The Return of the Indian by Lynne Reid Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

an operating table. Omri’s bedside lamp, which had a flexible neck and a 100-watt bulb—his mother had a thing about reading in a bad light—had been moved onto the chest. The light shone straight down onto the table, making no shadows. There was Kleenex spread everywhere. It looked very hygienic. Little Bear had already been laid on the table, and Matron, armed with a tiny pair of scissors, was soon cutting up a handkerchief to make a surgical gown for herself and an operating sheet for Little Bear.
    “I shall need an assistant,” she said briskly. “What about the Indian girl?”
    “She doesn’t speak much English.”
    “We’ll see. She looks bright enough.” She beckoned Bright Stars, who was already at her elbow. “How!” she said in a loud voice. Bright Stars looked puzzled. “When I point—you give,” Matron went on. Bright Stars nodded intently.
    “You say. I do.”
    Omri was directed to pour a drop of disinfectant and some of the boiling water into a small tin lid Patrick had prized off a box of candy-drops. The water turned white. Matron dropped the instruments in, and after some moments, poured off the liquid into another lid. Meanwhile, Omri was dipping up a few drops of tea into the tooth-paste cap.
    “Ah! Thank you, clear,” she said when she saw it. She seemed quite cheerful now. She picked up the cap in both hands. It was, to her, almost the size of a bucket, but she drank most of it at one go, and smacked her lips. “That’s more like it! What spinach is to Popeye, tea is to me! Now then, let’s get on with it.”
    The boys saw very little of the operation itself. The light shone straight down on the white-covered table. Matron stood with her back to them, working silently. Every now and then she would point at something on the tray. Bright Stars would swiftly pick it up and hand it to her. Only once or twice did she fumble, and then Matron would snap her fingers impatiently. For a long time there was not a sound except the occasional stamp of the pony’s foot or the clink of metal.
    Then Matron said, “I do believe we’re in luck.”
    The boys, who had been afraid to come too close, though Matron had made them both tie handkerchiefs around their faces, leaned forward.
    “One—er—ball went in one side and straight out the other. Missed his lung by a hairbreadth, I’m thankful to say. I’ve patched that up as best I could. Now I’m playing hide-and-seek with the other one. I think it’s lodged against his shoulder blade. Not far in. I … think … I’ve … got it. Yes!” She made a sharp movement and then held up a minute pair of tweezers. Whatever they held was far too small to see, but the tips were red and Omri shuddered. Matron dropped the bit of metal into the tray with a ping. Suddenly she began to laugh.
    “Whatever would St. Thomas’s surgical staff say if they could see me now!” she gurgled.
    “Will he be okay?” Omri asked breathlessly.
    “Oh, I think so! Yes, indeed! He’s a very lucky lad, is your Indian friend.”
    “We’re all lucky to have found you,” said Omri sincerely.
    Matron was stripping the wrapper off a large field dressing. “First World War dressings,” she was murmuring. “Amazing how they’ve lasted! As if they were made last week!”
    She indicated to Bright Stars that she should help her apply it to Little Bear’s back. Then they bandaged him between them, and after that she wiped her perspiring face on a scrap of cotton.
    “You can turn the light off now,” she said. “Phew! I’m hot.” Her towering cap was collapsing like an ice palace, but she didn’t seem to care. “Any more tea?—What an experience! Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Always thought I could do simple ops as well as any of those fat cats … Oh dear, what
am
I saying?” And she chuckled again at her own disrespect to professional etiquette.
    After swigging down another bucket of tea and making sure Bright Stars had some too, she checked Little