Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 5 (1926-11).djvu/48

 quickly and jerked off the bandages. "There!"

He was right. The hand had grown and now was the size of that of a vigorous boy of fourteen or fifteen. But, in addition, the

ULY 27, 1925.—Removed the parasitic hand from Pendleton's side this morning. Would not repeat the operation for a million dollars. It was a terrifying experience.

General and local anesthetics used. But while P. responded excellently, the parasitic hand remained active; in fact, it seemed to be animated with a fighting spirit. It seized the wrist of one of the surgical nurses during the preliminaries and held it in a relentless grip, so that she fainted in horror.

Later, when I proceeded to make the first incision, it seized my wrist and with remarkable force tried to direct the scalpel. Only by dropping the scalpel did I avoid stabbing P. to death.

I then applied anesthetics to the hand itself, with no appreciable results. Finally, in desperation, I pushed a wad of cotton into the hand, threw a loop around its wrist and had one of the nurses hold it taut. By thus misleading and misdirecting its efforts I was able to proceed. (How silly these words sound, as if I had been dealing with a separate entity! And yet that seems to be the only plausible assumption that would help to explain).

Throughout the operation the hand kept up its writhing and clutching motions. As I made the final cut it jerked loose from my hand, fell to the floor and then fastened around the ankle of the chief surgical nurse. In horror she dropped the instruments, screaming hysterically, and ran out of the operating room and fainted in the hallway.

I darted after her and removed the fiendish hand. Even then it kept up its autonomous struggle. It was with a feeling of relief that I dropped it into a jar filled with preservative and returned to complete my work on Pendleton.

I was careful to remove all traces of the attaching structures, and also treated the vestiges with X-rays to destroy all rudiments of the growth.

The operation, though simple, and normally requiring perhaps half an hour, lasted nearly four hours, because of the constant interference of the parasitic hand. Brent, the intern in charge of the anesthesia, the three nurses and I were complete wrecks at the end of the ordeal. After we wheeled the operating table from the room and turned the patient over to the special nurse, we found that the nurses had fallen to the floor, either in a faint or exhausted.

Brent looked over the room. "Rather like a shambles today," he remarked in ghoulish humor.

I nodded and dropped into a chair, and knew no more. I believe I fainted also.

August 10, 1925.—Pendleton dismissed from the hospital today. Only a circular scar indicates the position of the parasitic hand.

ARCH 5, 1926.—Pendleton dropped in this morning. He looked worried and thoughtful.

"You're not sleeping well, my boy," I told him.

"You wouldn't sleep well, either, doctor, if you felt something clawing within you."

I manifested surprize. "What do you mean?"

He smiled wearily. "Exactly what I said. Something clawing and pulling within me. And right at the place where that hand was removed."