'The same one!' Yossarian heard himself echo, quivering with a deep and ominous excitement that he could not control, and shoved his way after Dunbar toward the bed of the soldier in white.
'Take it easy, fellas,' the short patriotic Texan counseled affably, with an uncertain grin. 'There's no cause to be upset. Why don't we all just take it easy?'
'The same one!' others began murmuring, chanting and shouting.
Suddenly Nurse Duckett was there, too. 'What's going on?' she demanded.
'He's back!' Nurse Cramer screamed, sinking into her arms. 'He's back, he's back!' It was, indeed, the same man. He had lost a few inches and added some weight, but Yossarian remembered him instantly by the two stiff arms and the two stiff, thick, useless legs all drawn upward into the air almost perpendicularly by the taut ropes and the long lead weights suspended from pulleys over him and by the frayed black hole in the bandages over his mouth. He had,
in fact, hardly changed at all. There was the same zinc pipe rising from the hard stone mass over his groin and leading to the clear glass jar on the floor. There was the same clear glass jar on a pole dripping fluid into him through the crook of his elbow. Yossarian would recognize him anywhere. He wondered who he was.
'There's no one inside!' Dunbar yelled out at him unexpectedly.
Yossarian felt his heart skip a beat and his legs grow weak. 'What are you talking about?' he shouted with dread, stunned by the haggard, sparking anguish in Dunbar's eyes and by his crazed look of wild shock and horror. 'Are you nuts or something? What the hell do you mean, there's no one inside?'
'They've stolen him away!' Dunbar shouted back. 'He's hollow inside, like a chocolate soldier. They just took him away and left those bandages there.'
'Why should they do that?'
'Why do they do anything?'
'They've stolen him away!' screamed someone else, and people all over the ward began screaming, 'They've stolen him away. They've stolen him away!'
'Go back to your beds,' Nurse Duckett pleaded with Dunbar and Yossarian, pushing feebly against Yossarian's chest. 'Please go back to your beds.'
'You're crazy!' Yossarian shouted angrily at Dunbar. 'What the hell makes you say that?'
'Did anyone see him?' Dunbar demanded with sneering fervor.
'You saw him, didn't you?' Yossarian said to Nurse Duckett. 'Tell Dunbar there's someone inside.'
'Lieutenant Schmulker is inside,' Nurse Duckett said. 'He's burned all over.'
'Did she see him?'
'You saw him, didn't you?'
'The doctor who bandaged him saw him.'
'Go get him, will you? Which doctor was it?' Nurse Duckett reacted to the question with a startled gasp. 'The doctor isn't even here!' she exclaimed. 'The patient was brought to us that way from a field hospital.'
'You see?' cried Nurse Cramer. 'There's no one inside!'
'There's no one inside!' yelled Hungry Joe, and began stamping on the floor.
Dunbar broke through and leaped up furiously on the soldier in white's bed to see for himself, pressing his gleaming eye down hungrily against the tattered black hole in the shell of white bandages. He was still bent over staring with one eye into the lightless, unstirring void of the soldier in white's mouth when the doctors and the M.P.s came running to help Yossarian pull him away. The doctors wore guns at the waist. The guards carried carbines and rifles with which they shoved and jolted the crowd of muttering patients back. A stretcher on wheels was there, and the solder in white was lifted out of bed skillfully and rolled out of sight in a matter of seconds. The doctors and M.P.s moved through the ward assuring everyone that everything was all right.
Nurse Duckett plucked Yossarian's arm and whispered to him furtively to meet her in the broom closet outside in the corridor. Yossarian rejoiced when he heard her. He thought Nurse Duckett finally wanted to get laid and pulled her skirt up the second they were alone in the broom closet, but she pushed him away. She had urgent news about Dunbar.
'They're going to disappear him,' she said.
Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly. 'They're what?' he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily. 'What does that mean?'
'I don't know. I heard them talking behind a door.'
'Who?'
'I don't know. I couldn't see them. I just heard them say they were going to disappear Dunbar.'