The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bauby muses that, although his part of the hospital resembles an expensive private school, the cafeteria crowd couldn’t be further from private school students: “the girls have hard eyes, the boys tattoos and sometimes rings on their fingers. There they sit, chain-smoking and talking about fistfights and motorbikes” (107). He conjectures that Berck is just one stop in their journey from abused childhoods to jobless futures, and that he sees “neither pity nor compassion in their eyes” when he is wheeled past them and they fall silent (107). He observes that a small typewriter with a sheet of pink paper stuck in the roller stands on a table cluttered with empty cups. He muses, “Although at the moment the page is utterly blank, I am convinced that someday there will be a message for me there. I am waiting” (108).