When next I looked up he was sweating. He beckoned to me: "Ask Sister to send for the doctor. I can't stand this."
I went and asked her.
She sucked her little finger thoughtfully.
"Give him the thermometer," she said. He couldn't take it in his mouth, " ... for if I shut my lips they'll never open." I put it under his arm and waited while his feet kicked and his hands twisted. He was normal. Sister smiled.
But by a coincidence the doctor came, gimlet-eyed.
"Hysteria...." he said to Sister in the bunk.
"Is no one going to reassure Gayner?" I wondered. And no one did.
Isn't the fear of pain next brother to pain itself? Tetanus or the fear of tetanus—a choice between two nightmares. Don't they admit that?
So, forbidden to speak to him, I finished my splint till tea-time. But I couldn't bring myself to sit down to it, for fear that the too placid resumption of my duties should outrage him. I stood up.