Nurse Jess

by Joyce Dingwell

  “Is that why you chose it?” said Margaret sympathetically. “Are you a little homesick, Jessa?”

  “I don’t think so, and to tell the truth I just don’t know why I grabbed the pink.”

  But as they came down the stairs for breakfast, their crisp skirts rustling starchily, their little caps perched on their heads, one acorn-brown head, one red, Jessa thought she knew why.

  It was quite absurd, really, and it would be hard to explain, but the Barlows had always been a rhyming family like this.

  She told Margaret about it, very confusedly, but then of course it wasn’t a subject particularly overladen with intelligence.

  “It might sound silly to you, to outsiders,” she said doubtfully, “but it made sense to us, Meg. Dad might say at brekker, for instance: ‘Jessamine, you’re looking fine, but that melon and pine you’re eating is mine,’ and I’d reply, ‘I may look sunny, but I’m not your bunny, so don’t be funny, spread your toast with honey.’ You see?”

  “Not very well,” admitted Margaret apologetically. “I mean, did your mother—”

  “Mother,” said Jessamine, “had breakfast in bed.”

  “I still don’t understand how the pink uniform connects up.”

  “Well, we used only to rhyme in the morning, Daddy and I. It was an early Barlow habit, I suppose, like singing in the bath. I often found myself doing it in the a.m.’s at G.S. I might recite—”

  “Yes,” nodded Margaret hastily, skipping all that, “but how do you associate pink?”

  “Gink,” grinned back Jessa triumphantly. “Professor Gink., A lecture in the second hall, remember? It was hung on the notice-board. I couldn’t think where I’d heard the name before; I decided it must be one of the conchi traders, but I must have been unconvinced, otherwise I wouldn’t have been carrying Gink around in my subconscious like that and grabbed the pink uniform, do you understand?”

  Margaret said in bewilderment, “Oh, dear.”

  “It’s not really as psycho as it sounds,” apologized Jessa anxiously. “You see, I had Gink on my mind because I knew I’d heard it before, and having the habit of early rhyming, I guess I took the pink to rhyme with Gink.”

  “Not mauve to go with cove or yellow to go with fellow,” giggled Margaret, following at last.

  Jessa took her seriously. “No, but all the same I could have, because that particular Gink was a man. He was the parent who waylaid me. Remember me telling you? Well, it was a father, not a mother, visiting the prem. Poor fellow, he was gazing in at his little son. I was glad it was a boy; great sails of ears. It doesn’t matter with men, no ear-rings, you see. It didn’t really matter with his dad, either, oddly enough.”

  She thought about Mr. Daddy-long-legs Gink and his owl glasses and disheveled hair and rather sweet simpleness.

  She said sincerely, “He was quite a pet. I liked him from the beginning.”

  They turned into the dining-room. Just as at the Great Southern, it was only half filled. Meals would always be staggered here as at all hospitals. Jessa saw substantial plates of oatmeal and large platters of bacon and eggs, and thought of her three weeks’ break at Crescent Island and of the sugared paw-paw, sliced pineapple and iced coffee that Benjamin had carried deferentially to her side. She sighed and took her turn in the small queue at the self-serve.

  Margaret reached out for a tray and Jessa copied her. “It’s an unusual name, isn’t it?”

  “What name, Jessamine?”

  Jessa said, “Gink.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, you’d probably find quite a few on the electoral roll or in the telephone directory.”

  “Not in Crescent Island’s roll or directory,” said Jessa. “We have only thirty voters and eleven on the phone.” She added sadly, remembering the fame that was about to flood the island, “At least, we did.”

  They chose a table near a window. Outside dew gemmed the lawns, hung shining jewels on the delicate lace the spiders had woven overnight on the branches of the shrubs.

  “Do you think,” asked Jessa, turning back her gaze, “he could be a relative of Professor Gink? That parent, I mean. And why isn’t Professor Gink Professor Mary or Professor Ermyntrude or something, the same as the rest of the allwoman staff?”

  “Probably she isn’t staff,” said Margaret. “Probably she’s that valued adviser we have been told about. Come to think of it, Jessa, I believe I’ve often heard the name of Professor Gink, the same as one hears of the names of great pianists, or actresses, or social workers, only this time a fame associated with babies, of course.”

  “Like Truby King or Spock or something?”

  Margaret buttered toast and said, “Yes.”

  They dropped the subject of the pink uniform and the coincidence of Professor Gink having the same name as Jessa’s parent by unspoken consent. They fell to and depleted their plates in silence. They had no illusions as to what lay ahead of them, and knew they would need all their strength. When Jessa did speak at last it was with a mouthful of food, and she said, with a sharp awareness of the task that lay before them, “Meg, it’s not going to be a piece of cake.”

  She looked down at the depleted plate of bacon and eggs and they both laughed.

  At eight o’clock they reported for duty. On this first day in their newness they were grateful that Matron Martha had kept them together.

  They went up to Ward Two and Jessa kept close behind Margaret, who was already much more adept at “arriving” anywhere than she was. They went into the warm bright room.

  It was not like a ward—it was more like a personal nursery, but a big nursery. In a laboratory adjoining, nurses and sisters were preparing the injection foods, the bottled foods having been made up already and put into hygienic storage for use throughout the day.

  Jessa saw that every bottle was labelled with a baby’s name. She found herself looking for Gink, but could not find one. Poor little Gink mite, she thought, he must be an intravenous or a drop baby.

  “Nurse Margaret? Nurse Jess?” asked a sister briskly. “Which is which?”

  They disassociated themselves and Jessa was taken by a second sister, Sister Helen, she was smilingly told, to learn how to give a bath.

  “We’ll be easy on you on your first day and give you the Bouncer. He’s a whopper child, fully four and three-quarter pounds. He was an eight-monther, which gives him a start on the rest.”

  “What,” trembled Jessa, looking down to the Bouncer, who seemed anything to her but a bouncer, who appeared delicate and dresden enough to break, “would a small baby weigh?”

  “Fairy in Ward Three is four months premature, and her nappy safety-pin is as wide as she is,” said Sister Helen. “We haven’t dared weigh her yet.”

  Jessa looked with relief on the Bouncer. Compared to Fairy he would be a push-over. “Do I wash him?”

  “You certainly don’t, but after next week you can every third day. But right now you’ll oil him, then apply lanolin. When you’ve diapered and put him down again, come to me and I’ll give you Bing for his two-hourly feed.”

  “Bing croons, I suppose.”

  “I haven’t heard him.” Sister Helen added over her shoulder as she left, “He has no hair.”

  Neither had the Bouncer, neither had an amazingly aggressive atom whom Sister Judith was feeding and whom Jessa privately decided to call the Bruiser, but one little girl had. It was long and black and silky and it fell down in a perfect coiffure. Sister Judith saw Jessa looking at it and introduced, “Madeleine, our femme fatale. She hasn’t fingernails yet, but when they come we’re sure they’ll be painted red.”

  Jessa found the gauze and cottonwool and began gingerly on the Bouncer. “Don’t be frightened of him,” called Sister Helen across the room. “He’s one of our best toughs.”

  Eyes, nose and mouth washed, with the Bouncer earning his name by protesting at each operation, Jessa diapered and put him down and came over to feed Bing.

  Bing’s bottle was taken out of storage. As she
looked on the label “William Brown,” which was Bing’s proper name, Jessa kept her eye open again for Gink. Percy Gink, she thought, or even Aloysius Gink, but there was no bottle for any Gink at all.

  Bing’s bottle was bigger than the taxi-man’s baby’s, but it was still much smaller than the bottles Jessa had used at G.S. And the process took much longer. Sister Helen, coming to watch her, explained, “This is a premmie’s main disadvantage, Nurse Jess, his difficulty to suck and swallow. You need patience and then some.”

  “I can see that now,” nodded Jessa feelingly, “and I can see too, why forty babies need a non-stop staff of twenty-three.”

  It was dinner break before she realized it. Margaret came out of her corner of the ward as she did, her cheeks flushed like pink carnations. Knowing her own ability to flush even without a hot room Jess had no doubt that she herself must look like a boiled beetroot. But oh, oh, it had been fun.

  They ate at the window again. The dew was gone, the spider webs, blown away in a wind that had sprung up. Jessa chewed beef and potatoes and greens and never even thought about the cold chicken and iced avocado and buttered yams that Mother, desperate to keep her there on the island, would have ordered Benjamin to serve at noon Tinder the bauhinia tree.

  Back again up the stairs and Jessa and Margaret close together now, being shown how to feed by drops.

  From there into a small cubicle where three extra tiny ones were being attended continually and fed through tubes.

  During the afternoon Sister Valerie called Jessa to watch a special case, a boy with paralysis of the lungs affecting his breathing.

  “Professor Gink made an artificial opening to his throat which allowed him to breathe, but which mucus could easily block. You must keep constant watch, ready in an instant to clear the opening. Will you do that, please?”

  Jessa nodded, “Yes, Sister Valerie,” realizing she had almost answered, “Yes, Professor Gink.”

  She looked down on the little boy and decided to call him the Ace. He had sharp eyes and quick hands, and she was sure that one day he would break the sound barrier, though of course when he grew up that probably would be about as involved as catching a bus.

  She thought of that Gink baby, the youngest of Daddy-long-legs’s large quiver-full. She found she remembered him quite clearly, even though most prems, she had discovered, were pathetically alike in the sweet immaturity. She recalled with a stab of love in her heart his small, rather lost face. Rather like an absent-minded professor, she smiled—then realized that she had committed a libel, or was it a slander?—in naming the obscure Gink prem, son of that obscure Daddy-long-legs father, after the Professor Gink.

  Oh, well, Junior could be the perfesser then, she grinned.

  Matron Martha came in soon afterwards. It was remarkable how she seemed to “arrive” by neither “opening” nor “entering,” just as she had lectured. It was really an achievement for that large important bosom and straight ramrod back. Jessa was very impressed.

  She was more impressed still when Matron Martha took up a baby and cuddled him to her. Yes, Margaret had been right, she saw, there was only comfort there.

  The comfort was strictly for her prems, though. She turned and looked coldly on Jessamine.

  “Couldn’t you see this baby needed mothering, Nurse Jess? Nurses who care for premature babies must understand that such children are fully-dependent creatures. Their wits must be sharpened to all that a baby might need. They cannot ask. This child has an emotional side as well as a physical. Remember that in the future, and you can let Nurse watch the special case now, it’s time for your tea.”

  “That late?”

  Matron Martha was grudgingly pleased at this unmistakable evidence of Jessa’s absorption in her work. In her usual “tinder with you” one moment, “rescued” the next, she replied, “Yes, time goes, doesn’t it? Go and have your break, then come back and feed babies Brent, Carter and Jones, and after those I believe your day will be done.

  “And don’t forget, Nurse Jess, in the second hall tonight, Professor Gink.”

  Professor Gink... Uniform of pink... Jessa found herself walking to the absurd time of it, then telling herself not to be silly, that it was evening, not a.m., that she should not permit rhyming at this hour. She drank two cups of tea and ate three buns.

  Brent, Carter and Jones were all bottle types, and presented no feeding difficulties. She stopped right on time and went down with Margaret for tea.

  “Do we change for the lecture?”

  Margaret said, “I asked Matron Martha that and she said only if we wanted to. I’m not going to. Once I get out of this uniform it will be to get into bed.”

  Jessa nodded feelingly. “I’m done, too. I expect we’re both slack. Three weeks away from a ward is disastrous to the energy.”

  “Especially three weeks’ lotus-eating,” suggested Margaret slyly.

  “No, not lotus, only pawpaw and pineapple and buttered yams. However, this stew isn’t bad, is it?” Jessa ate heartily, as though two cups of tea and three buns were many hours away instead of only two.

  The lecture was at seven. Even those who presumably might have been going out for the evening made it clear that this was one thing they would not miss.

  Margaret and Jessa followed the little crowd of sisters and nurses to the second hall. Because they were new and did not want to intrude they chose seats at the back.

  Matron Martha was there already, and a pretty, youngish woman whom Margaret whispered was Doctor Elizabeth. “I met her when you were at tea; she came up to see Baby Birdwell, he wouldn’t suck.”

  Professor Gink had not arrived. Jessa shut her eyes and tried to imagine what the professor would look like. Slim? Or matured? Made-up or left shiny? Hat on or beautifully salon-ed hair? Flat heels or very high and French? It was no use, she simply could not visualize the woman.

  All she kept picturing was her Gink, Daddy-long-legs Gink—and, of course, the youngest of his large quiver-full, the Perfesser as she had named him, the little boy with the small lost face.

  “Up,” whispered Margaret urgently, and Jessa obeyed mechanically. How often had she “upped” at lectures at G.S.!

  And then she was staring. She was staring so hard that Margaret had to nudge her down again.

  “It’s—it’s a man,” she said.

  Margaret said, “Ssh,” then nodded. “I rather expected it,” she whispered under cover of picking up something from the floor. “Didn’t you?”

  “No, no, I didn’t. I though this hospital was female to the core.”

  “Perhaps he is the core,” decided Margaret shrewdly. “By the importance surrounding him I could quite believe that.”

  —Yes, but he hadn’t been so important doubled up peeking through a glass panel... losing his balance and sprawling over the floor... dropping his owl spectacles and groping for them... peering at her through touselled hair, thought Jessa.

  And what importance had she allotted him? A friendly pat on the arm that had sent him toppling over, a query as to which baby was his, advice—oh, my goodness!—advice to attend some clinic.

  He, the great Professor Gink!

  CHAPTER IV

  “HEALTHY babies are happy babies,” the Professor was reciting. “Actually they require little from us, but what they do require they must have, or trouble begins.”

  —Trouble, groaned Jessa inwardly, and tried to shrink further into her seat.

  “While lecturing in London,” said the Professor, “I—”

  Margaret began taking notes. Jessa, glancing round, saw that everybody was taking notes. She put down her head and pretended she was taking notes so as not to appear conspicuous. Now and then she stole a glance at Professor Gink.

  “As I said in the United States of America,” the Professor was continuing, “with these babies we must count everything in miniature; food, time, age, weight, length, strength.”

  Strength, scribbled Margaret. Jessa thought feebly to herself that she
had never felt so weak.

  The Professor was not a polished speaker. He stammered, he fumbled, he fidgeted, he ran his fingers through his rough shaggy hair so that it stood up like prickles, he dropped his notes and in retrieving them he dropped his glasses. There was something odd about those glasses. Jessa could see it even from here. There was a piece of cotton hanging from one wing as though the wing had been clumsily mended. If it had been mended it must have been broken.

  Broken where and when? Jessa thought ... And by whom...?

  Professor Gink was speaking of the emotional side. “Parents”—was he looking meaningly in her direction and reminding her that she once had made a parent of him?—“should be encouraged to visit their child a short while of every day, but to supplement this nurses should learn to act as temporary mothers, to cuddle and play and speak with the babies as they pass their cribs.

  “I myself,” continued the Professor, “have been visiting regularly one of our own Belinda’s small inmates, a foundling boy, as I expect you all know by now.

  “Fortunately, since the first forty-eight hours in any infant’s life are the crucial hours, a premature foundling is seldom encountered. It would be a sad prospect indeed if this was not rare.”

  The Professor mislaid his notes a second time, and Doctor Elizabeth rescued them for him from her lap.

  “I’m afraid I’m very clumsy,” he apologized. “Yesterday I broke the wing of my spectacles ... though I do believe that was not entirely my fault”—were his eyes roving again?—“I was bumped.”

  Matron Martha said, “Tch, tch.”

  The lecture went on. It was not so much a lecture as a confidential talk. Despite the occasional stutter, the showering papers, the retrieving of them and the consequent touselled hair and crooked spectacles, the scholar drove home his points. Margaret scribbled two pages full; all the audience, save Jessa, did the same.

  He sat down at last and ran his fingers through the shaggy hair, probably in the vain hope of tidying it. It made it stand up more like prickles than before.