“I’m scaldin’, Nellie, and achin’. Bring me some water in the tin cup, in the little tin cup by the pump!” Glasses did not satisfy her thirst, so June bought a tin cup for her. “It tastes so good and cold,” said Oh-a, Oh-a.
June’s special pet was Sarah Lauthier, a tiny little lady of ninety-six. June was Margaret to her and anyone who made a noise was Willie. On one occasion, five nurses and a doctor were strapping a delirious, screaming patient into the bed next to her and consciousness of the tumult gradually sifted into her mind. “Willie!” she piped up. “Don’t make so much noise. The neighbors will think we keep a disorderly house.”
June loved Willie, her cubby great-grand-child of ten. He came twice a week with bottles of orange juice and sat by her bedside. When he had been at her side for an hour, she realized that he was there, and chirped at him happily. He always stayed for two hours, holding her hand, and never seemed oppressed by the sickness around him.
For a time June almost succumbed to the temptation to break one of the most stringent of the hospital rules. Sarah was continually beckoning to her and whispering slyly in her ear, “You know what I want,” or “Wouldn’t a wee drop of gin taste good.” And then June discovered that little Willie was bringing her something that strongly resembled a Bronx cocktail, judging by the smell of it. After that she was careful that Granny’s orange juice was not confused with the orange juice of other patients and that she got every drop of it.
Every morning when June arrived on the ward, she found the little old woman, lying naked. It was evident that she could not endure being wet and tore off her sheets and nightgown so that the warm air could dry her. Her withered, crooked body was like that of Rodin’s ancient courtesan.
At times her years dropped from her and she coquetted with June adorably. She had the sweetest grin and the wickedest wink. And there was a tiny dimple still left in one cheek when she laughed her silent laugh.
One evening June found her trying to sew with her large brass cross at the end of a rosary. “What are you trying to do, Granny?” She was swearing softly to herself now and then.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to make a buttonhole, you damn fool? The needle won’t go through. How can I keep warm without a buttonhole in my gowns?”
And then Lora McAlister was carried into the ward and all its sordid ugliness was lightened and relieved. Lora was twenty-eight, a widow, with auburn hair and brown eyes. The floor man, an ex-patient, found much to do in the neighborhood and wandered around singing under his breath. June caught a few lines of a tuneless ballad once—“He placed his hand upon her knee. She said, ‘my man, you’re mighty free’—” and then he caught sight of her and the song died away in his throat. The doctors haunted the ward and other patients were deluged with attentions. The three men who were with Lora when the automobile accident occurred which resulted in her broken hip obtained special permission to call at the hospital to see her every afternoon, and the ward was beautiful with flowers and plants.
In spite of her injuries which were severe, she threw off her lethargy and powdered and primped and sewed ribbons on her night dress and sang until the ward was aglow and the up-patients in the corridor stopped their chattering to listen. The sixty and seventy year old women became conscious of their sex and were more willing to have their faces washed. They gave June quarters to buy them sweet-smelling talcums and relatives appeared with dainty night dresses for them.
June had been in the hospital six months when she was transferred to the male medical ward. She was glad to leave her old ladies for Sarah Lauthier was about to die. She did not want to see her dead. So she got permission to perform Granny’s morning toilet for the last time and after gathering up her flung-out wet clothes around the bed, fastening the old lady securely in a dry unbleached muslin night gown, tucking her in tightly, and leaving a little kiss on the tiny dimple in her cheek, she rushed breathlessly to the male building at the other end of the grounds.
Ward fifty-four was a strange, wild place. June and Miss Andrews, a capable young Irish girl who was two months June’s senior in training, were alone in the ward from seven o’clock in the morning until seven in the evening, save for the visits of the doctors and interns and the much to be dreaded superintendent of nurses. The head nurse of the ward was busy most of the day in the ward above and when she came, she came to help not to criticize. It was the superintendent who stood sternly at the end of the room and let her eye travel down the long ward for some disorder or carelessness. It was hard not to be careless at this time too, for an influenza epidemic had broken out over the city and every day eight to ten victims were carried in or walked in staggeringly, only to fall unconscious as soon as their clothes were taken from them.
According to the superintendent every ward in the hospital should be in order by ten o’clock; but to get the work underway, June and Miss Andrews did without their breakfasts in the nurses’ dining-room and arrived on the ward at six-thirty.
However, Red Reynolds who used to keep a saloon on Coney Island and was at present the kitchen-man, prepared
