"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1938, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT, COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER!. —Continued Ellen shook her head.

‘‘Nancy’s going out," she told him

“I’d rather stay hom'e. Mother doesn t like us both to be out—and I'd rather not ”

“Sure, I know. How’s Aunt Elizabeth anyway?” He was almost one of the family. Hadn’t Mrs Adams, in those younger, healthier, more prosperous days, gone into Mrs O’Conner the bitter winter night Jim was born, the night that senior O'Conner couldn’t be found until Adams himself, at his wife’s urgency, had struggled into a great coat and gone the rounds of the saloons? “She’s all right,” Ellen told him. “Only since that last attack, she’s not been so strong, you know. We have to look out for her. There’s a lot of ’flu in the district, and. her resistance is nothing to brag about.” Jim’s dark face was concerned. 1 “I know, it’s a rotten break,” he said, and touched her hand. “Suppose I look in on her today? I’m going by that way anyway. Got a tenant for the upstairs back, next door.” “You have? Mrs Lenz will be out of her mind with joy,” Ellen told him. “The flat’s been vacant for ages.” “This isn’t business, it’s friendship,” grinned Jim. He hesitated, looking away. “It’s Dot Mather; remember her?”.

Ellen nodded gravely. She remembered Dot. They all did. The district’s most defiant bad girl. Remembered earlier days when her mother had said, “Ellen, I don’t want you to play with Dot ...”

“She’s married,” said Jim finally, waiting for the question which didn't come, “some lad from New Haven. Trouble shooter now with the telephone company. She wrote me to find her a place. I thought of Mrs Lenz.” “But,” asked Ellen, “will Mrs Lenz?”

“Why not?” countered Jim instantly. “Dot’s married now isn’t she? And nowadays people can’t be too choosy. Too many flats going begging, you know.”

Ellen knew. Dot. She remembered how pretty she was, redheaded, wild as a hare. She shook her head, frowning a~ little. Her mother would —be annoyed. Not that it mattered. She was suddenly aware of the spring sunlight, and of Jim, lounging beside her, close, intent. Suddenly glad for little Dot Mather. Crazy Dot, they had called her. Married . . and happy. “I’ve got to go in,” she said to Jim, apd looked at her wrist watch. Eight thirty.” “Wait a minute . . can I come up to the house tonight, then?” he wanted to know. “Of course. Why not?”

She smiled at him, and the door closed behind her. Jim O'Conner walked off down the street. Went into his office whistling, thinking of Ellen. No one like her. He inserted his key in the lock of the door. A very big, very young man standing in the shadow the house next door slipped in after him, agile, silent. Jim turned and the whistle died on his lips.

“Damnit, Esposito, haven’t I told you never to come here?” he asked irritated.

The Association sub station corisisted of a ground floor office with a tailor shop and a loft above it. Ellen went in and found herself the last arrival. She nodded to Jenny, the little stenographer, already rattling the keys of her machine, and spoke to Miss Renwick, the tall, grey haired supervisor. The other nurses, seven in all, were busy getting out their reports ,and Ellen sat down to write up hers. The telephone Tang incessantly, a fire engine clanged past, children shouted and ran. Ellen, writing her last report, laid down her pen and ran her slim fingers through her curling hair. The calls were coming in, from central headquarters, from various doctors from families direct, from a great life insurance company which called on the Visiting nurse service to attend their policy holders. ,

“Nice quiet little dump,” remarked Harriet Peters, a girl whose delicate and vivacious beauty could not be subdued by the Oxford gray of her uniform dr the unbecoming hat. She was a recent recruit from private nursing and had taken her special training for the new work. She had come to the district sub station nursing, and had taken her special training for the new work. She had come to the sub station full of enthusiasm, but was finding life under the “I,” very different from hospital and private home adventures. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and made a face at Ellen who sat near her. “It’s a far cry,” said Harriet “from a Eugenie bonnet!” “Florentine tarns are the latest,” remarked Carolyn Mathews in a abstracted and indifferent tone, and wont to get her calls. Ellen got hers for the morning and stai'ted out. Her first call was some six or seven blocks away in a house to which she had not been before. Il was up three flights and back. The house was frankly tenement. The spring sunshine had no ]»wcr there. Dim gas jets flickered on the dirty landing easting eerie shadows. She went on upstairs, feeling her way, not touching the filthy bannisters. Presently, she knocked. Two rooms, littered .with dogs, with cats, with stale food, with children. In the back room her patient, a flu case. A three-year-old child playing on the littered floor, a year-old baby lying sucking at an indescribable rag of a pacifier on the bed. Relatives all round. The doctor had been and gone, and had telephoned the call into the sub station direct.

Ellen had never seen this family before. She spoke to Mrs Zina quietly took off her coat, produced her white apron from her bag and set to work. The first thing indicated was to get the windows up and the babies out; harder than it would seem; especially the windows. She was assured by a half-grown daughter that air, especially i

fresh air, would kill the madre —la povora! Much later she left the house, left Mrs Zina sleeping comfortably, relatively speaking, left the rooms as clean and fresh as was humanly possible, and had actually succeeded in persuading the half-grown daughter, who, at sixteen, turned out to be the mother of the year-old child, that little Camillo would be a lot better off without the pacifier. She had made some notes . Zina out of work, the girl’s husband out of work, too. Something would have to be done about that, thought Ellen. The morning wore on. Another call.

a long one, A third which was in the nature of prenatal care, advice and instruction. It would shortly be time to go back to report and to get her after-

noon calls and to have some lunch. The

last place she had left was a basement, a den. That human being lived there she had had complete evidence, but somehow now out in the open air, tainted as it was, it seemed almost incredible.

She thought . . there’s so much more to this than nursing,. so much more. She thought further that it was not astonishing that so many women connected with work of this type turned almost fiercely radical seeing what they must see, realising how little they could do, important though their work was . . “Miss Adams!”

The girl spoke twice before Ellen heard. Then Ellen turned and smiled into a small and radiant face. Gilda

Esposito, who lived not far from? her, and whom Elllen, from her not very great seniority, had watcher grow up. “Going back to the office?” Gilda wanted to know. “Yes . . walk along with me. How’s Mike?” Mike was Gilda’s brother. “Mike’s fine,” said Gilda. Gilda had a mouth like an .opening rose and great black eyes. She wore a little spring suit, fourteen dollars somewhere, but she wore it as if it were a hundred and fifty somewhere else. A little tailored suit, blue. The hat with the cavalier feather was not suitable to the suit but it was suitable to Gilda and her eyes and 'her white teeth. “And your mother?”

“She’s all right. She talks about you, wants to know why you don’t come to see us.”

Gilda’s accent was all of the city; not a lingering trace of South European in it. Had she not been born here, in'this very district. She was an American.

Ellen had known the Esposito family for years. And shortly after her affiliation with VNA she had called at the house, where Mrs Esposito had been one of her first patients. “But I thought you were working,” Ellen said to the other girl. “I was. I got a better job now,” Gilda explained, “but I don’t start till tomorrow.”

Stenographic work, she explained further, in an up town office. “Gosh, what a ' break!" triumphed Gilda. Presently they parted and Ellen went on her way. A small boy hailed her from the curb; a fantastically dirty little, boy with red hair and freckles, broken braces and patched pants. A little touselled headed devil with a wide grin and three missing teeth. The perfect Saturday Evening Post cover, thought Ellen. “Hi, Mis’ Noi's’,” was’ Bill’s elegant greeting.

“Hi, yourself,” replied Ellen. “Bill, why aren't you in school.” Bill was hugging a ragged pup, with eyes something like his own in expression. The pup wriggled furiously. “This is me dawg, see,” announced Bill, changing the subject, with tact. “Found him down the alley. Me old man says I kin keep him. Say, Miss Nois’, do I gotter have one of them things—you know . . li—li” He looked up in suddenly mute appeal, all eyes and outstanding cars and freckles. “Licence? I'm afraid you do, if you don’t want him taken up.”

“Jees,” said Bill, simply. “Well, we’ll see.” He looked at the dog with a preternaturally old affection. “We’re pals,” said Bill, “me an’ Old Timer.”

“Bill, why aren’t you in school?” Ellen persisted. But her eyes laughed. She could be sympathetic with a small boy, in springtime; she could understand perfectly why the droning voices of school teachers, and the hard desks and the harder seats made no appeal. "Aw, gee, Mis’ Nois,” said Bill plaintively, “me old man come home soused agin last night, see. and I gotter run errands for Ma.”

He gestured with a grimy hand. Old Timer, with a yelp, slipped from his master’s arms and took a wild turn on the sidewalk. Exhilarated by the sense of freedom, the noise and brightness and general excitement he cavorted, .stubby tail pointing skyward, out to the street. Bill swore, without apology, called and whistled. Ellen stepped forward quickly as a car turned a corner, a fast car, a small open ear. Another yelp-—the squeal of brakes —Ellen s exclamation of fear and pity . : ■ Bill was out in the street, ’(’here was in the moment a crowd, come from nowhere.

"Hey. youse!" and Bill was shrieking curses at the top of his small leather lungs, “you lousy—” "Bill ...”

Ellen was beside, one hand on his shoulder, 'rhe pup was now in Bill’s arms, whining, snuggling a bruised nose in Bill’s shoulder. , “.lees", remarked an older Bill, “he ain’t dead.” And with that consolation spat in the gull er and strode away, disgusted. Ellen turned the little dog over as it lay in Bill’s frantic clutch. “He’s all right, Bill,” she said, soothingly, “just shaken up, that’s all,” and drew boy and dog back to sidewalk safety again.’ But Bill was not reconciled.

“An’ who the hell do youse t’ink youse are, anyway?” he acidly inquired of -the driver of the car who, his vehicle now drawn up to the curb, was

standing beside him, “tearin’ t’rough the streets like dat and knockin’ a guy's dawg for a loop?” The driver spoke for the first time. (To be Continued.)