“Kaufman. That’s what we call her. Behind her back, of course. Anyway, I didn’t meet my big sister until the second week. She forgot all about me. Oh, well. I had to learn all the ropes the hard way. By making mistakes. Plenty of them. I didn’t endear myself to the General. I’m counting the days until I have my certification and I can depart the nether regions of Farrelly Hall. If I’m lucky, I’ll be hired as a private duty nurse by some lonely, wealthy old man with one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.” She laughed. “You should see your face, Waltert. I’m kidding!”
Jasia took the stairs two at a time. Hildie raced after her. “We’ll start at the top and work our way down. Call me Boots, by the way, but never in front of the General. She’ll skin you alive. We’re supposed to call one another Miss So-and-so. All very prim and proper. Come on! Keep up! This is going to be a whirlwind tour!” She laughed again. “You’re puffing like a steam engine.”
Boots took Hildemara from a large auditorium to a reception room to the library, kitchenette, two classrooms, and a dietetic laboratory. Hildie ran to keep up, wondering if everything would go like this. The second floor held a nurses’ dormitory; the third, an open-air sleeping porch with cot beds and another auditorium.
“People are coming and going at all hours up here, but you’ll get used to it. It’ll be a while before you’ll move up here anyway, if you make it through probation. The first six months, everyone on staff will try their best to wash you out, and anyone lacking in stamina and dedication goes! You look a little thin. You’d better get some meat on those bones. Oh, and I forgot to tell you: you can use the radio and piano. Do you play? No? Drat! We need someone around here to start up a glee club.”
Boots pointed this way and that as they rushed along.
“There’s a sewing machine in there. The shelves contain a fiction library. Two hundred books, but you’re not going to have any time to read even one of them. A magazine in the bathroom, maybe. What a slowpoke. Come on! Let’s move, Waltert!” She laughed easily, not winded at all. “You’re going to have to learn to fly if you want to be a good nurse.” She went down the stairs quickly, head high, not even holding the rail. In awe, Hildemara followed at a safer pace.
Boots waited at the bottom. She whispered, “As you already know, the General is on the first floor, guarding the gates to the outside world.” She pointed. “She has a helper, Mrs. Bishop.” She pointed to another office door. “Bishop’s a peach. If you’re late, she’ll sneak you in. But be careful. We don’t want to get her fired. Come on. Down we go into Probie Alley, or the Dungeon as I call it.”
The corridor bustled with new students finding their bearings.
“You’ll be down here in the gloom for six months, with a roommate, hopefully more fun than mine.” She shuddered dramatically. “Do whoever she is a big favor and keep everything put away. There’s barely space to change your mind in these cells, let alone your clothes.” Her shoes squeaked to a halt. “Here’s where I dump you. This humble abode is your new home! Enjoy!” She waved her hand airily.
Hildie peered in at a room with two narrow beds and two tiny dressers.
“Oh, before I forget, the most important room in the building-the communal bathroom-is just down the hall on the right, and on the left farther down is the itsy-bitsy kitchenette you’ll have to share with twenty classmates. Of course, there’ll be fewer by the end of the month.”
With that encouragement, Boots glanced at her pocket watch and squealed. “Holy Godfrey! I’ve gotta run! Duty in fifteen minutes! Cute doctor.” She raised her eyebrows up and down. “See ya!” She ran for the stairs. Her shoes squealed again. “Let me know if you have any questions or problems!” Her voice echoed in the corridor. Girls stuck their heads out doors to see who was making all the noise, but Boots had already bounded up the stairs.
Laughing under her breath, Hildemara entered her new home. It wasn’t any smaller than the room she had shared with Cloe and Rikka. And here she’d have only one roommate.
Smiling, she unpacked her blue dress with the white cuffs, red shoes, purse, and belt and put them in the bottom dresser drawer. She put two other dresses in the second drawer, along with her extra underwear. Unfolding the clothes Mrs. Kaufman had handed over, she admired the blue- and white-striped dress with puff sleeves. A pair of stiff-starched removable cuffs and a collar lay between the folds. A full white apron, long white silk stockings, and thick-soled white oxford shoes finished the ensemble. Hildie ran her hands over the garments, heart swelling with pride. No nursing cap, not yet. She would have to earn that. But even so, she couldn’t wait to wear the uniform tomorrow for her first morning orientation class.
Keely Sullivan, a redheaded, freckle-faced girl from Nevada, came in an hour later and unpacked her things. Over the next few hours, Hildie met Tillie Rapp, Charmain Fortier, Agatha Martin, and Carol Waller. They all crowded into the room to share how and why they had decided to become nursing students. Tillie, like Hildemara, had dreamed of becoming the next Florence Nightingale, while Agatha wanted to marry a rich doctor. “You can have doctors,” Charmain said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “My father’s a doctor. Give me a farmer any day. Farmers stay home!”
“Farmers are boring!”
“Excuse me?” Hildemara pretended offense. “My brother’s a farmer. Six feet two; blond; blue-eyed; football, basketball, and baseball star of our high school. He’s a senior in college now.”
Charmain’s eyes shone. “When do I get to meet him?”
“Maybe I’ll take you to his wedding. He’s marrying my best friend.”
Everyone laughed. They talked through dinner in the cafeteria and went on talking long after dark, too excited to go to bed. “Lights out, ladies!” Bishop called from the end of the hall. “It’s going to be an early morning!”
Sometime after midnight, the last girl crept out of Hildemara and Keely’s room. Hildemara put her hands behind her head and smiled in the dark. For the first time in her life, she felt completely, utterly at home.
Everything moved fast the first few months. Up at five in the morning, Hildie lined up for a shower and time at the mirror or sink. She had to be at the hospital by six thirty, ready for uniform inspection at seven. After that, she helped deliver breakfast trays to patients and had lessons in how to properly make a bed: sheets folded in square corners and tucked tight enough to bounce a quarter.
Hildemara and the others followed the General like ducklings down the hospital corridors, pausing as she introduced “our new probies” to patients and then demonstrated various skills they needed to learn over the next few weeks: taking and charting temperatures and pulse rates, changing bandages, doing bed baths and massages. Hildemara got her first sight of a naked man and felt her face go hot. Mrs. Kaufman leaned close as Hildie filed out the door with the other student nurses. “You’ll get over being embarrassed about anything soon enough, Miss Waltert.”
By the end of the week, Hildemara received her ward assignment and reported to the registered nurse who would continue her training and then wrote a daily progress report for Mrs. Kaufman. Just when she felt she had built some kind of rapport with one registered nurse, Hildie found herself reassigned to another.
After lunch in the cafeteria, Hildemara attended class lectures conducted by the General or various doctors: ethics, anatomy, and bacteriology to start, adding nursing history, materia medica, and dietetics later. She felt the hot breath of the General on her neck frequently and feared being culled.
“It’s not called Hell Month for nothing.” Boots lifted her mug of hot chocolate in salute. “Congratulations on making it through.” Though they addressed one another properly during duty hours and in class, Boots was Boots anywhere else. She made up nicknames for everyone. Tillie became Dimples; Charmain was Betty Boop; Keely became Red. Agatha with her impressive bosom became Pidge. She dubbed Hildie Flo for Florence Nightingale.
The days didn’t get easier, but Hildemara fell into the routine: up before dawn, shower, dress, breakfast, songs and prayers in the rec room chapel, uniform inspection, four hours of ward duty, half an hour lunch break in the cafeteria-sometimes all of it standing in line, which meant going hungry-four more hours on duty, thorough shower and shampoo to disinfect herself before dinner, classes until nine, study until eleven, fall into bed in time for Bishop’s “Lights out, ladies!”
She prayed constantly.
“Miss Sullivan!” The General’s voice boomed from the hallway. “Where do you think you’re going at this hour of the night?”
