suddenly metamorphosed from a loving, gentle, benevolent parent into a
most aggravating, irritating tyrant; nobody in any fairy tale I had ever
read was quite so cruel. He who had given us the world in which to roam
now apparently wanted to put us behind prison bars. His unreasonableness
was not directed towards the boys, who were in bed as soon as lessons
were done, but towards his daughters, Ethel and me. Whatever we did was
wrong. He objected particularly to young men.
Ethel was receiving the concentrated attention of Jack Byrne. Father in
scolding her said she should mix more. My beaus were a little older than
the ones I had had at school, and more earnest in their intentions.
Though not one really interested me—their conversation seemed flat,
consisting of foolish questions and smart, silly replies—father scolded
me also about them, “Why aren’t you serious like your sister? Can’t you
settle yourself to one? Do you have to have somebody different every
evening?”
Messages were coming to me from a young man going West, postmarked
Chicago or San Francisco. These daily letters and sometimes telegrams as
well, were not father’s idea of wooing. What could anyone have to say
every day? To his way of thinking, a decent man came to the house and
did his talking straight; he sat around with the family and got
acquainted. Father said, “That fellow’s a scoundrel. He’s too worldly.
He’s not even known in town.”
We had to ask permission whether Tom or Jack or Henry could call.
Without reason or explanation father said, “No,” and that was an end to
it. If we went out, we had to be back at ten and give an account of
ourselves.
Then came the climax. Ethel and I had gone to an open-air concert. On
the stroke of ten we were a full block away from home running with all
our might. When we arrived, three minutes late, the house was in utter
darkness—not a sight nor sound of a living creature anywhere. We banged
and knocked. We tried the front door, the back, and the side, then again
the front. It opened part way; father looked out, reached forth a hand
and caught Ethel’s arm, saying, “This outrageous behavior is not your
fault. Come in.” With that he pulled her inside, and the door slammed,
leaving me in the dark, stunned and bewildered. I did not know this
monster.
Hurt beyond words, I sat down on the steps, worrying not only about this
night but about the next day and the next, concerned over the children
left at home with this new kind of father. I was sure if I waited long
enough he would come out for me, but it was a chilly evening in October.
I had no wrap, and began to grow very cold.
I walked away from the house, trying to decide where I should go and
what I should do. I could not linger on the streets indefinitely, with
the possibility of encountering some tipsy factory hand or drummer
passing through. At first there seemed no one to turn to. Finally,
exhausted by stress of emotion, I went to the home of the girl who had
been with us at the concert. She had not yet gone to bed, and her mother
welcomed me so hospitably that I shall be eternally grateful. The next
morning she lent me carfare to go to Elmira, where I had friends with
whom I could stay.
Meantime father had found me gone. He had dressed and tramped up and
down First Street, searching every byway, inquiring whether I had been
seen. When he had returned at daybreak to find me still missing he had
sent word to Mary, who received his message at almost the same time as
one from me, telling her not to worry; I was all right. Both of them
urged me to come back to Corning, and in a few days I did so, taking up
again my responsibilities. Father and I tried to talk it over, but we
could not meet on the old ground; between us a deep silence had fallen.
Father had almost stopped expounding; instead, he was reading more. Debs
had come on his horizon, and the Socialist papers cropping up all over
the country were appearing in the house. From the Free Library, which he
had helped to establish years earlier, he was borrowing Spencer, who was
modern for that time, and other books on sociology.
I had given up encouraging young men to see me, but I, too, was
patronizing the library. My books were fiction. “All nonsense,” father
snorted at the mention of such titles as _Graustark_, _Prisoners of
Hope_, or _Three Musketeers_. The word “novel” was still shocking to
many people, and he classed them all as “love stories.” “Read to
cultivate and uplift your mind. Read what will benefit you in the battle
of life,” he admonished. But I continued my escape from the daily
humdrum to revel in romances, devouring them in the evenings and hiding
them under the mattress during the day.
One noon when I was waiting for the children to come in to lunch I was
buried in _David Harum_, finding it very funny, and did not hear father
enter. He stood ominously in the doorway. I should have felt trapped,
but, instead, without warning and without reason, the old love flamed up
again. I laughed and laughed. I was no longer afraid nor did I care for
his scowls or his silly old notions. The long silence was broken.
“Do listen to this.” And I started reading. The frown began to melt away
and soon father too was chuckling. This was the first laughter that had
been heard in that dreary household since mother’s death. The book
disappeared into his room, and soon thereafter he was caught seeking
more of “that nonsense.”
At last I realized why father had been so different. He had been lonely
for mother, lonely for her love, and doubtless missed her ready
appreciation of his own longings and misgivings. Then, too, he had
always before depended on her to understand and direct us. He was
probably a trifle jealous, though not consciously, because he considered
jealousy an animal trait far beneath him, and refused to recognize it in
himself. Nevertheless, beaus had been sidetracking the affections of his
little girls. So oppressed had he been by his sense of responsibility
that he had slipped in judgment and in so doing slid into the small-town
rut of propriety. His belated discipline, caused by worry and anxiety,
was merely an attempt to guide his children.
I, however, considered the time had passed for such guidance. I had to
step forth by myself along the experimental path of adulthood. Though
the immediate occasion for reading medical books had ceased with
mother’s death, I had never, during these months, lost my deep
conviction that perhaps she might have been saved had I had sufficient
knowledge of medicine. This was linked up with my latent desire to be of
service in the world. The career of a physician seemed to fulfill all my
requirements. I could not at the moment see how the gap in education
from Claverack to medical school was to be bridged. Nevertheless, I
could at least make a start with nursing.
But father, though he proclaimed his belief in perfect independence of
thought and mind, could not approve nursing as a profession, even when I
told him that some of the nicest girls were going into it. “Well, they
won’t be nice long,” he growled. “It’s no sort of work for girls to be
doing.” My argument that he himself had taught us to help other people
had no effect.
Father’s notions, however, were not going to divert me from my
intention; no matter how peaceful the home atmosphere had become, still
I had to get out and try my wings. For six months more we jogged along,
then, just a year after mother had died, Esther asked me to visit her in
New York. I really wanted to train in the city, but her mother knew
someone on the board of the White Plains Hospital, which was just
initiating a school. There I was accepted as a probationer.
_Chapter Four_
DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE
The old White Plains Hospital, not at all like a modern institution, had
been a three-storied manor house, long deserted because two people had
once been found mysteriously dead in it and thereafter nobody would rent
or buy. The hospital board, scoffing at superstition, had gladly
purchased it at the low price to which it had been reduced. However, in
spite of rearrangements and redecorating, many people in White Plains
went all the way to the Tarrytown Hospital rather than enter the haunted
portals.
Once set in spacious grounds the building was still far back from the
road; a high wall immediately behind it shut off the view of the next
street and nothing could be seen beyond except the roof of what had been
the stable. The surrounding tall trees made it shadowy even in the
daytime. To reach the office you had to cross a broad pillared veranda.
Parlor and sitting room had been thrown together for the male ward, and
an operating room had been tacked on to the rear. The great wide
stairway of fumed oak, lighted at night by low-turned gas jets, swept up
through the lofty ceiling. On the second floor were the female ward and
a few private rooms. The dozen or so nurses slept in the made-over
servants’ quarters under the gambrel roof.
Student nurses in large modern hospitals have little idea what our life
was like in a small one thirty-five years ago. The single bathroom on
each floor was way at the back. We did not have a resident interne, and,
consequently, had to depend mainly upon our own judgment. Since we had
no electricity, we could not ring a bell and have our needs supplied,
and had to use our legs for elevators. A probationer had to learn to
make dressings, bandages, mix solutions, and toil over sterilizing. She
put two inches of water in the wash-boiler, laid a board across the
bricks placed in the bottom, and balanced the laundered linen and gauze
on top. Then, clapping on the lid, she set the water to boiling briskly,
watched the clock, and when the prescribed number of minutes had elapsed
the sterilizing was over.
The great self-confidence with which I entered upon my duties soon
received a slight shock. One of our cases was an old man from the County
Home. He complained chiefly of pains in his leg and, since his condition
was not very serious, the superintendent of nurses left him one
afternoon in my care. This was my first patient. When I heard the
clapper of his little nickeled bell, I hurried with a professional air
to his bedside.
“Missy, will you please bandage up my sore leg? It does me so much
good.”
Having just had my initial lesson in bandaging, I was elated at this
opportunity to try my skill. I set to work with great precision, and,
when I had finished, congratulated myself on a neat job, admiring the
smooth white leg. My first entry went on his record sheet.
A little later the superintendent, in making her rounds, regarded the
old man perplexedly.
“Why have you got your leg bandaged?”
“I asked the nurse to do it for me.”
“Why that leg? It’s the other one that hurts.”
“Oh, she was so kind I didn’t want to stop her.”
I bowed my head in embarrassment, but I was young and eager, and it did
not stay bowed long.
Within a short period I considered myself thoroughly inured to what many
look upon as the unpleasant aspects of nursing; the sight of blood never
made me squeamish and I had watched operations, even on the brain, with
none of the usual sick giddiness. Then one day the driver of a Macy
delivery wagon, who had fallen off the seat, was brought in with a split
nose. I was holding the basin for the young doctor who was stitching it
up, when one of the other nurses said something to tease him. He dropped
his work, leaving the needle and cat-gut thread sticking across the
patient’s nose, and chased her out of the room and down the hall. The
patient, painless under a local anesthetic, gazed mildly after them; but
the idea that doctor and nurse could be so callous as to play jokes
horrified me.
When pursuer and pursued returned they found me in a heap on the floor,
the basin tipped over beside me, instruments and sponges scattered
everywhere. The patient was still sitting quietly waiting for all the
foolishness to stop. I am glad to say this was the one and only time I
ever fainted on duty.
The training, rigid though it was, would have been far less difficult
had it not been for the truly diabolical head nurse. In the morning she
was all smiles, so saintly that you could almost glimpse the halo around
her head. But as the day wore on the demon in her appeared. She could
always think up extra things for you to do to keep you from your regular
afternoon two hours off. This was particularly hard on me because I had
developed tubercular glands and was running a temperature. In my second
year I was operated on, and two weeks later assigned to night duty,
where I stayed for three awful months.
My worst tribulation came during this period. People then seldom went to
hospitals with minor ailments; our patients were commonly the very sick,
requiring a maximum of attention. There was no orderly and I could use
only my left hand because my right shoulder was still bandaged. I took
care of admissions, entered case histories, and, when sharp bells
punctuated the waiting stillness, sometimes one coming before I had time
to answer the first, I pattered hurriedly up and down the three flights,
through the shadows relieved only by the faint red glow from the gas
jets. I suppose adventures were inevitable.
One night an Italian was picked up on the street in a state of almost
complete exhaustion, and brought to the hospital. He was so ill with
suspected typhoid that he should have had a “special,” but instead he
was placed in the ward. An old leather couch stood across the windows,
and whenever a pause came in my duties I lay down. From there I could
keep an eye on my new patient. Sick as he was he insisted on making the
long trip through the ward to the bathroom. I could not explain how
unwise this was, because he could not understand a word of English. He
must have reeled out of his bed between thirty and forty times.
Just as the early spring dawn came creeping in the window behind me I
grew drowsy. I was on the point of dozing off when some premonition
warned me and I opened my eyelids enough to see the man reach under his
pillow, take something out cautiously, glide from his bed. Spellbound I
watched him slithering soft-footedly as he edged his way towards me. I
seemed to be hypnotized with sleep and could not stir. He came nearer
and nearer with eyes fixed, hands behind him. Suddenly I snapped into
duty, arose quickly, ordered him back to bed, and ran ahead to
straighten his sheets and pillows, not realizing my danger until he
loomed over me, his knife in his hand. Before he could thrust I grabbed
his arm and held it. Though I was small-boned I had good muscles, and he
was very ill.
Meanwhile, another patient snatched up his bell and rang, and rang and
rang. Nobody answered. The nurses were too far away to hear; the other
patients in the ward were unable to help me. But the man quickly used up
what little energy he had, and I was able to get the knife from him,
push him back in bed, and take his temperature. I assumed he had
suddenly become delirious.
About seven o’clock I answered a summons to the front door and found
three policemen who wanted to know whether we had an Italian patient.
“Indeed we have,” I answered feelingly and called the superintendent.
When the red tape was unwound, I learned that my Italian belonged to a
gang which had been hiding in a cave between Tarrytown and White Plains,
holding up passers-by. Amongst them they had committed five murders. The
others had all been hunted down, but this man’s collapse had temporarily
covered his whereabouts. The attack on me had apparently been merely
incidental to his attempt at escape through the open window behind me.
He was carried off to the County Hospital Jail, and I was not sorry to
see him go.
After this incident an orderly was employed and, though he was allowed
to sleep at night, it was reassuring to know he could be called in an
emergency. The emergency soon arose. A young man of about twenty-five,
of well-to-do parents, was admitted as an alcoholic. I remember that I
was impressed by the softness of his handshake when I greeted him. He
had the first symptoms of delirium tremens but he was now perfectly
conscious and needed no more than routine attention.
Sometime in the night the new arrival asked me to get him a drink of
water. When I came back into the room and offered it to him he knocked
me into the corner ten feet away. As my head banged against the wall, he
leaped out of bed after me and reached down for my throat. Though
half-stunned and off my feet, I yet had more strength than the man whose
flabby muscles refused to obey his will. The patient in the adjoining
bed rang and in a few moments the orderly came to my assistance. Between
us we got the poor crazed youth into a strait jacket. The doctor who was
summoned could do nothing and in the morning the young man mercifully
died.
To differentiate between things real and things imaginary was not always
easy at nighttime. One morning about two o’clock I was writing my case
histories in the reception office on the ground floor just off the
veranda. Both window and curtain behind my back were up about ten inches
to let in the cool, moist air. Abruptly I had a feeling that eyes were
staring at me. I could not have explained why; I had heard no sound, but
I was certain some human being was somewhere about. Anybody who had come
on legitimate business would have spoken. Perhaps it was another patient
with a knife. Should I sit still? Should I look behind me?
I turned my head to the window, and there an ugly, grinning face with a
spreading, black mustache was peering in at me. It might have been
disembodied; all I could see was this extraordinary face, white against
the inky background. It was not a patient, not anyone in my charge.
Relief was immediate and action automatic. I seized the long window
pole, twice as tall as I, dashed to the outer door, and shooed him off
the veranda. He ran for the outer gate while I brandished my weapon
after him.
Such instantaneous responses must have been the result of having in
childhood sent fears about their business before they could gather
momentum. Now I could usually act without having to think very much
about them or be troubled in retrospect. They were all in the day’s work
of the night nurse.
Probably the fact that I was low in vitality made me more susceptible to
mental than physical influences. Realistic doctors and stern head nurses
tried to keep tales of the old house from the probationers, but not very
successfully. When the colored patients could not sleep they used to
tell us weird stories, and with rolling eyes solemnly affirmed they were
true. One old darky woman, hearing the hoot owls begin their mournful
“too-whoo, too-whoo,” would sit straight up in her bed and whisper,
“Suppose dat callin’ me? Hit’s callin’ someone in dis hospital.”
Again and again after the owls’ hooting either somebody in the hospital
died, or was brought in to die from an accident. Reason told me this was
pure coincidence, but it began to get on my nerves.
And then stranger events, for which I could find no explanation,
followed. Once when I was making my rounds a little after midnight, I
turned into the room occupied by the tubercular valet of a member of the
Iselin family. I had expected him to be sleeping quietly because he was
merely there to rest up before being sent back home to England, but he
was awake and asked for ice. I started for the refrigerator, which was
two flights down in the cellar. But at the top of the stairs I suddenly
stopped short—“One—Two—Three!” I heard dull, distinct knocks directly
under the stairway.
Not one, single, tangible thing near by could have made those sounds. In
the space of a few seconds I took an inventory of the importance of my
life as compared to the proper care of my patient. I had to walk
deliberately down those steps, not knowing what might be lying in wait
for me below. As I stepped on the first tread the same knocks came
again—“One—Two—Three!”
I tried to hurry but it seemed to me that each foot had tons of iron
attached to it. The little red devils of night lights blinked at me and
seemed to make the shadows thicker in the corners. But nothing clutched
me from the dim and ghostly hall. I got down those steps somehow and
passed through the dining room into the kitchen. There I paused again.
Should I take a butcher knife with me? “No, I won’t do that,” I answered
myself resolutely, and started for the cellar stairs.
For the third time came the knocking. Glancing to right and left, my
back against the dark, I crept down, reached the refrigerator, broke off
some chunks of ice with trembling hands, put them in a bowl, steeled
myself while I chopped them into still finer pieces, and set out on the
return, my feet much lighter going up than down.
I had been away only a brief while altogether, but the patient, for no
apparent cause, had had a hemorrhage, and died in a few minutes.
Many times after that I heard these nocturnal sounds, usually overhead.
They began to seem more like footsteps—“tap, tap, tap, tap,”—very quick
and a bit muffled. Soon I was not sleeping well in the daytime.
One morning I asked at breakfast table, “Who was walking around last
night?”
“I wasn’t.” “Not I.” “Certainly not me,” came a chorus. “What makes you
think someone was up?”
“I distinctly heard footsteps the full length of the third floor.”
“What time?”
“Around four o’clock.”
But nobody admitted to having been up. “Then one of you must have been
walking in your sleep,” I insisted.
The nurse who had preceded me on night duty timidly contributed, “I
always heard somebody. I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear
you’d think I was queer.”
Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the second floor
ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran upstairs to the
nurses’ quarters as fast as I could and looked down the corridor. Every
door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the first floor. The
noise came once more above me. Back to the second floor. All patients
were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one, “Did you get up just
now?”
“No.”
“Did anybody else get up?”
“No.”
Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough to
become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I said to
one of the older nurses, “I’m going to wake you up and see whether you
hear them too.”
“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.
“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”
The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake,
led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”
Her expression was confirmation enough.
Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the
“Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she
had heard it all right but it had come from over _her_ head. At least my
senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater
credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to
listen.
One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff
that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous
breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I
was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous
months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.
After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private
rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this
same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being
restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted
me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear
it?”
He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew
he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”
Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get
downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re
in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing
well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.
Though still believing somebody was walking around the place, the doctor
by this time was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and
returned every night for a week. But the sound was a will-o’-the-wisp.
He never could catch up with it. He was so eager to exhaust every
possibility that he even brought the matter before the board. One of
them patronizingly explained that it was probably the echo from some rat
in the walls; they were in the habit of dismissing thus lightly the
superstitions which clung about the old house.