again before touching that portion of it where the ligature hid broken bone and said, "I had dreams. Dreams like when one dreams of being awakened and in the dream walks and talks and does all the normal things of life. I dreamed I rose and walked as through an open door, and found myself back home, but the Union had won and scavengers from the North descended upon Dixie like vultures on an ill-dead carcass." He looked away. "My wife had died of dysentery. My farm was ruined. I had to sell the house."
"A nightmare," I told him. "You've been grievously wounded."
"Yes," he said, and looked in some distaste around him, at the wounded lying all about, as though he himself weren't as filthy and meagerly fed and hard-driven as them. "And will I live?"
I couldn't tell him it was passing marvelous that he was alive with half his brain destroyed. Though it was. So I told him . . ..
. . .(water damage renders a few lines illegible) . . .and with that he had to be contented.
The rest of the day and through the night I was kept busy with more wounded brought in, half of them at least Federal prisoners that we treated as we did our own, though some of the doctors refused to treat anyone not of their regiment, a crime and offense against divine law for which I often wished they would be incinerated on the spot. Alas, divine mercy and divine justice both being in short supply in this war we had to make do with the human variety that required sweat and blood and sleepless nights