“Has your wife any worries?”
He tried to be quite truthful.
“Oh, no; at least, none that I know of.” Then he spoke about that “little girl” upstairs, remarking how wonderfully quick she was.
The doctor smiled.
“Isn’t she very young?”
“She’s had twenty-three years of hard experience. She was born in a hospital. Her mother died at her birth. The lot of us took care of her—the scrub woman, the nurses, the doctors, the patients; she grew up inhaling iodoform; it’s healthier than eau de cologne. Her dolls were little orphan babies. She learnt to sterilize instruments at an age when most children are being ‘perambulated’ in the park. She toddled after me, sat on the cots, watched the patients get well, watched them die. I could have made a good doctor out of her, but she thought nursing was more helpful. Her school graduates human beings.”
5
The patient improved. Miss Mary watched her drop into a quiet sleep, then flew over to see the doctor. She perched on the arm of a big chair; it wouldn’t do to sit in it when one is tired; it was too comfortable—
“What are you doing here? Anything wrong?”
“No. It’s that poor man.”