Another voice in the room said, “We’re going to give you a hypo, Mr. Vine,” but he hadn’t dared open his eyes again. It was easier to fight the pain without seeing.
There had been the prick of a needle in his upper arm. And pretty soon there’d been nothingness.
When he came back again—twelve hours later, he learned afterwards—it had been to the same white room, the same strange bed, but this time there was a woman in the room, a woman in a strange white costume standing at the foot of the bed studying a paper that was fastened on a niece of board.
She had smiled at him when she saw that his eyes were open. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Vine. Hope you’re feeling better. I’ll tell Dr. Holt that you’re back with us.”
She went away and came back with a man who was also strangely dressed, in roughly the same fashion as had been the stranger who had called him George.
The doctor looked at him and chuckled. “Got a patient, for once, who can’t talk back to me. Or even write notes.” Then his face sobered. “Are you in pain, though? Blink once if you’re not, twice if you are.”
The pain wasn’t really very bad this time, and he blinked once. The doctor nodded with satisfaction. “That cousin of yours,” he said, “has kept calling up. He’ll be glad to know you’re going to be back in shape to—well, to listen if not to talk. Guess it won’t hurt you to see him a while this evening.”
The nurse rearranged his bedclothing and then, mercifully, both she and the doctor had gone, leaving him alone to straighten out his chaotic thoughts.
Straighten them out? That had been three years ago, and he hadn’t been able to straighten them out yet:
The startling fact that they’d spoken English and that he’d understood that barbaric tongue perfectly, despite his slight previous knowledge of it. How could an accident have made him suddenly fluent in a language which he had known but slightly?