Читать книгу Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 10

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THE lacerations on young Watson's knuckles showed no signs of infection when I examined him the next morning, and the fractures would take care of themselves. He could have been safely discharged at once. Under ordinary procedure we would have sent him packing without delay. But I couldn't bear to turn him out into the street.

My own early experiences in Detroit had much to do with my interest in this chap. At his age I had wanted to study medicine; an absurd aspiration, for I had no resources at all. My chance came through what seemed at the time to have been a lucky accident. In recent years I have had reasons for changing my mind about "accidents." I do not mean that there are no accidents: I mean that many unexpected events, classified as accidents, deserve to be called something else.

My thoughts on this subject are still in a fluid state, but I shall share them with you, my friend, and you may make of them whatever you like.

I am not inviting you to believe (or to believe I believe) that everything occurs by design and decree. Such a theory—if pursued to its logical end—would destroy human freedom and make mere puppets of us all. But I do think that if a man is suddenly interrupted by some unheralded event—not of his own contriving—and is thereby deflected for a time from the course he had been pursuing, he would be well advised to keep his eyes open for some new and valuable opportunity which this circumstance may provide. Even if the so-called accident involves a great deal of pain and hardship, the victim may have a right to suspect that he has been very far off the track leading to the full development and expression of his powers; that severe discipline may be necessary to recondition his mind for a discovery of his unrecognized talents and capacities.

Every day, here at Brightwood, where so many victims of accidents put in for repairs, I see patients who haven't the slightest notion that their experience might be turned to good account. They whine and growl and fret over the discomforts of a tedious convalescence; and, after a few restless weeks of uncapitalized apathy, they pull on their pants and leave, with nothing to show for their time but a receipted hospital bill.

Once in a blue moon, somebody gets the idea that he may have been laid up for a purpose, like a ship in dry-dock getting her barnacles scraped off. To such as these, who have confided to me that they have found comfort in this supposition, I have lent some encouragement; but I have never taken the initiative in such a discussion. In my capacity as a surgeon, I can't go about telling people they have been whacked on the head to give them a chance to reorganize themselves and find out what they are good for. Such talk would quickly discredit a man in my position. His colleagues would crack jokes at his expense. He would soon be regarded as some sort of faith-healer; a quack, at heart; a fellow who plays around with the angels. No—if I'm serving as a surgeon I must be respected as a sound scientist; and there is no room in science—at present—for a theory of this character.

And, curiously enough, everything in me naturally revolts against such notions. Even in the face of my own experiences and observations, if some friend of mine should break down and confide to me his belief that almost nothing happens by accident; that Fate, or a busy-body Providence, or some such other-worldly Mr. Fixit trots about banging misdirected people on the topknot, or laying them low with a lumbar tumour, to the excellent end that they might have time to orient themselves in regard to their gifts, their duties, and their destinies, I should think him a little bit unhooked.

To save his face, I should probably concede that strange things do happen; that many an apparent misfortune has turned out to be a blessing. I might tell him about an eminent lawyer of my acquaintance, whose father owned a planing- mill and wanted his boy to learn the trade; and the boy collided with a saw and lost three fingers, ruining him for a career in the mill. But—all the same—I should privately rate the man an eccentric, who maintained that our seeming accidents are planned for us and our ultimate good, and it wouldn't surprise me if he turned up, some day, with the confidential report that he had just lunched with some prominent member of the Heavenly Host.