Read Online A Separate Peace by John Knowles - Free Book Online Page A

will.”
    Dr. Stanpole hesitated, and I think glanced at me for a moment. “Sports are finished. As a friend you ought to help him face that and accept it. The sooner he does the better off he’ll be. If I had the slightest hope that he could do more than walk I’d be all for trying for everything.There is no such hope. I’m sorry, as of course everyone is. It’s a tragedy, but there it is.”
    I grabbed my head, fingers digging into my skin, and the doctor, thinking to be kind, put his hand on my shoulder. At his touch I lost all hope of controlling myself. I burst out crying into my hands; I cried for Phineas and for myself and for this doctor who believed in facing things. Most of all I cried because of kindness, which I had not expected.
    â€œNow that’s no good. You’ve got to be cheerful and hopeful. He needs that from you. He wanted especially to see you. You were the one person he asked for.”
    That stopped my tears. I brought my hands down and watched the red brick exterior of the infirmary, a cheerful building, coming closer. Of course I was the first person he wanted to see. Phineas would say nothing behind my back; he would accuse me, face to face.
    We were walking up the steps of the infirmary, everything was very swift, and next I was in a corridor being nudged by Dr. Stanpole toward a door. “He’s in there. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
    The door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it back and stood transfixed on the threshold. Phineas lay among pillows and sheets, his left leg, enormous in its white bindings, suspended a little above the bed. A tube led from a glass bottle into his right arm. Some channel began to close inside me and I knew I was about to black out.
    â€œCome on in,” I heard him say. “You look worse than I do.” The fact that he could still make a light remark pulled me back a little, and I went to a chair beside his bed. He seemed to have diminished physically in the few days which had passed, and to have lost his tan. His eyes studied me as though I were the patient. They no longer hadtheir sharp good humor, but had become clouded and visionary. After a while I realized he had been given a drug. “What are you looking so sick about?” he went on.
    â€œFinny, I—” there was no controlling what I said, the words were instinctive, like the reactions of someone cornered. “What happened there at the tree? That goddam tree, I’m going to cut down that tree. Who cares who can jump out of it. What happened, what happened? How did you fall, how could you fall off like that?”
    â€œI just fell,” his eyes were vaguely on my face, “something jiggled and I fell over. I remember I turned around and looked at you, it was like I had all the time in the world. I thought I could reach out and get hold of you.”
    I flinched violently away from him. “To drag me down too!”
    He kept looking vaguely over my face. “To get hold of you, so I wouldn’t fall off.”
    â€œYes, naturally.” I was fighting for air in this close room. “I tried, you remember? I reached out but you were gone, you went down through those little branches underneath, and when I reached out there was only air.”
    â€œI just remember looking at your face for a second. Awfully funny expression you had. Very shocked, like you have right now.”
    â€œRight now? Well, of course, I am shocked. Who wouldn’t be shocked, for God sakes. It’s terrible, everything’s terrible.”
    â€œBut I don’t see why you should look so personally shocked. You look like it happened to you or something.”
    â€œIt’s almost like it did! I was right there, right on the limb beside you.”
    â€œYes, I know. I remember it all.”
    There was a hard block of silence, and then I said quietly,as though my words might detonate the room, “Do you remember what made you