A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

"There's no doubt the game turned out ill for me. At first it seemed as if it would be just otherwise, for my husband had good health, plenty of work, and sufficient pay; so that, when my little girl came, her sweet face brought no shadow of anxiety with it, and we hoped she would be followed in due course by half-a-dozen more. But ere the dear babe had learned to prattle, a drear change came over the happy prospect. The fever crept over the gentle darling, and after she had suffered for a week or more, lying on my arms, God raised her from me into his happy home, where the beauty of summer reigns for ever, and the coldness of winter never enters. Richard and I took the body of our babe to the burial-ground, and saw it covered up in the earth which by turns gives all we get, and takes away from us all we have; and as we walked back to our deserted home, arm-in-arm, in the light of the summer's evening, we talked to each other more solemnly and tenderly than we had done for many a day. And the next morning he went back to his work in the office, from which he had absented himself since our child's death; and I encouraged him to cheer up, and not to give way to sorrow when I was not nigh to comfort him, but toil bravely and hopefully, as a man should; and in so advising him, I do not blush to say that I thought not only of what was best for his spirits, but also of what our necessity required—for we were only poor people, not at any time beforehand in the world, and now reduced by the cost of our little one's illness and funeral; and, sir, in this hard world we women, most times, have the best of it, for when the house is full of sorrow, we have little else to do but weep, but the men have to grieve and toil too.

"But poor Richard could not hold up his head. He came back from work that day pale and faint, and in the evening he had a chill and a heat-fit, that let me know the fever which had killed our little one had passed into him. The next day he could not leave his bed, and the doctor (a most kind man, who was always making rough jokes in a rough voice—just to hide his womanliness) said to me, 'If your husband goes down to his master's chambers in the Temple to-day, he had better stop at the coffin-maker's, in the corner of Chancery Lane, and leave his measure.' But Richard's case was not one for a jest, and he rapidly became worse than the doctor fancied he would be when he made that light speech. He was ill for six weeks, and then began slowly to mend; he got on so far as to sit up for two days for half-an-hour while he had his tea, and we were hoping that soon he would be able to be moved into the country—to my sister's, whose husband was an engineer at Stratford; but, suddenly, he had a relapse, and on the morning that finished the tenth week from his being seized, his arms let go their hold on my neck—and I was left alone!

"All during my babe's and Richard's long illness my sister Martha had behaved like a true sister to me. She was my only sister, and, to the best of my knowledge, the only relation I had in the world—and a good one she was; from girl to woman her heart always rung out clear like a bell. She had three young children, but even fear of contagion reaching them could not keep her from me in my trouble. She kept making the journey backwards and forwards, at least once a week, in the carrier's cart; and, though she had no money to spare, she brought me, with her husband's blessing, presents of wine, and jellies, and delicate meat, to buy which, I knew right well, she and her husband and her children must have pinched themselves down to scanty rations of bread and water. Her hands helped mine to put the flowers in poor Richard's coffin; she bore me up while I followed it, pale and trembling, to the grave; and when that horrible day was coming to an end, and she was about to return home, she took me into her arms, and covering me with kisses and caressings, and a thousand gentle sayings, as if I had been a child of her own, instead of her sister and a grown woman, she made me promise to come down to her at Stratford at the end of the week, and stay with her till God should give me strength and spirits and guidance, to work for myself again.

"But that promise was not kept. Next morning the rough-tender doctor came in, out of his mere goodness, to give me a friendly look, and a 'God speed you,' and found me, too, sickening for an illness. I knew, sir, he had made the discovery before his lips confessed a word; for when he had taken my wrist and felt my pulse, and looked up into my worn face, he turned pale, as if almost frightened, and such a look of grief came on his eyes and lips that he could not have said plainer, 'My poor woman! my poor woman! what I feared from the beginning, and prayed God not to permit, has come to pass at last.'

"Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly; and I told the doctor how sore afflicted I was—how God had taken my husband and babe from me—how all my little means had been consumed in the expenses of nursing—how the little furniture in my rooms would not pay half what I owed to honest folk—and how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I could not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I could not rest in death if I left the world without paying my just debts. Well, sir, the doctor sate down by me, and said, in his softest and simplest way:—

"'Come, come, neighbour, don't you frighten yourself. Be calm, and listen to me. Don't let the thought of debts worry you. What little I have done in the way of business for your poor child and husband I never wish to be paid for—so there's your greatest creditor disposed of. As for the others, they won't trouble you, for I'll undertake to see that none of them shall think that you have wronged 'em. I wish I could do more, neighbor; but I ain't a rich man, and I have got a wife and a regiment of little ones at home, who won't help, in the long run, to make me richer—although I am sure they'll make me happier. But now for yourself; you must go to the fever-hospital, to have your illness out; the physician who'll take care of you there is the cleverest in all London; and, as he is an old friend of mine, I can ask him to pay especial attention to you. You'll find it a pleasant, cheerful place, much more cool and comfortable than your rooms here; the nurses are all of them good people; and while lying on your bed there you won't have to fret yourself with thinking how you are to pay for the doctors, and medicine, and kitchen physic.'

"I was only too thankful to assent to all the doctor said; and forthwith he fetched a coach, put me into it, and took me off to the fever-hospital, to which his influence procured me instant admittance. Without delay I was conveyed to a large and comfortable bed, which, with another similar bed parallel to it, was placed against the wall at the end of a long gallery, containing twenty other beds. The first day of my hospital life I spent tranquilly enough; the languor of extreme exhaustion had soothed me, and my malady had not robbed me of my senses. So I lay calmly on my couch and watched all the proceedings and arrangements of the great bed-room. I noticed how clean and white all the beds looked, and what kindly women the nurses were; I remarked what a wide space there was down the middle of the room between the two rows of beds, and again what large intervals there were between the beds on each side; I observed, too, that over every bed there was a ventilator set in the wall, and beneath the ventilator a board, on which was pinned a paper, bearing, in a filled-up printed form, the number of the bed to which it belonged, the date when the occupant was admitted to the ward, the names of the physician and nurse under whose charge she was, the medicine she was taking, and the diet on which she was put. It made me smile, moreover, to note how the nurses, when giving physic or nourishment, or otherwise attending to their charges, would frequently address them by the numbers on their boards, instead of their names.

"'Nurse, dear,' I asked, with a smile, when my attendant came near me, 'what's my name?'

"'Oh, dear!' said she, looking up at the board which had already been fixed over my head, 'your name is Number Eleven.'

"It would be hard for me to give you, sir, any notion of how these words, Number Eleven, took possession of my mind. This was the more strange, because the nurse did not usually call me by them; for she was a motherly creature, and almost always addressed me as 'poor dear,' or 'poor child'; and the doctors who had the charge of me spoke to me as 'friend,' or 'old friend,' or 'neighbor.' But all the same for that, I always thought of myself as Number Eleven; and ere many days, if any one had asked me what my name was, I could not for the life of me have remembered Abigail Mallet, but should have answered Number Eleven. The patient in the next bed to me was Number Twenty-two; she was, like myself, a poor woman who had just lost a husband and child by the fever, and both of us were much struck, and then drawn to each other, by discovering how we had suffered alike. We often interchanged a few words during the sorrowful hours of the long, hot nights, but our whisperings always turned on the same subject. 'Number Eleven,' I used to hear her poor thin lips murmur, 'are you thinking of your baby, dear?' 'To be sure, darling,' I would answer; 'I am awake, and when I am awake, I am always thinking of her.' Then most times she would inquire, 'Number Eleven, dear, which do you think of most—the little one or her father?' Whereto I would reply, 'I think of both alike, dear, for whenever I look at her, a fair young angel in heaven—she seems to be lying in her father's arms.' And after we had conversed so, No. 22 would be quiet for a few minutes; and often, in the silence of the night, I could at such times hear that which informed me the poor woman was weeping to herself—in such a way that she was happier for her tears.