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Page 23
One day he happened to go back while Doctor Willie was there, and
after that he understood her problem better.
Through it all Johnny lived. His thin, young body was now hardly an
outline under the smooth, white covering of his bed. He swallowed,
faintly, such bits of liquid as were placed between his lips, but
there were times when Jane Brown's fingers, more expert now, could
find no pulse at all. And still she had found no way to give him his
chance.
She made a last appeal to Doctor Willie that day, but he only shook
his head gravely.
"Even if there was an operation now, Nellie," said Doctor Willie
that day, "he could not stand it."
It was the first time that Twenty-two had known her name was Nellie.
That was the last day of Jane Brown's probation. On the next day she
was to don her cap. The _Sentinel_ came out with a congratulatory
editorial, and at nine o'clock that night the First Assistant
brought an announcement, in the Head's own writing, for the paper.
"The Head of the Training School announces with much pleasure the
acceptance of Miss N. Jane Brown as a pupil nurse."
Twenty-two sat and stared at it for quite a long time.
That night Jane Brown fought her battle and won. She went to her
room immediately after chapel, and took the family pictures off her
little stand and got out ink and paper. She put the photographs out
of sight, because she knew that they were counting on her, and she
could not bear her mother's eyes. And then she counted her money,
because she had broken another thermometer, and the ticket home was
rather expensive. She had enough, but very little more.
After that she went to work.
It took her rather a long time, because she had a great deal to
explain. She had to put her case, in fact. And she was not strong on
either ethics or logic. She said so, indeed, at the beginning. She
said also that she had talked to a lot of people, but that no one
understood how she felt--that there ought to be no professional
ethics, or etiquette, or anything else, where it was life or death.
That she felt hospitals were to save lives and not to save feelings.
It seemed necessary, after that, to defend Doctor Willie--without
naming him, of course. How much good he had done, and how he came to
rely on himself and his own opinion because in the country there was
no one to consult with.
However, she was not so gentle with the Staff. She said that it was
standing by and letting a patient die, because it was too polite to
interfere, although they had all agreed among themselves that an
operation was necessary. And that if they felt that way, would they
refuse to pull a child from in front of a locomotive because it was
its mother's business, and she didn't know how to do it?
_Then she signed it._
She turned it in at the _Sentinel_ office the next morning while
the editor was shaving. She had to pass it through a crack in the
door. Even that, however, was enough for the editor in question to
see that she wore no cap.
"But--see here," he said, in a rather lathery voice, "you're
accepted, you know. Where's the--the visible sign?"
Jane Brown was not quite sure she could speak. However, she managed.
"After you read that," she said, "you'll understand."
He read it immediately, of course, growing more and more grave, and
the soap drying on his chin. Its sheer courage made him gasp.
"Good girl," he said to himself. "Brave little girl. But it finishes
her here, and she knows it."
He was pretty well cut up about it, too, because while he was
getting it ready he felt as if he was sharpening a knife to stab her
with. Her own knife, too. But he had to be as brave as she was.
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