Far up the ward the Sister was working by a bed. Ryan, the man with his nose gone, was lying high on five or six pillows, slung in his position by tapes and webbing passed under his arms and attached to the bedposts. He lay with his profile to me—only he has no profile, as we know a man's. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding lips—the nose, the left eye, gone.
He was breathing heavily. They don't know yet whether he will live.
When a man dies they fetch him with a stretcher, just as he came in; only he enters with a blanket over him, and a flag covers him as he goes out. When he came in he was one of a convoy, but every man who can stand rises to his feet as he goes out. Then they play him to his funeral, to a grass mound at the back of the hospital.
It takes all sorts to make a hospital.
For instance, the Visitors....
There is the lady who comes in to tea and wants to be introduced to every one as though it was a school-treat.
She jokes about the cake, its scarcity or its quantity, and makes a lot of "fun" about two lumps of sugar.
When she is at her best the table assumes a perfect and listening silence—not the silence of the critic, but the silence of the absorbed child treasuring every item of talk for future use. After she goes the joy of her will last them all the evening.
There is the lady who comes in to tea and, sitting down at the only unlaid table, cries, "Nurse! I have no knife or plate or cup; and I prefer a glass of boiling water to tea. And would you mind sewing this button on my glove?"
There is the lady who comes in and asks the table at large: "I wonder if any one knows General Biggens? I once met him...."