Not wanting to waste his chance (in case the nurse is just a substitute for the holidays), Joe immediately starts tapping out a message in Morse code. The nurse draws the letters “MERRY CHRISTMAS” on Joe’s chest, and Joe realizes that he’s finally found someone to communicate with. One day, Joe finds that he has a new nurse. Eventually, to stop Joe’s tapping, one of the doctors gives Joe painkillers, causing him to have wild hallucinations about meeting Jesus in person. The first time he attempts this with a nurse, however, she doesn’t understand what he wants. One day, Joe gets the idea of trying to communicate to his nurses with Morse code. Keeping track of time helps Joe’s mind stay more focused, and several years pass in this new system. Although he initially fails, struggling to keep the right numbers in his head, eventually, he manages to work out a calendar based on the coming and going of nurses and the changes in temperature throughout the day. He eventually wakes up, believing the rat was a dream, but in his current condition, it’s hard to distinguish between dreams and reality.Įventually, Joe decides that the best way to take control of his situation is to find out a way to measure time. Barely able to even move without exhausting himself, at one point Joe feels himself being eaten alive by a rat. His condition means he can’t see or hear, either.
Not only is he missing both his arms, but he’s also missing his legs and most of his face, with a feeding tube going into a giant hole where his eyes, nose, and mouth used to be and a cloth mask covering the hole. Meanwhile, in the present in the hospital, Joe begins to learn the full extent of his injuries. One of Joe’s most bittersweet memories is spending the night in the arms of his girlfriend Kareen on the day before he shipped off to war. For the most part, Joe had a happy childhood, but his mind still lingers on certain events, like the time he and his friend Bill Harper accidentally lost Joe’s father’s treasured fishing rod or the time that Joe and Howie went to work on a railroad crew in the desert, only to quit after one day of arduous work. While in the hospital, he dreams about his childhood in Shale City, Colorado, and later, his time working in the bakery in Los Angeles. Joe continues struggles to tell the past apart from the present. In fact, he was gravely injured while fighting in World War I, and he’s now stuck in a hospital. Joe realizes that he’s really been hallucinating.
All of a sudden, he hears another telephone ring and remembers that his father is already dead. Joe goes home to see his mother and sees men are taking away his father’s body. When he goes to answer the phone, he learns that his father has died.
He feels like he’s waking up from a hangover. Joe Bonham wakes up to the sound of a phone ringing at the bakery in Los Angeles where he works.
0 kommentar(er)
