. He glances at the nurse, and nods. I feel her fingers move on my wrist.

“She's coming out,” I hear her say. Her voice is soft, almost a whisper. “Do you want to tell her now?”

I lie still, wondering in my dream what it is he wants to tell me. Always it flashes through my mind that he will say that I cannot recover. I watch his face anxiously.

“She's coming out very quickly, now,” the nurse informs him.

This is as far as I get on the first occasion. The room blurs, the figures waver, as things do when you see them through a heat haze. The unimportant doctor goes out. I grope for the nurse's hand, which has been withdrawn from me. I hear voices, hushed but matter-of-fact little sounds, like the click of a spoon on a bottle, the scrape of a chair. The blurring increases, with a zooming of sounds. I feel a stab of pain, a wave of nausea. I struggle and struggle in my mind; then I begin to see clearly.

I am coming back—the nurse was right; but I come back to another bed, a different room, another nurse, a doctor that I know. I rock and swing in confusion between my two experiences. Then the real world solidifies around me, and I am myself.

II

The first time this happened was coincident with my first experience with an anæsthetic. I wasn't under long, for it was a very minor operation. I thought my dream must be quite an ordinary sort. I had heard of strange things that people said when under the influence, and of illusions that they sometimes carried far into their waking; but my nurse—who was a gray-haired, rather stout woman, not in the least resembling the nurse in my dream—told me that she had never heard of anything quite like it.

Now my real hospital room is nothing at all like my dream room. It has a normal, ordinary window and a white painted wardrobe, and the bath is next to the door going into the hall, making a little corridor of the entrance. There is a bureau between me and the window, and no pictures adorn the walls, which are painted a washed-out blue. The dream room and the real room were just as dissimilar as two hospital rooms well could be. There was nothing in the real room to suggest the other.

I told my story to Dr. Peck—our own middle-aged, lanky Yankee family physician. He squinted at me and remarked that the subconscious mind was a queer animal.

Then, after I had got over the wild desire to discuss my ailments, which seems to be the natural aftermath of all operations, I forgot all about it, until my horse enthusiastically threw me one fine day. When I came to, I was in bandages, and I had had my dream for the second time.

As my last recollection was of a slipping saddle, and the bunching muscles of a frightened horse beneath me, to find myself in a white room, with an atmosphere that smelled strangely familiar, was a bit disconcerting. I was on my way “out” before I knew anything at all. I was in the struggle period. There seemed to be three nurses—one going out of a door that wasn't there; another, with cool, soft hands that held my pulse, who said over and over, “Do you want to tell her now?” and another, the real one, who kept getting out of focus, like the reflection one sees in a distorted mirror.

There were three doctors—one who left by the door that was not, my regular lanky Yankee, and, clearest of all, the pockmarked Japanese. His bright black eyes held me, and this time he spoke, with a penetrating voice and a queer accent. He was asking me something. I clung to his words desperately.

“Can you hear me?”

I heard him distinctly, but before I could answer, the vision faded—or, rather, it didn't fade, but reality came down in front of it like a curtain, and blotted it out.

This time I didn't speak to Dr. Peck about my dream. I felt reticent about it. I did ask my nurse whether her patients had ever told her that they had the same ether dream every time they went under. She was Scottish and matter-of-fact.

“No one ever heard of such a thing,” she said. “Delusions are delusions, and that's all there is to it.”

And then, a day or so later, after they had X-rayed me thoroughly, they found this broken bone. The following day they set it, and put me in a cast, where I've been ever since.

When they informed me of my misfortune, I was disgusted. I felt that a collar-bone was all that ride was worth, anyway; but since the ordeal was not to be avoided, I took what comfort I could from the thought, which amounted to conviction, that I should see the Japanese doctor again, and perhaps get the whole of his message.

Sure enough, the ether gave me back my dream, the same in every detail. The only thing that differed was the end, because I didn't get it all. The real world came and pulled me back, just as it always does; but this time I fought to stay. I fought hard. When I heard the dream nurse say, “Do you want to tell her now?” I dragged myself together. I concentrated with all my might. I glued my eyes on the glittering eyes that looked at me from that pockmarked face.

As before, there seemed a wait, and then the nurse said:

“She's coming out very quickly now.”

Again he spoke, leaning toward me with such earnestness that the vital importance of what he was to tell me made me shiver inwardly.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” I managed to answer.

I don't know how I did it. I certainly did not speak. I felt a contraction in my eyelids, and perhaps I lowered them in answer.

“Quickly, quickly!” said the nurse. “She's going out.”

He glanced at her as if annoyed by the interruption. Then his eyes sought mine; but already he had begun to blur. The nurse's voice seemed to be repeating, like a strange buzzing:

“Quickly, quickly, quickly!”

The room tilted, the portrait on the wall tipped till it was nearly sidewise, the big window became a smear of white; but still I held to his eyes, which were now mere pin points of light. I would hear—I would!

“It is very important—do you understand that it is very important?” I heard him say.

Desperately I strove to keep my balance in that reeling room.

“I must, I must!”

I seemed to see pity in the distant gleam of his eyes, and I strove the more. He must have known that I was trying to reach him as violently as he was trying to hold me. I realized the awful speed of time—so little, a mere instant between the moment when consciousness accompanied me into this strange place and the moment when it dragged me out of it into the real; and in that tiny fragment of time so much to do!

“I know! I know!” I screamed, but I knew that I made no sound.

“Remember”—the word burned into my soul—“remember, when you go back—”

He was still speaking, still giving me the all-important message; but I was going—I was gone. Blackness, the tinkle of a spoon on a glass, the scrape of a chair, the rattle of stiffly starched skirts, a touch on my wrist, but no longer the soft fingers that I knew so well! Coming, coming out—out!

Daylight—my room—Dr. Peck smiling at me and saying:

“Why do you smash yourself up like this, young woman? What kind of a cut-up puzzle picture are you trying to give me? And you took your time coming out of it, I must say!”

He grinned, but I saw he looked relieved. I suppose my fight to stay in the other room had been evident here, where they awaited my return.

So there it is. I've written it down. That was five weeks ago.

I've told nobody except Billy. The thing was on my mind, and he has been so good about coming to see me, bringing me flowers and all that! He's dear and sympathetic, and his hands are almost as nice as the hands of the dream nurse. He gently laughs at me.

“It's just like a crazy girl—had to go and pull a new stunt in ether jags!”

That's the way he takes it. Even he, who seems to understand me better than any one else, has no conception of what that desperate effort to get the message really is. I feel that it is genuine, that it is important, that there is something more to this than just ether fumes, but I can't make him see it. I don't suppose anybody would really believe me. However, there it is, as I said before. I've written it, and if it ever happens again, this much is a matter of record.

I wonder if the pockmarked doctor's warning—it is a warning, I am sure—is that some time I shall not return? That can't be, for his words told me to remember when I went back.

What am I dreaming? But that doesn't matter. The point is that I dreamed again. Where am I when I dream? Shall I ever get the answer? I wonder—I wonder!

III

Well, it did come again. Something went wrong with my leg. They had to open it and scrape the bone. I'll write this for my own satisfaction, since Billy will not take me seriously, and Dr. Peck continues to say that the subconscious mind is a queer animal.

This thing that I dream is true—I know it! Somewhere that room exists, those nurses are actual people. It's all real, and the Japanese doctor is the most real of all. If I could only speak when I'm there! If I could only ask them who and what they are, and why they haunt me! But I can't. I am more helpless there, in that dream place, than I have ever been in the waking world, even when very badly hurt. I'm tongue-tied, and my brain feels like a pebble in a sling about to be thrown away—away—far away.

My hand, between the fingers of my nurse, is my own hand—I know it. I feel her fingers, I am conscious of the flowing of my blood, but I have no control over myself whatever. I exercise my will—or, rather, I try to do so; I strive and strain, but all I can do is to fix my attention with all my might on what the Japanese doctor is telling me.

This time I did try to speak, but the feeling was just like my inability to control my hand. That part of my brain, or my will, or whatever it is that makes one's body respond to a desire to move, simply wasn't there. I lay inside myself, like a sword in its sheath—perfectly myself, but quite without ability to make myself a part of whatever might happen to the outside.

Next time, if the dream comes, I shall not fight. I will let all the preliminaries go by. They are always the same, and I know them by heart. The other nurse, the interne, the room itself—I won't notice them. I'll wait until the Japanese doctor begins speaking before I use my strength. Then perhaps I may be able to fight long enough to get all the message; for now I feel more than ever that it is something very important—important for all the world, not just for me alone. This time I stayed long enough to hear him say:

“Remember that the anæsthetic—”

Otherwise everything, every little thing, had been just as it always is. The nurse had told the Japanese doctor that I was rushing quickly back to the other world. He had asked me if I heard, had impressed upon me that I must carry his words with me back to the flesh and blood world of men and women.

Now at last I know—“the anæsthetic”—something that concerns ether. Perhaps something is wrong in the way it is administered; or are there other and better anodynes in that mysterious place to which I go? Perhaps the Japanese doctor wants to help us here with the knowledge of the world over there.

It seems to me as if now at last I had the real cue, as if I am very close to the answer; but oh, how Billy laughs at me! It's the only thing I have against him. He ought to know better than to laugh, when he knows it means so much to me, even if his man's logic won't let him realize that there are all sorts of things, just as much fact as ourselves, that we don't see unless some artificial means permits us to. You might just as well doubt Saturn's rings, or the canals on Mars, and I told him so. As I explained it to him:

“Perhaps the ether sleep is a sort of telescope.”

Oh, well, any one who understands radio ought to be able to believe something little and simple, like my dream.

I wonder if, when we're married, he'll always laugh at what I take most to heart? That would be rather awful. I wish he wouldn't be so pig-headed just because it doesn't concern him! If every time I took ether I had a vision of him holding out his arms to me, and uttering platitudes about love, he would say that it was a heavenly vision, and want to tell the world.

Dear Billy! I must learn to be patient with him. All wives have to study that, and one might as well get a running start before marriage. After all, it's very little to forgive—just his inability to see something that he hasn't seen and never will see; but he teased me until I had to come and add this last microscopic chapter to the story without an end.

I'm to “remember that the anæsthetic”—all right, I will, and wait patiently for the next word. If I asked Dr. Peck to give me a real good dose of ether when there is nothing the matter with me, I wonder if he would let me have it, so that I could go back and get the rest of the message? No, of course he wouldn't! He'd think I was crazy, and tell Billy it wasn't safe to marry me, and go upsetting the family, and maybe sending me off to a sanitarium.

I think I'll just have to laugh at it all, as Billy laughs at me, and forget it. When all is said and done, I have a lot of nicer things to think about. I'm going to be married—think of it!—married to Billy, my Billy, in a month and three days!

I shall be solid on my pins then. This surface cut will heal in no time, and they tell me I'm ready to learn to walk again, carefully. Dear, dear Billy! You miserably healthy thing, you've never had an ache or pain in your life; so what do you know about ether? You've been lucky—that's all. Well, here's where I drop the matter for the time being. I swear off speaking of Japanese doctors, strange nurses, Sargent portraits, and hospital rooms. If Billy brings them up, I swear to outlaugh him.

Just the same, I shall listen in for the end of the message; so, temporarily, “there's an end on it.”

IV

I am frightened. I can hardly write. I don't know what it means. It can't be, and yet it is—it's so! I have seen him! I have been face to face with the Japanese doctor! He was right before me, real, alive. There isn't any mistake—there couldn't be. Why, there is less chance of my being mistaken about him than: about any one in the whole world, even Billy!

Haven't I focused my every sense on him with all my might? Haven't I held to his eyes like a drowning man to a plank? No photographic plate was ever more clearly stamped with a picture than is my mind.

Why should I be so terrified? Haven't I always asserted that these people, whom I saw in the ether, were not shadows, but substance? Haven't I been all along convinced that somewhere that room actually exists? Yet now, when I have ocular proof, I'm frightened.

Let me write down how and where I met him. It's no use, I can't tell Billy, I can't tell anybody; but, for my own satisfaction, let me keep my record clear and complete.

It was in the car, for I have to use a cane when I walk, and I don't get around easily even yet. Nothing was further from my thoughts than the Japanese doctor. I only expect to see him when I'm under ether. It was just at the rush hour—a little after five. At a cross street near the subway there was a dreadful crush, people struggling and fighting in the mass that seemed to be slowly sucked down into the ground, as if caught in a vortex. We were held up by the traffic regulations, and waited next to the curb. I was leaning forward, watching the jam. Aunt Lucia sat next to me, quite uninterested.

A taxi drew up just behind us, and a man got out. He had a leather secretary case, and he turned his back as he reached inside for it. Then he tossed his fare to the driver, and ran, as if in a great hurry, to the subway entrance. The crowd closed about him.

I sat there, leaning from our car window, so stiff with astonishment that I couldn't speak or move; for the face that I had looked into was more familiar than my own in the mirror. He looked straight at me with his very black, very glittering eyes, and he did not recognize me!

I can tell myself a dozen times over that it isn't true, that it's merely a coincidence; but I know I'm trying to lie to myself. His square jaw, the set of his lips, his scarred and pitted face, more heavily scarred and pitted on one side than on the other! Why, I even recognized his hands. It was the man, alive and in the flesh.

I must have given some inarticulate cry, for my aunt thought I had hurt myself in some way, and anxiously pulled me back. He was gone. The crowd had closed around him, and the opening had sucked him down. The car gave a jerk. We had started once more. I could not speak, but I tried to open the door.

“What are you doing?” cried my aunt.

We turned the corner into the avenue. I saw the crowd milling about. Even if I got out and hobbled after him, how could I find him in that mob? And if I did, what could I say? I slumped back helplessly on the cushions.

My aunt was solicitous.

“Home at once!” she ordered, though I tried to reassure her. “You're not strong yet, and you've tried to do too much. If I were your mother, I'd put off the wedding for at least a month—indeed I would!”

“You're much nicer as an aunt,” I told her; but it was the old subconscious mind they make so much of that spoke, for I was too much upset to talk with her.

Home at last, and how glad I was to get here! As soon as I could I ran to my room, and looked up these papers. I've reread every word that I've written about what happens in the ether. I wanted to bring it all before me as clearly as possible, and to be sure, more than sure, that I have seen, with no possibility of error, the human counterpart of the man of my visions. Counterpart, did I say? No—the man I saw is the one. It is he and no other. What next, I wonder?

But why didn't he know me, when I knew him? There was no glimpse of recognition in his eyes. He was going uptown. He wore a queerly cut overcoat, with a kind of grayish yellow fur on the collar. The leather case he carried was an old one, much battered.

I know what I'll do. I'll find out if there is a convention or conference of physicians and surgeons being held in the city. There must be. It can't be difficult to sort out those who are Japanese. I must find this man, see him, tell him everything, and perhaps find out the meaning of our meetings—the meaning of the all-important message that I am to take back.

But why must I take it back, since he is here, in and of this world himself? Can it be that the warning he is trying to give is for me personally, and not something for the general good of mankind, as I had fancied?

Find him I must! Oh, if I only dared to go to Billy and get him to help me, how much simpler it would be! But what's the use? He would only laugh, and would ask me if I wanted a Japanese clergyman to marry us.

I might as well own up—I feel haunted. I'm writing these sensible things like one who whistles to keep up his courage. At heart I am frightened half to death. The feeling I had when I saw him face to face was—how does Shakespeare say it?—“distilled almost to jelly by the act of fear.” It was as bad as that. My eyes kept telegraphing back to my brain:

“There—there, that is the man!”

“No, no!” my brain was screaming. “Don't say such things! It can't possibly be true!”

Something deeper—my soul, I guess—kept whispering:

“Be warned! Be warned!”

I wish I knew what it all means, and I am afraid to know. I wonder what I shall write here next? I pray it may not be something terrible!

V

The answer—I have the answer! Oh, Billy, Billy, my Billy! Let me get hold of myself—let me write it all down. Perhaps in after years I shall want to go over this from beginning to end.

It happened out on the road, near the little house that Billy had taken for our honeymoon. He had gone out there with a surprise for me—a big cake, for it was my birthday as well as our wedding day. He was reckless, of course. It was just his hurry to see me. He had promised to be at the house before five o'clock, and he was late. He was driving his racing runabout himself.

I was here at home when the message came. He was in a hospital—they had identified him by letters in his pockets. He was unconscious, and the doctors felt that they must operate at once.

The car was at the door, waiting for mother. I ran from the telephone. I didn't wait for anybody. Just as I was, hatless and coatless, I ran out. I managed to make the chauffeur understand what had happened. He gave me one wild look, and jumped behind the wheel.

At last, at last, we got there. I saw an elderly physician and a big woman, a sort of head nurse.

“He's just down from the operating room,” one of them said, and they looked at each other.

They seemed to know about me—from Billy's letters, I suppose—but they hesitated. I don't know what I said, but at last they seemed to come to some occult agreement.

They both came with me. They wouldn't tell me anything, except that he had been badly injured, and they had had to go ahead and operate. He hadn't come out of the ether, but I could see him for just a moment.

One of them opened a door, and I went in. I was in the room of my dreams. The big window, the doors, the portrait, all were there. To my right stood the little nurse. Now for the first time I saw her face as she passed behind me and left the room. Following her closely, a young, black-haired interne passed me, with something rolled up in cotton in his hand.

Facing me, across the bed, was the other nurse. I saw the little fleur-de-lis that held her watch. Her hand, which I knew so well, held another hand than mine. Her fingers were on his wrist. I saw her eyes—they were terrible with pity. I heard the voice of the Japanese doctor:

“The anæsthetic—”

I looked wildly at the man—the short, stocky figure, the strong, pockmarked face, the glittering eyes. My head swam in the haze of ether; the smell of it seemed to grip me as if with hands. I heard, I saw, as I had seen and heard before; but where I had lain again and again in the mock sleep of dreams, lay my love—dead!

Then, flooding me with sudden force, I knew why I had dreamed! I knew what it was he had tried to tell me in my dreams!

Before they could stop me, I was on my knees beside the bed. I had Billy in my arms. I shook him, as if he were an infant stubbornly holding his breath.

Horrified, the nurse stooped to break my hold. All my heart and mind were concentrated on the still heart beneath mine; yet I saw the Japanese doctor thrust her away from my side. I felt his strong presence in a great, insistent urge. I cried out in a loud voice, which echoed in the room:

“Come—come—come! Come back—it isn't too late! Trust me, Billy! Come back!”

Then I felt it—the beat of his heart, the throb of life returning. I screamed.

On my shoulder I felt the doctor's calm hand. It steadied me. I looked up.

“He has come back,” I said, in a thin little voice that didn't seem at all my own. “The dead heart may be energized by vibration,” I whispered. “That's what you wanted to tell me!”

I looked up at him, but his eyes were fixed on Billy's face. He did not seem to see me.

“A miracle!” he whispered. “This is a miracle!”

Then his bright oblique eyes sought mine.

“Don't you remember?” I breathed. “Don't you?”

He did not answer me at once. Then, as he lifted me to my feet and took my place beside Billy, he said in a tone of bewildered wonder:

“Beyond every miracle that science explains—is still another.”

Billy's eyes opened—recognition—a twitch of the lips.

“It's my turn now,” the doctor said softly. “You brought him back—I'll keep him here!”