She must have understood. "The doctor thinks
he can save your leg for you; but it's a bad fracture. You must be
careful to keep very still."
He fell asleep; and life began again for him, in the midst of
suffering and death. He saw every day broken and mangled men, drunk
with ether, brought up as he had been, and laid in beds; he saw the
priest of the religion to which most of the poor and lowly still
belong, go and come among the cots, and stand by the pillows where
the sick feebly followed him in the mystical gestures which he made
on his brow and breast; he learned to know the use of the white
linen screen which was drawn about a bed to hide the passing of a
soul; he became familiar with the helpless sympathy, the despair of
the friends who came to visit the sick and dying.
He had not lacked for more attention and interest from his own than
the rules of the hospital allowed. His mother and 'Manda Grier came
first, and then Statira when they would let her. She thought it hard
that she was not suffered to do the least thing for him; she wished
to take him away to their own rooms, where she could nurse him twice
as well. At first she cried whenever she saw him, and lamented over
him, so that the head nurse was obliged to explain to her that she
disturbed the patients, and could not come any more unless she
controlled herself.
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