satisfaction of seeing a patient recover under quiet, efficient, selfless nursing.’
‘That’s all the reward one needs,’ Jenny said without thinking, carried along on the woman’s zeal. She saw the thin lips compress at her audacity in adding her opinion.
‘All too often it is not. After giving oneself until one is drained utterly, and then to be required to do extra duty, one begins to wonder. Such doubts can often form in the mind of a nurse pushed beyond endurance when she grows weary. It is those who find that little extra strength to push aside such doubts who make true nurses. I regret they are all too few.’
Rather than risk another comment that would most certainly be ripe for criticism by the look of this woman, Jenny held her tongue, not sure if she actually wanted all this. Yet she felt herself already being absorbed, the idea of hard unrewarding work an answer, even preferable to the boring, barren futility that had lately become her life.
Refusing to give herself time to think, she filled in the application form under the stern, sceptical eye of her interviewer, if only to show her that she wasn’t afraid of hard work.
It was not long after, wondering just what she had got herself into, that she was bidding goodbye to a tearful parent to commence training at a hospital in the heart of Hampshire. She had escaped.
‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this.’
The fair-haired girl’s plaintive sigh reached Jenny from the other side of the bed as they removed the soiled bottom sheet from underneath an incontinent elderly patient.
Trying to ignore the smell wafting up from the stained sheet, Jenny smiled across at her fellow student nurse. ‘We were told to expect this, you know.’
‘One thing bein’ told what to expect, another ’aving it right up your nose. I think I’d sooner ’ave joined the WAACs than this.’
‘What, with bombs dropping all over the place around London?’ The girl was a Londoner and had been glad to be here in Hampshire. ‘Sooner or later London will become a target and you could be stuck with a searchlight unit. That’s what they go for first, you know, searchlights. I would sooner be here and safe, with all the slops and bedpans, for all the hard work we have to do.’
All too soon after being sent to Hampshire, Jenny had discovered what real mental exhaustion was as she strove to absorb what the demonstrators and lecturers were telling her. Her ankles had ached from endless bed-making, scrubbing miles of floors, interminable polishing of bed springs and scouring what seemed like millions of metal bedpans until they shone again after being emptied down the sluice.
But for all the headaches: trying to cram six months’ training into six weeks, a wartime necessity; the drudgery, being saddled with the distasteful chores second-year nurses passed on to student nurses; all the cleaning up of incontinent patients, emptying slops and bedpans, mopping soiled floors, she had discovered that caring for those unable to care for themselves had its rewards. She really did feel she was doing something worthwhile at last. Often Jenny could hardly believe it was really she who now trod the wards in the uniform of a nurse – not that the uniform enhanced her appearance.
In lisle stockings and flat leather lace-ups, a white apron so starched that it practically stood up by itself, and indeed stood out from the blue striped dress like a bell-tent, she spent hours before a mirror battling with the piece of snow-white material that would eventually form her cap – at least once she had mastered the technique of folding it correctly so that the pinched pleats lay flat enough not to flap about over the crown of her head like some wayward seagull.
Like a true nurse she worked hard to aspire to the art of moving swiftly yet quietly, but with all that quantity of starch, quietly was virtually an impossibility. Her starched uniform heralded her approach with all the subtlety of an
‘That’s all the reward one needs,’ Jenny said without thinking, carried along on the woman’s zeal. She saw the thin lips compress at her audacity in adding her opinion.
‘All too often it is not. After giving oneself until one is drained utterly, and then to be required to do extra duty, one begins to wonder. Such doubts can often form in the mind of a nurse pushed beyond endurance when she grows weary. It is those who find that little extra strength to push aside such doubts who make true nurses. I regret they are all too few.’
Rather than risk another comment that would most certainly be ripe for criticism by the look of this woman, Jenny held her tongue, not sure if she actually wanted all this. Yet she felt herself already being absorbed, the idea of hard unrewarding work an answer, even preferable to the boring, barren futility that had lately become her life.
Refusing to give herself time to think, she filled in the application form under the stern, sceptical eye of her interviewer, if only to show her that she wasn’t afraid of hard work.
It was not long after, wondering just what she had got herself into, that she was bidding goodbye to a tearful parent to commence training at a hospital in the heart of Hampshire. She had escaped.
‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this.’
The fair-haired girl’s plaintive sigh reached Jenny from the other side of the bed as they removed the soiled bottom sheet from underneath an incontinent elderly patient.
Trying to ignore the smell wafting up from the stained sheet, Jenny smiled across at her fellow student nurse. ‘We were told to expect this, you know.’
‘One thing bein’ told what to expect, another ’aving it right up your nose. I think I’d sooner ’ave joined the WAACs than this.’
‘What, with bombs dropping all over the place around London?’ The girl was a Londoner and had been glad to be here in Hampshire. ‘Sooner or later London will become a target and you could be stuck with a searchlight unit. That’s what they go for first, you know, searchlights. I would sooner be here and safe, with all the slops and bedpans, for all the hard work we have to do.’
All too soon after being sent to Hampshire, Jenny had discovered what real mental exhaustion was as she strove to absorb what the demonstrators and lecturers were telling her. Her ankles had ached from endless bed-making, scrubbing miles of floors, interminable polishing of bed springs and scouring what seemed like millions of metal bedpans until they shone again after being emptied down the sluice.
But for all the headaches: trying to cram six months’ training into six weeks, a wartime necessity; the drudgery, being saddled with the distasteful chores second-year nurses passed on to student nurses; all the cleaning up of incontinent patients, emptying slops and bedpans, mopping soiled floors, she had discovered that caring for those unable to care for themselves had its rewards. She really did feel she was doing something worthwhile at last. Often Jenny could hardly believe it was really she who now trod the wards in the uniform of a nurse – not that the uniform enhanced her appearance.
In lisle stockings and flat leather lace-ups, a white apron so starched that it practically stood up by itself, and indeed stood out from the blue striped dress like a bell-tent, she spent hours before a mirror battling with the piece of snow-white material that would eventually form her cap – at least once she had mastered the technique of folding it correctly so that the pinched pleats lay flat enough not to flap about over the crown of her head like some wayward seagull.
Like a true nurse she worked hard to aspire to the art of moving swiftly yet quietly, but with all that quantity of starch, quietly was virtually an impossibility. Her starched uniform heralded her approach with all the subtlety of an
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