‘You can’t treat him until I admit him,’ the clerk said.
Yossarian played dead with his eyes shut while the clerk admitted him by shuffling some papers, and then he was rolled away slowly into a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell of formaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger.
The pleasant, permeating stink was intoxicating.
He smelled ether too and heard glass tinkling.
He listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the two doctors.
It delighted him that they thought he was unconscious and did not know he was listening.
It all seemed very silly to him until one of the doctors said,
‘Well, do you think we should save his life?
They might be sore at us if we do.’
‘Let’s operate,’ said the other doctor.
‘Let’s cut him open and get to the inside of things once and for all.
He keeps complaining about his liver.
His liver looks pretty small on this X ray.’
‘That’s his pancreas, you dope.
This is his liver.’
‘No it isn’t. That’s his heart.
I’ll bet you a nickel this is his liver.
I’m going to operate and find out.
Should I wash my hands first?’
‘No operations,’ Yossarian said, opening his eyes and trying to sit up.
‘Another county heard from,’ scoffed one of the doctors indignantly.
‘Can’t we make him shut up?’
‘We could give him a total.
The ether’s right here.’
‘No totals,’ said Yossarian.
‘Another county heard from,’ said a doctor.
‘Let’s give him a total and knock him out.
Then we can do what we want with him.’
They gave Yossarian total anesthesia and knocked him out.
He woke up thirsty in a private room, drowning in ether fumes.
Colonel Korn was there at his bedside, waiting calmly in a chair in his baggy, wool, olive-drab shirt and trousers.
A bland, phlegmatic smile hung on his brown face with its heavy-bearded cheeks, and he was buffing the facets of his bald head gently with the palms of both hands.
He bent forward chuckling when Yossarian awoke, and assured him in the friendliest tones that the deal they had made was still on if Yossarian didn’t die.
Yossarian vomited, and Colonel Korn shot to his feet at the first cough and fled in disgust, so it seemed indeed that there was a silver lining to every cloud, Yossarian reflected, as he drifted back into a suffocating daze.
A hand with sharp fingers shook him awake roughly.
He turned and opened his eyes and saw a strange man with a mean face who curled his lip at him in a spiteful scowl and bragged,
‘We’ve got your pal, buddy. We’ve got your pal.’
Yossarian turned cold and faint and broke into a sweat.
‘Who’s my pal?’ he asked when he saw the chaplain sitting where Colonel Korn had been sitting.
‘Maybe I’m your pal,’ the chaplain answered.
But Yossarian couldn’t hear him and closed his eyes.
Someone gave him water to sip and tiptoed away.
He slept and woke up feeling great until he turned his head to smile at the chaplain and saw Aarfy there instead.
Yossarian moaned instinctively and screwed his face up with excruciating irritability when Aarfy chortled and asked how he was feeling.
Aarfy looked puzzled when Yossarian inquired why he was not in jail.
Yossarian shut his eyes to make him go away. When he opened them, Aarfy was gone and the chaplain was there.
Yossarian broke into laughter when he spied the chaplain’s cheerful grin and asked him what in the hell he was so happy about.
‘I’m happy about you,’ the chaplain replied with excited candor and joy.
‘I heard at Group that you were very seriously injured and that you would have to be sent home if you lived.
Colonel Korn said your condition was critical.