* * * * *

At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid
down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found
myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things
to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled
backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects
mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books
I had read--all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of
white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into _him_.

"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"

"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall
in loathing.

"I'll call a doctor."

* * * * *

The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue.
Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.

My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.

"What did the doctor say?" I forced myself to ask of him.

"To be frank, Johnnie ... you're old enough to learn the truth ... he
thinks you're taken down with consumption."