Then there was light all around me, and there was a beefy guy in a white jacket standing with his hand on the wall switch.
“What's this I hear about you giving the nurse a hard time?” he asked, and there was no more feigning sleep.
“I don't know,” I said. “What is it?”
That troubled him for a second or two, said the frown then, “It's time for your shot.”
“Are you an M.D.?” I asked.
“No, but I'm authorized to give you a shot.”
“And I refuse it,” I said, “as I've a legal right to do. What's it to you?”
“You'll have your shot,” he said, and be moved around to the left side of the bed. He had a hypo in one hand which had been out of sight till then.
It was a very foul blow, about four inches below the belt buckle, I'd say, and it left him on his knees.
“____ ____!” he said, after a time.
“Come within spitting distance again,” I said, “and see what happens.”
“We've got ways to deal with patients like you,” he gasped.
So I knew the time had come to act.
“Where are my clothes?” I said.
“____ ____!” he repeated.
“Then I guess I'll have to take yours. Give them to me.”
It became boring with the third repetition, so I threw the bedclothes over his head and clobbered him with the metal strut.
Within two minutes, I'd say, I was garbed all in the color of Moby Dick and vanilla ice cream. Ugly. I shoved him into the closet and looked out the lattice window. I saw the Old Moon with the New Moon in her arms, hovering above a row of poplars. The grass was silvery and sparkled. The night was bargaining weakly with the sun. Nothing to show, for me, where this place was located. I seemed to be on the third floor of the building though, and there was a cast square of light off to my left and low, seeming to indicate a first floor window with someone awake behind it. So I left the room and considered the hallway. Off to the left, it ended against a wall with a latticed window, and there were four more doors, two on either side. Probably they let upon more doors like my own. I went and looked out the window and saw more grounds, more trees, more night, nothing new.
Turning, I headed in the other direction.
Doors, doors, doors, no lights from under any of them, the only sounds my footsteps from the too-big borrowed shoes.
Laughing Boy's wristwatch told me it was five forty-four. The metal strut was inside my belt, under the white orderly jacket, and it rubbed against my hip bone as I walked. There was a ceiling fixture about every twenty feet, casting about forty watts of light.
// un that's about it for Laughing Boy :)
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