It was a large square room, the walls painted green, the windows high but closed now against the pelting, icy rain. I was aware of the rain first, rattling against the windows, then the moaning of the little man who lay across the room from me in the only other occupied bed. He was sleeping and moaning in his sleep and under the sheet you could see the hard outline of a plaster cast from his neck down.
After a while a nurse came in with a tray of fruit juice but noticed the little guy was asleep and started walking out again.
“What about the non-paying customers?” I said. I wasn’t really feeling too bad. Only tired, with a dull ache in my left shoulder and a stiffness in my left arm.
She’d forgotten how to smile, professionally or otherwise. She said, “Well, I see seventeen is awake.”
