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Page 11
"Gone?" she said. "Of course it is gone. The bath-room man reported
it to me and I went and looked."
"But who in the world would take it?"
"My dear," said the first speaker, "who _does_ take things in a
hospital, anyhow? Only--a tin sign!"
It was then that the Head came in. She swept in; her grey gown, her
grey hair gave her a majesty that filled the Probationer with awe.
Behind her came the First Assistant with the prayer-book and hymnal.
The Head believed in form.
Jane Brown offered up a little prayer that night for Johnny Fraser,
and another little one without words, that Doctor Willie was right.
She sat and rested her weary young body, and remembered how Doctor
Willie was loved and respected, and the years he had cared for the
whole countryside. And the peace of the quiet room, with the Easter
lilies on the tiny altar, brought rest to her.
It was when prayers were over that the Head made her announcement.
She rose and looked over the shadowy room, where among the rows of
white caps only the Probationer's head was uncovered, and she said:
"I have an announcement to make to the training school. One which I
regret, and which will mean a certain amount of hardship and
deprivation.
"A case of contagion has been discovered in one of the wards, and it
has been considered necessary to quarantine the hospital. The doors
were closed at seven-thirty this evening."
II
Considering that he could not get out anyhow, Twenty-two took the
news of the quarantine calmly. He reflected that, if he was shut in,
Jane Brown was shut in also. He had a wicked hope, at the beginning,
that the Senior Surgical Interne had been shut out, but at nine
o'clock that evening that young gentleman showed up at the door of
his room, said "Cheer-o," came in, helped himself to a cigarette,
gave a professional glance at Twenty-two's toes, which were all that
was un-plastered of the leg, and departing threw back over his
shoulder his sole conversational effort:
"Hell of a mess, isn't it?"
Twenty-two took up again gloomily the book he was reading, which was
on Diseases of the Horse, from the hospital library. He was in the
midst of Glanders.
He had, during most of that day, been making up his mind to let his
family know where he was. He did not think they cared, particularly.
He had no illusions about that. But there was something about Jane
Brown which made him feel like doing the decent thing. It annoyed
him frightfully, but there it was. She was so eminently the sort of
person who believed in doing the decent thing.
So, about seven o'clock, he had sent the orderly out for stamps and
paper. He imagined that Jane Brown would not think writing home on
hospital stationery a good way to break bad news. But the orderly
had stopped for a chat at the engine house, and had ended by playing
a game of dominoes. When, at ten o'clock, he had returned to the
hospital entrance, the richer by a quarter and a glass of beer, he
had found a strange policeman on the hospital steps, and the doors
locked.
The quarantine was on.
Now there are different sorts of quarantines. There is the sort
where a trained nurse and the patient are shut up in a room and
bath, and the family only opens the door and peers in. And there is
the sort where the front door has a placard on it, and the family
goes in and out the back way, and takes a street-car to the office,
the same as usual. And there is the hospital quarantine, which is
the real thing, because hospitals are expected to do things
thoroughly.
So our hospital was closed up as tight as a jar of preserves. There
were policemen at all the doors, quite suddenly. They locked the
doors and put the keys in their pockets, and from that time on they
opened them only to pass things in, such as newspapers or milk or
groceries or the braver members of the Staff. But not to let
anything out--except the Staff. Supposedly Staffs do not carry
germs.
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