ExcerptFrom Chapter Twelve: "To The Hospital" Late in the afternoon, the sunlight gray behind lowering clouds, Whitey woke up from a nap and got out of bed. He went to the small bathroom in the hallway. After he was finished and was washing his hands at the sink, Patches appeared beside him, dressed in a white gown. He must have been admitted while Whitey was asleep. Patches pushed a small brown paper bag into Whitey's stomach. Whitey took it, held it against his thigh. The bag was heavy and tied with string. All he could think of to say was "Okay." He returned to the ward, put the package in the bedside cabinet under his folded clothes, and got back into bed. The paper bag's density, its metallic heft. There were no more ifs. Patches came back into the ward, got into the bed next to McGale's, on the other side of the nurse's station. Nobody looked at anybody else. What goes through a convict's mind before a crash out? McGale lay with his arms crossed, undoubtedly turning over his locks and keys in his mind for the millionth time. Patches, too, was probably mentally rehearsing as he pretended to read a magazine. Whitey might have tried to doze, but he was done sleeping. The rest of the evening, they waited. Experienced at high-pressure preludes, they surely knew not to thrash around. But there would be no stopping the steady thrumming in a man's chest, an adrenaline tingle in his arms and legs. Now each routine event-- dinner, nurse and orderly visits, but especially the guard's clockwork rounds-- instead of lulling Whitey, would have wound him tighter, as each action marked another step closer toward 2:30 A.M. After lights-out, at 10 P.M., one dim red bulb burned above the ward entrance. In the gloom, as the breathing from the beds around him deepened, Whitey could follow the hulking shape of the guard through half-closed eyes, each time he passed through the ward. The keeper's rounds were soft-soled half hours that Whitey and the others counted down. |
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