Nurse Jess

by Joyce Dingwell

  “May we ask questions?” Matron Martha enquired.

  He assured them he was only waiting, and two sisters rose immediately and asked them. Doctor Elizabeth had something to query... then Margaret got up.

  It was a good sensible topic, and Jessamine would have swelled with pride for her friend and for Great Southern—if only she hadn’t been sitting right beside Meg. She sank down, making herself as small, as insignificant and as unobtrusive as she could.

  Matron Martha obviously was pleased with Margaret. Hers was the final choosing of the trainees, so it was gratifying to have her selection vindicated like this.

  She glanced hopefully towards Jessa, but Jessa only sat smaller still.

  “That was a topical question,” approved Professor Gink when Margaret had finished. “My viewpoint, Nurse?”

  He looked enquiring.

  “Nurse Margaret.”

  “—Nurse Margaret, would be this...”

  At last all questions were over. Doctor Elizabeth thanked the Professor. Matron Martha led the party on the small dais down the hall to her private sitting-room to take tea. The rest of the hall rose.

  To her horror Jessa saw that she was nearest to the aisle and that in a few moments Professor Gink would be passing her by. She would have slipped behind Margaret only that it might have attracted attention, and besides, there wasn’t time, he was almost here.

  Matron Martha made the procession an informal one.

  “—As you see, Professor, we still have Sister Valerie in our midst.

  “—Do you remember, Professor, when Nurse Anthea took over that emergency with you with the Carlyon baby? Well, she finishes here next month.

  “—Oh, well, we lose one, but we gain another. Two others, indeed. These two young women graduated from the Great Southern Hospital. You have just encountered Nurse Margaret. This is Nurse Jess.”

  “Nurse Jess,” repeated Professor Gink.

  Whether he was looking at her or not, Jessa did not know.

  All she was looking at was where her eye levelled, and that was his third top button—at least buttonhole. The button was missing, she saw. She noted that he wore a bow tie, but that instead of reposing neatly east and west it perched crookedly north and south. Poor man, she thought spontaneously, he needs someone always to check him up, give him a brush and a dust.

  She heard the steps pass her by and then the rest of the hall begin to disperse.

  “Cocoa and bed,” said Margaret. Her eyes were shining.

  When they had got their cups and taken them to the seat by the window—you could not see the grass or the shrubs now, only a dark sky garlanded with stars—she sighed, “Oh, isn’t he marvellous, Jess!”

  “Who?”

  Margaret took a gulp of the cocoa and sighed again. “Professor Gink.”

  Jessa tried to change the subject. “Your topic tonight was Very apt, Margaret. I wish I could think of things like that.”

  “A man like Professor Gink makes you want to ask intelligent things. By the way”—Meg’s eyes were now questioningly on Jessa—“did you find any likeness in him to your waylaying parent? The one with the same name, Jessa?” Jessa said feelingly, “A great deal of likeness,” and tried to change the subject again by suggesting bed.

  But Margaret hadn’t finished either the subject or her supper.

  “Professor Gink,” she said slowly, probingly, “told us that he had been doing some ward visiting—”

  She paused, then, “Jessa, he couldn’t have been—he wouldn’t have been—”

  “Yes, he was,” said Jess forlornly. She added unhappily in a miserable rush, “And I clapped him on the arm and knocked him over and that made his glasses break. I—I even did worse than that.”

  “Worse?” By the scandalized note in her voice Margaret plainly doubted that possibility.

  “I advised him to attend a clinic,” confessed Jessa wretchedly.

  “A clinic! Professor Gink! Whatever for?”

  Jessa took up her cup to return it to the servery.

  “He was Mr. Gink to me, remember, and when he told me he’d had lots and lots of children, all premmie, I—I thought they were his.”

  “Oh, you didn’t, you couldn’t!”

  Jessa said desolately, “I did, I could.” She paused. “And that’s why I told him he ought to have advice.”

  They climbed the stairs together and by mutual consent for a second time they dropped the subject of the Professor.

  “First day over,” sighed Margaret. “I can remember my first day at Great Southern. Goodnight, Jessamine, sleep tight.”

  And that’s what she would sleep, thought Jessa ruefully, tight as a ball and anticipating the worst, lying stiff and tense.

  But the minute she stretched out on the bed weariness overtook her. She was asleep in five minutes and did not wake till the six-thirty bell.

  Margaret chose blue that day, Jessa yellow. They took their breakfast to the table they now considered theirs. When they went upstairs it was to find there had been a delay in the preparing of the bottles. “Lend a hand,” said Sister Helen briskly, and they began measuring mixtures, labelling them and storing them in the sterilized containers. This time Jessa knew it was no use looking for a Gink.

  Sister Helen was an affable soul, so during the mixing Jessa asked her how the foundling baby would be labelled.

  “He’s not in this ward, Nurse Jess, he’s in Six, and so far he’s simply been marked Master X.”

  “I call him the Perfesser.”

  Sister Helen smiled. “Apt, too, he has a faraway expression, but for that reason he also could be a poet—or even an absentminded plumber.

  “That’s the lot, I think, go across to Nurse Anthea, she has some pumping for you to do.”

  A breathing tube was being cleared for a girl baby. “Temporary paralysis of the vocal cords,” explained Nurse Anthea busily. “She’s too little for a lung, so we pump the oxygen by hand.”

  Jessa was shown how and told that she would be relieved in forty minutes. In that time Margaret took over, and Jessa went and gave a few oil and lanolin baths.

  She got the Bouncer again and he cried once more over the mouth and ears and nose cleansing.

  “Bounce him back,” advised a passing nurse. “He’s nothing but a big bully.”

  After morning break she found herself in one of the special small cubicles. “It’s time you met Eric,” said the sister-in-charge. “We call him that because he is fed only little by little. Intravenously. Come and see how it’s done.” By the side of Eric was an isolet with a boy who had weighed only two and half pounds at birth. “This is Russell to us, although I believe he is to be called Brian.”

  “Then why not Brian, Sister Helen?”

  “Because he wasn’t even the stir of a little breeze when we got him, only barely a rustle.” Sister and Jessa smiled.

  “Come in here and look at this pair,” invited Sister Helen. “They practically came in together. Both three months prem and both born on the same day of the same week.”

  Jessa looked. One was a little chocolate brown aboriginal girl, the other, a wan little boy, looked very pale in comparison.

  “Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit,” the sister said. “In spite of Brer Rabbit’s pallor it’s Tar Baby we’re most worried over. She isn’t responding at all well.”

  Jessa gazed at the little dark girl, finding, as most people find, that a brown baby is infinitely more attractive than a white one.

  She saw the purity of the small features, the proud brow. What noble lineage stood behind this dark atom, much nobler, she knew, than hers. From what far warrior tribe had she descended—the brave Aruntas? the Bindaboos?

  Would she have had more chance among her own native people, more opportunity of survival than in a modern foreign hospital like this?

  She touched a little finger. It was like brown boronia. Land of the woomera, the warrigal, the didgeridoo, even this young was there an instinct in her, was she heartsick in
this hygienic white world?

  Sister-in-charge must have sensed her thought, for she said briskly, “Make no error, Nurse Jess, a premature child me-ins simply a child who has so many degrees less chance of living. There’s no magic of survival, no witchery, unless it is accompanied by science, good nursing, good sense.” She paused and added, “And God.”

  Margaret caught up with her at the self-serve at dinner. They were pleased to see that their table was left vacant now as a matter of course.

  Jessa told her about Tar Baby and Margaret recounted a new inmate to Three who had received a blood transfusion within minutes of reaching Belinda.

  “Did you know we were the only hospital to admit prems from other hospitals, Jessa? Doctor Elizabeth told me that she has given transfusions to one hundred and twenty Rh-factor babies in two years, and only lost one.”

  “I suppose there must always be a loss,” nodded Jessa, remembering Sister-in-charge’s words, that a premature child had so many degrees less chance of living. For some reason she thought of her brown boronia girl.

  She fed all the afternoon. Feeding, like diapering, was always with them. The Bouncer—more affable being fed than bathed—came first, then the Bruiser, the Ace, Madeleine, the femme fatale, Russell, Bing, Eric or Little by Little.

  Before she went down to afternoon tea she had another peep at Tar Baby. The wee girl lay very quiet, but then so did Brer Rabbit. Jessa tiptoed away feeling a little cheered.

  When she returned she was given drop feeding, and that took a long time. It was only five minutes from the end of her day when she finished giving her last issue of drops.

  She stole along to the cubicle for a final peep, but Tar Baby was gone. Brer Rabbit was still there, still wan and pale. Perhaps her little scrap of brown boronia had been placed in an isolet. She went to enquire.

  Sister Helen said, “Tar Baby, Nurse Jess? No, she didn’t make it, the poor tiny sweet. Of course we didn’t expect her to. She was very prem and in very poor condition. We have only faint hopes for Brer Rabbit, too, he is also frail.”

  Jessa said, “Yes,” and went out into the corridor. She felt that old tight ball she always knew with finality stiffening in her heart. She had never got over it, not in her four years at Great Southern, that sudden blankness, that listening, seeking, feeling sensation... that knowledge of a falling star.

  She stood there irresolute, wanting to comfort—or was it wanting comfort?

  She had often comforted at G.S. Someone—it had been Matron—had said she possessed that touch.

  But there was no one to comfort here. Perhaps not anywhere. Perhaps the mother of the little tar baby, too, had gone ahead. Or she might be too sick to care. Or she might have known before her baby came to Belinda that it was all quite hopeless.

  Still it was strange not to go and put your arms around someone, touch their hand with yours.

  That was the comfort she was missing, her comfort in their comfort.

  On a sudden impulse Jessa went along to Ward Six.

  In the small off-cubicle she could hear a nurse moving around busily. She was the only one on duty. It was the quiet hour. Silently she tiptoed to the Perfesser’s crib.

  He was awake. He looked at her in that old wise way babies do even though one knows they must be unaware of everything. He still had that same lost little look. “Hallo, Perfesser,” she said.

  Then all at once she knew that someone else was visiting. He had come the other side and was bending over Master X, and, as usual, his hair fell forward as he did so and his glasses sat askew. A piece of cotton still dangled absurdly from one wing.

  “Late shift?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  The eyebrows, as shaggy as the hair, raised in silent question.

  “Visiting,” Jess said.

  “Every baby?”

  “No.”

  “But this baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” asked Professor Gink.

  Why. Why had she visited the Perfesser? Jessa only knew one reason, and it had no connection, no connection at all, but stumblingly she stammered it. “The Tar Baby died,” she said.

  She knew at once she could make no sense, that this show of emotion, even to a man who advocated emotion, must border on famous sentimentality, that she was being maudlin in fact.

  Then quietly, gently, he was saying, “So that little brown leaf has left the tree,” and Jessa was seeing a leaf falling... falling... then lying at last on the warm wide-bosomed earth. In some odd way she felt that arms had been put around her, she knew, without any movement from him, a touch of a hand in hers.

  Presently he said softly, “It is always difficult, always unpredictable. Nature made certain rules of time, of physical condition. Sometimes a leeway can be made up, sometimes not. When we fail they go on to the really skilled Hands.”

  “Yes,” Jessa said, and she felt the tight ball disappear.

  “And how are you, Perfesser?” Professor Gink was now saying.

  Jessa knew he must have heard her greeting, and she flushed.

  She looked across at him in apology and explained, “It was only because he had a faraway look that I named him that.”

  “Not,” suggested Professor Gink mildly, “because he had my ears?”

  He listened to his breathing, took up a little wrist, replaced it, drew up the rugs.

  “I’ll pass him tonight,” he decided. “Shall we go, Nurse Jess?”

  He remembered her name. Shutting the door soundlessly behind them—by this Jessa had really conquered the art of appearance and disappearance—Jessa felt at first gratified, and then disconcerted. Of course he would remember her name. Everyone always remembered a thorn.

  Falteringly she said, “I’m terribly sorry about your spectacles. It was really my fault. If you have others to substitute I could have them mended.”

  “I do have others. These are my old ones. I always carry several pairs, but put on the first one I lay my hands on. It just happens I’ve laid my hands each time on this pair.”

  “Then could I have them, please?”

  “What for?”

  “To mend them. I just told you.”

  “Look here, they’re my old pair. The frames are positively battered. They’re not worth it, but I tell you what you could do, Nurse Jess—”

  “Yes?”

  “Your fingers are more supple than mine—”

  Jessa glanced down and doubted it. He might be big and clumsy, but his hands were thin and sensitive, they were surgeon’s hands. Her look said as much.

  “Yours are a woman’s hands,” he differed, “and as such, more versed in intricate knotting. I have no doubt, too, you have finer cotton than this.” He took off the glasses and handed them over. Without them he looked defenceless somehow, more like a small boy than a learned man.

  She touched the clumsy repair job. “It feels like fishing gut.” she told him.

  He grinned suddenly and mischievously. “Quite right, Nurse Jess, it was.”

  “You want me to put fine cotton round this break, finish it without a dangle?”

  “Is that what you prescribe?”

  “Yes,” said Jess.

  He was rummaging for his second pair of glasses, his best pair. Out they came, a little less battered than the first.

  Jessa was putting the repair job into one of her capacious pockets. “You really should get some decent glasses,” she advised, “why don’t you slip into the Eye Clin—”

  She stopped short, agonizingly aware of what she had been going to say, of his instant hidden laughter.

  Clinics ... She was always recommending him to clinics. What must he think!

  “I must go to tea,” she stammered, retreated a step, said, “Goodbye, sir,” then hurried along the corridor.

  Her cheeks were burning, her heart was pounding furiously at her own stupidity, she felt .disgusted with herself—but in her pocket, oddly comforting, oddly lovable, she carried carefully and proudly
the broken spectacles of the Great Professor Gink.

  CHAPTER V

  SHE sat up late that night making a neat job of them. She even ran down to the corner store for a reel of brown silk. Her own sewing box, a farewell gift from Mother, had a selection of spools like an artist’s palette, but you couldn’t mend a professor’s spectacles in pink or blue thread.

  When she had finished, it looked almost professional. It was very strong, very unobtrusive, most of all it had no dangle. She put the glasses beside her on the bedside table and they were the last thing she looked at before she went to sleep and the first thing she looked at when she woke up.

  She slipped them in the pocket of her lilac uniform—Margaret was dove-grey today—and now and then as they went downstairs to breakfast she gave them a reassuring touch.

  Margaret brought the subject back to the Professor again, tactfully bypassing Jessa’s regrettable faux pas in not only thinking the Professor was a parent, but directing him to medical aid. She spoke admiringly of what he had said in

  London, how he had lectured in America, the countries in which he had travelled by special invitation to give his scholarly advice—Yes, thought Jessa, and I have his very own spectacles right here.

  She looked out for him as they climbed the stairs for work, peered along the long corridor, glanced up for a daddy-long-legs shadow on the opposite wall, peered quickly through the glass of every ward. There was no Professor Gink.