by Helen Wells
“I want you to meet Miss Antonio and Miss Prentice, the other nurses on this ward.”
These were two older student nurses in striped blue and white. Miss Antonio, a short dark girl who was encouraging a patient to eat, looked up and smiled understandingly. Tall, chilly Miss Prentice, with her arms full of dinner trays, nodded without much interest.
“Now—uh—let’s see what you can do to help,” the pretty head nurse said thoughtfully. Cherry saw at once that student nurses never make a move except under close and continual supervision. “Miss Franklin, would you get clean towels from the linen closet?” Cherry swallowed a giggle. Just what the insulting nurse had predicted a month ago! But Miss Baker, with her clear eyes and friendly voice, put it so nicely. “We’ve been needing clean towels all morning and no one’s had a chance to get them.” Miss Franklin rushed off, eager and confident.
“What a darling Miss Baker is,” Cherry thought. “If she asked me to scrub the floor with a toothbrush, I believe I’d say ‘Thank you!’ ”
“And you, Miss Ames. I think Miss Prentice could use some help in the kitchen. The ward’s just had lunch, you know.”
Cherry went into the kitchen rather disappointed, for she wanted to stay on the ward and get to know the patients. She had daydreamed a bit about how her presence on the ward might bring untold comfort to the sick.
But the tiny kitchen was fun in its way, even though she and Miss Prentice stepped on each other’s toes as they stacked trays. It was clear that Miss Prentice considered probationers less than nothing. “She acts as if she was never a probie herself,” Cherry thought. “Maybe she sprang from the cradle direct to student nurse.” She was puzzled by the chevrons on her student nurse’s uniform. With careful respect, she asked Miss Prentice what they stood for.
Miss Prentice peered down from the heights of her dignity, rather flattered. “That’s because I’m a third year nurse. Also, I’ve been on Ward 4 longer than any other student nurse, and I’m in charge when Miss Baker is off duty.” She seemed to regret her condescension and immediately froze again.
Cherry ignored Miss Prentice in her own turn and put her attention on the ward kitchen. It was tiny but complete, with a sink, steam table, and dumb-waiter. Over the clash of dishes and forks, Miss Prentice—to Cherry’s amazement—explained about special diets versus regular house diets. They stacked and stacked for what seemed like hours. Then Miss Antonio shoved in the last of the trays, and suddenly Cherry found that her job had melted away. Miss Prentice hurried off to X-ray. Cherry wandered back into the ward, feeling ignorant and in the way.
“Well, at any rate,” she thought, “it doesn’t take training to be cheerful and pleasant to the patients. I know I could handle them if Miss Baker would just give me the chance.”
The chance came immediately. Miss Baker called Cherry over to her desk and said, “Will you see if anyone wants anything, Miss Ames, and see if everyone is comfortable for the afternoon rest?”
Cherry brightened and started down the row of beds. At the first bed she carelessly rested her hand on the patient’s table.
“Don’t do that!” the gray-haired woman on the pillow exclaimed querulously. “You’ll get my bed jacket all wrinkled!”
“I’m sorry,” Cherry said. Her hand was nowhere near the pink bed jacket but Cherry thought it wiser not to say so, and obediently moved it away.
“For heaven’s sake!” the patient complained. “I don’t see why you have to bother me anyhow!”
“Is there anything you’d like?” Cherry asked gently, hanging on tight to her temper. “Are you comfortable?”
“Of course I’m not comfortable. How can I be comfortable with a raging fever and a horrible headache? I suppose you think I’m complaining. Well, I’m sick! I’m sick so I’ve got a right to complain!”
Miss Antonio came up noiselessly. Cherry felt her cheeks flame as she retreated. With deft strong hands the older nurse drew up the patient’s covers and said, “You must try to rest now, Mrs. Brownlee. No more talking.” She wheeled and left her, motioning Cherry to leave too. The gray-haired woman started to grumble again but Miss Antonio said firmly, “Time for a nap.” And the patient subsided.
With a grin, Cherry thanked Miss Antonio for her lesson in practical psychology. “This is going to take learning,” Cherry told herself. “I guess I’m not such a master mind at that.” She approached her next patient more cautiously.
A pretty little blonde woman smiled up at her and asked Cherry to pour her a glass of water from the pitcher on her bedside table. Cherry steadied the woman’s thin shoulders as she lifted herself to drink. The woman’s weakness, and her grateful glance, made Cherry feel very protective.
“Don’t you mind that mean ol’ Mis’ Brownlee, honey,” she whispered to Cherry over the rim of her glass. “Don’t you worry. You’re going to do fine.”
Now it was Cherry’s turn to be grateful. The soft Southern drawl went on. “Now when you come to that funny Mis’ Noonan, down in the bed yonder, be sure you tell her how fine she’s looking today. She certainly loves to hear that. And, honey, take care with that fat Mis’ Crosser. Don’t you bother her. She’s a caution for cats.” Cherry’s lips twitched. She saw that this gossipy, good-hearted little patient would keep her here all day if she was not careful, and a woman in another bed was looking jealously toward her. “That Mis’ Brackett, now, she’s a sad case, honestly, it’s a real pity—–”
“Nurse!” came a tired voice from the next bed. “I’m so thirsty—please.”
The whisper went on, “She always feels neglected, honey. Now if there’s the least little thing you want to know, just you come to me. I can see you’re new.”
Cherry thanked her with mixed emotions and hurried on to the next bed. This pale woman accepted Cherry’s help with the glass, drank it all, and lay back listlessly on the pillow without a word. Cherry rearranged her blanket and, seeing how exhausted the patient was, kept silent. The woman thanked her with heavy eyes.
On light feet she went down the row of beds. Across the room, she saw Josie doing the same thing—not a scared Josie now—for she was so absorbed in easing the patients that she had mercifully forgotten herself.
Cherry slowly gathered confidence as most of the women unquestioningly accepted her ministrations. Cherry looked down into the contrasting faces: a plump Jewish grandmother, an Italian woman with a smile like a sunburst, a tiny little Irish girl not much older than herself, a Slavic woman who spoke no English. What an assorted lot they were! And each patient’s personality was so different, too; for each one, Cherry had to find a different approach. It was challenging, it was fun. All went well until Cherry came to the last bed.
A stern middle-aged woman glanced at her critically and demanded, “How old are you?”
Cherry jumped. “Eighteen.”
“Same’s my girl.” The woman’s mouth shut like a clamp. “Hasn’t the sense of a chicken. Too young,” she proclaimed loudly enough for the whole ward to hear.
“If you’d turn your head a little—” Cherry suggested, reaching to plump up the twisted pillow, and trying to change the subject.
“Entirely too young to be in a hospital.” The woman ignored Cherry’s efforts. The other patients were taking an interest. Cherry’s gingerly developing confidence did a back flip. “Besides, you don’t look a day over fifteen to me.”
Cherry was fumbling for her professional authority when Miss Baker came to the rescue. There was an amused look in her clear hazel eyes. “Very good, Miss Ames,” she said approvingly, within the patient’s hearing. At that moment Cherry could have hugged her. She went off limply into the kitchen.
A moment later, Josie Franklin stumbled into the kitchen, too. She managed to look both frightened and elated. “Isn’t it awful?” she panted. “But—I can’t believe it—some of them seemed to like me!” She added mournfully, “And some of them didn’t.”
Cherry nodded as they each sipped a glass of water. “Buck up. After a
ll, it’s only our first day on the ward and there’s worse coming.” Josie looked so gloomy that Cherry exclaimed, “Silly, I’m only teasing!”
“Don’t tease me,” Josie warned. “I might collapse.” She looked at Cherry soberly from behind her glasses. “I’m glad I’m working with you, you’re so sure of yourself. You aren’t a bit scared.”
Cherry simply leaned against the sink and laughed.
Miss Baker came in and assigned them several small jobs. Almost all the patients were asleep now, so they had to move softly as they boiled rubber gloves in the fish kettle, a long, low pan shaped like a fish, powdered and tested them for holes and sent them out to be sterilized. The afternoon wore away. They helped the maid put away clean linens and boiled glasses and pitchers in the sterilizer. The head nurse sent Cherry to get a prescription filled. By the time she returned from the apothecary in a distant wing of the hospital, the ward was waking up.
Now Miss Antonio and Miss Prentice were busy taking four o’clock temperatures, respiration and pulse, and noting these on each patient’s chart for the interne’s visit. Shades were raised, flooding the ward with late afternoon sunlight. Cherry was so busy remaking an empty bed that she did not see the interne come in. But when the man in the white suit talking to Miss Baker turned around, she felt a little tingle of surprise.
The doctor assigned to Women’s Medical was young Dr. James Clayton.
Cherry remembered how chivalrous he had been that first day he had found her in the rotunda, and involuntarily she patted her black curls into place. Dr. Clayton looked very tall and young and handsome, in spite of his matter-of-fact professional air as he glanced over the charts. Miss Baker’s fair head came only to his shoulder and Cherry thought how romantic these two nice people looked together. However, there was nothing romantic to be seen in their manners—just the dignified impersonal courtesy of doctor and head nurse.
Cherry overheard them say something about “that little Britisher” and she distinctly heard the terrible Dr. Wylie’s name. She wondered hopefully if young Dr. Clayton would stop to speak to her. Probably not. After all, this was a hospital ward, not a tea party.
Cherry had not counted on Miss Baker. The head nurse took the trouble to introduce her two new probationers to the ward’s house officer. Cherry found herself looking up into Dr. Jim Clayton’s dark brown eyes. He said merely, “How do you do,” and did not smile, but a current of recognition and friendliness ran between him and Cherry. Cherry felt warmed and grateful and reassured to be made welcome like this, and now she felt a part of the ward with all her heart.
“Isn’t he nice!” Josie exclaimed under her breath as they turned away.
The patients seemed to think so, too. Dr. Clayton magically turned each routine check-up into a friendly little visit. However impersonal and hurried he was with the staff, he joked and chatted leisurely with the patients. Cherry saw cross Mrs. Brownlee cease grumbling and look pleasant, and even Mrs. Thompson, the middle-aged woman in the last bed, thawed out under his engaging smile. The whole ward seemed to have perked up. Cherry half envied the patients, for when Dr. Clayton had completed his tour, he turned briefly to Miss Baker, gave a few crisp orders, and strode away. Some of his vitality and warm good spirits seemed to linger in the air, and enliven the ward, even after he had gone.
Before Cherry knew it, it was four-thirty. She and Josie went to Miss Baker to report off duty. The head nurse smiled at them from her desk where she was preparing the day report book for the night nurse.
“Good night, Miss Ames—good night, Miss Franklin. I hope you didn’t have too difficult a time of it your first day.”
Josie sighed. “It’s only my feet that are tired, the rest of me could stay forever, I’m that fascinated.”
Cherry said impulsively, “I liked the sample I had today, and I want more.”
“Good!” Miss Baker laughed. “You’re going to be on Women’s Medical for the next month, you know, so I’m glad you feel at home here.” She dismissed them with a smile and returned to the day report. Miss Antonio and Miss Prentice were preparing to go off duty, too. Cherry and her companion said good night to them, and went off down the antiseptic-smelling corridor.
“Apron!” Cherry exclaimed as they rounded a corner.
“What apron?” said Josie, trotting along beside her.
“Mine,” Cherry explained. “Miss Mac said to shorten it, so I’ll just run up to the second floor and see if I can locate the sewing room.”
She promised to see Josie at dinner and went off in search of the sewing room. It was quite a long walk, down to another floor, past other wards with their doors tantalizingly ajar, and through a quiet private pavilion. Cherry found the right room at last. The sewing room was not busy, and was so well-equipped that Cherry ran up the hem of her apron in exactly four minutes. Out in the hall again, she started to retrace her steps. She thought she would go down to the lounge and library—Gwen and Ann might be there and Cherry was eager to compare notes on their afternoon’s adventures. She glanced at her watch with its spinning second hand. Nearly five. She was off duty until the rising bell tomorrow morning. She would study, and rinse out a few things, Cherry decided, as she walked along through the deserted halls of the private pavilion. She would write a letter home and one to Dr. Joe.
Suddenly she stopped. She forgot her plans. A high thin voice was calling—seemed to be calling her. Certainly there was no one else within sight or sound in this pale green corridor of closed doors. Only one door was open, at the isolated end of the hall. The door of the voice.
It was a remarkable voice, very British, very high-pitched, feeble but imperious. “Nurse! Nurse!” it demanded. “Can’t you possibly come? Do come! Nurse!” It sounded to Cherry like the sad voice of an old person.
She looked hastily around. She knew enough of hospital routine to call the floor nurse in charge but her desk, tiny at the far end of the corridor, was deserted. Cherry flew silently down the long hall to the nurses’ small sitting room, but its chintz chairs and table with its vase of roses winked emptily back at her. A glimpse at the call board showed her that all the private duty nurses here were busy, and only Room Number One’s bell buzzed persistently on the board.
Cherry went back into the hall, and stood looking around. If only somebody would pass by—even a student nurse, an orderly, a maid, anybody. That poor old Britisher in Room One—for that was what Cherry decided the voice was—might be in real trouble.
The voice called again, very faint. Cherry ran toward it. The very least she could do was find out what was wrong and summon help if necessary. She had no right to be in this wing, but was it not a nurse’s duty to report an emergency? That poor old Britisher … Cherry popped into the private room and gasped.
In the bed lay a tiny girl. She could not have been over six or seven years old. Her pinched little face looked imploringly at Cherry from the pillow, and Cherry saw that the child’s leg was enormously bandaged in a plaster cast and raised at a steep angle by a pulley. She was pale and restless. “She must be in pain,” Cherry thought, “with that great weight pulling at her hip.”
“I say, have you seen my mummy?” the child piped. “I’m dreadfully lonesome for my mummy. I call and call, but she never comes.”
“Why, you poor little tyke,” Cherry breathed. She moved closer to the bed and saw tear smudges on the child’s wan cheeks. “Where is your mother?”
“I haven’t seen my mummy since London. I was asleep in the shelter and Jerry came over and I got hurt and I don’t know where my mummy is. But the doctor said she’s coming, so I thought p’rhaps she came today.” The little girl looked up at Cherry with trusting eyes. “I daresay she’ll be along soon, though. He said so.”
“Oh,” Cherry said. London. Bombings. Perhaps that was why this forlorn scrap of a girl lay half-crippled in a hospital, waiting for a mother who might have been killed. Cherry had read of children and wounded people being evacuated from the Allied countries. But the
reality she saw before her now was so cruel it was almost unbearable.
“I came over on a big boat,” the child offered conversationally.
Cherry could not talk. She was angry—fighting mad at the bitter evidence she saw before her. She choked in her fury and took the child’s hand. The little girl curled her fingers around Cherry’s. “I don’t feel so lonesome now,” she said. “I don’t s’pose you could stay here and play with me, could you?”
“No, I have lots of things I must do, you see. But your own nurse will come in and talk to you while you eat your supper.”
The child sighed. “She never can stay awfully long either. I say, have you by any chance a doll? I should so like a doll.” Cherry glanced around the room and saw blocks, a clumsy toy train and a well-thumbed picture book—but no doll. “That is, if you please, Nurse. A doll wouldn’t have to go away and a doll is really quite a lot of company, you know.”
Cherry breathed in sharply. “You shall have a doll,” she promised.
The little girl’s eyes widened. “Truly? Right away?”
“Right away. You just be patient and I’ll be right back with a doll.”
The little clipped voice followed Cherry joyfully into the hall. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Nurse!”
The corridor was still deserted as Cherry hurried toward the stairs. She hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going to get a doll. The children’s wing, which was a good two blocks away, might supply one on requisition from the proper hospital authority but that would take days of waiting. Cherry thought fleetingly it was a pity the little girl could not be in the children’s ward, instead of alone in a private room, but no doubt her doctor had his reasons. It was too late to go to a store to buy anything today. Cherry thought of making a rag doll out of a knotted towel. But such a crude plaything would not be company for anyone but the tiniest child. Or she could cut out paper dolls. No, it must be a real one. Preferably a big one. Cherry concentrated as she went along downstairs and toward the lounge. Where, where, where was she going to find a doll? She had promised one, she had to produce one.
