"E.J." was the Junior Medical.
So the Nurse went back to the ward, and sat down, palpitating, in
the throne-chair by the table, and spread her crisp skirts, and
found where the page had been torn out of the order-book.
And as the smiles of sovereigns are hailed with delight by their
courts, so the ward brightened until it seemed to gleam that Easter
afternoon. And a sort of miracle happened: none of the babies had
colic, and the mothers mostly slept. Also, one of the ladies of the
House Committee looked in at the door and said:
"How beautiful you are here, and how peaceful! Your ward is always a
sort of benediction."
The lady of the House Committee looked across and saw the new
mother, with the sunshine on her yellow braids, and her face refined
from the furnace of pain.
"What a sweet young mother!" she said, and rustled out, leaving an
odor of peau d'Espagne.
The girl lay much as Liz had left her. Except her eyes, there was
nothing in her face to show that despair had given place to wild
mutiny. But Liz knew; Liz had gone through it all when "the first
one" came; and so, from the end of the ward, she rocked and watched.
The odor of peau d'Espagne was still in the air, eclipsing the
Easter lilies, when Liz got up and sauntered down to the girl's bed.
"How are you now, dearie?" she asked, and, reaching under the
blankets, brought out the tiny pearl-handled knife with which the
girl had been wont to clean her finger-nails. The girl eyed her
savagely, but said nothing; nor did she resist when Liz brought out
her hands and examined the wrists. The left had a small cut on it.
"Now listen to me," said Liz. "None of that, do you hear? You ain't
the only one that's laid here and wanted to end it all. And what
happened? Inside of a month they're well and strong again, and they
put the kid somewhere, and the folks that know what's happened get
used to it, and the ones that don't know don't need to know. Don't
be a fool!"
She carried the knife off, but the girl made no protest. There were
other ways.
The Nurse was very tired, for she had been up almost all night. She
sat at the record-table with her Bible open, and, in the intervals
of taking temperatures, she read it. But mostly she read about Annie
Petowski being allowed to sit up, and the Goldstein baby having bran
baths, and the other thing written below!
At two o'clock came the Junior Medical, in a frock-coat and grey
trousers. He expected to sing "The Palms" at the Easter service
downstairs in the chapel that afternoon, and, according to
precedent, the one who sings "The Palms" on Easter in the chapel
must always wear a frock-coat.
Very conscious, because all the ward was staring at his
gorgeousness, he went over to the bed where the new mother lay. Then
he came back and stood by the table, looking at a record.
"Have you taken her temperature?" he said, businesslike and erect.
"Ninety-eight."
"Her pulse is strong?"
"Yes; she's resting quietly."
"Good.--And--did you get my note?"
This, much as if he had said, "Did you find my scarf-pin?" or
anything merely casual; for Liz was hovering near.
"Yes." The nurse's red lips were trembling, but she smiled up at
him. Liz came nearer. She was only wishing him Godspeed with his
wooing, but it made him uncomfortable.
"Watch her closely," he said, "she's pretty weak and despondent."
And he looked at Liz.
"Elizabeth," said the Nurse, "won't you sit by Claribel and fan
her?"
Claribel was the new mother. Claribel is, of course, no name for a
mother, but she had been named when she was very small.
Liz went away and sat by the girl's bed, and said a little prayer to
the effect that they were both so damned good to everybody, she
hoped they'd hit it off. But perhaps the prayer of the wicked
availeth nothing.
"You know I meant that," he said, from behind a record. "I--I love
you with all my heart--and if only you----"
The nurse shook down a thermometer and examined it closely. "I love
you, too!" she said. And, walking shakily to one of the beds, she
put the thermometer upside down in Maggie McNamara's mouth.
The Junior Medical went away with his shoulders erect in his
frock-coat, and his heavy brown hair, which would never part
properly and had to be persuaded with brilliantine, bristling with
happiness.
And the Nurse-Queen, looking over her kingdom for somebody to lavish
her new joy on, saw Claribel lying in bed, looking at the ceiling
and reading there all the tragedy of her broken life, all her
despair.
So she rustled out to the baby-room, where the new baby had never
batted an eye since her bath and was lying on her back with both
fists clenched on her breast, and she did something that no trained
nurse is ever supposed to do.
She lifted the baby, asleep and all, and carried her to her mother.
But Claribel's face only darkened when she saw her.
"Take the brat away," she said, and went on reading tragedies on the
ceiling.
Liz came and proffered her the little mite with every art she knew.
She showed her the wrinkled bits of feet, the tiny, ridiculous
hands, and how long the hair grew on the back of her head. But when
Liz put the baby on her arm, she shuddered and turned her head away.
So finally Liz took it back to the other room, and left it there,
still sleeping.
The fine edge of the Nurse's joy was dulled. It is a characteristic
of great happiness to wish all to be well with the world; and here
before her was dry-eyed despair. It was Liz who finally decided her.
"I guess I'll sit up with her to-night," she said, approaching the
table with the peculiar gait engendered of heel-less hospital
carpet-slippers and Mother Hubbard wrappers. "I don't like the way
she watches the ceiling."
"What do you mean, Elizabeth?" asked the Nurse.
"Time I had the twins--that's before your time," said Liz--"we had
one like that. She went out the window head first the night after
the baby came, and took the kid with her."
The Nurse rose with quick decision.
"We must watch her," she said. "Perhaps if I could find--I think
I'll go to the telephone. Watch the ward carefully, Elizabeth, and
if Annie Petowski tries to feed her baby before three o'clock, take
it from her. The child's stuffed like a sausage every time I'm out
for five minutes."
Nurses know many strange things: they know how to rub an aching back
until the ache is changed to a restful thrill, and how to change the
bedding and the patient's night-dress without rolling the patient
over more than once, which is a high and desirable form of
knowledge. But also they get to know many strange people; their
clean starchiness has a way of rubbing up against the filth of the
world and coming away unsoiled. And so the Nurse went downstairs to
the telephone, leaving Liz to watch for nefarious feeding.
The Nurse called up Rose Davis; and Rosie, who was lying in bed with
the Sunday papers scattered around her and a cigarette in her
manicured fingers, reached out with a yawn and, taking the
telephone, rested it on her laced and ribboned bosom.
"Yes," she said indolently.
The nurse told her who she was, and Rosie's voice took on a warmer
tinge.
"Oh, yes," she said. "How are you?... Claribel? Yes; what about
her?... What!"
"Yes," said the Nurse. "A girl--seven pounds."
"My Gawd! Well, what do you think of that! Excuse me a moment; my
cigarette's set fire to the sheet. All right--go ahead."
"She's taking it pretty hard, and I--I thought you might help her.
She--she----"
"How much do you want?" said Rose, a trifle coldly. She turned in
the bed and eyed the black leather bag on the stand at her elbow.
"Twenty enough?"
"I don't think it's money," said the Nurse, "although she needs that
too; she hasn't any clothes for the baby. But--she's awfully
despondent--almost desperate. Have you any idea who the child's
father is?"
Rosie considered, lighting a new cigarette with one hand and
balancing the telephone with the other.
"She left me a year ago," she said. "Oh, yes; I know now. What time
is it?"
"Two o'clock."
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Rosie. "I'll get the fellow on
the wire and see what he's willing to do. Maybe he'll give her a
dollar or two a week."
"Do you think you could bring him to see her?"
"Say, what do you think I am--a missionary?" The Nurse was wise, so
she kept silent. "Well, I'll tell you what I will do. If I can bring
him, I will. How's that yellow-haired she-devil you've got over
there? I've got that fixed all right. She pulled a razor on me
first--I've got witnesses. Well, if I can get Al, I'll do it. So
long."
It did not occur to the Nurse to deprecate having used an evil
medium toward a righteous end. She took life much as she found it.
And so she tiptoed past the chapel again, where a faint odour of
peau d'Espagne came stealing out into the hall, and where the
children from the children's ward, in roller-chairs and on crutches,
were singing with all their shrill young voices, earnest eyes
uplifted.
The white Easter lilies on the altar sent their fragrance out over
the gathering, over the nurses, young and placid, over the hopeless
and the hopeful, over the faces where death had passed and left its
inevitable stamp, over bodies freshly risen on this Easter Sunday
to new hope and new life--over the Junior Medical, waiting with the
manuscript of "The Palms" rolled in his hand and his heart singing a
hymn of happiness.
The Nurse went up to her ward, and put a screen around Claribel,
and, with all her woman's art, tidied the immaculate white bed and
loosened the uncompromising yellow braids, so that the soft hair
fell across Claribel's bloodless forehead and softened the defiance
in her blue eyes. She brought the pink hyacinth in its pot, too, and
placed it on the bedside table. Then she stood off and looked at her
work. It was good.
Claribel submitted weakly. She had stopped staring at the wall, and
had taken to watching the open window opposite with strange
intentness. Only when the Nurse gave a final pat to the bedspread
she spoke.
"Was it a boy--or a girl?" she asked.
"Girl," said the nurse briskly. "A little beauty, perfect in every
way."
"A girl--to grow up and go through this hell!" she muttered, and her
eyes wandered back to the window.
But the Nurse was wise with the accumulated wisdom of a sex that has
had to match strength with wile for ages, and she was not yet ready.
She went into the little room where eleven miracles lay in eleven
cribs, and, although they all looked exactly alike, she selected
Claribel's without hesitation, and carried it to the mysterious room
down the hall--which was no longer a torture-chamber, but a
resplendently white place, all glass and tile and sunlight, and
where she did certain things that are not prescribed in the hospital
rules.
First of all, she opened a cupboard and took out a baby dress of
lace and insertion,--and everybody knows that such a dress is used
only when a hospital infant is baptised,--and she clothed Claribel's
baby in linen and fine raiment, and because they are very, very red
when they are so new, she dusted it with a bit of talcum--to break
the shock, as you may say. It was very probable that Al had never
seen so new a baby, and it was useless to spoil the joy of
parenthood unnecessarily. For it really was a fine child, and
eventually it would be white and beautiful.
The baby smelled of violet, for the christening-robe was kept in a
sachet.
Finally she gave it another teaspoonful of warm water and put it
back in its crib. And then she rustled starchily back to the
throne-chair by the record-table, and opened her Bible at the place
where it said that Annie Petowski might sit up, and the Goldstein
baby--bran baths, and the other thing written just below.