The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [405]
“William!” his mother exclaimed in shock as he stood before her at the door.
“Mom, I’m sick. Put me to bed,” he said feebly, throwing himself weakly into the house.
As she closed the door; he crumbled up and his mother screamed.
SECTION TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I
The thin-faced, prim nurse read the thermometer and wrote on the chart.
2:00 P. M.—103.
Shaking her head prophetically, she studied the patient, observing that the forced and shallow respirations continued. The face was flushed and emaciated. Glazed eyes. Nostrils drawn out from the effort to breathe, each emission of breath accompanied by a forced, expiratory grunt. Lips that seemed blue with raised, grayish-red fever blisters, pin-head size, on the angle of the upper lip. An anxious expression on the suffering features.
A sudden cough wracked his body, and out of his mouth there came a feeble drooling of sounds. Bending closely and listening, she distinguished the words, Please God. He became more restless. Looking vacantly up, he saw a figure of whiteness, as if through a mist. He was on fire, his legs, and his arms, and his chest, and his face. There was a nauseous taste in his dry mouth, and he could feel the coating on his tongue. That pain in his side was like a constriction or a boil, and there were aches all over his body, persisting like toothaches, or earaches, subsiding, returning in waves that shot up and down within him. Again there came that cough, coming up from his chest like a razor-bladed knife, dragging up rusty, infectious sputum. The nurse bent over him to wipe his drooling lips. She mopped his face with a cold cloth. Again he coughed, and when the cough ceased, he moaned in restlessness, dribbled out a confusion of sounds, which grew into articulated words.
“I’m dying.”
He looked up, a beseeching expression tearing his face, and he sensed himself alone and helpless, removed from the commotion of a world that beat and hummed in his ears. He sighed. Still again that cough.
“Priest,” he muttered.
The nurse shook her head. She knew the meaning of this. Again she wiped his drooling lips, and momentarily left the room while Studs lay with the feeling that he was sunk in a low bed on a rough mattress, surrounded by walls that towered up on the high ceiling.
Outside the afternoon sun beat like a torch on backyards and rear porches and the dusty cement of the alley. The exhaust pipe of an antiquated automobile backfired like a gun going off. A peddler, half a block away, was heard calling his wares in an Italian accent. A mother shrieked for her boy. A love song was crooned, and two boys walked through the alley singing Just A Gigolo out of tune.
And again that cough, sputum oozing from his heated mouth, a sense of his heart fluttering in pain, an ache which seemed to eat into the marrow at the base of his spine, pains in his shoulders and in the muscles of his arms and legs, a nauseous taste in his mouth, a pounding between his half-opened eyes, that expiratory grunt with the struggles that produced shallow breathings, and the world outside a buzz and a din and a humming in his ears.
II
“Mrs. Lonigan, you had better call Dr. O’Donnell. And also, he is moaning for the priest,” the nurse said to Mrs. Lonigan, who was haggard and worn, her face pinched, shadows indented like circles beneath his eyes.
“Oh, God! Is he dying? Is my boy dying? Oh, Blessed Mother of God!”
“Please, Mrs. Lonigan,” the nurse said patiently and with gentleness.
“Is he dying?”
“He is in a restless coma, and his condition is critical. His temperature has gone up to one hundred and three, and we had better have the doctor. After Dr. O’Donnell comes it will be best to have the priest, because he may come out of this coma and be able to confess. We’ll just hope for the best.”
“Oh, my son! My first-born son!” Mrs. Lonigan exclaimed, blessing herself.