Page 274 - tender-is-the-night

nurse, you must learn to take advice. Promise me you will.’
What was a promise with the head sick? He looked in
upon a frail exile from the Caucasus buckled securely in a
sort of hammock which in turn was submerged in a warm
medical bath, and upon the three daughters of a Portuguese
general who slid almost imperceptibly toward paresis. He
went into the room next to them and told a collapsed psy-
chiatrist that he was better, always better, and the man tried
to read his face for conviction, since he hung on the real
world only through such reassurance as he could find in the
resonance, or lack of it, in Doctor Diver’s voice. After that
Dick discharged a shiftless orderly and by then it was the
lunch hour.

274 Tender is the Night