Are we going to operate or aren’t we?’
‘He doesn’t need an operation,’ complained the other.
‘It’s a small wound.
All we have to do is stop the bleeding, clean it out and put a few stitches in.’
‘But I’ve never had a chance to operate before.
Which one is the scalpel?
Is this one the scalpel?’
‘No, the other one is the scalpel.
Well, go ahead and cut already if you’re going to.
Make the incision.’
‘Like this?’
‘Not there, you dope!’
‘No incisions,’ Yossarian said, perceiving through the lifting fog of insensibility that the two strangers were ready to begin cutting him.
‘Another county heard from,’ complained the first doctor sarcastically.
‘Is he going to keep talking that way while I operate on him?’
‘You can’t operate on him until I admit him,’ said a clerk.
‘You can’t admit him until I clear him,’ said a fat, gruff colonel with a mustache and an enormous pink face that pressed down very close to Yossarian and radiated scorching heat like the bottom of a huge frying pan.
‘Where were you born?’
The fat, gruff colonel reminded Yossarian of the fat, gruff colonel who had interrogated the chaplain and found him guilty.
Yossarian stared up at him through a glassy film.
The cloying scents of formaldehyde and alcohol sweetened the air.
‘On a battlefield,’ he answered. ‘No, no.
In what state were you born?’
‘In a state of innocence.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand.’
‘Let me handle him,’ urged a hatchet-faced man with sunken acrimonious eyes and a thin, malevolent mouth.
‘Are you a smart aleck or something?’ he asked Yossarian.
‘He’s delirious,’ one of the doctors said.
‘Why don’t you let us take him back inside and treat him?’
‘Leave him right here if he’s delirious.
He might say something incriminating.’
‘But he’s still bleeding profusely.
Can’t you see?
He might even die.’
‘Good for him!’
‘It would serve the finky bastard right,’ said the fat, gruff colonel.
‘All right, John, let’s speak out.
We want to get to the truth.’
‘Everyone calls me Yo-Yo.’
‘We want you to co-operate with us, Yo-Yo.
We’re your friends and we want you to trust us.
We’re here to help you.
We’re not going to hurt you.’
‘Let’s jab our thumbs down inside his wound and gouge it,’ suggested the hatchet-faced man.
Yossarian let his eyes fall closed and hoped they would think he was unconscious.
‘He’s fainted,’ he heard a doctor say.
‘Can’t we treat him now before it’s too late?
He really might die.’
‘All right, take him.
I hope the bastard does die.’