Read Online Nurse Jess by Joyce Dingwell - Free Book Online Page B

ollowing evening Jessa underwent an experience that affected her very deeply.
    Within minutes of being rushed into Belinda from a country cottage hospital a prem ’ s life was saved by a complete exchange blood transfusion. The little girl was Rh - factor type, but the case was quite successful. Doctors Elizabeth and Mary were almost maddeningly calm over the result, thought Jessa, whose own heart was fluttering wildly, and who was drawn back to the small cubicle a dozen times to assure herself that it had happened, that a child had undergone all this and lived.
    Not only lived, but looked fairly robust after it—as robust, anyway, as one could expect of a prem.
    The doctors had gone. It was the quiet hour and she was alone in the little nursery. She checked the temperature of the cot to make sure it was ninety-five degrees. The rest of the room was seventy-five degrees, but three hot-water bottles between two mattresses made sure that the Country Girl, as Jessa had named her, would be snug and warm.
    She took another glance at the little countenance, thinking as she did that that might be all that belonged to the child. These very new babes were completely muffled up even to their bonnets. It was only when they grew huge like the Bruiser or the Bouncer—or even Madeleine, who was almost full time and would soon be up to water baths now — that one realized there was something more to them than a little pinched face.
    The Country Girl was only on glucose. Before Doctor Elizabeth had departed, she had superintended Jessa as she fed the babe by a pipette. Tomorrow she was to have boiled whey, the same the next day, but after that, all going well, there would be another bottle to label and store in the sterilizer, another baby to feed.
    Jessa replaced the dressing trolley and tray, the bowls, tourniquets, plaster and scissors.
    “ Young woman, ” she told the Country Girl, “ if you ’ d been born a century ago you wouldn ’ t be alive today. ” She realized what s he had said and smiled. “ If you did survive, ” she amended, “ you ’ d be terribly old, my dea r . ”
    It somehow seemed a time for smiling. The Country Girl was alive and should grow into a strong woman. She had asked Doctor Elizabeth about prems once and had been told, “ If they haven ’ t caught up by twelve months you can be sure they will by twenty-four. And there are no setbacks or complications in after years, no ill effects. ”
    The spectacles in her pocket, too, made Jessa curiously happy. She did not know why, or whether they should, but none the less they did.
    Then, too, she was going home on Wednesday. She was not homesick, but there was a lightness in her heart every time she thought of the island, and of Mummy and Father. And Lopi, of course, with its little wisp of smoke.
    She could have sung at her work—she did croon a little.
    When Nurse Anthea came in she remarked, “ Someone ’ s glad. ”
    “ Me, ” said Jessa ungrammatically. “ Our Rh babe is bouncing fit—or will be, and I go on leave quite soon. ” She did not mention the glasses. How could she? And, anyway, they could not be making her blithe like this.
    She kept on just missing the Professor. Either he attended the nurseries when she was absent or she arrived just after he had gone. She thought ruefully that unless she soon handed over his spectacles she would be breaking them completely, not just a wing, and one breakage was enough. Her work was not always as delicate and light as a prem baby, it was occasionally quite hard. Besides, there were often awkward trays to replace, trolleys to push, nursery furniture to shift. Glasses carried in a uniform pocket were just asking to be damaged.
    She had noticed before that the letter rack in the hall sometimes held mail for the Professor, for anyone attached even casually to Belinda, in fact. She therefore bought a big envelope, wrote his name on it, wrapped the glasses in tissue and put it in the compartment under