From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) PEACE: The visit to Van Ness
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 08:04:00 

On Sun, 10 Dec 2000, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> 3.  Shortly afterwards, there is this exchange between Weer and the
> nurse:
> 
>    "Please, I've got to see the doctor.  I'm dying."
>    The nurse: "All these people are ahead of you."
>    Ted Singer and Sherry Gold are both obviously much younger than I,
> but there is no use arguing with that kind of thing. (4)
> 
> Weer is uncharacteristically obtuse here (I can't recall any similar
> instances).

When Weer says he's dying and the nurse says the others are ahead of him,
he takes her to mean (perhaps knowing she doesn't really mean) that Ted
and Sherry are closer to dying than he is, although, being younger, they
are probably further away from dying than Weer.

Possible ironies: Weer is closer to death than he thinks.  Or perhaps it's
been a very long time since he died, making him further from death (in the
other direction) than Ted and Sherry.

-Rostrum


*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/