He was right. The next morning they heard from the old man (the colonel). Every one of them, including McCall and Williams, had been cited for conspicuous bravery on the field of battle, over and above their line of duty, in rescuing the wounded.
V
Hamilton was sitting up in a wheelchair, watching Miss Meadows flutter about from one patient to another—raising or lowering a bed, adjusting a pillow, injecting morphine, sponging a patient’s back, bringing water—doing a hundred and one things. Hamilton admired her swift skill—the sureness with which she did everything, the expertness with which her capable fingers patted the bedclothes into position, the gentle strength of her finely molded arm when she lifted a man in bed or helped him to his chair, the dexterity with which she snipped off gauze and linen and converted them into dressing pads and bandages. Above all, her cheerfulness.
At six each morning she would come into the ward—in her familiar white sweater coat on the cooler days—and take temperatures. She carried scores of thermometers in a glass, it seemed, and as she moved from bed to bed she would shake them down with a dexterous twist of her wrist. Sometimes, on especially cold days, when her fingers were numb, a thermometer would slip from her grasp and shatter on the floor. But in spite of cold, and no matter how little she had slept the night before, she invariably smiled.
Meadows had a word and a nickname for everyone. Hamilton was a “Colonel,” because of his first outburst against having a negro in his ward, his Southern accent and his rather aristocratic cast of features.
“In a few more days, you’ll have a regular goatee, and then you will look like a colonel,” she used to tease him when he was still lying on his back, unable to shave.
The patients were all her boys and she mothered them in a delightfully impartial manner.
One of the men she maternally called “Sleepyhead,” because he was always asleep when time came for taking temperatures. Another was “Caruso,” because he snored (she called it singing) in his sleep.
“That was a most beautiful aria you rendered last night,” teased Meadows, “it sounded like the Awakening of the Lion from Hagenbeck.”
Then, as every one in the ward laughed, and before Caruso could reply, she thrust a thermometer between his lips. Caruso pretended to be in a great rage and in pantomime drew a knife and threatened her with it.