She put a cigarette between my lips and lighted a match.
“Take a few whiffs and then try to sleep. You need lots of sleep.”
In the ward there was only the glimmer of night lights in red glasses, and now and then all through the night matches were lighted, illuminating the room for a second, followed by the glowing end of a cigarette shining like a star in the darkness.
The sleeping men breathed heavily, tossed about violently, gave strange jerks and starts. Sometimes they spoke aloud in their sleep.
“That isn't a dud, you fool! It will blow us to hell.”
“Now then, get on with it, can't you?”
“Look out! They're coming! Can't you see them moving by the wire?”
The spirit of war was in that ward and hunted them even in their sleep; lurking terrors surged up again in their subconsciousness. Sights which they had tried to forget stared at them through their closed eyelids. The daylight came and the night nurse slipped away, and the day nurse shook one's shoulders and said: “Time to wash and shave. No malingering!”
It was the discipline of the hospital. Men as weak as rats had to sit up in bed, or crawl out of it, and shave themselves.
“You're merciless!” I said, laughing painfully when the day nurse dabbed my back with cold iodine at six o'clock on a winter morning, with the windows wide open.