s gone for ages--he must have had to round them up from every floor
in the Hospital. Whenever any of them went to look for anything, it took
them ages. It was as if for every article needed in the wards of that
Hospital there was a separate and inaccessible central depot.[27]

At one moment a small pillow had to be placed in the hollow of my
patient's back if he was to be kept in that position on which I had been
told his life depended. When I sent the night nurse to look for
something that would serve, she was gone a quarter of an hour, in which
I realized that my case was not the only case in the Hospital. For a
quarter of an hour I had to kneel by his bed with my two arms thrust
together under the hollow of his back, supporting it. I had nothing at
hand that was small enough or firm enough but my arms.

That night I would have given everything I possess, and everything I
have ever done, to have been a trained nurse.

To make matters worse, I had an atrocious cough, acquired at the Hotel
de la Poste. The chemist had made up some medicine for it, but the poor
busy dispensary clerk had forgotten to send it to my room. I had to stop
it by an expenditure of will when I wanted every atom of will to keep my
patient quiet and send him to sleep, if possible, without his morphia
_piqures_. He is only to have one if he is restless or in pain.

And to-night he wanted more than ever to talk when he woke. And his
conversation in the night is even more lacerating than his conversation
in the day. For all the time, often in pain, always in extreme
discomfort, he is thinking of other people.

First of all he asked me if I had any books, and I thought that he
wanted me to read to him. I told him I was afraid he mustn't be read to,
he must go to sleep. And he said: "I mean for you to read yourself--to
pass the time."

He is afraid that I shall be bored by sitting up with him, that I shall
tire myself, that I shall make my cough worse. He asks me if I think he
will ever be well enough to play games. That is what he has always
wanted to do most.

And then he begins to tell me about his mother.

He tells me things that I have no right to put down here.

There is nothing that I can do for him but to will. And I will hard, or
I pray--I don't know which it is; your acutest willing and your
intensest prayer are indistinguishable. And it seems to work. I will--or
I pray--that he shall lie still without morphia, and that he shall have