OUTSIDE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 388, 29 November 1946, Page 30

OUTSIDE

|| Written for "Thé Listerier" |

by

ALLONA

PRIESTLEY

HE’LL have to go to ‘hos- » pital." The doctor’s "tone was brisk, definite. Something inside me. turned. over heavily. I spoke but made no sound. "Best place for her, you know," said the doctor cheerfully. "Got a bit beyond | you and me, eh? Oh, no danger. Needs experts, though. She’ll love it, of course, My kids would break their necks to get back. Look after them marvellously." — "When Be Pm "Oh, as soon as possible. Doesn’t need anything with her. This PE hiatioie say. Give this note to the / ,

ambulance man. He'll see to everything. Good luck." And he went. The note was sealed." I sat down and tried to think. She seemed to be getting better. She didn’t look so ill. Why couldn’t ‘he have told me something? I jerked my mind back. I must tell Elizabeth. "Darling, the doctor thinks you'll get better more quickly in hospital. In the children’s hospital. You’ll.we with a whole lot of other little girls and boys. Would

you like to go?" "Oh, I'd love that, Mummy. Could I stay a week?" She was weakly thrilled and full of importance. Won’t Ann be surprised when she comes home from school? You'll tell them at school that I’m in hospital, won’t you, Mummy?" Ring the ambulance. Get her dressing gown. Brush. Comb. Sponge-bag. Keep doing little things. Keep on the surface. * % a HE ambulance man was kind. He brought beautiful red blankets and he made little jokes for Elizabeth, At the hospital he took charge. There were forms to fill in, a young doctor who muttered over the note and gave Elizabeth a few tests. Then up the hill to the children’s hospital. This time the ambulance man lifted Elizabeth out and carried her into a bright clean ward that looked empty and unlived in in spite of the beds. Children were sitting outside in dressing gowns. Out on the sun-porch a baby was crying. . A plump fair little nurse took off Elizabeth’s pyjamas and put on hospital ones. They were too small and her arms stuck out of the sleeves. Then another nurse came in briskly to take particulars. I tried to make my- self be calm and efficient too, but I kept stammering and repeating myself. "When can I find out... ." I began, and she said brightly, "Perhaps you’d like to talk to Sister. Come out to the office when you're ready." Now I had to say good-bye. "We'll come on Sunday, darling. We’ll all come on Sunday." "Good-bye, Mummy. ‘Tell them at school,"

In a queer way she seemed to be just accepting things as they happened to her. It was a blessing, but it worried. me, somehow. I knocked on Sister’s open door. A blue starched. voice said "Yes?" I asked my. questions humbly and . got .crisp, courteous, adequate replies, Then she said, "You realise that this. will. be a matter of months. While she is as is rend sah able to, see_her."

"But it says .. ." "I’m_ sorry." "Not .even .. . not. even if-it does take . . . . months?". t "Not at all. You may write, but please don’t send expensive presents. If you would like to walk back in the open, the door to the garden is on the left." I was left looking at the door in the long brown. passage. "Proper bitches, some of them," said a rather battered homely little woman sitting on the seat by the door. "But they look after the kids something wonderful. Don’t you worry." To the left and in to the garden. Don’t you dare cry, you fool. Think of something to do. In the tram. Keep thinking. I'll write letters with pictures. I'll send ‘a little parcel every day. Friday she said I could see the doctor. Why don’t they tell you something. At home she was gone, the bed all scrambled and the picture she had been trying to draw lying on the mat. % bd By ‘THAT night ‘a friend discovered that she knew a nurse in the children’s hospital. She rang and the kind nurse went over to see how she was. She came back with the news that Elizabeth was quite settled and happy. "Tl look in in the morning and take her some fruit, and I'l! ask if there’s anything she wants," she said. You wouldn’t believe what a difference that made. Just to know something. Not to be cut off completely. After that we settled down to the letters and little parcels. Rings every few days from the kind nurse and her — friends, trips to the hospital with baskets

of titbits for yet another kind nurse to take to Elizabeth. The feeling grew that no trouble was too much for the patients. We had odd glimpses of a strange world centred on itself and turning inwards, somehow resenting the impact of those of us outside. I found out why I couldn’t see Elizabeth. The children’s hospital was closed to visitors during the measles epidemic. Why couldn’t the Sister have told me that? I’ spoke to a doctor friend. "Oh, yes," he said éasily, "I know. Some of them are like that. But you should see the parents they have to deal with. Awful pests." I thought of mothers, not very wise, frightened, a bit hysterical. "But, Sister. . . ." "The door to the garden is'on the left." Pests. I suppose so. I suppose I was, too. I went to see the house surgeon. They saw us all together in the waiting room. They were mostly youngsters, looking full of knowledge and purpose, but not yet quite at ease with thé witch doctor’s manner. I felt again that the patients mattered tremendously, that all this huge place was just working to make Elizabeth well. It was we who were outsiders, in some way resented, and why not? We were the merely healthy. % %* x HEN it began to be weeks. More letters, more little parcels; more fanciful desserts packed a little insecurely in cardboard boxes. And the precious scraps of news. I wondered if they realised, those kind nurses of ours; if they knew how we jumped to the phone, how we learned their bulletins by heart and re-issued them to our friends. And now the news was getting better, always a little better. Under the guidance of knowledgeable friends, we took to the illicit pastime of window visiting. We stalked through bushes, and peered furtively through windows. Thank goodness Elizabeth’s was open. She looked so much better, was thrilled to see us.. She gave expert advice as to which starched figures could be safely ignored, which must be bobbed down for. It was

hair-raising, but wonderful for the morale. After a few times perhaps we got careless, for suddenly there was Sister at the window. "We don’t want window-visitors," she said and shut it in our faces. "That old Sister Snake," said Ann with feeling on the way home, "that beastly old Sister Snake." At last she was convalescing, almost normal, home ‘in a fortnight, in a week. To the last Sister really couldn’t say when she’d be out. Complications might arise, one never knows. I timidly ventured to mention what the doctor had said to me. I was quietly set aside. Pests. All of us. She came out the next day. Ann and I were in a flutter. We packed clothes and wondered if they would still fit her. Would she be changed? Would she be glad to be back? We gave the case to a smiling nurse and waited outside the ward. At last she came, walking very sedately and carefully in the unaccustomed shoes. She smiled rather uncertainly, little and yet self-possessed in the long high corridor. Ann jumped at her and gave her a bear hug. I thanked someone vaguely, signed something, and then we were out in the car. In the back seat Elizabeth and Ann sat with their arms round each other, talking rapturously both at once. Elizabeth looked well, but very pink and white and fragile beside rufty-tufty brown Ann. I thought how careful I would be of her, how wisely I would feed her. I wouldn’t be careless and Jet things slide as I seemed to so often. I told myself again how lucky I was. She was well again. Good old witch doctors. Good old high priestesses. Good old Sister Snake. Let them put on all the airs they liked. They’d cured Elizabeth. In the back seat the billing and cooing changed suddenly to a passionate frenzy. Above it soared Elizabeth’s shattering soprano. "Ann, you're -a beastly little rat. Mummy, Ann’s took half my chocolate." I relaxed in peace. The family was itself again.