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"It's one of the ways."

"I thought of epilepsy, you know, and of a TIA, a transient ischemic attack, which you don't know about. Then I was afraid of a stroke--everyone should always be afraid of a stroke. Am I talking too much? I had this feeling I was seeing everything twice."

"You mean double?"

"Not that, not yet. The feeling of suspecting that I had gone through everything before. There was hardly anything new for me in the daily news. Every day there seemed to be another political campaign going on or about to start, another election, and when it wasn't that, it was another tennis tournament, or those fucking Olympic Games again. I thought it might be a good idea to come in here and check. Anyway, my brain is sound, my mind is clear. So is my conscience."

"That's all very good."

"Don't be too sure. Great crimes are committed by people whose conscience is clear. And don't forget, my father died of a stroke."

"At ninety-two?"

"Do you think that made him want to jump with joy? Michael, what will you do with yourself? Disturbing my peace of mind is my not knowing where the hell you're going to fit in."

"Now you are talking too much."

"You're the only one in the family I really can talk to, and you won't listen. The others all know this, even your mother, who always wants more alimony. Money does matter, more than almost everything else. Want a sound idea? Get a job now with a company with a good pension plan and a good medical plan, any company and any job, no matter how much you hate it, and stay there until you're too old to continue. That's the only way to live, by preparing to die."

"Oh, shit, Dad, you really believe that?"

"No, I don't, although I think it might be true. But people can't survive on Social Security, and you won't even have that. Even poor Melissa will be better off."

"Who's poor Melissa?"

"That sweetheart of a nurse out there, the one that's attractive and kind of young."

"She's not so attractive and she's older than I am."

"She is?"

"Can't you tell?"

Toward the end of Yossarian's second week in the hospital they hatched the plot that drove him out.

They drove him out with the man from Belgium in the room adjacent to his. The man from Belgium was a financial wise man with the European Economic Community. He was a very sick financial wise man from Belgium and spoke little English, which did not matter much because he had just had part of his throat removed and could not speak at all, and understood hardly any English either, which mattered greatly to the nurses and several doctors, who were unable to address him in ways that had meaning. All day and much of the night he had at his bedside his waxen and diminutive Belgian wife in unpressed fashionable clothes, who smoked cigarettes continually and understood no English either and jabbered away at the nurses ceaselessly and hysterically, flying into alarms of shrieking terror each time he groaned or choked or slept or awoke. He had come to this country to be made well, and the doctors had taken out a hunk of his larynx because he certainly would have died had they left it all in. Now it was not so certain he would live. Christ, thought Yossarian, how can he stand it?

Christ, thought Yossarian, how can I?

The man had no way to make his feelings known but to nod or shake his head in reply to insistent questions fired at him by his wife, who had no serviceable way to relay his responses. He was in more dangers and discomforts than Yossarian could tick off on the fingers of both hands. Yossarian ran out of fingers the first time he counted and did not try again. He had grown no new fingers. There was normally such strident commotion in his vicinity that Yossarian could hardly find the time to think about himself. Yossarian worried about the man from Belgium more than he wanted to. He was moving into stress and knew stress was not healthy. People caught cancer under stress. Worrying about his stress put Yossarian under more stress, and he began to feel sorry for himself too.

The man was in pain that was unimaginable to Yossarian, who received no painkillers for it and felt he would be unable to endure it much longer and pull through. The man from Belgium was drugged. He was suctioned. He was medicated and sterilized. He kept everyone so busy that Nurse MacIntosh hardly could find time for Yossarian to fondle the lace at the bottom of her slip. Business was business, and the sick man from Belgium was serious business. Melissa was rushed and rumpled, distracted and breathless. He did not feel right cajoling her attention with so much that was critical going on right next door and, once spoiled, felt impoverished without her. No one else would do.

The man from Belgium, who could hardly move, kept them all on the run. He was hyperalimentated through a tube stuck in his neck so that he would not starve to death. They fed water intravenously into the poor man so that he would not dehydrate, suctioned fluids from his lungs so he would not drown.

That man was a full-time job. He had a chest tube and a belly tube and required such constant ministration that Yossarian had little time to think about Chaplain Tappman and his problem or Milo and Wintergreen and their squads of invisible bombers or of the tall Australian roommate with the white makeup in stiletto heels with full breasts or anyone else. A few times a day Yossarian would venture into the hallway to look into the other room just to see what was going on. Each time he did he came reeling back to his own bed and collapsed in a woozy faint with an arm pressed over his eyes.

When his vision cleared and he looked up again, the more mysterious of the private detectives would be peering in at him. This secret agent was a dapper man in trimly tailored suits and muted paisley ties, with a foreign complexion and dark eyes in a strong-boned face that looked vaguely Oriental and reminded him of a nut, a shelled almond.

"Who the fuck are you?" Yossarian wanted to shout out at him more than once.

"Hey, who are you?" he did ask one time amiably, forcing a smile.

"Are you talking to me?" was the lordly rejoinder, in a soft voice with perfect enunciation.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Not at all. I was merely wondering about the thickset, balding gentleman with yellow hair who was here in the corridor a good deal up until a few days ago."