"THE BOYS ..."
So now one steps down from chintz covers and lemonade to the Main Army
and lemon-water.
And to show how little one has one's eye upon the larger issues, the
thing that upset me most on coming into a "Tommies'" ward was the fact
that instead of twenty-six lemons twice a day for the making of lemonade
I now squeeze two into an old jug and hope for the best about the sugar.
Smiff said to-day, "Give us a drop of lemon, nurse...." And the Sister:
"Go on with you! I won't have the new nurse making a pet of you...."
I suppose I'm new to it, and one can't carry on the work that way, but,
God knows, the water one can add to a lemon is cheap enough!
Smiff had a flash of temper to-night. He said: "Keepin' me here starin'
at green walls this way! Nothing but green, nine blessed months!"
His foot is off, and to-night for the first time the doctor had promised
that he should be wheeled into the corridor. But it was forgotten, and I
am too new to jog the memory of the gods.
It's a queer place, a "Tommies'" ward. It makes me nervous. I'm not
simple enough; they make me shy. I can't think of them like the others
do, as "the boys"; they seem to me full-grown men.
I suffer awfully from my language in this ward. I seem to be the only
V.A.D. of whom they continually ask, "What's say, nurse?" It isn't that
I use long words, but my sentences seem to be inverted.
An opportunity for learning to speak simple Saxon....
"An antitetanic injection for Corrigan," said Sister. And I went to the
dispensary to fetch the syringe and the needles.
"But has he any symptoms?" I asked. (In a Tommies' ward one dare ask
anything; there isn't that mystery which used to surround the officers'
illnesses.)
"Oh no," she said, "it's just that he hasn't had his full amount in
France."
So I hunted up the spirit-lamp and we prepared it, talking of it.
But we forgot to talk of it to Corrigan. The needle was into his
shoulder before he knew why his shirt was held up.
His wrath came like an avalanche; the discipline of two years was
forgotten, his Irish tongue was loosened. Sister shrugged her shoulders
and laughed; I listened to him as I cleaned the syringe.
I gathered that it was the indignity that had shocked his sense of
individual pride. "Treating me like a cow...." I heard him say to
Smiff--who laughed, since it wasn't his shoulder that carried the serum.
Smiff laughed: he has been in hospital nine months, and his theory is
that a Sister may do anything at any moment; his theory is that nothing
does any good--that if you don't fuss you don't get worse.
Corrigan was angry all day; the idea that "a bloomin' woman should come
an' shove something into me systim" was too much for him. But he forgets
himself: there are no individualists now; his "system" belongs to us.