Vigil in the Night Read Online Free Page B

young nurse at that moment passing. “Nurse Dunne, you’re going off now. Take Nurse Lee with you to the nurses’ home. Give her any help she needs. Get her a laundry number and find out where she’s to sleep.”
      Nora Dunne was about twenty-five, with a rounded, compact figure, a freckled, merry face, and dark long-lashed Irish eyes which held a twinkle that nothing seemed to quench. With an appraising glance at Anne, her face broke into a grin of friendly welcome.
      “So you’re the latest victim. Strong healthy girls wanted for the Institute for Destruction of Nurses. Well, you look as though you could stand it.” Anne’s blank expression only made her laugh the louder. “You don’t know what I’m gassing about, do you? But you’ll soon find out. Dear old Hepperton—the wonder hospital of the century—hot and cold running water, breakfast in bed, and all home comforts. Maybe!”
      “It doesn’t seem quite so marvelous as that,” said Anne cautiously.
      “It isn’t,” Nurse Dunne answered tersely. “It’s the frozen limit. Lousy accommodation, beds like boards, cockroaches in the woodwork, damp in the basements. The plumbing’s awful, you can’t get a hot bath in the home unless you send Mulligan, the janitor, a postcard. And you want the stomach—beg pardon, I forgot my physiology—I should have said the gizzard, of an ostrich for the grub.”
      “What’s the work like?” inquired Anne.
      Nora Dunne laughed gaily. “My dear, you’ll get plenty of that. Our wards are always full and running over. And we’ve got one marvelous man—Prescott—surgeon—a dark silent devil who operates like an archangel. Unfortunately we don’t belong to him in C, but we assist him in the operating room, and he’s simply grand. You see, the trouble with this place is lack of money. It’s entirely dependent on public subscriptions, and it doesn’t get them—at least, not enough. The result is—everything suffers, is skimped and scraped to the bone. Though the building looks good enough from the outside, it’s so old it creaks. What we nurses have to put up with would give you a pain. I suppose you thought you were lucky to see that ad. Let me tell you, dear chicken, that stays in seven days of the week. The matron’s a card. We call her the Bruiser.”
      “Doesn’t anyone try to improve things?”
      Nora pursed up her lips. “Oh, yes, one or two, I suppose. Prescott, especially, though he doesn’t really know how bad things are with us nurses. He’s up in the clouds, got some wild idea in his head about a surgical brain clinic. Then of course there’s Bowley. He’s not a doctor, he’s the Matthew Bowley. You must have heard of him. He’s practically a millionaire. And he seems to be interested in the hospital. He’s a regular pal of Prescott, too. But there aren’t any others worth writing home about. And what a committee we’ve got—frightened cheese-paring old sissies!”
      As Nora rambled on, they reached the nurses’ home. Here the little Irish nurse turned to Anne with her sudden infectious smile.
      “Pardon my indelicacy, angel face, but I think I like you. If you can stand it, why don’t you bunk in with Nurse Glennie and me? Our room’s not so bad, and it’s made for three. I warn you Glennie snores—I have to throw shoes at her twice nightly—but I can arrange it if you like.”
      Because she had taken an immediate liking to Nora, Anne nodded in cordial agreement.
      The room to which Nora introduced her was up three flights of winding stairs, a mere attic underneath the rooftops, with three cheap truckle beds, three old wooden chests of drawers, and two enamel washbasins. Amusedly Nora studied Anne’s face.
      “Don’t lose your nerve, honey. You’ll get used to it.”
      “I suppose so.” Anne made her tone cheerful. But she had never seen such a wretched room in all her life.
      “It isn’t the Ritz,” Nora went on. “But you can take it