IN HOSPITAL.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1773, 11 June 1913, Page 8

IN HOSPITAL.

WHILE WELLINGTON SLEEPS.

THE NURSE'S LOT.

[Bv "Mere Hebe."]

The newspaper that morning had recorded that the mountains 011 tho other side of the harbour Ixho a well-defined snow lino. Also that snow lay on tho rinakoii Hills, and sleet had fallen in the city. Jones, who occupied' bed 11 in No. X Ward of Wellington's Public Hospital, could well believe it. An Antarctic blast swept down the ward from the open doorway at the corridor .end, and tho faulty lock of the farther door was responsible for a monotonously irritating banging. It was well past midnight, but Jones could not sleep. Bang! again went the doer; furiously the southerly rattled the windows, and from the open top of ono of them Jones was receiving a gentle ■ sprinkle of rain. Fresh air, and plenty of it, is a first essential in a hospital ward, and somebody has to sleep under the open windows—wet or fine. Jones was ono of the somebodies— his window was easy to open. Intense grew the cold. He wondered if he could get another blanket, or a hotwater bottle. The snow must surely have reached the lowlands —it was bitter enough to make Jones think that there was a drift of it along tho corridor. The. patient in tho next bed was wakeful, but more successfully combating the frigid conditions; he had his head wrapped— night-cap-like—in llannel, and his feet rested comfortably oil a hot-water bottle. "A bit of a draught," he remarked to

the Bhivering Jones, who wj\s very cognisant of the fact. "She'll"—and he nodded hls'hea-1 towards where the nurse was sitting by a shaded lamp, brow much puckered, writing up her report—"tell you that it's good tor you. Draughts, they say, are all right if they are indirect. It's tho direct draughts that arc the trouble. To me," and he twisted the flannel' tighter round his head— "they're all the same—direct or indirect."

Jones also thought, tho difference was hard to define. That point he was not going to argue. On the advico of the man in flannel he would signify his distress. Timorously ho rapped on his locker. Tho nurse continued with tiie report book. Jones rapped harder, and up with a quavering cry of "Nurse!" The sprightly, pink-clad person heard the call, and setting down her pen, she drifted out from the halo of tho light to Jind tho signaller. Jones watched her approach through the gloom, now and then illumined by the shooting flames of the fires, and coughed slightly as tho nurse seemed likely to pass him by. "What do you want, old man?" she asked, coining to his bedside. Jones quietly described the weather; its effect on mortals without sufficient bedclothes," or a hot-water bottle, and asked for a little of each.,

. The nurse gazed down the middle of the ward, occupied on these wintry nights, by a lino of shakedown stretchers. The stress of weather drove many cases into hospital, and the family under her guardianship now numbered over thirty. She told Jones that she did not think there was a spare blanket; in fact, there had not been enough pillows either. His chances of Katting a hot-water bottle were not bright, but perhaps Smith down, the ward would be asleep and she could take his. She assured Jones of the healthiness of fresh uir, and wais moving away when— , , Crash! followed by an chorus of voices calling "Nurse!" Away down, tho ward the' light-footed girl sped. ' The man in the flannel helmet raised himself in his bed, and glanced along. "It's that old fathead Brown, wandering again," he grumbled. | It was "that old fathead Brown," too; ho had somnambulistic tendencies; on this occasion he had collided, with a screen of linen airing at the fireplace, knocking tho clothes into the flames, lhe nurse calmly extinguished tho little outbreak; put Brown back to bed; quietened the alarmed patients in the vicinity, and then returned quite unconcernedly to her report book, a- , . ~ Jones tried hard not to think of eiderdown quilts and fleecy blankets. Rather was he making his thoughts turn to the - plight of those waifs of the world, who sleep out imder Nature's canopy, 1 be-the sky starry-lit or full of scudding storm clouds. To him, though, it seemed as if the nurse liad pigeonholed his requests. . There was some stir in the top corner; a patient was sitting on the side of. his bed, and feeling about as if for Ins socks and boots. . , , "Get into bed, you silly; you 11 get cold," said the man next to him. The man who was arising thus early in the morning said he really couUm t go back to bed; he had promised to go to Sydney to see Arnst row; in tho boat Tace, rind the steamer left at a quarter-past four, so lie- niust be tarrying along. The nurse noticed tlie departing guest, and came over. She tried to cajole him to go back to bed. It was no use; he said it was imperative he should see Arnst row. The nurse then tried to gently force him to his couch. This aroused tho mail, and he grappled with her; they swayed along the bedside. The little nurse pluckily held to him; but weight began to tell, 'lhe combatants sfemed likely to topple across a patient in the next bed, when a man from across the ward, wrapping a blanket around himself, came to the nurse s assistance. and together they put the sculling enthusiast back to bed, and braced him in! , ' . .Tones lookpfl on the scone in amazement. He had not previously reckoned wrestling among a nurse's qualifications. . Under tho circumstances he guessed that the position of nurse in a public hospital : was worth some hundreds a year, and lie supposed they didn't get £1 a week. Subsequently he discovered that they ' didn't. There is no extravagance abou.t ' tho hosnital nurse's scale of payHe did not wonder now if the nurse had forgotten all about him. The gale still thundered outside; but the ' clanain" door had strangely stopped. Between tho gusts Jones could hear two pn- ; tients in delirious argument a few beds away one was dealing with accountancy, and'tho other horse-racing; the slight margin of reasoning faculty which either po«es=ed would sometimes grasp a scrap of the other's talk, and then would follow a torrent of words. Bedlam and Babel! Jones was repentin" tho words to himself as ho dropped into a doze., He dreamt that he was sitting in a cosy room surrounded by warmth and light. His pipe ™ 'Ijming exceedingly well; there was no falling away in the qualitv of Simpkinss snecal cut 'of tobacco. Tt was no _ pot-boiler he was reading: he would lust toa<t his fost at the fire for another ten minutes, and then go A prolonged clatter of the windows the illu-on : the cosy fire, belaud pipe vanished into mental recesses, but still .Tones, in his ho*J a "onsation of the warmer things of life. There certainlv was an extra covering over him. and his feet we- snugly tucked to a plump hot-water bottle. Th° nurse had kept her _ word; and Smith's loss had been Jones's gam.