"I was in great difficulty."
This is the opening line of the story, and it introduces the doctor's original predicament: he must tend to a patient ten miles away in the middle of a snowstorm. While this sentence describes the doctor's immediate circumstances, it also establishes the melancholy and powerless tone that will persist throughout the story as the doctor is buffeted along by a series of strange events.
"One doesn’t know the sorts of things one has stored in one’s own house."
Rosa makes this comment to the doctor after the groom appears from the pigsty with two horses. The doctor, until this point, was certain his only horse was dead. Rosa's comment in emblematic of the absurdist nature of the events to come. At the same time, her comment also suggests that there is something mysterious and sinister about the doctor's own character.
"It’s not my intention to give you the girl as the price of the trip."
After the groom declares that he will be staying behind with Rosa, the doctor protests and says that he will not go on the journey without the groom. Here, the doctor purports to be acting with Rosa's safety in mind, but he is quickly manipulated by the groom and sent away on the horses. The doctor's words are powerless in the face of his circumstances, suggesting that despite his chivalric performance, he is at the mercy of others in the story.
"Poor young man, there’s no helping you."
Upon discovering that the young man is not, in fact, healthy and that he is quite ill, the doctor notices a large wound opening on his hip. The wound is also infected with worms. The doctor concludes that the man is dying, once again resigning himself to a position of powerlessness as he refuses to act.
"Take his clothes off, then he’ll heal, / and if he doesn’t cure, then kill him. / It’s only a doctor; it’s only a doctor."
The doctor hears the patient's family and the rest of the townspeople chanting this song as they undress him and lay him next to the patient. The chant itself argues that the doctor is only a disposable tool by which the townsfolk will be able to save the young man. In the context of the story, the chant reflects the doctor's own anxiety over his helpless position.
"Naked, abandoned to the frost of this unhappy age, with an earthly carriage and unearthly horses, I drive around by myself, an old man. My fur coat hangs behind the wagon, but I cannot reach it, and no one from the nimble rabble of patients lifts a finger. Betrayed! Betrayed!"
Here, toward the conclusion of the story, the doctor describes his fate: to freeze to death after being stripped naked and placed on what are now extremely slow-moving horses. The story ends on a dark and melancholy note, as the doctor is essentially sentenced to death by the patients he wants to heal.
