I began to take death as a matter of course. In its ordinary manifestations it no longer disturbed me. But death by ******** I resented, and still fear and resent, with a bitterness that is hard to put into words. The victims of man’s indifference, when caught in gigantic flywheels and broken, miners caught under falls of slate in badly shored cuttings; victims of passion, men and women, beaten, shot, cut.
One night a half dozen policemen carried in and laid on a bed in the emergency ward a man who had ****** his wife and then cut his own throat. It was a ghastly wound, which I need not describe. They stood around, those policemen, watching me while the interne was on the way.
I said nothing. Why save him, for that? If death was the answer, why not let him die then and there? But he was saved, incredibly saved, and after long weeks in the hospital they took him away one day, and before long he went to the gallows. It was strange to think of him, as he lay in his bed, knowing that he was being saved to be hanged. He had a tube in his throat for a long time, and even after that was gone he could not speak, for he had injured his vocal cords. So he went dumb to his fate. He had been ***** that night. He did not even remember what he had done.
