Like a fish of the deep rising to the surface of bright air and sun, he swam up to consciousness out of a dead blank into a whiter world than he had ever seen. The daylight was blinding. He heard voices very near at hand, as if just behind his ear, talking together quietly in a business-like way against a background medley of babblings and shrieks, moans and mutterings. He was lying prone and someone was working on his back—fingers probed at his spine. He flopped over, like a fish out of water, and found himself in a low bed, little more than a mattress, so low that the two men who worked over him were kneeling on the edge.
As surprised as he, they looked at him in impersonal silence, and then recovered themselves.
“Just a moment, take it easy, turn over again, please,” one of them said; and the other: “Take it easy, baby.”
They must have anticipated what he was going to say because here he was saying it—saying it all in a rush as if he hadn’t heard or as if he were too exasperated, angered, and offended to take it easy. “What’s going on here, where am I, what are you doing to me!”
“Just lie back again, it’ll only take a second,” the first man said; and the second murmured the classic “It won’t hurt a bit” as he himself cried out the still-more-classic “Where am I” again.
“You’re in the hospital.”
“What for!”
“Take it easy, baby.”
“What hospital?”
“The alcoholic ward.”
He didn’t get this, not any of it. He had awakened fightingmad, or at least bitterly offended and indignant because he couldn’t figure out where he was, because he was being taken advantage of, because he didn’t know who these two men were and what right had they to touch him? Now he heard the bedlam going on in the background and he was outraged at this further intrusion on his peace. “What’s all that racket!”
“The others.”
“Other what?”
“Patients. Now just turn over and relax, it won’t take a moment.”
“What do you think you’re doing! Who are you!”
“We want to draw off a little of the spinal fluid. Relieve the pressure on the brain.”
“Spinal tap, baby.”
He suddenly understood. “Oh no you’re not!” He drew up his knees against his chest, and as he did so his head exploded in pain above his eyes.
Both men straightened and stood back from the bed. One of them put his hands on his hips. The other’s already were.
He saw now the syringe and needle and also saw the two men more or less clearly for the first time. One was small, baldish, pleasant-looking, in his middle forties. Probably the doctor, though he looked more like a professor or teacher. The other was a big strapping fellow around thirty, broad and well-built but far from muscular. With a frame like a hammer-thrower, he was yet soft, just this side of fat. He stood looking down with a half-smile on his face, and the impression he gave was that of an enormous sleepy tomcat, indifferent, self-sufficient, yet predatory.
“What’s the matter, what are you afraid of,” the teacherish man said.
“I’m not afraid of anything!”
“Then why won’t you let us do it?”
“Because I won’t have it! You’re not going to do that to me!”
“A spinal tap won’t hurt you any. We do it all the time.”
“Not on me you don’t!” He had a horror of the spinal puncture because when it had been used in the TB sanatorium as a means of anesthesia some years ago, a friend of his had been paralyzed by it; not temporarily, which had been the idea, but permanently.
“You must listen to reason. You have too much alcohol in your system. This will help clear your brain, take some of the pressure off. Do you understand?”
“Sure I understand, what do you think I am!”
“Besides that, you have a fractured skull.”
“Fractured skull!”
“A slight fracture, between the right temple and eye.”
“I don’t believe you!” His splitting head denied this disbelief but he didn’t believe it all the same.
“The X-ray showed it very clearly. It’s not serious, however. There’s no real concussion.”
“But where did I get—”
“Don’t ask us, baby,” the bigger man said, smiling. “That’s what you came in with.”
“How did I get here? I didn’t ask to be—”
“You were brought in by the ambulance. Now let’s go ahead with this. It’s the best thing for you. It’ll make you feel a lot better.”
“I feel all right, right now!” He didn’t. His head was bursting with pain, but—hadn’t it often, didn’t it always, on such mornings as this?
“You refuse?” the professor-like man said.
“I certainly do! You’re not going to do that to me!”
The small man turned to the other and spoke as if Don weren’t there at all, or as if he didn’t understand English. “I guess there’s nothing to do then, Bim. We can’t give it to him without his consent, now that he’s conscious. The patient seems to be in his right mind, capable of deciding for himself.”
“Try him, Doctor.”
The doctor turned back to Don. “What’s your name?”
“Don Birnam,” he answered, almost haughty.
“Where do you live?”
“Three-one-one East Fifty-Fifth.”
“Manhattan?”
“Certainly!”
“What do you do?”
“Do? I—well, I’m not doing anything, at the moment.”
“Unemployed?”
“He didn’t look unemployed to me,” the other said with a smile. “Not from the clothes he was wearing.”
Don automatically looked down at himself. He had on a short white gown that barely reached to the knees; made of a heavy cloth as stiff and rough as canvas. It was tied in the back: he could feel the thick knot, now, between his shoulder blades. He was outraged at the spectacle he must present of himself, outraged that the man should smile. But the smiler was not smiling at him, he noticed; it was just a habit, a fixed expression of the sleepy cat-like face.
“What year is it?” the doctor went on.
“Why are you asking me these fool questions!”
“What year is it?”
“Nineteen thirty-six!”
“What month?”
“October.”
“What day is today?”
Oh-oh. This is something he couldn’t be sure of.
“What day is it?”
“I—I’m sorry, I guess I don’t know. Monday or Tuesday, maybe, but I—” God if it were Tuesday he had to be back home, had to be safely back and in bed and finished with the weekend before Wick came in. He had to get out of here and quick.
“What’s your name?”
“I told you. Don Birnam.”
“Where do you live?”
“Three-one-one East Fifty-Fifth. Manhattan!”
“Three-eleven?”
“Three-one-one, I said! That’s three-eleven in any language, isn’t it? Or it was when I went to school.”
The doctor turned again to the other. “Okay, Bim. Give him some paraldehyde and let him go. Ten grains. I’ll be in the women’s ward.” He started down the room.
Don suddenly couldn’t let him go like that. “Doctor!” he called out. “Wait a minute!”
The doctor went on without turning back.
The big fellow was looking down at him, squinting faintly. “What did you want?”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“Oh.” He sank back, relieved.
“You were brought in here yesterday afternoon.”
“Really in an ambulance?”
“I’ll say. You were out like a lamp. You’ve got an awful black eye.”
Instinctively Don raised his hand and touched the eye with his fingers.
“Too bad. Such nice eyes, too. Really awful nice.” The voice had no fiber or resonance at all. It was the audible but whispered intimacy of one who spoke from a pillow in the dead of night. “Want to see what you look like?” From a pocket in his jacket he drew out a small round mirror and held it between thumb and forefinger.
Don pulled away. “No thank you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the matter, baby?”
In anger, Don glanced up again. But he was in no position to be angry. He had to bear with this until he got out of here, or at least until he got his clothes. “Are you a doctor?” he said, to say something.
“No.”
“Orderly?”
“No.”
“What.”
“Nurse.” He smiled. Then, barely audible: “Is that all right?”
“All right what?”
“All right with you.” He smiled as if he were privately amused—a little wryly but still amused—at some secret slight joke of his own. Nothing to laugh about; just sort of muse over, continually.
Don was too uncomfortable to face him. “What’s the other guy,” he said, looking away.
“That’s Doctor Stevens. Did you like him?”
“Listen. Didn’t he say I could go?”
“Okay, baby. Hold your water. I’ll go get it.”
“My clothes?”
“Your paraldehyde. You’ll love it.” He moved silently away.
When he was at a safe distance, Don turned on the mattress to watch him go. He moved down the ward with a noiseless casual tread as if in carpet-slippers on his way to his own bathroom at home, indescribably nonchalant and at ease. It was infuriating. But you didn’t have to watch him, did you? He lay on the mattress face down, refusing to look further.
Though he couldn’t believe the business about the fractured skull, he began to realize the spot he was in. The alcoholic ward. So here he was at last. Inevitably he would wind up in this place and the only wonder was that he hadn’t been here before. This was your natural home and you might as well take it. Take it and lie low and wait for your chance to get out again—and then forever afterward watch your step. But it wasn’t happening, either—not any of it. You had a bad head but you certainly didn’t feel the pain you knew you had, didn’t shake (no more than usual), didn’t sweat (no more than usual). It was all so unreal that you weren’t even suffering; you were merely biding your time, in a time-out. He began to look about him.
It was a long high-ceilinged room with a concrete floor bare of anything but beds, most of them so low they were little more than pallets. Only three or four were of normal height, and these were boarded up at the sides like babies’ cribs. The idea, he supposed, was to keep you from falling out; or, in the case of the low beds, from hurting yourself if you did fall.
On the mattress next to his, a man who looked like some kind of crank messiah (but only because of the gaunt and hollow face) lay staring at the ceiling. He had a three- or four-days’ growth of beard, his cheeks were sunken, his eyes large and sad. His white legs stuck out below the pathetically short gown like a cadaver in the morgue. He might have been dead, but that his entire frame—all over, all of it at once—quivered. It shook with tiny tremors, regular, precise, constant, as if a fine motor operated somewhere beneath him, in the mattress itself.
Farther off, a middle-aged Negro babbled God knows what at the top of his lungs, and no one paid enough notice to find out what he was complaining about. In the bed across the way another Negro got up on his knees, lifted his gown, and urinated on the floor. No one seemed to notice or mind that, either, least of all the intelligent-looking man who leaned against the wall a few feet away in a stiff faded robe held together by a safety-pin, looking about as casually as he could and being very careful to avoid every returning glance. His self-consciousness was painful to see. Don felt that the man had been looking at him, but by the time he noticed the fellow, he had shifted his gaze an inch or two to the left. You couldn’t have caught his eye if you’d tried. Other men in faded robes or short gowns open at the back moved restlessly up and down the aisle or went in and out of the two rooms at the end where most of the shouting seemed to be coming from. There was a strong smell of disinfectant and dirty feet.
It wasn’t possible that he was here or that he had come to this place in an ambulance, clang-clanging through the streets like the ambulances in the movies or like the one he had seen yesterday tearing in and out among the pillars of the L. You couldn’t ride in one of those things and not know it. But you had. You had been rushed zig-zagging through the city streets while an interne sat at your side taking your pulse or your temperature and bracing himself for the turns. But how had you got into it in the first place? Where had you been picked up—by whom? What or who had given you a fractured skull—if you had one? All he remembered was the bottle left behind on the living room table.
The nurse Bim appeared again, moving down the ward like a cat. He was even cat-like in color: tawny; neither blond nor brunet. From a little distance he smiled at Don and raised his eyebrows, and his head waggled from side to side ever so slightly. There was something contemptuous about his every motion, a carelessness or insolence which yet solicited attention—and got it, Don realized. Damn his eyes, why did you have to notice, why did you look at all? But this kind of coquetry was so bold and mocking that you couldn’t take it seriously, you shouldn’t allow yourself to become exasperated. Maybe the guy was clowning.
He sauntered up to Don’s bed and handed him a small thick glass half-full of a colorless liquid. “Here’s your drink, baby. You can pretend it’s gin. Doesn’t it look like it?”
“Set it down, will you please?” Because of his shaking hand he didn’t trust himself to take the glass under the other’s gaze.
But the nurse, God damn him, always seemed to be two jumps ahead of your own thought. “Go ahead, I won’t look.”
“What’s it for?”
“Your head and your nerves. It will clear you up. No, don’t smell it, just take it.” He pretended to look away and Don picked up the little glass and downed the stuff in one swallow.
It was the foulest tasting liquid he had ever had in his mouth and that was going some; bitterer than anything he’d ever heard of (he’d be tasting and smelling it for weeks); but almost instantly, miraculously, the throbbing in his head died down, his heart quieted, his hands stopped trembling. He felt suddenly clear and normal; all trace of hangover and fright were gone. He couldn’t believe it. He looked up at the nurse in surprise. “What was the name of that stuff?”
“Paraldehyde.”
“What?”
“Paraldehyde.”
He had heard perfectly, but he wanted the name said again, wanted to fix it in his mind forever, wished he had some way of writing it down so that he would never never forget it.
The nurse sat down beside him. “Feel better, baby?” The words were a vibrationless hum, intimate and secret-sounding as the voice of Marlene Dietrich. You had no defense against him. You couldn’t even snub the guy.
But the perpetual slight smile bothered him even more than the voice. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering.”
“What?”
“Ever been here before?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’re right. I would have remembered you. Anybody ever tell you that you look like Ronald Colman?”
If you only had sense enough to laugh, or kid back!
“Little younger, but the same eyes and puzzled forehead. Nice.”
“Listen. I’ve taken that drink. Now what about—”
“Want to bet something?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet this isn’t your last time.” He put his hand on Don’s knee—completely impersonal, oddly enough—and nodded toward the man Don had noticed before, leaning against the wall. “See that one over there? He won’t look at us but he’s listening to every word. He’s a repeater, that one. I’ll bet I’ve seen him six times this year, and it’s only October. Advertising man. Lovely fellow, too.”
Don studied the empty glass, in his embarrassment. “What about my clothes.”
“What’s all the rush? It’s only noon. Sunday at that, don’t forget. You can’t get a drink till afternoon.”
There he was again, knowing your thought. “Listen. Can’t I get my clothes? The doctor said—I heard him say—”
“Now now. Just relax, baby. I’ll get them for you if you’re in such a sweat.” He got up from the mattress and sauntered off through the ward.
Paraldehyde. Was that the word—had he got it right? God this could maybe turn out to be the discovery of your life. As long as there was such a thing as paraldehyde in the world—
Doctor Stevens came into the ward again. He was accompanied by an older man in a business suit. They stood in the middle of the room talking together and looking about. The doctor pointed out first one patient and then another, not troubling to lower his voice. “Now that one over there—” And even as the alarmed patient began to respond in excited fearful apprehension, the two men slowly turned their backs and began to regard and discuss another. They might have been visiting a picture-gallery, or admiring impersonally the various blooms and plants in a hothouse.
They came forward and stood between his mattress and the one next to it. “Now this fellow”—indicating the staring messiah—“came in last night. He says he’d had only one glass of beer.”
As the gaunt skinny man awoke to the fact that he was under study, the invisible motor somewhere within the mattress speeded up at once, accelerating the tremors that rippled throughout the whole body. Sweat began to stand out above the apprehensive eager eyes, eager to please, eager to prove he was master of himself. The sweat broke and ran down his face as the doctor addressed him.
“How many did you have,” the doctor said in a loud voice, as if speaking to some one hard of hearing.
“One, Doctor. Just one.”
“One what?”
“Just one bottle of beer, Doctor.”
“What’s your name?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What’s your name?”
“John Haspeth.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Haspeth, Doctor.”
“How do you spell it?”
“John Haspeth.” The front of the gown, across his chest, was already dark with sweat.
“You can see,” the doctor said, “how he’s beginning to perspire. The whole bed will be soaked in a minute or two. That’s because we’re talking to him, of course. And notice the feet and legs—well, the whole body, for that matter. The tremors are getting worse. He’ll be shaking himself right off that mattress onto the floor if we stand here long enough. It’s the effort at concentration, plus self-consciousness. If we turned our backs, the shaking would die down very quickly.”
The patient watched and listened with passionate anxious concern, hanging on every word, and the tremors quickened even more as the doctor addressed him again.
“What do you do, John?”
“I’m a painter, Doctor.”
“House-painter?”
“Signs. I paint signs.”
“Where do you live?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What day is it?”
“Day?”
“What day is it?”
“Wednesday, Doctor.”
“What month?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What’s the month, what month is it?”
He raised his hand to his mouth but it kept hitting his chin, so he lowered it again and clutched the sides of the mattress to still the shaking. Then, as if a tardy answer would spell ruin, he gasped, breathlessly: “January.”
“What year?”
“Year, Doctor?”
“What’s the year? Is it Nineteen-thirty-four, Thirty-five, -six, -seven?”
“Thirty-six, Doctor.” The shaking had become violent now. The hands and arms pumped up and down, the legs danced like a puppet’s, the entire trunk jumped and bounced on the bed.
The two men watched this in silence for a moment, regarding the struggle almost without interest. “How many drinks did you have?” the doctor went on.
The patient hugged his shoulders to quiet himself. “Just one, Doctor—I only had one. Just one glass.”
“I thought you said bottle.”
“Oh no, Doctor. Just one. Only one small jigger.”
“Jigger of beer?”
“Whisky, Doctor. Only one little glass.”
“Okay.” The doctor turned to speak to his friend.
“Doctor! Doctor!” the patient called out. “Won’t you give me something?”
“No no, not now. You can have all you want of those things in the hall. They’re in the jar on the desk. Go help yourself. You know where they are. Take as many as you like.”
“What does he want?” the man in the business-suit said.
“Medication. A sedative. I tell him he can help himself to the salt-tablets. We encourage that as much as possible. No sedatives in the daytime. We try to maintain or restore the normal sleep-cycle, you see—make them stay awake during the day. Put them to sleep now and they’ll be raising hell all night. That fellow over there took a running jump at the wall around three-thirty this morning and got a terrible shaking-up. Thought it was the ocean and wanted to jump in. That wouldn’t have happened in the daytime. Delirium is a disease of the night.”