upright; then slowly, proudly, very slowly and proudly, he relaxed downward to the pillow, while across his face spread the most beatifically happy expression I have ever seen on a human being, and his eyes—normal eyes now—filled just to the brim with tears, but did not spill over, as he smiled with relief, pride, and the exhaustion that comes with release from intolerable strain.
In a second he had recovered, and was telephoning his mother. He grinned. “Every telephone really needs a bed beside it.”
But there were still plenty of confusions and disappointments too. One doctor would contradict another and then himself—because, in truth, the circumstances were so unprecedented. They were terrifically impressed at what had happened, but they could not explain it or vouch for the future. They soberly could not believe that the Gerson regime alone had produced this effect. But when we asked them “Would you yourself take the responsibility for taking Johnny off that diet, now?” they all said, “No!”
We found out more and more how sickness makes a world of its own. Johnny came to feel that people not in hospital were representatives practically of a different race, from another planet. He banded together with his fellow patients, fellow prisoners, in a kind of mutual defense pact, walling out the external world. But how he envied the healthy outlanders! What Frances did was to give him an efficient balance between the one world and the other. She taught him to adjust himself to the life of the hospital while still maintaining active touch with what went on outside. It was I who was the epitome of the external world breaking in. Sometimes I was too exuberant; the contrast was too acute, and though Johnny loved my visit every evening and looked forward to it eagerly, the letdown after I left was sometimes sharp.
He still felt very strongly that he was actively participating in Inside U.S.A. Late in December the Book-of-the-Month Club accepted it, though I still had a good deal of writing to do. Johnny sighed. “Well, that solves the financial problem!”
A little later something gave him great happiness. He had sent a question in to “Information Please,” and it was used on the program one night when I was a guest. I had asked him to listen in but he had no idea that his question was going to be used, and he went wild with excitement when he heard his name on the air. The question asked us to tell what the symbols K, K2, K., and K2 signified. Johnny stumped us handsomely, and immediately made plans for use of the Encyclopaedia Britannica he had so nicely won.
He was gay and confident. He murmured to a visitor, “The doctors are fighting among themselves now as to who cured me.”
Mount let him come home for 36 hours over Christmas, penicillin drip and all, and we had a small party and a happy time. But then he had to return to the hospital because it took time for the abscess cavity to fill. This was Christmas night. I will never forget Johnny’s calmness, covering over his heartbreak, as I drove him back and he limped down the long, empty corridor, and then hiked himself wearily into bed and drank some of his juices—so lonely, so alone, so unyielding, and with the hospital cold and stony and most of the nurses away for Christmas, after the warmth and lights and the presents under the tree at home. “Well, Father,” he said at last, “good night.”
He was not discharged till January 12. He wanted urgently to go home, but we decided to fill a small additional interval at Mrs. Seeley’s; of course we were still following the diet adhesively. Frances drove him up to the hospital for a series of last dressings, and finally he was in his own comfortable small room at home again. He had been away since August, and this was February 6. In a minute he was jumping around arranging the chemicals on the laboratory shelf. Mount came up a few days later and, venturing beyond any-thing he had ever said before,
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