And then Doctor Z stood up and combed the debris out of his whiskers
and remarked that, taking it by and large, it had been one of the
pleasantest little outings he had enjoyed in the entire course of his
practice. He said that as a patient I was fair, but as a balloon I was
immense. He asked me whether I had seen anything of his umbrella and
began looking round for it. I tried to help him look, but I was too
tired to exert myself much. I told him I believed I would take a little
nap.

I opened a dizzy eye part way. So this was heaven--this white expanse
that swung and swam before my languid gaze? No, it could not be--it did
not smell like heaven. It smelled like a hospital. It was a hospital. It
was my hospital. My nurse was bending over me and I caught a faint whiff
of the starch in the front of her crisp blue blouse. She was two-headed
for the moment, but that was a mere detail. She settled a pillow under
my head and told me to lie quiet.

I meant to lie quiet; I did not have to be told. I wanted to lie quiet
and hurt. I was hurty from head to toe and back again, and crosswise and
cater-cornered. I hurt diagonally and lengthwise and on the bias. I had
a taste in my mouth like a bird-and-animal store. And empty! It seemed
to me those doctors had not left anything inside of me except the
acoustics. Well, there was a mite of consolation there. If the
overhauling had been as thorough as I had reason to believe it was from
my present sensations, I need never fear catching anything again so long
as I lived, except possibly dandruff.

I waved the nurse away. I craved solitude. I desired only to lie there
in that bed and hurt--which I did.

I had said beforehand I meant to stay in St. Germicide's for two or
three days only. It is when I look back on that resolution I emit the
hollow laugh elsewhere referred to. For exactly four weeks I was flat
on my back. I know now how excessively wearied a man can get of his own
back, how tired of it, how bored with it! And after that another two
weeks elapsed before my legs became the same dependable pair of legs I
had known in the past.

I did not want to eat at first, and when I did begin to want to they
would not let me. If I felt sort of peckish they let me suck a
little glass thermometer, but there is not much nourishment really in
thermometers. And for entertainment, to wile the dragging hours away,
I could count the cracks in the ceiling and read my temperature chart,
whi