Word: likeness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
...there in the big brown chair and after a while I looked around and saw a guy in his thirties with short hair sleeping on the sofa, and a guy in his fifties with bristly gray whiskers rocking back and forth in a chair like mine, sort of chanting to himself. Every one else on the ward was in bed. I wondered how long it would take for the luxury of time to turn into the horror of waiting, endlessly. By the third day I had strong hints that it didn't take very long...
Sometimes they'd order coffee or cigarettes and sometimes they'd just stare and the ladies behind the counter would confer and decide what the person wanted. Then the patient would hand over his dime or thirtyfive cents, just like a poor kid in a candy store, and shuffle away with his purchase...
...student volunteer came in, breathless, out of the rain. She would take off her rainhat and shake her hair and her vinyl raincoat would sparkle with raindrops. She would move so gracefully, and so quickly. I wanted so much to talk to her. Although I knew I was like her, a student, a volunteer, I felt so far away from...
EVENTUALLY I left the canteen and walked up to O-2. The caged-in stairwell was like a pressure chamber and I felt as if I were passing into a deeper, deader, and even more remote region...