White Linen Nurse

Hallowell Abbott Eleanor

Description

Rae Malgregor went into the profession of nursing with the best of intentions, but she soon finds that her expectations were vastly different than the reality of her new job. Burnt out and mired in despair, she begs for intervention and soon finds herself caring for a young invalid girl. Before long, her life begins to change in ways she never could have imagined. The White Linen Nurse is a hilariously engaging tale that will charm modern-day readers.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775456889
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE WHITE LINEN NURSE
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ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT
 
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The White Linen Nurse First published in 1913 ISBN 978-1-77545-688-9 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X
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TO MAURICE HOWE RICHARDSON
WHO LOVED ROMANCE ALMOST AS MUCH AS HE LOVED SURGERY, THIS LITTLE STORYIS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF TWO PERSONS' UNFADING MEMORIES
Chapter I
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The White Linen Nurse was so tired that her noble expression ached.
Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs achedand the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothingof her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Likea strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by twotugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smileseemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensationcertainly was very unpleasant.
Looking back thus on the three spine-curving, chest-cramping,foot-twinging, ether-scented years of her hospital training, it dawnedon the White Linen Nurse very suddenly that nothing of her ever hadfelt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression!
Impulsively she sprang for the prim white mirror that capped her primwhite bureau and stood staring up into her own entrancing,bright-colored Novia Scotian reflection with tense and unwontedinterest.
Except for the unmistakable smirk which fatigue had clawed into herplastic young mouth-lines there was certainly nothing special the matterwith what she saw.
"Perfectly good face!" she attested judicially with no more than commoncourtesy to her progenitors. "Perfectly good and tidy looking face! Ifonly—if only—" her breath caught a trifle. "If only—it didn't look sodisgustingly noble and—hygienic—and dollish!"
All along the back of her neck little sharp prickly pains began suddenlyto sting and burn.
"Silly—simpering—pink and white puppet!" she scolded squintingly,"I'll teach you how to look like a real girl!"
Very threateningly she raised herself to her tiptoes and thrust herglowing, corporeal face right up into the moulten, elusive,quick-silver face in the mirror. Pink for pink, blue for blue, gold forgold, dollish smirk for dollish smirk, the mirror mocked her seethinginner fretfulness.
"Why—darn you!" she gasped. "Why—darn you! Why, you looked more humanthan that when you left the Annapolis Valley three years ago! There wereat least—tears in your face then, and—cinders, and—your mother's bestadvice, and the worry about the mortgage, and—and—the blush of JoeHazeltine's kiss!"
Furtively with the tip of her index-finger she started to search herimperturbable pink cheek for the spot where Joe Hazeltine's kiss hadformerly flamed.
"My hands are all right, anyway!" she acknowledged with infinite relief.Triumphantly she raised both strong, stub-fingered, exaggeratedlyexecutive hands to the level of her childish blue eyes and stoodsurveying the mirrored effect with ineffable satisfaction. "Why my handsare—dandy!" she gloated. "Why they're perfectly—dandy! Why they'rewonderful! Why they're—." Then suddenly and fearfully she gave ashrill little scream. "But they don't go with my silly doll-face!" shecried. "Why, they don't! They don't! They go with the Senior Surgeon'sscowling Heidelberg eyes! They go with the Senior Surgeon's grim grayjaw! They go with the—! Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
Dizzily, with her stubby finger-tips prodded deep into every jadedfacial muscle that she could compass, she staggered towards the air, anddropping down into the first friendly chair that bumped against herknees, sat staring blankly out across the monotonous city roofs thatflanked her open window,—trying very, very hard for the first time inher life, to consider the General-Phenomenon-of-Being-a-Trained-Nurse.
All around and about her, inexorable as anesthesia, horrid as the hushof tomb or public library, lurked the painfully unmistakable sense ofinstitutional restraint. Mournfully to her ear from some remote kitchenyregion of pots and pans a browsing spoon tinkled forth from time to timewith soft-muffled resonance. Up and down every clammy white corridorinnumerable young feet, born to prance and stamp, were creepingstealthily to and fro in rubber-heeled whispers. Along the somberfire-escape just below her windowsill, like a covey of snubbed doves,six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together withexcessive caution concerning the imminent graduation exercises that wereto take place at eight o'clock that very evening. Beyond her dreariestken of muffled voices, beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick, ona far faint hillside, a far faint streak of April green went roamingjocundly skyward. Altogether sluggishly, as though her nostrils wereplugged with warm velvet, the smell of spring and ether and scorchedmutton-chops filtered in and out, in and out, in and out, of herabnormally jaded senses.
Taken all in all it was not a propitious afternoon for any girl as tiredand as pretty as the White Linen Nurse to be considering the generalphenomenon of anything—except April!
In the real country, they tell me, where the Young Spring runs wild andbare as a nymph through every dull brown wood and hay-gray meadow, theblasé farmer-lad will not even lift his eyes from the plow to watch thepinkness of her passing. But here in the prudish brick-minded city wherethe Young Spring at her friskiest is nothing more audacious than asweltering, winter-swathed madcap, who has impishly essayed some finemorning to tiptoe down street in her soft, sloozily, green,silk-stockinged feet, the whole hob-nailed population reels back aghastand agrin before the most innocent flash of the rogue's green-veiledtoes. And then, suddenly snatching off its own cumbersome winterfoot-habits, goes chasing madly after her, in its own prankish,vari-colored socks.
Now the White Linen Nurse's socks were black, and cotton at that, acombination incontestably sedate. And the White Linen Nurse had wadedbarefoot through too many posied country pastures to experience anyordinary city thrill over the sight of a single blade of grass pushingscarily through a crack in the pavement, or puny, concrete-strangledmaple tree flushing wanly to the smoky sky. Indeed for three hustling,square-toed, rubber-heeled city years the White Linen Nurse had nevereven stopped to notice whether the season was flavored with frost orthunder. But now, unexplainably, just at the end of it all, sittinginnocently there at her own prim little bed-room window, staringinnocently out across indomitable roof-tops,—with the crackle of gloryand diplomas already ringing in her ears,—she heard, instead, for thefirst time in her life, the gaily dare-devil voice of the spring, ahoydenish challenge flung back at her, leaf-green, from the crest of awinter-scarred hill.
"Hello, White Linen Nurse!" screamed the saucy city spring. "Hello,White Linen Nurse! Take off your homely starched collar! Or your sillycandy-box cap! Or any other thing that feels maddeningly artificial! Andcome out! And be very wild!"
Like a puppy dog cocking its head towards some strange, unfamiliarsound, the White Linen Nurse cocked her head towards the lure of thegreen-crested hill. Still wrestling conscientiously with theGeneral-Phenomenon-of-Being-a-Trained-Nurse she found her collarsuddenly very tight, the tiny cap inexpressibly heavy and vexatious.Timidly she removed the collar—and found that the removal did not resther in the slightest. Equally timidly she removed the cap—and foundthat even that removal did not rest her in the slightest. Then very,very slowly, but very, very permeatingly and completely, it dawned onthe White Linen Nurse that never while eyes were blue, and hair gold,and lips red, would she ever find rest again until she had removed hernoble expression!
With a jerk that started the pulses in her temples throbbing like twotoothaches she straightened up in her chair. All along the back of herneck the little blonde curls began to crisp very ticklingly at theirroots.
Still staring worriedly out over the old city's slate-gray head to thatinciting prance of green across the farthest horizon she felt her wholebeing kindle to an indescribable passion of revolt against all HushedPlaces. Seething with fatigue, smoldering with ennui, she experiencedsuddenly a wild, almost incontrollable impulse to sing, to shout, toscream from the housetops, to mock somebody, to defy everybody, to breaklaws, dishes, heads,—anything in fact that would break with a crash!And then at last, over the hills and far away, with all the outragedworld at her heels, to run! And run! And run! And run! And run! Andlaugh! Till her feet raveled out! And her lungs burst! And there wasnothing more left of her at all,—ever—ever—any more!
Discordantly into this rapturously pagan vision of pranks and posiesbroke one of her room-mates all awhiff with ether, awhirr with starch.
Instantly with the first creak of the door-handle the White Linen Nursewas on her feet, breathless, resentful, grotesquely defiant.
"Get out of here, Zillah Forsyth!" she cried furiously. "Get out ofhere—quick!—and leave me alone! I want to think!"
Perfectly serenely the newcomer advanced into the room. With her pale,ivory-tinted cheeks, her great limpid brown eyes, her soft da