You know English, you know about Japs, you know about DiMaggio and Louis, but you don’t know your own name, do you, schmuck?

Schmuck? Isn’t that Jewish?

I’m a Jew. A Jew or something.

“Fuck it,” I said, and got up again. Time to walk. Time to find another window and see if there are any palm trees and see if they make me scream.

I was in a nightshirt, so I dug in the drawers of the bedside stand and found some clothes. Skivvies and socks and a cream-color flannel shirt and tan cotton pants. I put them on; I remembered how to do that, anyway. And I about tripped over a pair of shoes by the bed; stopped and put them on. Civilian-type shoes, not the boondockers I was used to.

The adjoining room was a dormitory or a ward or something; twenty beds, neatly made, empty. Was I the only guy here?

I walked through the ward into a hallway, and at my right was a glassed-in area, behind which pretty girls in blue uniforms with white aprons were scurrying around. Nurses. None of them seemed to notice me. But I noticed them. They were so young. Late teens, early twenties. I hadn’t seen a pretty girl in so very long. I didn’t know why. But I knew I hadn’t. For some reason it made me want to cry.

Held it back, though. Instinct said tears would keep me in here, longer, and already I wanted out. I didn’t know where else I’d go, because I didn’t know where the hell I belonged, but it wasn’t here.

I went over to the glass and knocked; a nurse looked up at me, startled. She had light blue eyes, and blond curly shoulder-length hair showering from under her white cap. Petite, fine features. The faintest trail of freckles across a cute, nearly pug nose.

She slid a window to one side and looked at me prettily from behind the counter. “Ah-you’re the new patient,” she said. Pleasantly.

“Am I?”

She checked her watch, glanced at a chart on a clipboard on the counter. “And I think it’s about time for your Atabrine tablets.”