Dave looked at Freddy and grinned happily.
"Boy, am I glad to see you!" he exclaimed. "According to the Doc we should be dead, by rights, or something. Instead, we just got our nerve centers knocked haywire. Say, do you know how long we've been here? Did he tell you when you woke up last time?"
"I guess he didn't have the chance," the English youth said with a wry grin. "I started yelling for them to take us to the General, and they thought I was completely off my topper. Stuck a needle in me and I popped off like a kitten. We've been here last night or since this morning, haven't we? And where the dickens are we, anyway?"
"Hold your hat, Freddy, here it comes," Dave said with a chuckle. "We've been here eight days, he told me."
Freddy's jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out so far you could have knocked them off like marbles on sticks. Then he flushed and laughed scornfully.
"Come off it, Dave!" he protested. "Don't give me any of that kind of tosh. My word! Eight days, my hat!"
"No kidding, that's what he said," Dave insisted. And then he started to give Freddy the medical officer's description of what had happened to them, and their unknown, to them, actions during the eight day period.
He had almost finished when the medical captain came hurrying back into the ward. At his heels were two male orderlies in hospital white. Dave broke off what he was saying and stared questioningly. The medical officer looked very much excited, and also very much impressed.
"Take them to my receiving office," he said to the orderlies and stepped to the side.
Neither Dave nor Freddy had the chance to ask the questions that hovered on their lips. The orderlies took hold of their beds and started wheeling them down the aisle to the double doors at the end. They passed through another ward and then were wheeled into a fair sized room that was fitted up more as an office than a hospital room.