The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [172]
He fell asleep, and was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of voices and the noise of orderlies moving patients into the tent. Occasionally he could see the red skeletal outline of a hand covering a flashlight, and once or twice a midgeon of light cast an eerie shadow across a patient's face. What's going on? Minetta wondered. He could hear a man groaning, and the sound formed goose flesh on his scalp. The doctor came in, and talked for a little while with one of the orderlies. "Watch the drain on that thoracic, and give him a hypo, twice the usual amount, if he's too restless."
"Yes, sir."
That's all they know, Minetta thought, hypo, hypo, I could be a sawbones myself. He was watching the scene through half-opened eyes, and he listened cautiously to the conversation between the two patients whose heads were bandaged. It was the first time he had heard them speak. "Hey, orderly," one of them was asking, "what's up?"
The orderly came over to them, and talked for a little while. "I hear there was a lot of patrolling today, and these guys just came from Battalion Aid."
"You know if E Company was in it?"
"Ask the General," the medic said.
"I'm glad I wasn't in it," one of the patients muttered.
"You ain't just a bird-turding, Jack," the orderly said.
Minetta turned over. What a way to get waked up, he thought. There was a patient at the far end of the tent who was weeping with loud thick sounds that seemed to writhe out of his chest and throat. Minetta closed his eyes. What a setup, he thought disgustedly. His annoyance was suppressing a great deal of fear; he had become conscious suddenly of the thrumming of the jungle night outside the tent, and he had the childish horror that comes from waking suddenly in the darkness. "Jesus," he muttered. With the exception of the minor exertions that had been required to use the bed pan under the cot and to eat the food that had been set before him, he had been completely inactive for two and a half days, and it made him extremely restless. I can't take this, he said to himself. The patient who had been weeping had begun to scream now, and the sounds had such terror that Minetta ground his teeth and held the blanket over his ears. "NEEEE-YOWWWWWWW, NEEEEEEE-YOWWWWWRR," the patient wailed, imitating the sound of a mortar, and then he screamed again, "God, you got to save me, you got to save me!'
There was a long silence afterward with no sound at all in the black tent, and then one of the patients muttered, "Another psycho."
"What the hell are we in the loony ward for?"
Minetta shivered. That nut could kill me when I'm asleep. His thigh, which was almost healed, began to throb. I gotta stay awake. He pitched restlessly, listening to the crickets and the animals in the brush beyond the tent. A few shots were fired far in the distance, and he began to shudder again. I will be nuts by morning, he thought, and began to giggle to himself. His stomach felt empty; he was hungry. What did I get into this for? he wondered.
One of the new patients began groaning, and lapsed at last into a bubbly cough. That guy sounds bad, Minetta thought. Death. It seemed at the moment almost tangible. He became afraid to breathe, as if the air were polluted. In the darkness things seemed to be moving about him. What a night, he said to himself. His heart was beating quickly. Oh, Jeez, lemme just get out of here.
His stomach was tense and nervous; he retched emptily once or twice. I ain't gonna get any sleep, that's a cinch. Jealousy began to torment him. Minetta went through a long fantasy in which Rosie made love to another man; it began with her going alone to dance at Roseland; and it ended inevitably, sickly, in his mind; he felt a chill sweat forming on his shoulders and the backs of his thighs. He began to worry about his family. They ain't gonna hear from me for a couple of months. How the hell will I write them a letter? They'll think I'm dead. He felt a pang as he thought of his mother's anxiety. Jeez, the way she'd fuss over me when I got a cold. Italian mothers and Jewish mothers, they're always that way. He tried to repress the concern his mother was causing him, and began to think of Rosie again. If she don't hear from me, she'll be fooling around with someone else. He became bitter. Aaah, fug her, I've had dames who give me a better time than her. There's lots of others. He thought of the exciting shiny luster of her eyes, and felt a comfortable grief and self-pity. He longed for her.