"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1939, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER XI. —Continued.

Ellen went on back to the sub station to make her reports and to see what could be done about the Vitar boy, to get in touch with SPCC and other authorities. The boy should be taken away from those dreadful people. And now Nancy and her mother had returned, a little colour in Mrs Adam's face, while Nancy had managed to tan beautifully during her short stay. “What have you been doing?" Mrs Adams wanted to know of Ellen. Ellen told her. Mrs Adams was silent. She then remarked. “I hope you had good sense enough not to bring Mr Bartlett to the apartment while I was away.”

“Only,” said Ellen, “as far as the door. You do stay conventional, don’t you, Mother.” “It pays,” said Mrs Adams, and her eyes darkened.

A few days later, just before the start of her own vacation, Ellen, coming out of a house on the outskirts of her district, was walking down the street, when, from a tall, narrow, dingy looking lodging house an elderly hag of a woman rushed out, wringing her hands and screaming. “Police,” she was shrieking.

People started to hurry toward her just as she saw Ellen. She ran to her. “Nurse,” she said, "Nurse!” Her loose lips were white, they shook. “A woman—” she gasped—“my house—suicide—you can smell the gas—” The officer on the beat hurried up. Ellen knew him. He nodded to her briefly. “What’s this? Stand back, you!” he ordered the little gathering crowd.

He jerked a thumb at Ellen. Together they raced into the house and up the rickety stairs, the woman at their heels. “Top floor, back,” she gasped. A knot of people, possibly other lodgers, were gathered on each landing. They reached the door. It was locked. The cop said to Ellen tersely—“hold everything.” A shove of his strong shoulder, another, another, and the flimsy lock had broken.

The room was small, dark, narrow. There was one dirty window. There was a bureau which had seen better days. A chair, straight-backed, with a coat flung over it. There was a washstand. There was also a narrow bed. Ellen, choking, got to the window and opened it. The officer was bending over the bed. The pipe line to the gas jet bad been wrenched away, by what desperate and despairing hands, and was pouring its deadly fumes into the room.

The policeman carried the woman who lay on the bed out of the room and down to a lower landing. He said, “Will you take charge, nurse? I’D ring headquarters and get an ambulance and the gas company. She’s not dead,” finished the cop, without brutality, but with the indifference engendered by a hundred such scenes in a workaday world. She was not dead. She lay there fully dressed. Ellen knelt down beside her. The lodging-house keeper came close. “She only came here last night,” she said, “Said she’d pay me today for a week in advance. Ellen was staring down at the unconscious woman. There was a window on the landing which a moment before she had raised, high. A little wind stirred through. A little sun. Ellen thought, I mustn’t faint, I mustn’t faint . . .

She was working, while she fought against the sickness, the blackness which crept over her. Working. Dakr hair, with red lights in it; faint colour in thin cheeks, eyes that were closed, but that would be blue, Ellen knew, if ever they opened again.

“There’s the emergency wagon," reported the cop, after what seemed years.

She spoke to tho policeman, standing a little apart, her hand on his blue sleeve, her eyes never leaving the slim form stretched out on the dirty boards, wrapped in the blankets Ellen had managed to pull off the bed and put about her. The cop gulped and swore under his breath.

She thought of the police blotter, the report that must go in, and so she said, merely, I’ll attend to things when the ambulance comes. I know her, you see.

The ambulance clanged down the street. Ellen’s heart was choking her. Pete would be on it. Oh, God, why hadn’t she thought of that!” Coral. Coral, why did you do it? Didn’t you know how much we love you, didn’t you know we wanted you to come home? CHAPTER XII. Down the street swung the dark ambulance, leaving a trail of sound, sinister sound, the back-wash of an insistent clangor. It stopped. People were standing about. A second policeman had come up. People were whispering, exclaiming. "Wisht,” said a gaunt individual, “wisht I had the noive . . .”

Pete McGregor swung himself off the ambulance and spoke briefly to. his driver. He ran up the steps of the house, carelessly shoving aside the people who had gathered on the peeling stoop. “Suicide, doc? Is she dead?” asked some one. “How the hell do I know?” inquired the interne. He spoke to the policeman who was on the stairs. “Gas.” explained the cop. briefly. “What! Another?” asked Pete. “Can’t they do something different for a change? This gets monotonous.”

Hard-boiled, you see. Because he had to be. Because his own years had been so strange and difficult. The boyhood of the neighbourhood, this neighbourhood. More to eat. warmer clothes than a lot of fellows. Baseball, spring evenings, football, a second-hand bike. School and a girl with dark thick braids, roughened into curls at the ends. A darkness shot through with

ruddy lights. Blue eyes, very deep. His growing up, growing' out of the adolescent braggart attitude toward girls, growing into manhood, very young manhood, loving, planning to work, to be something. For her. Then, disaster, and the drifting downward. Too young, 100 hurt to pull himself up by the bootstraps and tell himself there were other girls . . a pool room brawl, a young man rescued from the quick flash of a knife, out of sheer perversity, perhaps, because Pete didn’t happen to like the knife wielder. Then, interviews, conferences, the big doctor with his shock of grey hair. "I want to do something for you, son. You’ve done something for me I can’t repay.” Well, he’d led his class at high school. The university was not so different — not so difficult —nor medical school. And then a gradual growing into an interest which blocked everything else out, which anesthised him, somehow.

Now the interneship at the hospital. Nearly over. They spoke of him there, the men who mattered. McGregor’s a good man. He’s sound on diagnosis. A worker.”

But the things he saw, the things he heard! He’d thought himself calloused, thought he knew life pretty well, thought nothing could turn him sick, wound him with pity, clutch at his heart. He was mistaken. Charity wards; an ambulance clanging through the streets. Hard-boiled. Pete McGregor.

He ran up the stairs. At the head of the landing a girl, in a dark grey uniform. In that curious moment he saw everything with an individual distinctness. Saw the fair hair under her unbecoming hat. Saw that she was ashen, that she had been crying. Heard her say as he himself said —“Ellen!” Pete, you must help us, it’s —oh; Pete, it’s Coral. No, things didn’t happen like that. The emergency crew from the gas company were working over her. One said. “She’s coming around, doc/’ He said to himself, as he mechanically replied, “Oke, good work, boys.” I can’t look. I mustn’t. He was shaking. The hands which held the stethoscope were shaking. His mouth shook. God, I can’t look.

Ellen’s hand was on his arm. She said, low, for his ears only, “Brace up. You’ve got to. You’ve got to help.” She was thinking . . her stage name . . . on the reports ... on the police blotter. Perhaps we can keep it from mother . . . He forced himself to look. That wasn't Coral. Yes, it was Coral. He said to himself. I’ve got to get out of this

Eut he took no step. He stayed. He did all that was necessary. The stretcher came up the stairs. He and his driver carried her down, breathing now, moaning a little.

Ellen ran down after them. She said urgently, “Get her into the hospital, do everything you can for her. I’ll telephone Nancy. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

“I’ll fix things up,” he promised, roughly.

The stretcher had been shoved into the waiting car. The cop swung himself aboard. Pete said to Ellen, “It can’t be Coral.” He knew it was.

She said dully, “I ought to go with her. Nancy will come right away. Pete, be gentle with her, won’t you?”

He laughed. He had to laugh. He couldn’t help it. She said, her eyes blazing, “if you dare to.” Her eyes were tragic and accusing. “How do you know —anything —about her? And what right have you to judge her? Or any other man?” He lifted his hand in a signal to his driver. The ambulance, clanging drove off. Ellen went away slowly. The crowd, some of them, following, asking their interminable questions. She shook them off.

Presently she went into a ’phone booth and called her home. Nancy, if only Nancy would answer. Waiting, she looked at her wrist watch. No, she would be asleep. Nancy, please answer, please. “Ring them again operator,” she said sharply, “I know some one’s at home.

Nancy’s voice came to her, thick and petulant with drowsiness. Ellen asked, “Nancy, where’s mother?” “For crying out loud!” said Nancy. “What’s happened? She went out for a walk I guess, with Mrs Lenz. I heard ’em go. What’s up?” The drowsiness was clearing from her voice. She listened while Ellen talked. briefly, rapidly. No time to break things gently. Just keep it from her mother that was all.

Nancy said, in a dull voice, a voice that was flat and oddly bruised sounding, “I’ll get dressed and go right over. I’ll say, oh, anything. Leave a note. Mrs Lenz will stay with mother, or Mrs Meader. Get home as soon as you can."

, “No, I’ll go to the hospital." Ellen told her, "at the noon hour. Meet me there, if you can.” She hung up and went about her work. Efficient, unsentimental, sympathetic, capable. She couldn’t think, but her hands thought for her. She gave a bed bath. She washed hot faces and stick hands. She telephoned doctors. She did her work because it had to be done.

At the noon hour she telephoned in her reports and went to the hospital. They knew her there. There was no difficulty—about anything. Nancy was there, had been there for some time. Ellen saw Pete in the barren waiting room. He had aged, she thought. He said, “She’s all right. You can take her home tomorrow.” He added, “You are going to take her home, aren’t you?” Ellen said, “What else? Haven't we been waiting—eight years? Pete, did she.know you?” “She knew me.” . "What did she say?” (To b® Continued,)