I thought a while.
Nothing.
Nobody to benefact me thus.
I’d gone over a cliff in my car, and into a lake, I suddenly remembered. And that was all I remembered.
I was…
I strained and began to sweat again.
I didn’t know who I was.
But to occupy myself, I sat up and stripped away all my bandages. I seemed all right underneath them, and it seemed the right thing to do. I broke the cast on my right leg, using a metal strut I’d removed from the head of the bed. I had a sudden feeling that I had to get out in a hurry, that there was something I had to do.
I tested my right leg. It was okay.
I shattered the cast on my left leg, got up, went to the closet.
No clothes there.
Then I heard the footsteps. I returned to my bed and covered over the broken casts and the discarded bandages.
The door swung inward once again.
Then there was light all around me, and there was a beefy guy in a white jacket standing with his hand on the wall switch.
“What’s this I hear about you giving the nurse a hard time?” he asked, and there was no more feigning sleep.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What is it?”
That troubled him for a second or two, said the frown then, “It’s time for your shot.”
“Are you an M.D.?” I asked.
“No, but I’m authorized to give you a shot”
“And I refuse it’” I said, “as I’ve a legal right to do. What’s it to you?”
“You’ll have your shot,” he said, as he moved around to the left side of the bed. He had a hypo in one hand which bad been out of sight till then.
It was a very foul blow, about four inches below the belt buckle, I’d say, and it left him on his knees.
“____ ____!” he said, after a time.
“Come within spitting distance again,” I said, “and see what happens.”
“We’ve got ways to deal with patients like you,” he gasped.
So I knew the time had come to act.
“Where are my clothes?” I said.
“____ ____!” he repeated
“Then I guess I’ll have to take yours. Give them to me.”
It became boring with the third repetition, so I threw the bedclothes over his head and clobbered him with the metal strut.
Within two minutes, I’d say, I was garbed all in the color of Moby Dick and vanilla ice cream. Ugly.
I shoved him into the closet and looked out the lattice window. I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms, hovering above a row of poplars. The grass was silvery and sparkled. The night was bargaining weakly with the sun. Nothing to show, for me, where this place was located. I seemed to be on the third floor of the building though, and there was a cast square of light off to my left and low, seeming to indicate a first floor window with someone awake behind it.
So I left the room and considered the hallway. Off to the left, it ended against a wall with a latticed window, and there were four more doors, two on either side. Probably they let upon more doors like my own. I went and looked out the window and saw more grounds, more trees, more night, nothing new. Turning, I headed in the other direction.
Doors, doors, doors, no lights from under any of them, the only sounds my footsteps from the too big borrowed shoes.
Laughing Boy’s wristwatch told me it was five forty-four. The metal strut was inside my belt, under the white orderly jacket, and it rubbed against my hip bone as I walked. There was a ceiling fixture about every twenty feet, casting about forty watts of light.
I came to a stairway, off to the right, leading down. I took it. It was carpeted and quiet.
The second floor looked like my own, rows of rooms, so I continued on.
When I reached the first floor I turned right, looking for the door with light leaking out from beneath it.