"Just barely. They're trying intravenous feeding to pull him through.
I don't think he'll make it."

"For God's sake, let's get there before he conks out!"

Lou raced me to the City Hospital and up to the ward. There was a
scrawny old man in a bed, nothing but a papery skin stretched thin
over a face like a skull and a body like a Halloween skeleton,
shivering as if he was cold. I knew it wasn't the cold. The medics
were injecting a heart stimulant into him and he was vibrating like a
rattletrap car racing over a gravel road.

"Who are you?" I practically yelled, grabbing his skinny arm. "What
happened to you?"

He went on shaking with his eyes closed and his mouth open.

"Ah, hell!" I said, disgusted. "He's in a coma."

"He might start talking," Lou told me. "I fixed it up so you can sit
here and listen in case he does."

"So I can listen to delirious ravings, you mean."

Lou got me a chair and put it next to the bed. "What are you kicking
about? This is the first live one you've seen, isn't it? That ought to
be good enough for you." He looked as annoyed as a director. "Besides,
you can get biographical data out of delirium that you'd never get if
he was conscious."

* * * * *

He was right, of course. Not only data, but attitudes, wishes,
resentments that would normally be repressed. I wasn't thinking of
acting at the moment, though. Here was somebody who could tell me
what I wanted to know ... only he couldn't talk.

Lou went to the door. "Good luck," he said, and went out.

I sat down and stared at the old man, _willing_ him to talk. I don't
have to ask if you've ever done that; everybody has. You keep thinking
over and over, getting more and more tense, "Talk, damn you, _talk_!"
until you find that every muscle in your body is a fist and your jaws
are aching because you've been clenching your teeth so hard. You might
just as well not bother, but once in a while a coincidence makes you
think you've done it. Like now.

The old man sort of came to. That is, he opened his eyes and looked
around without seeing anything, or it was so far away and long ago
that nobody else could see what he saw.

I hunched forward on the chair and willed harder than ever. Nothing
happened. He stared at the ceiling and through and beyond me. Then he
closed his eyes again and I slumped back, defeated and bitter--but
that was when he began talking.

There were a couple of women, though they