Glass Cell Read Free

against the stone floor. Clumsy attempts to carry him. Curses. They left him crumpled on the floor while they went away again. Carter retched, but nothing came up. The men returned with a stretcher. The journey was a long one, down corridors that Carter barely saw through partly opened eyes. Up stairs after stairs they went, Moony and somebody else—what was his name, the one of last night? Or when? Up they went, nearly sliding him backward and headfirst off the stretcher. Then along corridors, narrowish ones, where inmates—Carter knew from their flesh-colored clothes—and a few Negroes in blue overalls, also inmates, stared in silence as they passed by. Then the smell of iodine and disinfectant. They were going into the hospital ward. He lay on the stretcher on a hard table. A voice was murmuring angrily. It was a nice voice, Carter thought.
    Moony’s voice replied, “He’s out of order all the time . . . He’s out of order. What’re you gonna do with guys like him? . . . You should have my job, mister . . . All right, speak to the warden. I’ll tell him a thing or two myself.”
    The doctor spoke again, lifting Carter’s wrist. “Look at this!”
    “Ah, I’ve seen worse,” said Moony.
    “How long was he hung up?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t string him up.”
    “You didn’t? Who did?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Would you mind finding out?— Would you mind finding out?”
    A man with round, horn-rimmed glasses and a white jacket washed Carter’s face with a large wet cloth, and squeezed some drops from it on to his tongue.
    “. . . Morphine, Pete,” said the doctor. “A whole half grain.”
    They rolled his sleeve higher and gave him a needle. Pain began to ebb quickly, like a flood receding, like an ocean drying up. Like heaven. A pleasant, sleepy tingling invaded his head, lightly dancing, like gentle music. They began to work on his hands, and he fell asleep during it.

2
    W hen Carter awakened, he was lying in a firm white bed on his back, his head on a pillow. His arms lay outside the covers and his thumbs were huge lumps of gauze as big as the rest of his hands. He looked to right and left. The left bed was empty, the right held a sleeping Negro with a bandaged head. Pain seeped back into his thumbs, and he realized that it was the pain that had awakened him. It was growing worse, and it frightened him.
    He looked at the approaching doctor, wide-eyed with fear, and, realizing that he looked afraid, Carter blinked his eyes. The doctor smiled. He was a small dark man of about forty.
    “How are you feeling?” asked the doctor.
    “My thumbs hurt.”
    The doctor nodded, still faintly smiling. “They took some punishment. You’ll need another shot.” He looked at his wristwatch, frowned slightly, and went away.
    When he came back with the needle, Carter asked, “What time is it?”
    “Six thirty. You had a good sleep.” The needle went in, stayed a few seconds. “How about something to eat—before this puts you to sleep again?”
    Carter did not answer. He knew from the light at the window that it was 6:30 in the evening. “What day is it?”
    “Thursday. Scrambled eggs? Milk toast? I think that’s all you’d better try— Ice cream? Does that appeal to you?”
    Carter’s brain turned tiredly over the fact that this was the kindest voice he had heard since entering the prison. “Scrambled.”
    Carter was in the ward for two days before they removed the bandages, and then his thumbs looked enormous to him and they were bright pink. They did not look as if they belonged to him or to his own hands. The thumbnail was tiny in the mass of flesh. And they still hurt. The morphine shots came every four hours, and Carter wished they were more often. The doctor tried to be reassuring, but Carter could see that he was worried because the pain did not diminish. His name was Dr. Stephen Cassini.
    On Sunday, Carter was allowed no visitors, whatever the state of his demerits, because he was in