Free The Black Stallion Challenged by Walter Farley Page B

that’snot why I’m here,” he added, slightly irritated by Henry’s squeamishness. “I’m going inside. You do what you like.”
    When Alec had gone, Henry quietly faced the closed door separating them. For several minutes he didn’t move, fighting the panic within him. Then, furious with himself for what he knew
had
to be needless fear, he wrenched the door open and strode inside the operating room.
    He saw the filly, Bitter Sweet, prone on the operating table, arc lights blazing above her and white-robed men standing around the table. A small group of spectators hovered nearby. His nerves tingling, he nodded to some of the horsemen he knew. They paid little attention to him, all being interested in the work of the veterinary surgeon, and for this he was grateful.
    For a while Henry kept his eyes on Dr. Palmer’s tall, round-shouldered figure, hoping thus to reassure himself, even though the man was well known to be competent and skillful. But finally his gaze shifted to the curving line of faces just beyond the operating table. He picked out Alec’s and moved over to stand beside him.
    Alec hoped that within a few minutes Henry would see this operation for what it really was—no curtain raiser, no impending TV drama but a quick, efficient, skillful job of mending a horse’s broken bone. The large doors at the far end of the room were slightly open and some neighborhood kids were peeking inside. Perhaps one of them would be a veterinary surgeon himself one day, Alec thought.
    He knew that the filly had come through thosedoors a short time ago, quietly and without pain. She had been given a sedative, nothing more than a tranquilizer that a human being would have taken under the same circumstances. Once she was inside the room, the anesthesia had been injected intravenously, and as it began to take effect she had been carefully lowered to the operating table which lay flush with the floor. She had been secured, then the hydraulic lift had elevated the table so that the surgeon could go to work.
    She was resting comfortably now, and the anesthesia was being maintained by a closed-circuit, circle-type machine. She breathed easily through the mask about her nose, the tubes of the mask leading through a vaporizer and into a large rubber bag that contained a mixture of gas and oxygen. It moved like a living thing as she inhaled and exhaled.
    An operating sheet, draped over the filly’s injured leg, had a rectangular, open window which exposed the area ready for incision. Her leg had been shaved and painted with an antiseptic.
    Dr. Palmer finished drying his hands on a sterile towel; he glanced at his assistant standing alongside and nodded. They were masked and gowned and scrubbed, ready to begin. The surgeon’s eyes swept over the table and he made a swift, meticulous inventory of his instruments.
    Henry muttered, “It’s like watching them operate on a member of your family.”
    Alec didn’t answer. He was aware of a faint smell of ozone coming from the ultraviolet lamps, which he knew could effectively kill bacteria in the air. But he also knew that the greatest advance in preventinginfection during veterinary surgery had come with the discovery of sulpha drugs and penicillin and streptomycin.
    While the assistant injected novocaine into the injured area, the surgeon glanced around and nodded to Alec and Henry. Then he took the razor-edged scalpel and bent over the table.
    Henry turned away from the scene but Alec continued watching. There was a powerful light directly above the operating table which cast no shadow, generated no heat. The surgeon had a square piece of gauze in one hand and he pressed it hard against the exposed area before making his incision. The scalpel slashed quickly to bone level. His assistant steadied the filly’s leg and removed the rush of blood with a suction tube which he rotated in the depths of the wound. When the opening showed clear, the surgeon swabbed it dry and packed it with