“Hush, hush! Pray be quiet, dear. You are making yourself hot and feverish.”
The nurse laid her cool white hand upon the patient’s brow, but she resented it and thrust it away. “Let me be. I don’t want holding down. It’s shameful. It’s cruel. Oh, why did I come to this dreadful place? As for that Sir Denton, or whatever his name is—”
“What about him? Do you want me?” said the gentleman in question, who had come into the ward and up to the bed unnoticed. “How are you this morning?—Ah, better.”
“No, I’m not, I’m worse, and it’s shameful.”
“What is?” said the surgeon, smiling.
“For me to be neglected by the doctors and nurses as I am. It’s too bad, it is; and I might have died—no doctor, no nurse.”
“Ah, yes; it is very cruel,” said Sir Denton. “I have shamefully neglected my patients here, and as for the conduct of Nurse Elisia to you, it is almost criminal. You will have to go back home to your own people and be properly treated. Dreadful places, these hospitals are.”
Nurse Elisia looked up at the old surgeon with wondering eyes, as he took the woman’s own tone, but he smiled at her sadly.
“Come with me, I want to talk to you. Poor thing,” he said, as they walked away, “she is in the irritable, weary state of the convalescent. She is not answerable for what she says. Sorry I was obliged to go, but the case was urgent. Mr Elthorne’s father. A terrible accident. The spine injured, and paralysis of the lower part of the body.”
“Mr Elthorne’s father!” cried the nurse, turning pale. “How shocking!”