At long last Willis got into a car and started it and drove it slowly down the street, winding around things. He and Jeff got Mrs. Sloan in the back somehow and she moaned once but her eyes didn’t open. Willis said, “Where to?” in a funny way and Nora thought probably he had a certain percentage of “shock,” also. Maybe about forty per cent, she thought, and she thought Jeff had about fifty and she had ten or maybe twenty per cent at most.
The car started along the street very slowly, going this way and that, but the lights were smashed and you couldn’t tell exactly what you were running over. They went around the east side of the square, sometimes going up over the curb, and past a brick house that was burning inside fiercely. Nora saw then that sweat was pouring down Willis’s face and he was crying and the butler beside him was looking straight ahead at absolutely nothing.
She was sitting between them and not being paid any attention to. When they reached St.
Paul Street, they couldn’t make a right tum because of the rubble so they went on north.
Finally Jeff said, “The City Hospital’s the other way, Willis.” He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want to hurt the chauffeur’s feelings.
But Willis wasn’t making a mistake. He answered, “Jeff, there won’t be any city hospital down there.”
Jeff said, “Check,” and sounded crestfallen. “Where you headed?”
“I thought we might get through farther up here and around east and back to St. Paul on that side. The Infirmary.”
“Mrs. Sloan would be highly incensed—”
“I don’t know if she’ll ever be highly anything.”