“Yes de-er.”
“Do you mean to say they don’t put them into a separate room to die?”
“They can’t dear. They haven’t got the space” flashed Miss Dear.
Death shut in with one lonely person. Brisk nurses putting up the screen. Dying eyes cut off from all but those three dark surrounding walls, with death waiting inside them. Miriam’s eyes filled with tears. There, just across the room, was the end. It had to come somewhere; just that; on any summer’s afternoon ... people did things; hands placed a screen, people cleared you away.... It was a relief to realise that there were hospitals to die in; worry and torture of mind could end here. Perhaps it might be easier with people all round you than in a little room. There were hospitals to be ill in and somewhere to die neatly, however poor you were. It was a relief ... “she’s always the last to get up; still snoring when everybody’s fussing and washing.” That would be me ... it lit up the hostel. Miss Dear liked that time of fussing and washing in company with all the other cubicles fussing and washing. To be very poor meant getting more and more social life with no appearances to keep up, getting up each day with a holiday feeling of one more day and the surprise of seeing everybody again; and the certainty that if you died somebody would do something. Certainly it was this knowledge that gave Miss Dear her peculiar strength. She was a nurse and knew how everything was done. She knew that people, all kinds of people were people and would do things. When one was quite alone one could not believe this. Besides no one would do anything for me. I don’t want anyone to. I should hate the face of a nurse who put a screen round my bed. I shall not die like that. I shall die in some other way, out in the sun, with—yes—oh yes—Tah-dee, t’dee, t’dee—t’dee.
“It must be funny for a nurse to be in a hospital.”
“It’s a little too funny sometimes dear—you know too much about what you’re in for.”
“Ilikeyourredjacket. Good Heavens!”
“That’s nothing dear. He does that all the afternoon.”
“How can you stand it?”
“It’s Hobson’s choice, madam.”