AT two-thirty the next morning, Lymie opened his eyes in a bare hospital room. The light was on, shaded by a piece of yellow paper. Miss Vogel, the night nurse, saw that he was awake, came over to the bed, and took his temperature. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with dyed black hair and a black fuzz on her upper lip. She took the thermometer out from under Lymie’s tongue and read it. Then she wiped his forehead with a damp washcloth, and straightened the covers. These first threads of dependency having been established between them, she bent over the bed, so that her face was close to his,
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