John Andrews opened his eyes. It was pitch black, except for a series of bright yellow oblongs that seemed to go up into the sky, where he could see the stars. His mind became suddenly acutely conscious. He began taking account of himself in a hurried frightened way. He craned his neck a little. In the darkness he could make out the form of a man stretched out flat beside him who kept moving his head strangely from side to side, singing at the top of his lungs in a shrill broken voice. At that moment Andrews noticed that the smell of carbolic was overpoweringly strong, that it dominated all the familiar smells of blood and sweaty clothes. He wriggled his shoulders so that he could feel the two poles of the stretcher. Then he fixed his eyes again in the three bright yellow oblongs, one above the other, that rose into the darkness. Of course, they were windows; he was near a house. He moved his arms a little. They felt like lead, but unhurt. Then he realized that his legs were on fire. He tried to move them; everything went black again in a sudden agony of pain. The voice was still shrieking in his ears: “There's a girl in the heart of Maryland With a heart that belongs to me-e.” But another voice could be heard, softer, talking endlessly in tender clear tones: “An' he said they were goin' to take me way down south where there was a little house on the beach, all so warm an' quiet...” The song of the man beside him rose to a tuneless shriek, like a phonograph running down: “An' Mary-land was fairy-land When she said that mine she'd be...” Another voice broke in suddenly in short spurts of whining groans that formed themselves into fragments of drawn-out intricate swearing. And all the while the soft voice went on. Andrews strained his ears to hear it. It soothed his pain as if some cool fragrant oil were being poured over his body. “An' there'll be a garden full of flowers, roses an' hollyhocks, way down there in the south, an' it'll be so warm an' quiet, an' the sun'll shine all day, and the sky'll be so blue...” Andrews felt his lips repeating the words like lips following a prayer. “--An' it'll be so warm an' quiet, without any noise at all. An' the garden'll be full of roses an'...” But the other voices kept breaking in, drowning out the soft voice with groans, and strings of whining oaths. “An' he said I could sit on the porch, an' the sun'll be so warm an' quiet, an' the garden'll smell so good, an' the beach'll be all white, an' the sea...” Andrews felt his head suddenly rise in the air and then his feet. He swung out of the darkness into a brilliant white corridor. His legs throbbed with flaming agony. The face of a man with a cigarette in his mouth peered close to his. A hand fumbled at his throat, where the tag was, and someone read: “Andrews, 1.432.286.” But he was listening to the voice out in the dark, behind him, that shrieked in rasping tones of delirium: