Meanwhile, the boils got worse. I kept getting onto streetcar #7 and going to L.A. County General Hospital and I began to fall in love with Miss Ackerman, my nurse of the squeezings. She would never know how each stab of pain would cause courage to well up in me. Despite the horror of the blood and the pus, she was always humane and kind. My love- feeling for her wasn't sexual. I just wished she would enfold me in her starched whiteness and that together we could vanish forever from the world. But she never did that. She was too practical. She would only remind me of my next appointment.