CHAPTER V

NIGHT DUTY

DIRECTLY I had given vent, to my distinct refusal to sign away all claims to any property I might hereafter inherit, as was expected of one who was to be admitted as a Professed Sister, I was frightened at my own valour, and waited in some apprehension for what would come next. Sister Keziah adopted the only dignified course. She at once ordered me from the room, having first observed that, after the flippant manner in which I had treated a most solemn subject, she could never, under any circumstances, consent to allow me to be trained for the Sisterhood. To my surprise, nothing more whatever was said upon the matter, and the only signs by which I knew that Sister Keziah had not forgiven my impetuous words were the increased austerity and dislike with which the Sisters regarded me, and the fact a powerful one in my enfeebled state of health-that I was immediately put upon night duty at the hospital.

The post of a Night Nurse, as I soon discovered, is neither an easy nor a pleasant one. Before I had been professionally invested with scissors and probe, I

had always admired the inevitable chapter in a hospital romance where the "Nurse walked quietly down the ward, smoothing a bed for one, and giving a cheery word to another, as she rearranged the hot pillow," whilst she was followed by the "admiring eyes" of her devoted patients, who "worshipped the ground she trod upon," and invariably remarked to each other when she had passed, "Poor Nurse Soand-so! I wonder what her history is;" and Nurse so-and-so always smiled "bitterly," or "cynically," or curiously "—none of which would have a very happy effect, one would think upon the careworn face, still beautiful in its unearthly pallor," and "gazing dreamily into the starlit night," she would inevitably propound to space the enigma "Heavens! How will it all end?" Which always made a very suitable climax to the chapter, and formed an excellent contrast to the next, usually opening in "a brilliantlylighted ball room," and taking one's breath utterly away with violent descriptions of an extraordinary existence that did duty for supremely high society.

So much for the romance. My first experience of night duty at once showed me I must expect the reality to be a little different.

Imagine a long, dimly-lighted, and barn-like space, bare, save for the necessary furniture and appliances, and the double row of beds, arranged at such regular intervals as would ensure to each patient the prescribed number of cubic inches of air; the white-washed walls, stonily reflecting the uncompromising whiteness of the boarded floor; forty

to fifty women, in different stages of different diseases, herded together, irrespective of age and position, helplessly equalised in the great republic of human suffering.

In one bed a girl lay raving in the delirium of fever; in another, a woman, denied the temporary relief of sleep, moaned continuously aloud in paroxysms of agony from abscesses in the ears. One poor patient, a young laundress, whose recent admission to the hospital was owing to a brutal assault by a drunken husband, constantly rehearsed the revolting details of the sordid tragedy. Sitting up in bed, and rocking to and fro, her head bound in ghastly bandages, her short, coarse hair still matted with coagulated blood, and one arm stark and rigid in wooden splints and lint, she began in the dead-level, monotonous tones bred of long-continued experience, rising to hoarse cries of "Don't 'it me, Tom, don't 'it me! Help! Murder! Oh, you brute! Oh, my arm-my arm, it's broken! For Gawd's sake don't kick me!" and so on, over and over again throughout the long night. Some of the patients were convulsed with frightful fits of coughing; whilst one or two others lay in a state of stupor so terribly intense that it seemed but the prelude to a greater stupor still. One bed at the extreme end of the ward was a little out of the regular line. It was, I found, an extra, hastily made up to accommodate a surgical case brought in late that afternoon-a case that had been accompanied by officers of the Law, one of whom sat by the bedside now, to be presently re

lieved by a brother officer, a system of surveillance which would be pursued until the patient was well enough to be taken before a magistrate.

She says she cut the child's throat with a razor, and then tried to cut her own," I heard the Sister in charge tell a Lady Probationer, as they sat chatting together at the head of one of the tables. "Dr. Holderness declares, though, that the wound is certainly not self-inflicted."

The Lady Probationer glanced towards the end of the ward, where a lowered gas-jet dimly outlined the motionless girlish figure, with its ghastly bandages, and glimmered on the metal buttons of the policeman's uniform.

"But tell me, why do those people always cut their throats? It's such a repulsive idea," she said, with some disgust.

The Sister shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

"I suppose because it costs nothing," she said. "But most likely the man she lived with did it in a fit of passion, and, in persisting it was attempted suicide, she has some idea of shielding him."

"Quite romantic!" laughed the Lady Probationer. "She's unconscious now and sinking fast," the Sister said, in matter-of-fact tones. "That bed can be moved away again to-morrow. Nurse Grey, is 22 your patient?"

I said she was not, and was inwardly thankful that 22 had not been assigned to my charge, since her one idea seemed to be to wait until the Nurses' backs were turned, and then stealthily to crawl across the

Ward on her hands and knees. I don't know with what intention she constantly made for the opposite beds, for she had never gone more than a yard or two before Nurse Yates, whose patient she was, had pounced down upon her with noisy objurgation, and boisterously herded her back to bed. This time, however, seizing a favourable opportunity, she was almost in the middle of the ward. Sister Caroline at once rose to the emergency. She summoned Nurse Yates, and, going up to 22, peremptorily ordered her to get up. 22, by way of a suitable reply, merely expressed a futile but overpowering desire to cut the Sister's heart out. Entirely unmoved at this proposed vivisection, Sister Caroline, standing over her, repeated her command in very much. the same contemptuous tones that she might have adopted towards a refractory and ill-conditioned dog. The Lady Probationer looked on with languid interest.

Two or three of the convalescents craned their necks to see what would happen, in evident thankfulness to 22 for providing some relief to the tedious monotony of the long and dreary night. 22, again avoiding the point at issue, gratuitously offered her unbiassed opinion of Sister Caroline's birth and parentage, evincing in her vivid description a ready flow of invective, and a talent for incisive, if unsavoury imagery. A faint echo of a smothered laugh was wafted from the end of the ward. Nurse Yates, obeying the order she read in Sister Caroline's angry eyes, picked up the struggling bundle, and carried it