Chapter 5
BLINDING light struck at his eyeballs and for a little while he knew pain and violent nausea. A thousand devils with iron mallets beat out an anvil chorus inside his skull. Then someone lifted his head and forced pungent liquid down his throat.
A starched, professional voice said, “Breathe deep, through your mouth, son,” and McCord obediently breathed deep through his mouth, and presently found that he could open his eyes and keep them open.
After a while he could even identify the room he was in and some of the faces which ringed the bed on which he lay.
He discovered that the starched, professional voice belonged to a white-haired man who had Physician and Surgeon written all over him. A gray-faced, hard-bitten man who later turned out to be one of the house d***s stood bes
