HOW RAE MALGREGOR UNDERTOOK GENERAL HEARTWORK FOR A FAMILY OF TWO
BY ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT
Author of “Molly Make-Believe,” etc.
IN THREE PARTS: PART THREE
WITH PICTURES BY HERMAN PFEIFER
SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALMENTS
ON the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression of her trained-nurse face.
From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face. The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been summoned on a difficult case.
On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.
On recovering consciousness, the White Linen Nurse and the Child find the Senior Surgeon pinned under their motor-car, and after receiving instructions as to its management, the Nurse runs the car into a brook, and the Senior Surgeon becomes aware for the first time that the car is afire. Momentarily unnerved by the thought of the peril in which he has been, the Senior Surgeon clings to the White Linen Nurse, and finally proposes that, since she has decided to give up professional nursing, she take up General Heartwork for him and his daughter. The proposal is in fact a proposal of marriage, and after a frank discussion of the situation (which is one of the most significant and powerful pieces of work of the author), the White Linen Nurse accepts.