In the evening, Creel runs to inform Craven that his wife is ready to give birth. The doctor asks, "can't some of the women handle this?", but Allaryce tells him, "I've examined the woman. A caesarian section is indicated". Craven refuses to operate, even when Allaryce threatens to leave him if he does not help. As Major Adams tries to reason with him, Craven recounts that he could never perform proper surgery and that he paid for medical school with a job at a slaughterhouse. He tells the Major, "I graduated just in time for the war… Shiloh… eighteen thousand casualties… in that one campaign, seventy-two percent of my patients died…" The Major tells him, "…shock and gangrene… that wasn't your fault…" and continues, "…who do you think you are to sit in judgment of yourself?… what makes you think that you ought to be infallible?… what right have you got to make yourself personally responsible for the war?… I was at Shiloh… I had two hundred and twenty-three men… every one of them friends and neighbors… I came out with seventeen…"