“You see, I take you at your word when you offer to help,” said Dr. Maitland. “Two friends of mine are coming from Guy’s to assist me, but I can’t put them both up. May I send one on to you?”
“By all means,” said Arthur.
“Thank you very much,” said he. “There is no time nor need, I think, to tell you how grateful I feel for your kindness. By the way, Mr. Avesham, can you use a clinical thermometer? No? That’s bad. When you go to the dispensary tell them to give you one, and take your own temperature and the dispensary man’s temperature several times, under the tongue. Get a thirty-second thermometer, and your temperature is 97·6°. Take it until it is right. Then you know how to use one. In the houses you visit, if you see a man, woman, or child ill, insist on taking their temperature. If the thermometer registers as much as half a degree over 99 take their names and addresses and tell me when you come back. Also, after taking each temperature, if there is any fever, dip the thermometer into a solution of the mercury and wipe it carefully. Good-bye, and many thanks. The dispensary is the second door on the right.”
As soon as he was gone Dr. Maitland turned to the others.
“A fine absence of nervousness,” he said; “he looked as if he was going to pay a call. And I don’t see any nervousness here, either. Miss Fortescue, I think you said you knew something about nursing, so I have put you with Nurse James in charge of the first ward. In a day or two she will have put you in the way of your work, and then probably I shall ask you to look after certain houses, or take charge of patients by yourself. Miss Avesham also is under her in the same ward. You have about forty cases, some very serious. Please put yourselves entirely in her hands: she is admirable. There is no need to tell you that on your care and watchfulness many lives depend. You will both have day nursing only. This way, please.”
CHAPTER XV
The weeks that followed were the most terrible and most wearing that Jeannie had ever known. During the first day or two she showed a real aptitude for her work; she was gentle, firm, and untiring, and as the epidemic increased Miss Fortescue was soon moved to help in a larger ward, and a dozen cases in a smaller ward, off the one under Nurse James, were put under Jeannie. The head nurse was thus always at hand in case she wanted her, but otherwise Jeannie had to manage her patients alone. It was a constant matter of anxiety to Jeannie as to whether she ought or ought not to summon the other. At first the slightest rise in a patient’s temperature seemed to her enough grounds on which to ask the inspection of the elder woman, for she had been told she could not be too careful. Nurse James herself was worked almost to death; and on Jeannie’s calling her one day to look at a patient she had exclaimed, snappishly:
“It would be less trouble to look after them myself.”
Jeannie flushed slightly, but said nothing, and went back to her work. Nurse James hurried out of the room, but returned a moment later.
“You must forgive me, Miss Avesham,” she said, “but I am worried to death. What we should do without you and Miss Fortescue I don’t know. But the temperature always goes up a little in the afternoon; it is only the very sudden rise or sudden falls, particularly the latter, which need alarm you.”