All evening the watching Taube has been hanging over Ghent.
Mrs. Torrence and Janet have gone back with the ambulance to Melle.
[_Night._]
Sat up all night with Mr. ----.
There is one night nurse for all the wards on this floor, and she has a
serious case to watch in another room. But I can call her if I want
help. And there is the chemist who sleeps in the room next door, who
will come if I go in and wake him up. And there are our own four doctors
upstairs. And the _infirmiers_. It ought to be all right.
As a matter of fact it was the most terrible night I have ever spent in
my life; and I have lived through a good many terrible nights in
sick-rooms. But no amount of amateur nursing can take the place of
training or of the self-confidence of knowing you are trained. And even
if you _are_ trained, no amount of medical nursing will prepare you for
a bad surgical case. To begin with, I had never nursed a patient so tall
and heavy that I couldn't lift him by sheer strength and a sort of
amateur knack.
And though in theory it was reassuring to know that you could call the
night nurse and the chemist and the four doctors and the _infirmiers_,
in practice it didn't work out quite so easily as it sounded. When the
night nurse came she couldn't lift any more than I could; and she had a
greater command of discouraging criticism than of useful, practical
suggestion. And the chemist knew no more about lifting than the night
nurse. (Luckily none of us pretended for an instant that we knew!) When
I had called up two of our hard-worked surgeons each once out of his
bed, I had some scruples about waking them again. And it took four
Belgian _infirmiers_ to do in five minutes what one surgeon could do in
as many seconds. And when the chemist went to look for the _infirmiers_
he was gone for ages--he must have had to round them up from every floor
in the Hospital. Whenever any of them went to look for anything, it took
them ages. It was as if for every article needed in the wards of that
Hospital there was a separate and inaccessible central depot.[27]
At one moment a small pillow had to be placed in the hollow of my
patient's back if he was to be kept in that position on which I had been
told his life depended. When I sent the night nurse to look for
something that would serve, she was gone a quarter of an hour, in which
I realized that my case was not the only case in the Hospital. For a
quarter of an hour I had to kneel by his bed with my two arms thrust
together under the hollow of his back, supporting it. I had nothing at
hand that was small enough or firm enough but my arms.
That night I would have given everything I possess, and everything I
have ever done, to have been a trained nurse.
To make matters worse, I had an atrocious cough, acquired at the Hotel
de la Poste. The chemist had made up some medicine for it, but the poor
busy dispensary clerk had forgotten to send it to my room. I had to stop
it by an expenditure of will when I wanted every atom of will to keep my
patient quiet and send him to sleep, if possible, without his morphia
_piqures_. He is only to have one if he is restless or in pain.
And to-night he wanted more than ever to talk when he woke. And his
conversation in the night is even more lacerating than his conversation
in the day. For all the time, often in pain, always in extreme
discomfort, he is thinking of other people.
First of all he asked me if I had any books, and I thought that he
wanted me to read to him. I told him I was afraid he mustn't be read to,
he must go to sleep. And he said: "I mean for you to read yourself--to
pass the time."
He is afraid that I shall be bored by sitting up with him, that I shall
tire myself, that I shall make my cough worse. He asks me if I think he
will ever be well enough to play games. That is what he has always
wanted to do most.
And then he begins to tell me about his mother.
He tells me things that I have no right to put down here.
There is nothing that I can do for him but to will. And I will hard, or
I pray--I don't know which it is; your acutest willing and your
intensest prayer are indistinguishable. And it seems to work. I will--or
I pray--that he shall lie still without morphia, and that he shall have
no pain. And he lies still, without pain. I will--or I pray--that he
shall sleep without morphia. And he sleeps (I think that in spite of his
extreme discomfort, he must have slept the best part of the night). And
because it seems to work, I will--or I pray--that he shall get well.
There are many things that obstruct this process as fast as it is begun:
your sensation of sight and touch; the swarms and streams of images that
your brain throws out; and the crushing obsession of your fear. This
last is like a dead weight that you hold off you with your arms
stretched out. Your arms sink and drop under it perpetually and have to
be raised again. At last the weight goes. And the sensations go, and the
swarms and streams of images go, and there is nothing before you and
around you but a clear blank darkness where your will vibrates.
Only one avenue of sense is left open. You are lost to the very memories
of touch and sight, but you are intensely conscious of every sound from
the bed, every movement of the sleeper. And while one half of you only
lives in that pure and effortless vibration, the other half is aware of
the least change in the rhythm of his breathing.
It is by this rhythm that I can tell whether he is asleep or awake. This
rhythm of his breathing, and the rhythm of his sleeping and his waking
measure out the night for me. It goes like one hour.
And yet I have spent months of nights watching in this room. Its blond
walls are as familiar to me as the walls of rooms where I have lived a
long time; I know with a profound and intimate knowledge every crinkle
in the red shade of the electric bulb that hangs on the inner wall
between the two beds, the shape and position of every object on the
night table in the little white-tiled dressing-room; I know every trick
of the inner and outer doors leading to the corridor, and the long grey
lane of the corridor, and the room that I must go through to find ice,
and the face of the little ward-maid who sleeps there, who wants to get
up and break the ice for me every time. I have known the little
ward-maid all my life; I have known the night nurse all my life, with
her white face and sharp black eyes, and all my life I have not cared
for her. All my life I have known and cared only for the wounded man on
the bed.
I have known every sound of his voice and every line of his face and
hands (the face and hands that he asks me to wash, over and over again,
if I don't mind), and the strong springing of his dark hair from his
forehead and every little feathery tuft of beard on his chin. And I have
known no other measure of time than the rhythm of his breathing, no mark
or sign of time than the black crescent of his eyelashes when the lids
are closed, and the curling blue of his eyes when they open. His eyes
always smile as they open, as if he apologized for waking when he knows
that I want him to sleep. And I have known these things so long that
each one of them is already like a separate wound in my memory.[28] He
sums up for me all the heroism and the agony and waste of the defence of
Antwerp, all the heroism and agony and waste of war.
About midnight [?] he wakes and tells me he has had a jolly dream. He
dreamed that he was running in a field in England, running in a big
race, that he led the race and won it.
[_Sunday, 11th._]
One bad symptom is disappearing. Towards dawn it has almost gone. He
really does seem stronger.
[_5 a.m._]
He has had no return of pain or restlessness. But he was to have a
morphia _piqure_ at five o'clock, and they have given it to him to make
sure.
[_8 a.m._]
The night has not been so terrible, after all. It has gone like an hour
and I have left him sleeping.
I am not in the least bit tired; I never felt drowsy once, and my cough
has nearly gone.
* * * * *
Antwerp has fallen.
Taube over Ghent in the night.
Six doctors have seen Mr. ----. They all say he is ever so much better.
They even say he may live--that he has a good chance.
Dr. Wilson is taking Mr. Foster to England this morning.
Went back to the Hotel Cecil to sleep for an hour or two. An enormous
oval table-top is leaning flat against the wall; but by no possibility
can it be set up. Still, the landlord said he would find a table, and he
has found one.
Went back to the "Flandria" for lunch. In the mess-room Janet tells me
that Mr. ----'s case has been taken out of my hands. I am not to try to
do any more nursing.
Little Janet looks as if she were trying to soften a blow. But it isn't
a blow. Far from it. It is the end of an intolerable responsibility.
The Commandant and the Chaplain started about nine or ten this morning
for Melle, and are not back yet.
We expect that we may have to clear out of Ghent before to-morrow.
Mr. Riley, Mrs. Lambert and Janet have gone in the second car to Melle.
I waited in all afternoon on the chance of being taken when the
Commandant comes and goes out again.
[_4.45._]
He is not back yet. I am very anxious. The Germans may be in Melle by
now.
One of the old officials in peaked caps has called on me solemnly this
afternoon. He is the most mysterious of them all, an old man with a
white moustache, who never seems to do anything but hang about. He is
certainly not an _infirmier_. He called ostensibly to ask some question
and remained to talk. I think he thought he would pump me. He began by
asking if we women enjoyed going out with the Field Ambulance; he
supposed we felt very daring and looked on the whole thing as an
adventure. I detected some sinister intention, and replied that that was
not exactly the idea; that our women went out to help to save the lives
of the wounded soldiers, and that they had succeeded in this object over
and over again; and that I didn't imagine they thought of anything much
except their duty. We certainly were not out for amusement.
Then he took another line. He told me that the reason why our Ambulance
is to be put under the charge of the British General here (we had heard
that the whole of the Belgian Army was shortly to be under the control
of the British, and the whole of the Belgian Red Cross with it)--the
reason is that its behaviour in going into the firing-line has been
criticized. And when I ask him on what grounds, it turns out that
somebody thinks there is a risk of our Ambulance drawing down the fire
on the lines it serves. I told him that in all the time I had been with
the Ambulance it had never placed itself in any position that could
possibly have drawn down fire on the Belgians, and that I had never
heard of any single instance of this danger; and I made him confess that
there was no proof or even rumour of any single instance when it had
occurred. I further told the old gentleman very plainly that these
things ought not to be said or repeated, and that every man and woman in
the English Ambulance would rather lose their own life than risk that of
one Belgian soldier.
The old gentleman was somewhat flattened out before he left me; having
"_parfaitement compris_."
It is a delicious idea that Kitchener and Joffre should be reorganizing
the Allied Armies because of the behaviour of our Ambulance.