At two a.m. he drove her from the room, braving her eyes. Alone, it was harder. His eyelids drooped. A small ache appeared in the cramped muscles of his back. The left leg of his once-white trousers was coldly damp where saline from the wet-packs had dripped.

The hospital was quiet.

Quiet.

Except for occasional little sounds. Pain cries, muted hollow drumming of urine into bedpan, rubber-heel tattoo across linoleum floors; blending to the background like cricket-shrill and birdcalls in the country, felt but not actually heard.

Twice he dozed briefly, jerking himself awake to hastily change the ice-water packs.

I’m sorry, Mr. Grigio, he silently told the recumbent form on the bed.

If I had not been hungry for money I would be more rested now, better able to take care of you. But I am hungry for money with good reason and I needed the money from that moonlighting. Really needed it.

Only please don’t die because I fall asleep.

God, don’t let that happen to me. Don’t let that happen to him.

His hands dipped into the icy water.

Throttled the cold cloth.

Applied the chill pack.

Took the fabric meant for warm female loins, warmed now instead by fire absorbed from braised male flesh, and dropped it into the bowl for rechilling.

He repeated the procedure again and again while Joseph Grigio breathed soft unconscious sighs, occasionally whimpering unintelligible Italian phrases. His burned face and body were perceptibly swollen now.

Listen, Adam told him.

This is a hell of a lot of trouble if you die. You will not die on me, you pitiful incendiary son of a bitch.

You had better not, he threatened.

Once he thought he heard the harlequin walking through the corridors of the ward.

“Stay away from here,” he said aloud.

Scutta mal occhio, poo-poo-poo.

Repeating the litany as he drove his hands into the cold wet.

He lost track of the hours, but it no longer became a battle to stay awake. He had spurs of pain which kept him headed into consciousness. Sometimes he almost wept with the pain as he reached into the bowl whose ice he had replenished three more times in the course of the night. His hands became gnarled and blue, the fingers difficult to bend, their tips puckered and empty.

Once, in his own agony he forgot about the patient, abandoned him. He rose, rubbed his hands, stretched, arched his back, flexed his fingers, batted his eyes, walked to the men’s room and relieved himself, washed his hands with wonderful warm water.

When he got back to Room 218 the packs on Mr. Grigio were warm, far too warm. Furiously he squeezed new ones, applied them, dropped the used ones in the bowl.

Mr. Grigio groaned, and he answered with a groan of his own.

“You haven’t been here all night?” Meomartino said.

He didn’t answer.

“Cristos. Obviously you’ll do anything to win coffee.”

He heard the voice as through a telephone, although the Surgical Fellow stood next to him.