He gave me the look that a dog gives, and his words had the character of an unformed cry.
He was quite alone at the end of the ward. The Sister was in her bunk. My white cap attracted his desperate senses.
As he spoke his knees shot out from under him with his restless pain. His right arm was stretched from the bed in a narrow iron frame, reminding me of a hand laid along a harp to play the chords, the fingers with their swollen green flesh extended across the strings; but of this harp his fingers were the slave, not the master.
"Shall I call your Sister?" I whispered to him.
He shook his head. "She can't do anything. I must just stick it out. They're going to operate on the elbow, but they must wait three days first."
His head turned from side to side, but his eyes never left my face. I stood by him, helpless, overwhelmed by his horrible loneliness.
Then I carried his tray down the long ward and past the Sister's bunk. Within, by the fire, she was laughing with the M.O. and drinking a cup of tea—a harmless amusement.
"The officer in No. 22 says he's in great pain," I said doubtfully. (It wasn't my ward, and Sisters are funny.)
"I know," she said quite decently, "but I can't do anything. He must stick it out."