The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [418]
“I’m dying.”
He looked up, a beseeching expression tearing his face, and he sensed himself alone and helpless, removed from the commotion of a world that beat and hummed in his ears. He sighed. Still again that cough.
“Priest,” he muttered.
The nurse shook her head. She knew the meaning of this. Again she wiped his drooling lips, and momentarily left the room while Studs lay with the feeling that he was sunk in a low bed on a rough mattress, surrounded by walls that towered up on the high ceiling.
Outside the afternoon sun beat like a torch on backyards and rear porches and the dusty cement of the alley. The exhaust pipe of an antiquated automobile backfired like a gun going off. A peddler, half a block away, was heard calling his wares in an Italian accent. A mother shrieked for her boy. A love song was crooned, and two boys walked through the alley singing Just A Gigolo out of tune.
And again that cough, sputum oozing from his heated mouth, a sense of his heart fluttering in pain, an ache which seemed to eat into the marrow at the base of his spine, pains in his shoulders and in the muscles of his arms and legs, a nauseous taste in his mouth, a pounding between his half-opened eyes, that expiratory grunt with the struggles that produced shallow breathings, and the world outside a buzz and a din and a humming in his ears.
II
“Mrs. Lonigan, you had better call Dr. O’Donnell. And also, he is moaning for the priest,” the nurse said to Mrs. Lonigan, who was haggard and worn, her face pinched, shadows indented like circles beneath his eyes.
“Oh, God! Is he dying? Is my boy dying? Oh, Blessed Mother of God!”
“Please, Mrs. Lonigan,” the nurse said patiently and with gentleness.
“Is he dying?”
“He is in a restless coma, and his condition is critical. His temperature has gone up to one hundred and three, and we had better have the doctor. After Dr. O’Donnell comes it will be best to have the priest, because he may come out of this coma and be able to confess. We’ll just hope for the best.”
“Oh, my son! My first-born son!” Mrs. Lonigan exclaimed, blessing herself.
“We must give him all the chance we can and let the will of God and Nature take its course. Come now, dear. I know how you feel, and I want you to bear up like the brave mother that you are.”
“God have mercy on me, a poor mother carrying this cross at the end of my old days. Oh, Blessed Mary, Mother of God, be with me in my hour of tribulation.”
Following the nurse into the sick room, Mrs. Lonigan dipped her hands into the holy water fount hanging by the door, blessed herself, sprayed the room, formed the sign of the cross over Studs with wetted fingers while the nurse wiped his lips. She looked down at the emaciated and tortured parcel of flesh that was her son. She blessed herself, muttered words of prayer, walked out of the room, and the nurse heard her at the telephone.
The window curtain stirred. A troop of shouting children passed in the alley, and Studs tossed with the echoing of their cries. He quivered, coughed deep from his chest. He looked up beseechingly with glassy, half-opened eyes as the nurse wiped his lips. Why must he be tortured with a rough mattress?
III
His eyes closed. He knew that he had been left alone to burn up, to be bruised and hurt by a rough mattress. His ears buzzed. Turmoil seethed in his head. He had to get out. To sleep, to die, even death, anything but this fire and weakness in him, and this stiff, hard mattress. With relief, he felt a cold cloth on his face. His head sagged.