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Page 72
II
Now, the Nurse had been up all night, and at noon, after she had
oiled the new baby and washed out his eyes and given him a
teaspoonful of warm water, she placed Liz in charge of the ward, and
went to her room to put on a fresh uniform. The first thing she did,
when she got there, was to go to the mirror, with the picture of her
mother tucked in its frame, and survey herself. When she saw her cap
and the untidiness of her hair and her white collar all spotted, she
frowned.
Then she took the violets out of her belt and put them carefully in
a glass of water, and feeling rather silly, she leaned over and
kissed them. After that she felt better.
She bathed her face in hot water and then in cold, which brought her
colour back, and she put on everything fresh, so that she rustled
with each step, which is proper for trained nurses; and finally she
tucked the violets back where they belonged, and put on a new cap,
which is also proper for trained nurses on gala occasions.
If she had not gone back to the mirror to see that the general
effect was as crisp as it should be, things would have been
different for Liz, and for the new mother back in the ward. But she
did go back; and there, lying on the floor in front of the bureau,
all folded together, was a piece of white paper exactly as if it has
been tucked in her belt with the violets.
She opened it rather shakily, and it was a leaf from the ward
order-book, for at the top it said:
Annie Petowski--may sit up for one hour.
And below that:
Goldstein baby--bran baths.
And below that:
I love you. E.J.
"E.J." was the Junior Medical.
So the Nurse went back to the ward, and sat down, palpitating, in
the throne-chair by the table, and spread her crisp skirts, and
found where the page had been torn out of the order-book.
And as the smiles of sovereigns are hailed with delight by their
courts, so the ward brightened until it seemed to gleam that Easter
afternoon. And a sort of miracle happened: none of the babies had
colic, and the mothers mostly slept. Also, one of the ladies of the
House Committee looked in at the door and said:
"How beautiful you are here, and how peaceful! Your ward is always a
sort of benediction."
The lady of the House Committee looked across and saw the new
mother, with the sunshine on her yellow braids, and her face refined
from the furnace of pain.
"What a sweet young mother!" she said, and rustled out, leaving an
odor of peau d'Espagne.
The girl lay much as Liz had left her. Except her eyes, there was
nothing in her face to show that despair had given place to wild
mutiny. But Liz knew; Liz had gone through it all when "the first
one" came; and so, from the end of the ward, she rocked and watched.
The odor of peau d'Espagne was still in the air, eclipsing the
Easter lilies, when Liz got up and sauntered down to the girl's bed.
"How are you now, dearie?" she asked, and, reaching under the
blankets, brought out the tiny pearl-handled knife with which the
girl had been wont to clean her finger-nails. The girl eyed her
savagely, but said nothing; nor did she resist when Liz brought out
her hands and examined the wrists. The left had a small cut on it.
"Now listen to me," said Liz. "None of that, do you hear? You ain't
the only one that's laid here and wanted to end it all. And what
happened? Inside of a month they're well and strong again, and they
put the kid somewhere, and the folks that know what's happened get
used to it, and the ones that don't know don't need to know. Don't
be a fool!"
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