“She don’t know ’em herself.”
A little more talk, and the sentences became broken, the words disconnected, and ere long I left him in a natural, comfortable sleep.
He suffered terribly from pain in his head, and the doctor had forbidden all unnecessary noise in the ward. I was therefore not a little surprised the next morning as I approached the door, to hear loud, noisy singing, laughing and talking alternately, such as I had never at any time heard since I had visited the hospital.
I paused at the door, hesitating to enter, and knowing the state in which I had left Ennis, both provoked and indignant. Just at that moment, one of the orderlies came out, and to my question as to the meaning of the disturbance, informed me that a new case of violent fever and delirium had just been brought in, and as the other wards were crowded, it had been a necessity to place him here. Thus re-assured, I walked in, when Wilson at once came up to me with, “Oh, Miss —— if you would only try. This man’s out of his head—he can’t live—and the doctor ordered us to find out where his friends are, if possible, and let them know. He has a good deal of money in his knapsack, and we should like to know what to do with it; if his friends are far off, they couldn’t be here in time, but we can’t tell.”
“Has he had no intervals of consciousness?” I asked, not caring to show how I shrank from the task.
“None, and he won’t have till he goes into a stupor, and then the game’s up.”
I was too much worried at the time to ask whether an “interval of consciousness” was supposed to exist during a stupor, as his words seemed to imply, and merely said,
“But if you have tried in vain, what object is there in my speaking to him?”
As I spoke, a burst of noisy, insane laughter came from his lips, and rang discordantly through the ward; he tried to spring from his bed, but was forcibly held on each side.