The sight was sickening, the work exhausting and thankless, and if I had not known that the patient had only a few days to live, I think I would have applied for a job in the coal gang.
On the twentieth night, at about twelve o'clock, I was awakened by the moans of the dying man, who was calling in a faint voice. His face was flushed and it seemed as if all the blood had gone to his head; but he seemed suddenly to turn deadly white, and he lay back still.
A young boy sleeping next to him hid his head under the bed clothes in fright. I was sent to notify the doctor upstairs.
The young doctor declared him dead, and turning to me ordered me to dress him.
I looked at him puzzled and asked: "Dress him up in his striped suit?"
"No," answered the doctor, smiling, "put the shroud on and make him ready for the morgue."
"But I have never dressed a corpse in my life and would not know how to go about it," I protested. So the doctor kindly volunteered to teach me.
First he closed the dead man's eyes; then we put on the shroud, which looked like a night-shirt with frills at the sleeves, and attached to it a conical fool's cap to cover his head; then his hands and feet were tied separately.
When we had done, we laid the body on an empty bed in the smaller hospital, very much to the dismay and terror of the three consumptives who slept there. But they kicked up such a row that they were allowed to sleep in our section.
The next morning when I went on an errand into the next room I stopped to gaze on the body of Fritz. The change that had taken place was startling. During the few months that Fritz had passed in the hospital, although disciplined and silent like most old convicts, he always wore a peculiarly shifty, sneering expression on his reddish face. Now it was wax white, the eyelids had opened, and the pale blue eyes were staring at me with a peaceful, angelic expression. For an instant I gasped at the thought that he might have come back to life, and I called out: "Fritz! Fritz!" but no answer came, and only the gentle, inscrutable smile persisted. I touched his cheek. It was cold and hard. But I could not explain the almost miraculous change in the expression of the face. Suddenly it dawned upon me that death had released the unclean spirit, and left the body to go back to mother earth as clean as it had been conceived.