Nurse in White (5 page)

Kind? Ellen asked herself as she looked down at the beautiful stranger.
How could I be anything but kind to one so fragile—so utterly lovely?
And yet she knew that the girl on the bed had been terribly abused and frightened—tortured, perhaps. But why and by whom?

CHAPTER FIVE

It
was on Ellen’s
last night in Receiving some ten days before that the ambulance had been summoned to the lodge of a wealthy broker out on the West Lake Road. The lodge keeper and his wife, good, honest Irish folk, had been returning on foot from a friend’s when a big car passed them at a great rate of speed.

“Liked ta run us down,” Barney told Ellen when she talked with the pair while the patient’s T.P.R., diagnosis, etc., were being taken in the Receiving Room. “But we thought nothin’ of it at th’ toime—’tis a well-traveled highway. An’ thin when we reached th’ lodge gates we see a bundle on th’ ground. ‘Blankets,’ sez I.”

“We’ll be seein’.” Annie Doogan took up the tale. “An glory be t’God! If ’twaren’t a body in the blanket—”

“ ’Twas only wan, miss, an’ th’ pore thing lucked mighty dead t’me.”

“I sez t’ Barney, sez I, ‘I’ll come fer th’ ambulance,’ sez I, ‘an’ mebbe th’ poleece,’ sez I, ‘fer ’tis dirty worruk’s bin goin’ on,’ sez I.”

“An I sez. ‘Th’ ambulance first, Annie, darlin’,’ I sez, ‘an’ I thin mebbe th’ poleece,’ that’s what we done. An’ will th’ pore thing live, miss? An’ who might she be?”

Ellen could give them no information. There was none to give. The girl—she was, apparently, in her early twenties—was clad only in a cotton wrapper over underwear that had once been elegant. That is, Ellen felt sure their very simplicity and the fineness of the material bespoke a person of good taste and one possessed of a measure of wealth. The wrapper didn’t belong. The girl was painfully thin as if from some long illness; but her features—her hands and feet were those of a gentlewoman. In her first faint mutterings, Ellen and Dent were positive they detected an English accent, hence the title Lady X. There was not a scrap of anything that could be used for identification. Even the shoes, sensible oxfords, while they looked English to Ellen, bore no manufacturer’s name or trademark. The wrapper was undoubtedly American and was much too large. The blanket, an automobile robe, was dirty and cheap.

In the sudden emergency, when her life hung by a mere thread, MacGowan had resorted to transfusion. Ellen typed the same, as also did Cyrus Dent. Miss Forsyth grudgingly gave her consent when it was discovered that Ellen had passed her twenty-first birthday a month before. The superintendent didn’t approve of asking her nurses to donate blood—there were professional donors.

“Aye,” grunted Angus sourly, “an’ there be heather i’ th’ Hielands an’ what of it? It’s th’ noo—it’s th’ noo we’re needin’ blude.”

So Ellen had twice given her blood, 500 cc’s each time, and young Dent had donated his once, and they both felt an unusual interest in the mystery girl. And for a brief time hostilities ceased.

“Just what relation does that make us, Gaylord?” the young man had asked, grinning at her as they stood beside the patient’s narrow bed. “She has your blood and my blood in her veins. She’s too old to be our child,” he went on audaciously, “but she could be a sort of link between us.”

“Isn’t it queer how giving a person blood like that seems to create a special feeling for him?” Ellen mused, only half listening to the other. “I wonder who she is—someone important, I’m sure.”

“Well, she’s got swell blood in her,” Cy persisted, “yours and mine. Still dislike me, Gaylord? Even while our good red corpuscles are working happily together inside Lady X, hustling about trying to keep her alive? Aw, Gaylord, I’m not such a bad guy, honestly. Loosen up, gal. Don’t be so all-fired Nightingalish.”

That last was unfortunate. “I could wish no greater happiness than to be like her,” Ellen began with unwonted primness and felt herself a smug little hypocrite. Did she want to be like her entirely? No. No, her heart cried. Florence Nightingale was wonderful, a saint; but Ellen wanted more from life—warmth, love, happiness. A feeling of shame made her angry at herself and at him for producing it.

“God forbid!” she heard Cy say softly. “But of course you don’t mean a word of it. No girl as pretty as you are could be satisfied with that kind of a life.”

“That’s what you think,” Ellen snapped, “and what you think isn’t in the least important to me.”

“Ouch!” cried Cy and clapped his hand to his cheek as if it were something more than a verbal slap, just as Doctor MacGowan entered the room. He eyed the two questioningly. Ellen looked decidedly miffed and the young intern, though grinning, was holding his cheek.

He scowled and Dent vanished. The chief of staff studied the mystery girl’s chart and curtly announced the chances of finding her people appeared decidedly hopeless unless the patient regained full consciousness and memory. Ten days had already gone with little if any change. Frowning, he left the ward.

Ann wrinkled her nose at his erect, forbidding back and whispered, “Angus’s corns must be hurting him. Usually he’s such a jolly old chap, don’t you know. Sometimes I think he hates even himself, Ellen.”

“Oh, we all get those days, Ann. But Mac isn’t really grouchy, it’s just his—his old-world physique, his rugged Scotch physiognomy—”

“In other words, he was just born that way—a sourpuss.” Ann laughed briefly. She and MacGowan had from the first just naturally antagonized each other. It irked him to work with her and, if possible, he found some excuse for preventing it. Ann knew it and seemed to glory in the fact that she could rile the great Angus. “But nae doot his mither lo’ed him—the puir bairn!” Her r’s rolled in perfect imitation of Mac’s and Ellen laughed. Ann was the limit!

Ellen returned to the end bed. “Comfortable?” she asked as she sat down beside the girl. It was after-three and the ward was quiet. Only this one patient was awake.

“Yes,” breathed the girl, “quite.” Then, after a moment in which her eyes searched Ellen’s face, she whispered, “Am—am I going to die?”

“Of course not. You are going to be well and strong again.”

“But—but—why am I here? What has happened to me? I—I can’t remember. Where am I?” All this scarcely above a whisper but it was the most she had yet said. Ellen felt a little thrill of excitement.

“You are in Anthony Ware Hospital in Brentwood, New York. You are not to worry or try to think at all. Everything is going to be all right.” Ellen spoke slowly and with quiet assurance.

“But—but why am I frightened? Who am I?”

“It will all come back to you when you are stronger,” Ellen told her.

“But—but why am I frightened? Who am I?”

“You see, there was an accident and your back and head were injured.”

The wide violet eyes lost some of their terror. Ellen smiled and pressed the cold, lifeless hand.

“You are kind,” the girl murmured. Her fine brows, oddly dark in one so fair, drew together in a frown of perplexity.

“Try to sleep instead of thinking, dear,” Ellen urged. “The more you sleep and relax, the sooner you will remember, and we are all going to help you.”

“So very kind,” she murmured again, and closed her eyes. In a little while she slept that deep trancelike
unconsciousness
that is own sister to death.

For a long moment Ellen stood looking down at the girl lying so white and still. What lay behind that thick curtain of forgetfulness? And was it possible to build up the broken body and restore the shattered nerves? To pierce the dark veil so that memory would return? She shook her head. Dr. MacGowan had said that eventually, when her bruised and torn back should heal, she would regain the ability to move and if MacGowan said so it must be true, of that Ellen was certain. He had also said that no doubt her memory would return—at least partially. Sometimes when there had occurred a concussion as serious as Lady X’s, memory was never completely restored. Oh, she must get well—she must! Why she was so insistent, Ellen didn’t know. Perhaps it was her own blood—demanding to go on living.

Her lips thinned and she slipped from the room and down the length of the long corridor to a great window that looked out upon a suddenly white world. The snow was newly fallen and lay pure and untrampled as far as her eye could reach. She drew back the curtains. Millions of stars glittered in the cold blue black sky and a slightly lopsided moon seemed about ready to drop from sight below the horizon of housetops.

Just like a Christmas card, she thought. Every house on the street was dark. The streetlights showed wreaths on a few windows and touched a decorated fir tree or two. Four more days until Christmas. Last year she had been in Pediatrics and what fun they had had! She wondered just what they could do this year to cheer the patients in Ward L.

Dr. Timothy Ware had built and endowed this hospital as a memorial to his father, Anthony Ware, pioneer and philanthropist, and had named the free woman’s ward, the Lillian Latham, in memory of his mother. This was shortened to ‘Lily,’ then to ‘Lil’ and finally to ‘L’—Ward L it remained. A large painting in oils of this same Lillian Latham, exquisitely beautiful and no doubt idealized, hung between the two long west windows in the ward and on the opposite wall a picture of Christ and the woman taken in adultery.

Ellen always felt antagonistic when she looked at that picture—not because of the subject or the artist’s treatment of it, but because it hung in this particular ward. She knew that poverty and sin did not necessarily go hand in hand and she wondered if perhaps that picture was responsible for the attitude of some of the patients here. They were often so terribly snobbish in their poverty. It hurt their pride to be in a free ward at all. Foolish though no doubt it was, Ellen didn’t much blame them, and wished she had the temerity to suggest its removal.

Ann had suggested a tree for Christmas with Dent acting as Santa Claus; but Miss Forsyth had informed them that Braddock would impersonate the Christmas saint for the whole hospital, excepting possibly, the private rooms, Male Surgical and L. Ellen could understand omitting private rooms and even Male Surgical, but why L—the charity ward? It seemed to her that of all places in the hospital, L needed cheering most. But she loyally submitted; no doubt Miss Forsyth had her reasons. She drew the curtains and went back to her table in the alcove. Ann joined her.

“Slavonski’s eating oranges again,” she said sourly. “At this time of night! There ought to be a law against it and probably there is in any other hospital but this.”

“Don’t begrudge the poor thing what enjoyment she can get from sucking oranges, Ann,” Ellen soothed. “It’s little enough pleasure she gets otherwise or ever will in this world.”

“But she’s so darned selfish with them, Ellen, and I never saw such oranges. Tomorrow I’m going out and buy a half dozen of the biggest I can get and I’m going to eat ’em all. I wish I could do it right in front of her and smack my lips even louder than she does. How long do you suppose she’ll be here, Ellen?”

“Until spring, anyway, if not longer. What has she to go back to? One room over a fruit stand with a lazy husband who thinks the government owes him a living. You know she’ll probably never walk again, Ann. Why not be nice to her?”

“To her? There you go, Ellen. Be nice to them,” she mimicked. “And they run you ragged. Do you know what that Muller woman said to me when I gave her that last drink of water? That she intended giving the superintendent an earful when she came around next time: Such goings on she never did see. Nurses lazing around, refusing to answer calls and starving them. The food wasn’t fit for a dog to eat. Just because she was in a ward didn’t mean she wasn’t used to good food and proper service. She’d tell her plenty and some of the smart young flibbertigibbets would be losing their easy jobs. Easy jobs! Wish she could follow one of us around for one night—she’d change her tune. Probably endow us with halos.”

“I hope you let her rave on and didn’t answer, Ann,” Ellen’ said anxiously. “They like to sputter, but they don’t really mean anything. She won’t complain to Miss Forsyth or to Miss Williams, either.”

“Oh, won’t she? Williams wouldn’t listen—she never does. Agatha’s different—always looking for lapses. I told her to go on and blab if it would ease her mind any. I didn’t care. I don’t, either.”

“Why do you say that, Ann? You do care. And really I think it is probably hard for some of the people in L. Charity is never very easy to accept.”

“They ought to be good and thankful they can come here for nothing and be taken care of. No, Ellen, I’m not going to get maudlin over any charity patient. I give them good service and what do I get for it—scowls, black looks and complaints. They’re a thankless lot.”

“Oh, they’re not often like that, Ann—”

“Often enough to make me long to wring their necks even while I sweetly and painstakingly attend to their wants,” Ann snapped.

“I think they need something more than service, Ann,” Ellen began wistfully, but Ann cut her short.

“I refuse to listen, Ellen. And I had hoped you had outgrown your altruism by this time.”

“Oh, well,” Ellen laughed, refusing to get into an argument at four in the morning. “Let’s talk about our Christmas tree. While you’re out tomorrow buying those oranges, you might get some of the things for the tree. There’ll be sixteen we know of and probably one or two more—there always are. Better count on twenty. I don’t know of any in L who expect to go home for Christmas.”

“Count out Slavonski and Muller,” Ann said grimly. “They get nothing.”

“Oh, Ann!” Ellen protested mildly.

“And where do you get twenty? We’ve only sixteen beds filled and if Crispi goes home as she insists she will, there’ll be only fifteen.”

“Crispi won’t go home, and it’s quite likely all twenty beds will be filled by Christmas, Ann. People seem to fall around pore at this time of the year. So really I think we should get a few extra things—one never knows and it would be too bad to miss anyone. We can always take them up front if we have anything over.”