“Perhaps the hospital was full and they put her there when she came in and can’t risk moving her. Have you been here long?” Rose said.
The woman lifted her pendulous breasts and swung them out from the body.
“Whew! Hot today! Three weeks goin’ on Monday, mam. Long enough to know thet I wouldn’t sleep in thet bed, you is in, not for a million dollars.”
“What’s the matter with it?” Rose inquired demurely.
“It’s ... it’s ...” her breasts rested upon her bed as she leaned forward, “It’s a death....”
But Miss Kexter’s appearance on the ward brought her speech to a sudden halt. She flopped her body back upon the pillows and smiled weakly.
“When I think of all the clothes I got to wash whin I get outa here. I prides myself my chillun is the cleanest goin’, and the teachers always seys so, too. In all the health campaigns at School 17, Willie is always chose....”
But Rose Standish heard no more. Miss Kexter was standing beside her bed and saying, “When did you decide to be sick?” Miss Standish caught the sarcastic banter in her voice and replied lightly, “I haven’t. And I hope I aren’t.”
Miss Kexter stood perplexedly by for a moment, pondering that phrase. “I aren’t, I am not, I aren’t,” she kept saying it over and over to herself. Rose Standish had been to college. She couldn’t be wrong, yet that didn’t sound right, somehow ... “I aren’t.”
“Sorry this happened to you when the infirmary was closed. You must hate it on a ward. Hard as we work, I must say in spite of the depression, I think the nurses ought to be allowed to be sick in private, don’t you?”