A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

Sister said that I could hardly have had a more instructive case, as she had nearly all the bad symptoms a typhoid case can have, including a good deal of hæmorrhage.

I was horribly proud one day when the senior physician was going round and lecturing to the students and speaking to them of the necessity for good nursing in typhoid; and he made Sister show them the child's poor, bony little back and legs, with not a red mark on them; and he told them it had taken all her strength to battle with the fever, and if she had also had a bed-sore to sap her strength away, she could never have pulled through.

We had two diphtheria tracheotomies while I was in that ward; and though they were not my cases (as they both had special nurses), I was present at the operations, and I learnt a good deal about their treatment, as Sister used to let me relieve their nurses for meals, &c. And she taught me to change and clean their tubes, and so on; so that when I was put on as a special later on, I was not so much afraid of accidents as I should otherwise have been.

It must have been a very bad form of diphtheria, as one of the specials became infected, and had to go away to the Fever Hospital; and then Sister took it, but she was not very ill with it, and she was nursed in her own room. It has made them talk about the necessity for some isolation ward to put these cases in. Of course they are only taken in here if they are too ill for it to be safe to send them on to the Fever Hospitals.

We had a busy time when Sister was ill, but the staff nurse was very good and to be depended upon, and things went on all right.

I must tell you of a little joke we had one night in the Matron's house, where all the lady pupils live. Late one evening in September, when we were all undressed, one of them came to my room and said there was a wretched cat on some leads outside the bathroom window, and it was making such a row, as it could not escape. We went to inspect, and agreed that a rescue was necessary. By this time most of the lady pupils had assembled, and we fetched a ladder from the boxroom. It was too short; but we tied bath towels to it, and lowered it through the window to the leads. Then the stupid cat would not come up, and only cried the more; so I was shoved through the window in my dressing-gown, and they held on to me until I got my feet on the ladder, and could climb down to the cat. Just then Matron's door opened, and they all slipped away to their rooms. I heard something about "too much noise" and "lights out," and then she came into the bathroom and shut down the window. It was lucky the ladder was too short, or she must have seen it. It was pretty dark, and I was sitting down consoling the cat and waiting till the coast was clear, when I heard a smothered laugh, and then for the first time I remembered the gardens at the back, that belonged to some of our visiting doctors. I had looked at their houses and seen all the blinds down, and I had never thought they might be sitting under the trees at that time of night. After that, I very carefully kept my face to the wall; and soon the window was cautiously opened, and with some difficulty the cat and I were hauled in, and very quietly we pulled up the ladder. Then I told them I was certain we had been watched, and we located the garden from which the laugh had come; and next morning, sure enough, there were two basket-chairs under the trees, so we knew which doctor it was. But he never gave us away, and I don't know to this day whether he recognised me; but I often fancied there was a twinkle in his eye when we met.

Then the question arose what to do with the cat, as it appeared to be hungry, and not inclined to be quiet; so eventually the most innocent-looking lady pupil was deputed to go to the home sister, and tell her she had caught this strange cat in the bathroom, and, as it seemed starving, might she go down and feed it, and then turn it out? The home sister was fond of cats, and her sympathies were aroused; so she assisted in providing it with supper and seeing it off the premises.

In November I was sent on night duty. The lady pupils are not obliged to do night duty, as they are only here for one year; but Matron was short of senior probationers, and asked me if I would like it, and I thought I would. Part of the time I have been an "extra," just helping wherever they were busy, and helping in the theatre for any night operations. Then I was put on as "special" with a tracheotomy (diphtheria) in a men's medical ward—such a nice boy, called Albert, aged eight. And, when he was getting better, another little chap of three came in, so desperately bad that they had to do tracheotomy in the receiving room; and then he was brought over and put in a cot by my boy's bed, and I looked after them both. Poor Albert was rather jealous at first, and whenever I was attending to the small boy he began to "wheeze" too, thinking I should rush to his rescue; but he soon found that that did not pay.

After these boys had both recovered, I disinfected, and had a night off to air myself; and then Matron let me do the staff nurse's nights off—very interesting, but rather anxious, work.

You go to a ward which perhaps you have never been inside before, and you don't know where anything is kept. There are from twenty to forty patients; if the latter, there is a probationer to help you. Most of them are sleeping quietly; the few who are awake are probably wondering what sort of a rise they can take out of the strange nurse.