Life in the bunk is wretched (except that the new V.A.D. tells fortunes by hands).
The new Sister is at the same time timid and dogged. She looks at me with a sidelong look and gives me little flips with her hand, as though (a) she thought I might break something and (b) that she might stave it off by playfulness.
Pain....
To stand up straight on one's feet, strong, easy, without the surging of any physical sensation, by a bedside whose coverings are flung here and there by the quivering nerves beneath it ... there is a sort of shame in such strength.
"What can I do for you?" my eyes cry dumbly into his clouded brown pupils.
I was told to carry trays from a ward where I had never been before—just to carry trays, orderly's work, no more.
No. 22 was lying flat on his back, his knees drawn up under him, the sheets up to his chin; his flat, chalk-white face tilted at the ceiling. As I bent over to get his untouched tray his tortured brown eyes fell on me.
"I'm in pain, Sister," he said.
No one has ever said that to me before in that tone.