woman's lap? It didn't make sense!

With instinctive caution, he parted his eyelids, ever so
slightly, and sought to peer upward through his thick lashes.
The effort was painful, but less so than he had feared.
Already, through natural buoyancy or else by reason of the
unseen nurse's ministrations, the throbbing ache was becoming
almost bearable.

At first, his dazed eyes could make out nothing. Then he
could see, through his lashes, the velvety dark blue of the
night sky and the big white Southern stars shining through a
soft cloud. Inconsequentially, his vagrant mind recalled
that, below Miami, the Southern Cross is smudgily visible on
the horizon, somewhere around two in the morning. And he
wondered if he could descry it, if that luminous cloud were
not in the way.

Then, he knew it was not a cloud which shimmered between his
eyes and the stars. It was a woman's filmy hair.

And the woman was bending down above him, as be lay with his
head on her knee. She was bending down, sobbing softly to
herself, and bathing his aching head with water from a bowl at
her side.

He was minded to rouse himself and speak, or at least to get a
less elusive look at her shadowed face, when running footsteps
sounded from somewhere. And again by instinct, Brice shut his
eyes and lay moveless.