The story began on a downtown Brooklyn street corner. An elderly man had fallen down while crossing the street , and an ambulance rushed him to the nearest hospital. There, when he came to now and again, the old man repeatedly called for his son.
From a worn letter located in his pocket, an emergency-room (急救室) nurse learned that his son was a sailor stationed in North Carolina Camp. Obviously there were no other relatives.
Someone at the hospital called the Red Cross office in Brooklyn, and a request for the son to rush to Brooklyn was sent. Because time was short—the patient was dying, so they found the young man and rushed him to the airport in time to catch the only plane that night enable him to reach his dying father.
It was dusk when the nurse took the tired, anxious sailor to the bedside. “Your son is here,” she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened. The medicine he had been given because of the pain from his heart attack made his eyes weak and only saw the young man in uniform(制服 ) standing outside the oxygen tent. He extended his hand. The sailor wrapped his strong fingers around the old man’s, releasing a message of love and encouragement. The nurse brought him a chair, so the sailor could sit by the bed.
Nights are long in hospitals, but all through the night the young sailor sat there, holding the old man’s hand and offering words of hope and strength. It was nearly dawn when the patient died. The sailor placed his lifeless hand he had been holding on the bed, and went to inform the nurse.
“Who was the man?” the sailor asked.
“He was your father.” the nurse answered surprisingly.
“No, he wasn’t,” the sailor replied.” I never saw him before in my life.”
“Why didn’t you say something when I took you to him?” she asked.
“I knew immediately there‘d been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn’t here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, I guessed he really needed me. So I stayed.”
Two days later a message came in that there had been two sailors with the same name and similar number in the Camp. Someone in the personnel office had pulled out the wrong record.
But the wrong sailor had become the right son at the right time. And he proved, in a very human way, that there are people who care what happens to their fellow men.
1.An emergency-room nurse found out that the old man’s son was a sailor__________.
A. by calling the Red Cross office in Brooklyn
B. because the old man repeatedly called for his son
C. from a letter found in the old man’s pocket
D. from someone in hospital
2.In the hospital__________ .
A. the nurse stayed by the old man’s bed through most of the night
B. the dying man said a few words to his son
C. the son offered love in the last few hours of the old man’s life
D. the old man knew the young man wasn’t his son
3.The young sailor told the nurse that he was not the real son of the old man__________ .
A. after the old man died
B. when the nurse sensed something strange
C. before the sailor came to the nurse’s station
D. when holding the old man’s hand
4.The sentence “the wrong sailor had become the right son at the right time” in the last paragraph means that__________ .
A. the sailor was wrong in fooling the dying old man
B. The sailor made the right decision about what he should do
C. the sailor told the real story about him and the old man
D. the right son hurried to the hospital in time
