Nurse in Love Read Free

peremptory tone. “I’m not a doctor. I —”
    “Well, I am. So I’ll examine him, if you don't mind.” He was kneeling beside her now, his capable hands beginning their gentle exploratory work. He said: “People like you are always so disastrously well - meaning. You simply can’t let well alone: you have to do all you can to make it worse.”
    He sat back on his heels and looked Kathryn up and down appraisingly. Then: “If you really want to make yourself useful, get to the nearest telephone and call an ambulance.”
    Kathryn volunteered: “The Wardrop Hospital is not far away.”
    “I know that. Get an ambulance from there.” Kathryn stumbled to her feet, noting a laddered n y lon as she did so and hoping that the pett y anger she felt was caused by that, and not by antagonism for this man who clearly knew so well what he was about.
    He went on briskly: “Ask for the Casualty extension, and for goodness’ sake don’t haver over the directions you give them. Be clear, and make it urgent.” As Kathryn moved away a voice said: “There’s a telephone at the tobacconist’s a few doors down . S ha ll I show you, miss?” — and she found that the lorry-driver was at her side.
    “Yes, do. But you’d better not come with me. The police —” She stopped, pitying the nervous twisting of his cap between his hands, the troubled anxiety of his eyes. He began urgently: “I couldn’t help it, miss. There’s people could witness for me — ”
    She laid a hand upon his arm. “I know. I could myself.”
    “How bad do you think he is?”
    “I don’t know. But the doctor will tell you before they take him away.”
    She knew that he wanted to linger, justifying himself, but she had to say : “Look, I mustn’t delay calling the ambulance. But they will almost certainly take him to the Wardrop Hospital, and if he is detained he will be taken through Casualty to the children’s ward. I’m its Sister. So if you come to the hospital to-morrow and ask for me, Sister Clare, I’ll have news for you. Will you do that?”
    He nodded gratefully, slowly taking in her words. “A Sister, you say? A nursing Sister? But that fellow”—his thumb jerked over his shoulder—“that chap who said he was a doctor —he ticked you off !”
    “He didn’t know — ”
    “All the same, bet you could have done as much for the nipper as him!”
    She left him staring, indignant for her. She was a little ashamed of being grateful for his championship. But she was.
    At breakfast, talk at the Sisters’ table ran mainly upon the new ‘intake’ of student nurses due to go on the wards that morning. For, each three months, fourteen to twenty girls left the care of Sister Tutor in the Preliminary Training School and set upon the adventure of real nursing with varying success.
    Sister Bridgeworth, a spare, agile woman of th irty-f ive, stirred her coffee moodily and dema n ded: “Has anyone seen this lot? What are they like?”
    “Pretty dumb, I daresay,” suggested a cynic.
    “I don’t know,” another voice contributed. “Sister Tutor told me she thought they were well above the average.”
    “An incurable optimist, Sister Tutor! According to her, they’re always ‘above the average’. But she should see some of them when they get on to the wards !”
    “All the same, we ought to be fair.” This a little hesitantly from Kathryn. “Do you think, for instance, that they’re any worse than we were? I know that, looking back, I blush for myself !”
    “They start out knowing more, but we had to work harder and pick up our nursing as we went along. When I trained there was no block-system for us. We had to do our theory in our own time. I doubt if these girls would come through the conditions we knew in those days,” said an elderly Sister who was about to retire.
    “I don’t think I agree.” Kathryn was undaunted. “After all, taking up nursing involves a pretty big decision in itself, and no one who really wants to