Vigil in the Night (16 page)

 
Forrest’s entry had been abrupt. But at the sight of the ward, so different now in its tranquility and order, the old doctor drew up short. He glanced around, missing nothing in that choleric, intensive scrutiny. Finally his gaze came to rest on Anne and Lucy. He made no remark on the improvement in the ward’s condition. His eyes bored into them in silence.

 
Then he barked, “You’ve just come. Where are ye from?”

 
“London.” Anne was as laconic as he.

 
And for this she won a grudging nod.

 
“Come around with me,” he grunted. “The pair of ye. There’s work here for a couple of real nurses. And, by the grace of God, ye look as though ye were something more than dummies.”

CHAPTER 53

 
Neither Anne nor Lucy had nursed cerebro-spinal fever before; but now they experienced the devastating force of an infection far surpassing, in terror and malignancy, the worst form of tropic plague. Many of the cases at Bryngower were of the apoplectic type. The unhappy individual, apparently quite well, would be stricken with violent shivering, headache, and frightful spasms. Then would come stupor. Within twenty hours the doomed patient would be dead.

 
Anne worried so intensely that she could not sleep at night. She knew only too well the root cause of the infirmary’s inefficiency. Miss James was a well-intentioned woman, but she was utterly and hopelessly unfitted to command the present crisis. Only the stickling authority of Dr. Hespley kept her in Bryngower. Miss James, like himself, was an official of the Health Ministry. No matter that Dr. Forrest raved and stormed. To a mind that moved in terms of pensions, promotion, and the neat initialing of departmental returns, to displace her was unthinkable.

 
Then, about twelve days after the arrival of Lucy and Anne, Providence quietly intervened. Miss James broke down.

 
“I’ll notify my department immediately,” said Hespley. He was long, dry, and precise, with gold-rimmed pince-nez on his high-bridged nose. “We’ll get a replacement by the end of the week.”

 
“We’ve got one now,” Forrest declared bluntly. “We’re making Sister Lee head of the nursing staff.”

CHAPTER 54

 
Forrest did not await the other doctor’s answer. He walked out to break the news to Anne. He found her, as usual, in her ward. “Well!” he declared grimly. “I want to be the first to congratulate our new matron.”

 
She stood very still, her eyes remote, a spot of color on either cheek, strangely moved by the knowledge of what lay before her. At last she was in charge of a community of nurses; at last she could put into practice what she had longed and hoped for all her life. Rapidly she outlined her program. She had thought of it so often during the long watches of the night that it was perfect and complete.

 
“I must have more nurses, Doctor. I know where to get them. You see, I’m going to put our nurses on eight-hour-duty stretches instead of the eleven hours they’re doing now. Also, I want to send some out on house-to-house visiting. Then we simply must have better accommodation for them. And better food. Everything depends on the nursing in these fever cases. You can’t have superlative nursing from tired-out, underfed, badly housed nurses. We’ve been living on cold scraps for the past fortnight. It’s beyond all sense and reason. Why should nurses be treated worse than scullery maids? I want hot soups and good hot meats for them. I’ll find a cook somewhere. I’ll reorganize the kitchen. And I want outside living accommodation. Some of the nurses must still live in that abominable hut, I suppose. But I’ve got to have a better place for the others. There’s a small temperance hotel just outside the town. It’s practically empty at the moment, and though it’s old-fashioned, it’s solid and comfortable. I want to commandeer that hotel, Doctor. I want a free hand with the grocer, the butcher, the milkman, and the chemist. I promise you I’ll waste nothing. I’m thinking only of the essentials, supplies of war—only this war is to save life, not destroy it!”

 
She broke off, quite out of breath, afraid that she had offended him by saying too much. He did not speak for a full minute, his small eyes drilling her with their penetrating regard. Then he held out his hand, gave hers a long, firm clasp.

 
My dear,” he said, in a curiously gentle voice, “we’re together in this—till the end.”

 
She hurried to the town. Her first visit was to the post office. Here she sent off two wires. One was to Susan Gladstone, secretary of the Union, asking for six specially selected nurses. The other she sent jointly to Nora and Glennie, in Manchester, asking them to move heaven and earth to join her.

 
Next evening six new nurses arrived from the Union. Anne herself showed them to their comfortable quarters in the temperance hotel. And straightaway she set her eight-hour shift in action. The reaction to the innovation was incredible. At the end of a few days Anne heaved a great sigh of thanksgiving. Her team was working marvelously, no longer a group of apathetic individuals, but a welded, fighting unit.

 
On the following Monday Nora and Glennie arrived. Somehow they had obtained permission, by a miracle persuaded the Bruiser to relent. Anne stole a precious half-hour and, taking Lucy with her, went to meet them at Bryngower station.

 
It was a reunion such as none of them had ever visioned, on the gusty platform against the background of the gloomy, frightened town; yet it lost nothing in affection because of that.

 
Laughing and talking, the four nurses left the station. Though the thought never crossed their minds, they paid resounding tribute to their own profession. They were going, at the risk of their lives, to nurse a deadly disease. Yet they did so with gaiety, with bright, unflinching courage.

 
Later, Anne said to Lucy, hesitantly, “I’m so glad you and Nora and Glennie have taken to each other. I’ve got a marvelous big room for the three of you at the hotel. I’ve really been worried about your room here. It’s damp and horrible.”

 
“And what about you? Are you going to the hotel?”

 
“Oh, no, I must stay here.”

 
Lucy smiled quietly. “Then I’m staying, too. You don’t think that I’m going to let you stop in this dump while I wallow in comfort. No thank you, darling. I’m not running myself that way, now. Besides, if you did send me to the hotel, they’d all say you were favoring me because I am your sister. And finally, if you must know the truth, I want to stick beside you.”

 
Anne’s eyes misted. Deeply touched, she did not press the point. She said instead, “There’s another matter. And here you can’t argue. Here I must have my way. It isn’t favoritism. It isn’t anything but real and solid merit, Lucy. You’ve worked wonderfully since we came here. In my opinion you’re the best nurse in the house. I’ve spoken to Dr. Forrest about it, and he agrees. Lucy, we’re starting another ward on the first floor—for the children. We want you,
I
want you, to be the new ward sister.”

 
Lucy clasped her hands together. Overcome, she could not, for a moment, speak. Then she said in a low voice, “Thank you, Anne. That’s the best news of my whole life.”

CHAPTER 55

 
The new children’s ward was opened, the new sister was in charge. It gave Anne a warm expansion of her heart to see Lucy in her fresh uniform, so serious and intent, so conscious of her responsibility, and so eager to fulfill it.

 
There were perhaps twenty children in the ward. Several of them were at the stage of recovery. The others, though acutely ill, were progressing favorably and were expected to recover. But there was an exception—one child was mortally ill. Dr. Forrest had expressed the opinion that she could not live beyond the week.

 
It was not unduly depressing for a ward sister to have one dangerous case in twenty. It was, considering the severity of the epidemic, a cheerful percentage. Yet Lucy, for some queer reason, was not content. Her brow was anxious, her demeanor reserved, all her energy bent, it seemed, upon that one child.

 
So marked was this, Anne could not fail to notice it. And today, just four weeks after Lucy’s promotion, as Anne came into the ward, she had to pause at the unexpectedness of what she saw. Lucy was sponging the child gently and systematically in an effort to reduce her temperature. There was nothing unusual in this routine procedure. The wonder was that Lucy, as ward sister, should, with two nurses available in the ward, be doing it herself.

 
Unobserved, beside the screens, Anne studied Lucy’s actions. The more she gazed, the more she became convinced of a great tenderness, a deep and secret motive, behind everything that Lucy did. The child was a little girl of four years, the only daughter of a decent couple in the town. The father spent most of his day walking up and down outside the hospital, waiting for news of his little Gracie.

 
Certainly, despite the ravages of the fever, Gracie Hedley was a sweet child. Even now her fine-spun golden hair clustered in ringlets on the pillow. And as Anne looked at the unconscious Gracie, a chord of recollection vibrated in her memory. How and why she could not tell—yet, nevertheless, there was some strange resemblance between this dying child and the little boy who had died at Shereford of diphtheria.

 
In a flash Anne saw it all. Lucy, touched by this resemblance, too, was fighting a hopeless battle for this other life.

 
A troubled line drew between Anne’s brows. She dreaded instinctively the psychological effect, the disappointment, of inevitable failure on Lucy’s part. As she watched, too, she felt that Lucy was holding the child nearer her than was needful, exposing herself heedlessly to that infection against which all the nurses had been warned to take precautions.

 
The next day came, and the next. Then it was Saturday. The weekend passed. And Gracie Hedley still breathed, still swung by her slender thread of life. On Tuesday morning Dr. Forrest spent a long time with the still unconscious girl. He declared that should Gracie survive the crisis of the next twenty-four hours, she would positively recover. He added gruffly that, in his opinion, the crisis would prove fatal.

CHAPTER 56

 
Twenty-four hours! Eyes on the clock, Lucy summoned up the last of her reserves. The seconds slowly ticked away, the minutes dragged along. Somehow the day went on. Lucy had barely been out of the ward for twelve hours. Nevertheless, immune to all Anne’s remonstrances, she determined to spend the night there, too.

 
And so, when darkness fell and the lamps were lit, Lucy settled herself to watch beside the cot. She had no sense of tiredness. She felt light, impervious to fatigue, filled by a predestined force that nothing could impair.

 
All that day Gracie had seemed to be holding her own. But now, as the shadows deepened, it seemed as though the last remnants of her feeble strength were leaving her. She began to breathe with a faint stertor, and her temperature suddenly shot up. And worst of all, her head, pulled back by spasm, was locked between her thin shoulder blades.

 
Lucy’s eyes never left the dying child’s face. Through all her ministrations her own gaze remained fixed upon those poor sightless, squinting eyes. She held the limp hand in hers. It was as though she poured some fierce, implacable current into that emaciated little frame.

 
About two o’clock in the morning Gracie’s breathing began to fail. And her pulse, under Lucy’s finger, flickered and was almost still. Lucy’s face went deathly pale. Was she to fail, at the eleventh hour, after all that she had done? She bent forward frantically and, lifting the limp form of the child, pressed her mouth against the almost lifeless lips. Desperately she inflated the collapsed chest with her own breath. Then she started swiftly the movements of artificial respiration.

 
How long she continued she did not know. But there came a moment when she stopped. The child was breathing again, softly but regularly. Beads of perspiration had broken on her brow.

 
With shaking fingers Lucy fumbled for her thermometer. She could scarcely take the reading. But when she did, she almost cried aloud. The fever had broken. Quickly she reached for the feeding pipette, dropped a few drachms of peptone solution on Gracie’s tongue. Her heart gave a great bound when she saw the child swallowing naturally. The breathing strengthened, as did the pulse. The temperature fell another degree. More nourishment, taken more easily. And then, as the first streaks of dawn filtered through the blinds, Gracie’s eyelids lifted. She looked up at Lucy with consciousness, with intelligence. She could not speak—that was yet to come. But there it was, the gleam of life and understanding. The crisis was over at last.

 
A great rush of joy broke over Lucy. Tears came blindingly and stingingly, tears of ecstatic joy. She pressed her hands together, lifted them up in a prayer of gratitude. Then stumblingly she rose and rolled up the window blind. There, against the opposite wall, keeping vigil, staring up toward her, was Tom Hedley. She made a gesture of abandoned joy. And as he started forward, she went dizzily to the door to meet him. There, on the threshold, as she told him, the rising sun set a light about them both.