Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t say you did,” said Dr. Cassini. “Had a bad dream?”
    “Um-m.” Carter got out of bed to get a glass of water. He carried it back in a cat’s cradle of his two little fingers and his forefingers. His method of carrying glasses had ceased to be amusing to him or to anyone else. The most difficult task for him was fastening the buttons of his shirt and trousers.
    Dr. Cassini was still standing by his bed. “I was thinking you could go back to the cell block tomorrow, if you’d prefer it.”
    Carter sensed a challenge in his words. Dr. Cassini evidently thought he was well enough. Carter’s head was ringing from morphine.
    “Or you could stay on here, if you’d like to help out. You can see we need people, even if they haven’t got their thumbs.” Dr. Cassini looked at him with his dark head cocked, as if he were saying something of importance about which Carter might have to make an earthshaking decision. “In the cell block—well, I don’t know what kind of work they could give you, farm work, shoemaking, carpentry, everything I can think of is out because of those thumbs. Then in about a week, we could make some more X-rays. The inflammation should be going down. It might be just as well that you’re up here.”
    What was he saying? Carter had a moment of nausea. The smell of disinfectant, the memory of bedpans, pile cases, bed sores, hernias, came all at once—plus a fear of becoming dependent on the morphine, just because it was easy to get here.
    “You can’t get your morphine so easily, you know,” said Dr. Cassini crisply.
    “I know. You said you could give me something else.”
    “It won’t be as good.” Dr. Cassini folded his arms and smiled.
    Carter thought that Dr. Cassini might be a morphine addict himself. It had crossed his mind before, but he wasn’t sure and he really didn’t care, but it seemed that Dr. Cassini was urging him to stay on it, to get himself hooked as Dr. Cassini was hooked—maybe. “I can still try them,” Carter said, and sat down on his bed.
    “All right. I’ll give you the pills tomorrow morning and you can go down to the zoo, if you like.” He turned away, then looked back. “If you run into trouble with the work they give you, just let me know. I can do something about it.”

5
    T he next morning, with a dozen pills in his pocket, his possessions tied up in a shirt, and a pass, Carter went down to A-block. Dr. Cassini had bandaged his thumbs for protection. It was around 9 o’clock. The inmates were at their jobs. The guard looked at his pass, glanced at his thumbs, then took Carter to his old cell, number nine, and unlocked it for him. The guard was a new one to Carter. The cell was occupied by two men now, Carter saw from the two shingles with numbers hanging over the door, and from the two towels and washcloths on the rod on the rear wall. Hanky was still here: he remembered Hanky’s color photograph of a blonde propped up on the table.
    “Maybe have to put a cot in here,” said the guard.
    Carter knew that many cells had three men in them, though the cells were originally built to hold only one man. He dreaded being back with Hanky plus still another man, each bumping into the others if he moved at all. “Isn’t there any other cell—”
    “If it says number nine, it’s number nine,” said the guard, waving Carter’s pass. “Wait here.” He went off toward the cage.
    Carter knew it would be a long wait. He crossed the corridor and sank down on a wooden bench. He waited nearly forty-five minutes, and then the guard came back. Carter stood up.
    “They’ll bring a cot up in a couple of minutes, so go on in,” he said.
    Carter went back into number nine. Without even a cot as an object of his own, he did not know where to put his things. He dropped the shirt bundle on the floor in a front corner, then lay down gently on the lower bunk and let his feet hang over the side.
    The cot arrived, carried by an inmate Carter had never seen