~ 10 ~
I took his temperature.
"What is it?"
"Something like a hundred," I said. It was one hundred and two and four tenths.
"It was a hundred and two," he said.
"Who said so? Your temperature is all right," I said. "It's nothing to worry about."
"I don't worry," he said, "but I can't keep from thinking."
"Don't think," I said. "Just take it easy."
"I'm taking it easy," he said and looked straight ahead.
He was evidently holding tight onto himself about something.
"Take this with water."
"Do you think it will do any good?"
"Of course, it will."
I sat down and opened the "Pirate" book and commenced to read, but I could see he
was not following, so I stopped.
"About what time do you think I'm going to die?" he asked.
"What?"
"About how long will it be before I die?"
"You aren't going to die. What's the matter with you?"
"Oh, yes, I am. I heard him say a hundred and two."
"People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two. That's a silly way to talk."
"I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can't live with forty-four
degrees. I've got a hundred and two."
He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o'clock in the morning.
"You poor Schatz," I said. "It's like miles and kilometres. You aren't going to die.
That's a different thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind it's
ninety-eight."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," I said. "It's like miles and kilometres. You know, like how many
kilometres we make when we do seventy miles in the car?"
"Oh," he said.
But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too,
finally, and the next day he was very slack and cried very easily at little things that were of no
importance.
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: