Their arrival
stirred me up a little. I began to take a more personal interest in the
proceedings. Haddon moved the little octagonal table close to the bedside,
and, with his broad back to me, began taking things out of his bag. I
heard the light click of steel upon steel. My imagination, I found, was
not altogether stagnant. "Will you hurt me much?" I said in an off-hand
tone.
"Not a bit," Haddon answered over his shoulder. "We shall chloroform you.
Your heart's as sound as a bell." And as he spoke, I had a whiff of the
pungent sweetness of the anaesthetic.
They stretched me out, with a convenient exposure of my side, and, almost
before I realised what was happening, the chloroform was being
administered. It stings the nostrils, and there is a suffocating sensation
at first. I knew I should die--that this was the end of consciousness for
me. And suddenly I felt that I was not prepared for death: I had a vague
sense of a duty overlooked--I knew not what. What was it I had not done? I
could think of nothing more to do, nothing desirable left in life; and yet
I had the strangest disinclination to death.
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