The general wards--where
the poor folks went--were always so overcrowded that patients with all
sorts of different diseases had to be packed into the same rooms, and
often infected each other. When an operation was to be performed, things
were managed in the most cheerfully casual way: the patient was laid
on a stretcher and carried across the open yard, often in the depth of
winter, and as he was always covered up with a rug, the others usually
thought he was being taken off to the dead-house.
When Peer opened his eyes, he was aware of a man in a white blouse
standing by the foot of his bed. "Why, I believe he's coming-to," said
the man, who seemed to be a doctor. Peer found out afterwards from a
nurse that he had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.
He lay there, day after day, conscious of nothing but the stabbing of
a red-hot iron boring through his chest and cutting off his breathing.
Some one would come every now and then and pour port wine and naphtha
into his mouth; and morning and evening he was washed carefully with
warm water by gentle hands. But little by little the room grew lighter,
and his gruel began to have some taste. And at last he began to
distinguish the people in the beds near by, and to chat with them.
On his right lay a black-haired, yellow-faced dock labourer with a
broken nose. His disease, whatever it might be, was clearly different
from Peer's. He plagued the nurse with foul-mouthed complaints of
the food, swearing he would report about it.
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