Dart’s letter today is longer and it begins with bad news. “In the language of the masses, I feel like hell. I’m a strict bed patient again! I stand between the devil and the briny deep.”
He goes on to say that he has contradictory instructions from two different doctors: One says he cannot under any circumstances lie on his back or sit “on what I’ve been sitting on for years.” The other orders that he must lie on his back with his leg elevated again! It seems the phlebitis and the surgical wound are both vying for complete attention. His next paragraph puts a grim punctuation on his story.
It seems there was a Marine in the neighboring ward who was told today that he’d need another operation (his 7th) on a cyst like Dart’s. The Marine got out of bed, donned his dress blues, walked out of the hospital, and jumped off the nearest bridge, falling 50 feet to agonizing injuries.
Another of Dart’s buddies from his first ward at McIntyre hospital is back. He and Dart are being moved to the “guinea pig ward.”
Changing the subject, Dart writes about a lively game of craps going on across the ward from him. As the five little cubes with spots on them roll from the cup, there are expressions of anguish or joy. Writes Dart, “Personally, I do not wish to risk my already meager exchequer on a game of chance – ever.” Like father, like daughter, it seems.
Switching gears again, Dart tells of a “comely, be-goggled miss from the Red Cross” wheeling a battered piano into the ward this afternoon and entertaining the guys with a lively concert. She was followed by a motley crew of musicians dressed in Navy blues, who treated the patients to an hour of one of the best string sextets in the country. (Featured regularly on the radio program “Meet Your Navy”). They played everything from Strauss to Gershwin. When they departed, they left the battered piano behind. Now, Dart is being tortured by the ham-fisted antics of non-musicians banging out “Chopsticks” and “Glow Worm.” To a music lover like Dart, that must have been as uncomfortable as an infected wound and a swollen leg.
This juxtaposition of professional musicians and tone-deaf hacks reminds me of another comparison that strikes me often. That would be the comparison of Dart’s original prose and my plodding paraphases of same. I hope, dear reader, that you are taking the time to scroll through the actual letters accompanying these posts to get the first-hand flavor of these two authors.
