With force, with some sort of an inner screw, at length I succeeded in tearing my eyes away from the glass beneath my feet, and I noticed the golden letters, “Medical Bureau.” Why did he bring me here rather than to the Operation Department? Why did he spare me?⁠—about this I did not even think at that moment. I made one jump over all the steps, firmly closed the door behind me and took a very deep breath, as if I had not breathed since morning and as if my heart had not beaten for the same length of time, as if only now I started to breathe and only now there opened a sluice in my chest.⁠ ⁠…

Inside there were two of them, one a short specimen with heavy legs, his eyes like the horns of a bull tossing the patients up, the other extremely thin with lips like sparkling scissors, a nose like a blade⁠—it was the same man who⁠ ⁠… I ran to him as to a dear friend, straight over close to the blade, and muttered something about insomnia, dreams, shadows, yellow sand. The scissors-lips sparkled and smiled.

“Yes, it is too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you.”