They’ve stolen him away!’
‘Go back to your beds,’ Nurse Duckett pleaded with Dunbar and Yossarian, pushing feebly against Yossarian’s chest.
‘Please go back to your beds.’
‘You’re crazy!’ Yossarian shouted angrily at Dunbar.
‘What the hell makes you say that?’
‘Did anyone see him?’ Dunbar demanded with sneering fervor.
‘You saw him, didn’t you?’ Yossarian said to Nurse Duckett.
‘Tell Dunbar there’s someone inside.’
‘Lieutenant Schmulker is inside,’ Nurse Duckett said.
‘He’s burned all over.’
‘Did she see him?’
‘You saw him, didn’t you?’
‘The doctor who bandaged him saw him.’
‘Go get him, will you?
Which doctor was it?’
Nurse Duckett reacted to the question with a startled gasp.
‘The doctor isn’t even here!’ she exclaimed.
‘The patient was brought to us that way from a field hospital.’
‘You see?’ cried Nurse Cramer.
‘There’s no one inside!’
‘There’s no one inside!’ yelled Hungry Joe, and began stamping on the floor.
Dunbar broke through and leaped up furiously on the soldier in white’s bed to see for himself, pressing his gleaming eye down hungrily against the tattered black hole in the shell of white bandages.
He was still bent over staring with one eye into the lightless, unstirring void of the soldier in white’s mouth when the doctors and the M.P.s came running to help Yossarian pull him away.
The doctors wore guns at the waist. The guards carried carbines and rifles with which they shoved and jolted the crowd of muttering patients back.
A stretcher on wheels was there, and the solder in white was lifted out of bed skillfully and rolled out of sight in a matter of seconds. The doctors and M.P.s moved through the ward assuring everyone that everything was all right.
Nurse Duckett plucked Yossarian’s arm and whispered to him furtively to meet her in the broom closet outside in the corridor.
Yossarian rejoiced when he heard her.
He thought Nurse Duckett finally wanted to get laid and pulled her skirt up the second they were alone in the broom closet, but she pushed him away.
She had urgent news about Dunbar.
‘They’re going to disappear him,’ she said.
Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly.
‘They’re what?’ he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know.
I heard them talking behind a door.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.
I couldn’t see them.
I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar.’
‘Why are they going to disappear him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It doesn’t make sense.
It isn’t even good grammar.
What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Jesus, you’re a great help!’
‘Why are you picking on me?’ Nurse Duckett protested with hurt feelings, and began sniffing back tears.
‘I’m only trying to help.
It isn’t my fault they’re going to disappear him, is it?
I shouldn’t even be telling you.’
Yossarian took her in his arms and hugged her with gentle, contrite affection.