stomach and I could feel my face getting more and more flushed; I dug my teeth into my fist to
try to gain control and then I noticed that there were tears all over my hand.
The engine of Dr. Stanpole’s car roared exhaustedly. The headlights turned in an erratic arc away
from me, and then I heard the engine laboriously recede into the distance, and I continued to
listen until not only had it ceased but my memory of how it sounded had also ceased. The light
had gone out in the room and there was no sound coming from it. The only noise was the
peculiarly bleak whistling of the wind through the upper branches.
There was a street light behind me somewhere through the trees and the windows of the
Infirmary dimly reflected it. I came up close beneath the window of Finny’s room, found a
foothold on a grating beneath it, straightened up so that my shoulders were at a level with the
window sill, reached up with both hands, and since I was convinced that the window would be
stuck shut I pushed it hard. The window shot up and there was a startled rustling from the bed in
the shadows. I whispered, “Finny!” sharply into the black room.
“Who is it!” he demanded, leaning out from the bed so that the light fell waveringly on his face.
Then he recognized me and I thought at first he was going to get out of bed and help me through
the window. He struggled clumsily for such a length of time that even my mind, shocked and
slowed as it had been, was able to formulate two realizations: that his leg was bound so that he
could not move very well, and that he was struggling to unleash his hate against me.
“I came to—”
“You want to break something else in me! Is that why you’re here!” He thrashed wildly in the
darkness, the bed groaning under him and the sheets hissing as he fought against them. But he
was not going to be able to get to me, because his matchless coordination was gone. He could not
even get up from the bed.
“I want to fix your leg up,” I said crazily but in a perfectly natural tone of voice which made my
words sound even crazier, even to me.
“You’ll fix my ...” and he arched out, lunging hopelessly into the space between us. He arched
out and then fell, his legs still on the bed, his hands falling with a loud slap against the floor.
Then after a pause all the tension drained out of him, and he let his head come slowly down
between his hands. He had not hurt himself. But he brought his head slowly down between his
hands and rested it against the floor, not moving, not making any sound.
“I’m sorry,” I said blindly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I had just control enough to stay out of his room, to let him struggle back into the bed by himself.
I slid down from the window, and I remember lying on the ground staring up at the night sky,
which was neither clear nor overcast. And I remember later walking alone down a rather aimless
road which leads past the gym to an old water hole. I was trying to cope with something that
might be called double vision. I saw the gym in the glow of a couple of outside lights near it and
I knew of course that it was the Devon gym which I entered every day. It was and it wasn’t.