"No, you can only do what I have told you. His life hangs on a thread; he may live, but I doubt it."
I listened in a detached kind of way, scarcely realizing what I heard; I was perfectly indifferent, too. It had nothing to do with me, and even if it had, I did not care. Then darkness came upon me again and I no longer saw the bright speck shining.
After that I had quickly fleeting moments of consciousness; things around me became real for a moment and then passed away. Doubtless I was in a semi-comatose condition; sometimes I imagined I heard fragments of conversation, but I can remember nothing definite.
After that followed a time of intense weariness. I felt as though I were too weak even to lie down; I could not move my limbs, and the weight of my own body on the bed seemed to weary me, but I was not sufficiently conscious to realize the full extent of my weariness. I have a vague remembrance of being fed; I call to mind a woman standing by my bedside holding something to my mouth; but as I reflect now these things seem only phantoms of the mind.
After a time I became conscious of intense pain, and I have a recollection of being able to move my limbs, and I remember hearing a voice saying:
"He is stronger anyhow, but I never saw a man so utterly exhausted."
A long space of time, how long I do not know, but it seemed to me interminable. Day appeared to follow day and week to follow week, and yet I have no distinct remembrance. In recalling it all, I am like a man trying to remember a far-off dream.
Suddenly I became awake. I was fully conscious that I was living; I could outline the room in which I lay, I could see the sunlight streaming in at the window, I could hear the birds singing. I was very weak, but I was alive; I was able to think, too, able to connect thought with thought, although my memory was dim. Incidents of my life passed before me like shadows; I saw them only in part, but I did see them.
The room was strange to me. This was not my little bedroom by the sea; the apartment was bigger than the whole of my cottage. The ceiling was high, and the window through which the sun shone was large. I did not care so much where I was; all the same, I was curious.
"What has happened to me, I wonder?" I asked myself, "and why am I here?"