Part 14 (1/2)

As the weeks go by I recognize the difficulty of keeping the life of the Sisters and the VAD's out of the circle of orous and symmetrical vision of the ward attacks an by offendingme

On the whole the Sisters loathe relations They look into the ward and see the o back into the bunk feeling that the ward doesn't belong to them

The eldest Sister said to me yesterday: ”Shut the door, nurse; there's Captain Fellows's father I don't want hi round”

On that we discussed relations, and it seemed to me that it was inevitable that a Sister should be the only buffer between the anxieties

”No, a relation is the last straw You don't understand!” she said

I don't understand, but I ao in the Mess I said to _h the four years' training just to wear that cap and cape!”

And she: ”You couldn't go through it and come out as you are”

Mr Wicks has set his heart on crutches

”If you won't try me on them I'll buy me own and walk out of here!”

Then I realize the vanity of his threat and the coest a new idea before he sees it too

We set hier, ”I can't stand on these, they're too long You go and ask for soether we slurred over the fact of that pendulous, nerveless body which had hung fro he was buried in his own silence, and I suppose he was looking at the vision on the bedrail

A boy of seventeen was brought in yesterday with pneumonia

He was so ill that he couldn't speak, and we put screens round his bed

All the other patients in the ward immediately beca hier cynical, said, ”There you are Sonnie, it's alavehis feet were--clean and thin, with the big toe curling up and the little toes curling back

”Will you brush ed to say to me, and when I had finished: ”This is a pretty ward”

It isn't, but I alad it seems so to him

The boy is at his worst Whenever we co to do now?”

But to whatever we do he sub there propped on his pilloith his s down the ward, he is all the centre of hts; I as