The Bell Tolls for No One Read Free Page B

him crashing into doorways and falling down the steps. It was like the whole building was under bombardment. He made it on down, gravity was on his side.
    He had a good wife. I remember one time they cleaned up my face with cotton and some kind of sterilizer when it was all smashed-in from a bad night out. They seemed very tender and concerned and serious about my smashedin face, and it was a very odd feeling to me, that care.
    Anyhow, the drinking got to Mick, and it gets to each of us differently. With him, the body swelled up, doubled, tripled in size in various places. He couldn’t zip his pants and had to cut slits in the pant legs. His story was that they didn’t have a bed for him in the vet’s hospital. My feeling was that he didn’t want to go there. Anyhow, one day he made a foolish move and tried the General Hospital.
    After a couple of days he phoned me. “Jesus Christ, they’re killing me! I’ve never seen a place like this. No doctors anywhere and nurses don’t give a damn and just these fruit orderlies running around like snobs and happy that everybody’s sick and dying. What the fuck is this place? They’re carrying the dead out by the dozens! They mix up the food trays! They won’t let you sleep! They keep you awake all night fucking around with nothing and then when the sun comes up, they wake you up again. They throw you a wet rag and tell you to get ready for breakfast and then breakfast, if you want to call it that, arrives around noontime. I never knew that people could be so cruel to the sick and dying! Get me outa here, Hank! I beg you, pal, I beg you, let me out of this pit of hell! Let me die in my apartment, let me die with a chance!”
    â€œWhatcha want me to do?”
    â€œWell, I asked to get out and they won’t give me my release. They’ve got my clothes. So you just come on down here with your car. You come up to my bed and we’ll bust out!”
    â€œDon’t you think we better ask Mona?”
    â€œMona don’t know shit. Since I can’t fuck her anymore she don’t care. Everything about me swelled up but my dick.”
    â€œMother nature is sometimes cruel.”
    â€œYeah, yeah. Now listen, you comin’ on down?”
    â€œSee you in about 25 minutes.”
    â€œO.K.,” he said.
    I knew the place, having been there 2 or 3 times myself. I found a parking spot near the entrance building and walked on in. I had the ward number. It was the stink of hell all over again. I had the strange feeling that I would die in that building some day. Maybe not. I hoped not.
    I found Mick. The oppressive helplessness hung over everything.
    â€œMick?”
    â€œHelp me up,” he said.
    I got him to his feet. He looked about the same.
    â€œLet’s go.”
    We went padding down the hall. He had on one of those chickenshit gowns, untied in back because the nurses wouldn’t tie them for you, because the nurses didn’t care about anything except catching themselves some fat young subnormal doctor. And although the patients seldom saw the doctors, the nurses did—in the elevators, pinchy pinchy! oh hee hee hee!—with the smell of death everywhere.
    The elevator door pulled open. There sat a fat young boy with pimples sucking at a popsicle. He looked at Mick in his gown.
    â€œDo you have a release, sir? You have to have a release to get out of here. My instructions are . . . ”
    â€œI’m on my own release, punk! Now you move this thing down to the street floor before I jam that popsicle up your ass!”
    â€œYou heard the man, son,” I told him.
    We moved on down, smartly, and straight through the exit building where nobody said a word. I helped him into the car. In 30 minutes he was back at his place.
    â€œOh fuck!” said Mona. “What have you done, Hank?”
    â€œHe wanted it. I believe a man should have his own wishes as much as possible.”
    â€œBut