“I know, lover,” she said. “Leave it to Bertha. She’ll take care of it.”
The ambulance man put an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, buddy. Your heart is taking an awful beating. You got quite a dose of gas. If you could only smell your own breath, you’d realize it. You smell like a gas house.”
I went down to the ambulance. Strained, white faces in the lobby eyed me as though I’d been some alien creature. I stretched out on the cot in the ambulance. I felt a needle prick my arm, and heard the scream of the siren.
After a while I began to feel better and realized that the ambulance was the safest place for me — that and the receiving hospital. The police were looking for me in too many different places on too many different charges.
Chapter Fourteen
Bertha Cool called on me in the receiving hospital. “I have a cab waiting, lover, any time you feel like trying to leave. How are you?”
The nurse looked at my chart and said, “He’s suffering from a general run-down condition as well as the shock and the gas.”
Bertha said, “It’s no wonder. Poor boy. He’s been working twenty-four hours a day, and he isn’t built for it.”
The nurse said to me, “You must take things easier.” I said, “I’m better now. I think I can leave.” The nurse said, “Just a minute. I’ll get the doctor’s permission.”
She walked down the corridor. I heard the whir of a telephone dial, and then she started talking, saying something in a low voice which I couldn’t understand.