The dream jumped a few grooves. Now he could hear the service moaning on somewhere above his head. “Man hath but a short time to live He heard the creak of the ropes, and the shadow of the grave seemed to darken the dark. He was being let down into the earth, still trying his best to protest. But the air was getting stuffy in this hole. He was finding it more and more difficult to breathe, much less yell his complaints. He could just manage to haul a stale shiver of air through his aching sinuses, but his mouth seemed stuffed with something, flowers perhaps, and he couldn’t move his head to spit them out. Now he could feel the thump of clod on coffin, and Christ alive if he couldn’t hear the sound of worms at either side of him, licking their chops. His heart was pumping fit to burst. His face, he was sure, must be blue-black with the effort of trying to find breath.
Then, miraculously, there was somebody in the coffin with him, somebody fighting to pull the constriction out of his mouth, off his face.
“Mr. George!” she was saying, this angel of mercy. He opened his eyes in the darkness. It was the nurse from that hospital he’d been in-she was in the coffin, too. “Mr. George!” She was panicking, this model of calm and patience. She was almost in tears as she fought to drag his hand off his face. “You’re suffocating yourself!” she shouted in his face.
Other arms were helping with the fight now, and they were winning. It took three nurses to remove his hand, but they succeeded. Charlie began to breathe again, a glutton for air.
“Are you all right, Mr. George?”
He opened his mouth to reassure the angel, but his voice had momentarily deserted him. He was dimly aware that his hand was still putting up a fight at the end of his arm.
“Where’s Jeudwine?” he gasped. “Get him, please.”
“The doctor is unavailable at the moment, but he’ll be coming to see you later on in the day.”
“I want to see him now.
“Don’t worry, Mr. George,” the nurse replied, her bedside manner reestablished, “we’ll just give you a mild sedative, and then you can sleep awhile.”
“No!”
“Yes, Mr. George!” she replied, firmly. “Don’t worry You’re in good hands.”
“I don’t want to sleep any more. They have control over you when you’re asleep, don’t you see?”
“You’re safe here.”
He knew better. He knew he wasn’t safe anywhere, not now. Not while he still had a hand. It was not under his control any longer, if indeed it had ever been. Perhaps it was just an illusion of servitude it bad created these forty-odd years, a performance to lull him into a false sense of autocracy. All this he wanted to say, but none of it would fit into his mouth. Instead he just said: “No more sleep.”
But the nurse had procedures. The ward was already too full of patients, and with more coming in every hour (terrible scenes at the YMCA she’d just heard; dozens of casualties, mass suicide attempted), all she could do was sedate the distressed and get on with the business of the day. “Just a mild sedative,” she said again, and the next moment she had a needle in her hand, spitting slumber.
“Just listen a moment,” he said, trying to initiate a reasoning process with her; but she wasn’t available for debate.
“Now don’t be such a baby,” she chided, as tears started.
“You don’t understand,” he explained, as she prodded up the vein at the crook of his arm.
“You can tell Dr. Jeudwine everything when he comes to see you.” The needle was in his arm, the plunger was plunging.
“No!” he said, and pulled away. The nurse hadn’t expected such violence. The patient was up and out of bed before she could complete the plunge, the hypo still dangling from his arm.
“Mr. George,” she said sternly. “Will you please get back into bed!”
Charlie pointed at her with his stump.
“Don’t come near me,” he said.
She tried to shame him. “All the other patients are behaving well,” she said, “why can’t you?” Charlie shook his head. The hypo, having worked its way out of his vein, fell to the floor, still three-quarters full. “I will not tell you again.”