This was the tenth time, however, for within half an hour Eighteen’s light flickered on again. Maida answered it that time and when she came out she looked very peculiar.
“What is the matter?” I asked, meeting her in the corridor.
“It is Eighteen. He is very restless.”
“Yes, I know that he is.”
“He——” she hesitated. “He does not seem to like the room.”
Our eyes met but I tried to keep the little tremor of fright out of my voice as I replied: “He isn’t accustomed to a hospital room yet, that is all.”
“I hope so, I’m sure,” said Maida somewhat morosely and went on about her errand.
I myself am so accustomed to the hospital that is home to me that it is only once in a while that I see it as it impresses a stranger. For a singular moment or two that night I saw it with alien eyes, so to speak; the corridor was long and strange and dark with the vases of flowers along the walls making grotesque shadows against the lighted region of the chart desk at the extreme end of the wings; the hush that always surrounds a hospital, particularly at night, seemed unfamiliar and grim; the doors swung noiselessly; the little thud of our rubber-heeled shoes along the rubberized floor-runner seemed stealthy. Our hushed, low voices had a furtive note. The hospital odours of antiseptics and soap and medicines and sickness, with under it all a lurking, faint but ever-present breath of ether, came to my nostrils with the clearness of novelty. The dim red gleams of scattered signal lights, above the black voids that were doors, seemed strange, too, and weird. I caught myself staring up and down the corridor, puzzled and wondering and faintly frightened as if I were in a new and terrifying place. Then all at once, things resolved themselves into the old, familiar wing. But the feeling of uneasiness persisted.
The patient in Eighteen finally turned off his light and must have gone to sleep, for we heard nothing of him for an hour or two. We were fairly busy, with little opportunity for conversation. Along about two o’clock I found that Sonny had managed to acquire a sore throat, a hot, flushed face and icy feet. I was hurrying for camphorated oil and a hot-water bottle when Eighteen’s light shone redly above the door. I hastened to answer it.
“Nurse,” said our patient firmly, his eyes quite swollen from lack of sleep, and his bedclothes more tousled than ever. “Nurse, I do not like this room. I want another.”