I opened a dizzy eye part way. So this was heaven--this white
expanse that swung and swam before my languid gaze? No, it could
not be--it did not smell like heaven. It smelled like a hospital.
It was a hospital. It was my hospital. My nurse was bending over
me and I caught a faint whiff of the starch in the front of her
crisp blue blouse. She was two-headed for the moment, but that
was a mere detail. She settled a pillow under my head and told me
to lie quiet.

I meant to lie quiet; I did not have to be told. I wanted to lie
quiet and hurt. I was hurty from head to toe and back again, and
crosswise and cater-cornered. I hurt diagonally and lengthwise
and on the bias. I had a taste in my mouth like a bird-and-animal
store. And empty! It seemed to me those doctors had not left
anything inside of me except the acoustics. Well, there was a
mite of consolation there. If the overhauling had been as thorough
as I had reason to believe it was from my present sensations, I
need never fear catching anything again so long as I lived, except
possibly dandruff.

I waved the nurse away. I craved solitude. I desired only to
lie there in that bed and hurt--which I did.

I had said beforehand I meant to stay in St. Germicide's for two
or three days only. It is when I look back on that resolution I
emit the hollow laugh elsewhere referred to. For exactly four
weeks I was flat on my back. I know now how excessively wearied
a man can get of his own back, how tired of it, how bored with
it! And after that another two weeks elapsed before my legs became
the same dependable pair of legs I had known in the past.