horror and pity of it all. And as he walked, he twisted his own neck about, and beat the air with his arm like a wing, as if he had received a blow in his kidneys. He felt that he might be clean and free if he could only escape into a single burning passion—hard, and hot, and glittering—of love, hatred, terror, or disgust. But he was caught, he was strangling, in the web of futility—there was no moment of hate that was not touched by a dozen shafts of pity: impotently, he wanted to seize them, cuff them, shake them, as one might a trying brat, and at the same time to caress them, love them, comfort them.
As he thought of the dying boy upstairs, the messy ugliness of it— as they stood whimpering by while he strangled—choked him with fury and horror. The old fantasy of his childhood came back to him: he remembered his hatred of the semi-private bathroom, his messy discomfort while he sat at stool and stared at the tub filled with dirty wash, sloppily puffed and ballooned by cold gray soapy water. He thought of this as Ben lay dying.
Their hopes revived strongly in the forenoon when word came to them that the patient’s temperature was lower, his pulse stronger, the congestion of the lungs slightly relieved. But at one o’clock, after a fit of coughing, he grew delirious, his temperature mounted, he had increasing difficulty in getting his breath. Eugene and Luke raced to Wood’s pharmacy in Hugh Barton’s car, for an oxygen tank. When they returned, Ben had almost choked to death. Quickly they carried the tank into the room, and placed it near his head. Bessie Gant seized the cone, and started to put it over Ben’s mouth, commanding him to breathe it in. He fought it away tigerishly: curtly the nurse commanded Eugene to seize his hands.
Eugene gripped Ben’s hot wrists: his heart turned rotten. Ben rose wildly from his pillows, wrenching like a child to get his hands free, gasping horribly, his eyes wild with terror:
“No! No!’Gene!’Gene! No! No!”
Eugene caved in, releasing him and turning way, white-faced, from the accusing fear of the bright dying eyes. Others held him. He was given temporary relief. Then he became delirious again.
