The Patronne
I take off my cloak and blue veil in the patronne's room.
The patronne is usually sitting at her desk. Sometimes she says good morning to me, and sometimes she doesn't.
She used to be fille de salle in this hospital, she used to clean these stairs and corridors; then she rose to be infirmière in the ward where I work now, and then panseuse. She is a huge gaunt raw-boned sorrel-coloured woman, who looks like a war-horse. She is so alive and quick that you feel her personality stronger than anything in the hospital, than anything, you think, anywhere. I have seen her seem stronger than death—driving death away.
When Number 17 was so very ill, I think it was she who drove death away from his bed. She worked and swore, and worked and swore. It was hideous. I laugh when I remember. Afterwards I found her outside in the corridor, sitting on the bench. He was going to get well. I cried; and she swore at me till I laughed.
Big red blotches come out on her arms when she is excited, and get purple when she is tired. If you visit the hospital, you do not know what to think of her. But if you work there you admire her, and are proud when she speaks to you kindly. It is an illumined day if by chance she says to you, "Bon jour, ma crotte."