Then I realize the vanity of his threat and the completeness of his imprisonment, and hurry to suggest a new idea before he sees it too....
We set him on crutches....
He is brave. He said with anger, "I can't stand on these, they're too long. You go and ask for some shorter ones...."
And thus together we slurred over the fact of that pendulous, nerveless body which had hung from the crutches like an old stocking.
But all the evening he was buried in his own silence, and I suppose he was looking at the vision on the bedrail.
A boy of seventeen was brought in yesterday with pneumonia.
He was so ill that he couldn't speak, and we put screens round his bed. All the other patients in the ward immediately became convalescents.
I helped Sister to wash him, holding him on his side while he groaned with pain; and Sister, no longer cynical, said, "There you are Sonnie, it's almost finished...."
When I rolled back the blanket it gave me a shock to see how young his feet were—clean and thin, with the big toe curling up and the little toes curling back.
"Will you brush my hair?" he managed to say to me, and when I had finished: "This is a pretty ward...."