Word: warded
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After half an hour guys started coming back on the ward again, and then disappeared into their rooms. I was still alone. So after a while I went into the room that Mrs. Snowden said was mine. It was just like the other nine tiny singles of our ward: bed, chair, dresser, mirror...
AFTER I ARRIVED in Ward O-2, we went immediately into the nurses' office. Ian introduced me to Mrs. Snowden, the head nurse. He told me that she was under strict orders: 1) not to talk to me, and 2) not to tell any other nurses, doctors, or patients who I was. The idea was that I should have as "uncontaminated" an experience as possible, that I should be treated as much as a patients as possible. Ian said goodby or something like that that made me scared and he smiled and left. I smiled to Mrs. Snowden and walked...
...very different from any ward I'd ever been on as a volunteer. There was a very long hallway with a row of ten doors lining one wall. Each door led to a small bedroom. The opposite long wall, coated with thick yellow or green hospital paint, was pretty bare except for the door that led onto the ward, an old Gauguin print, and halfway down the length of the ward, the TV. I glanced up and down the long narrow room and noticed a few middle-aged men, either skinny or fat in cheap untucked cotton shirts and chinos...
...curled up in a fake leather chair for some time. Gradually I became accustomed to what little activity there was on the ward. The dominant sound was the TV. Below the TV there could be heard occasional snoring and shifting and shufling. And once in a while a far-away telephone ring from the nurses' office. That...
...hours, as I sat curled up in the armchair, I gradually made the transition from person to patient. The movement was down, and especially in. I experienced a luxurious, guilt-free withdrawal into myself. Eventually there was just me on Ward O-2 and a bunch of other crazy people with whom I felt close, and some vague abstractions like Harvard and Cambridge and Cape...