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Page 4
Curiously enough, her letter was dated April first. Under that very
date, and about that time of the day, a health officer in a near-by
borough was making an entry regarding certain coloured gentlemen
shipped north from Louisiana to work on a railroad. Opposite the
name of one Augustus Baird he put a cross. This indicated that
Augustus Baird had not been vaccinated.
By the sixth of April "Twenty-two" had progressed from splints to a
plaster cast, and was being most awfully bored. Jane Brown had not
returned, and there was a sort of relentless maturity about the
nurses who looked after him that annoyed him.
Lying there, he had a good deal of time to study them, and somehow
his recollection of the girl with the hunting-case watch did not
seem to fit her in with these kindly and efficient women. He could
not, for instance, imagine her patronising the Senior Surgical
Interne in a deferential but unmistakable manner, or good-naturedly
bullying the First Assistant, who was a nervous person in shoes too
small for her, as to their days off duty.
Twenty-two began to learn things about the hospital. For instance,
the day nurse, while changing his pillow slips, would observe that
Nineteen was going to be operated on that day, and close her lips
over further information. But when the afternoon relief, while
giving him his toothbrush after lunch, said there was a most
interesting gall-stone case in nineteen, and the night nurse, in
reply to a direct question, told Nineteen's name, but nothing else,
Twenty-two had a fair working knowledge of the day's events.
He seemed to learn about everything but Jane Brown. He knew when a
new baby came, and was even given a glimpse of one, showing, he
considered, about the colour and general contour of a maraschino
cherry. And he learned soon that the god of the hospital is the
Staff, although worship did not blind the nurses to their
weaknesses. Thus the older men, who had been trained before the day
of asepsis and modern methods, were revered but carefully watched.
They would get out of scrubbing their hands whenever they could, and
they hated their beards tied up with gauze. The nurses, keen,
competent and kindly, but shrewd, too, looked after these elderly
recalcitrants; loved a few, hated some, and presented to the world
unbroken ranks for their defence.
Twenty-two learned also the story of the First Assistant, who was in
love with one of the Staff, who was married, and did not care for
her anyhow. So she wore tight shoes, and was always beautifully
waved, and read Browning.
She had a way of coming in and saying brightly, as if to reassure
herself:
"Good morning, Twenty-two. Well, God is still in His heaven, and
all's well with the world."
Twenty-two got to feeling awfully uncomfortable about her. She used
to bring him flowers and sit down a moment to rest her feet, which
generally stung. And she would stop in the middle of a sentence and
look into space, but always with a determined smile.
He felt awfully uncomfortable. She was so neat and so efficient--and
so tragic. He tried to imagine being hopelessly in love, and trying
to live on husks of Browning. Not even Mrs. Browning.
The mind is a curious thing. Suddenly, from thinking of Mrs.
Browning, he thought of N. Jane Brown. Of course not by that
ridiculous name. He had learned that she was stationed on that
floor. And in the same flash he saw the Senior Surgical Interne
swanking about in white ducks and just the object for a probationer
to fall in love with. He lay there, and pulled the beginning of the
new moustache, and reflected. The First Assistant was pinning a
spray of hyacinth in her cap.
"Look here," he said. "Why can't I be put in a wheeled chair and get
about? One that I can manipulate myself," he added craftily.
She demurred. Indeed, everybody demurred when he put it up to them.
But he had gone through the world to the age of twenty-four, getting
his own way about ninety-seven per cent. of the time. He got it this
time, consisting of a new cast, which he named Elizabeth, and a
roller-chair, and he spent a full day learning how to steer himself
around.
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