The White Linen Nurse Part 4

With a gesture of ill-concealed impatience the Superintendent shrugged the absurd speech aside.

"Dr. Faber," she said, "won't you just please a.s.sure Miss Malgregor once more that the little Italian boy's death last week was in no conceivable way her fault,--that n.o.body blames her in the slightest, or holds her in any possible way responsible."

"Why, what nonsense!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "What--!"

"And the Portuguese woman the week before that," interrupted Rae Malgregor dully.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Senior Surgeon. "It's nothing but coincidence! Pure coincidence! It might have happened to anybody!"

"And she hasn't slept for almost a fortnight." the Superintendent confided, "nor touched a drop of food or drink, as far as I can make out, except just black coffee. I've been expecting this break-down for some days."

"And-the-young-drug-store-clerk-the-week-before-that," Rae Malgregor resumed with sing-song monotony.

Brusquely the Senior Surgeon stepped forward and taking the girl by her shoulders, jerked her sharply round to the light, and, with firm, authoritative fingers, rolled one of her eyelids deftly back from its inordinately dilated pupil. Equally brusquely he turned away again.

"Nothing but moons.h.i.+ne!" he muttered. "Nothing in the world but too much coffee dope taken on an empty stomach,--'empty brain,' I'd better have said! When will you girls ever learn any sense?" With searchlight shrewdness his eyes flashed back for an instant over the haggard gray lines that slashed along the corners of her quivering, childish mouth. A bit temperishly he began to put on his gloves. "Next time you set out to have a 'brain-storm,' Miss Malgregor," he suggested satirically, "try to have it about something more sensible than imagining that anybody is trying to hold you personally responsible for the existence of death in the world. Bah!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fiercely. "If you are going to fuss like this over cases hopelessly moribund from the start, what in thunder are you going to do some fine day when out of a perfectly clear and clean sky Security itself turns septic and you lose the President of the United States--or a mother of nine children--with a hang-nail?"

"But I wasn't fussing, sir!" protested Rae Malgregor with a timid sort of dignity. "Why, it never had occurred to me for a moment that anybody blamed me for--anything!" Just from sheer astonishment her hands took a new clutch into the torn flapping corner of the motto that she still clung desperately to even at this moment.

"For Heaven's sake stop crackling that brown paper!" stormed the Senior Surgeon.

"But I wasn't crackling the brown paper, sir! It's crackling itself,"

persisted Rae Malgregor very softly. The great blue eyes that lifted to his were br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of misery. "Oh, can't I make you understand, sir?" she stammered. Appealingly she turned to the Superintendent. "Oh, can't I make anybody understand? All I was trying to say,--all I was trying to explain, was--that I _don't want to be a trained nurse--after all_!"

"Why not?" demanded the Senior Surgeon with a rather noisy click of his glove fasteners.

"Because--my--face--is--tired," said the girl quite simply.

The explosive wrath on the Senior Surgeon's countenance seemed to be directed suddenly at the Superintendent.

"Is this an afternoon tea?" he asked tartly. "With six major operations this morning and a probable meningitis diagnosis ahead of me this afternoon I think I might be spared the babblings of an hysterical nurse!" Casually over his shoulder he nodded at the girl. "You're a fool!" he said, and started for the door.

Just on the threshold he turned abruptly and looked back. His forehead was furrowed like a corduroy road and the one rampant question in his mind at the moment seemed to be mired hopelessly between his bushy eyebrows.

"Lord!" he exclaimed a bit flounderingly. "Are _you_ the nurse that helped me last week on that fractured skull?"

"Yes, sir," said Rae Malgregor.

Jerkily the Senior Surgeon retraced his footsteps into the office and stood facing her as though with some really terrible accusation.

"And the freak abdominal?" he quizzed sharply. "Was it _you_ who threaded that needle for me so blamed slowly--and calmly--and surely, while all the rest of us were jumping up and down and cursing you--for no brighter reason than that we couldn't have threaded it ourselves if we'd had all eternity before us and--all creation bleeding to death?"

"Y-e-s, sir," said Rae Malgregor.

Quite bluntly the Senior Surgeon reached out and lifted one of her hands to his scowling professional scrutiny.

"Gad!" he attested. "What a hand! You're a wonder! Under proper direction you're a wonder! It was like myself working with twenty fingers and no thumbs! I never saw anything like it!"

Almost boyishly the embarra.s.sed flush mounted to his cheeks as he jerked away again. "Excuse me for not recognizing you," he apologized gruffly.

"But you girls all look so much alike!"

As though the eloquence of Heaven itself had suddenly descended upon a person hitherto hopelessly tongue-tied, Rae Malgregor lifted an utterly transfigured face to the Senior Surgeon's grimly astonished gaze.

"Yes! Yes, sir!" she cried joyously. "That's just exactly what the trouble is! That's just exactly what I was trying to express, sir! My face is all worn out trying to 'look alike'! My cheeks are almost sprung with artificial smiles! My eyes are fairly bulging with unshed tears! My nose aches like a toothache trying never to turn up at anything! I'm smothered with the discipline of it! I'm choked with the affectation! I tell you--I just can't breathe through a trained nurse's face any more!

I tell you, sir, I'm sick to death of being nothing but a type. I want to look like _myself_! I want to see what Life could do to a silly face like mine--if it ever got a chance! When other women are crying, I want the fun of crying! When other women look scared to death, I want the fun of looking scared to death!" Hysterically again with shrewish emphasis she began to repeat: "I won't be a nurse! I tell you, I won't! I _won't_!"

"Pray what brought you so suddenly to this remarkable decision?"

scoffed the Senior Surgeon.

"A letter from my father, sir," she confided more quietly. "A letter about some dogs."

"Dogs?" hooted the Senior Surgeon.

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. A trifle speculatively for an instant she glanced at the Superintendent's face and then back again to the Senior Surgeon's. "Yes, sir," she repeated with increasing confidence. "Up in Nova Scotia my father raises hunting-dogs. Oh, no special fancy kind, sir," she hastened in all honesty to explain. "Just dogs, you know,--just mixed dogs,--pointers with curly tails,--and s.h.a.ggy-coated hounds,--and brindled spaniels, and all that sort of thing,--just mongrels, you know, but very clever; and people, sir, come all the way from Boston to buy dogs of him, and once a man came way from London to learn the secret of his training."

"Well, what is the secret of his training?" quizzed the Senior Surgeon with the sudden eager interest of a sportsman. "I should think it would be pretty hard," he acknowledged, "in a mixed gang like that to decide just which particular dog was suited to what particular game!"

"Yes, that's just it, sir," beamed the White Linen Nurse. "A dog, of course, will chase anything that runs,--that's just dog,--but when a dog really begins to _care_ for what he's chasing he--wags! That's hunting!

Father doesn't calculate, he says, on training a dog on anything he doesn't wag on!"

"Yes, but what's that got to do with you?" asked the Senior Surgeon a bit impatiently.

With ill-concealed dismay the White Linen Nurse stood staring blankly at the Senior Surgeon's gross stupidity.

"Why, don't you see?" she faltered. "I've been chasing this nursing job three whole years now--and there's no wag to it!"

"Oh h.e.l.l!" said the Senior Surgeon. If he hadn't said "Oh h.e.l.l!" he would have grinned. And it hadn't been a grinning day, and he certainly didn't intend to begin grinning at any such late hour as that in the afternoon. With his dignity once rea.s.sured he relaxed then a trifle.

"For Heaven's sake, what _do_ you want to be?" he asked not unkindly.

With an abrupt effort at self-control Rae Malgregor jerked her head into at least the outer semblance of a person lost in almost fathomless thought.

"Why I'm sure I don't know, sir," she acknowledged worriedly. "But it would be a great pity, I suppose, to waste all the grand training that's gone into my hands." With sudden conviction her limp shoulders stiffened a trifle. "My oldest sister," she stammered, "bosses the laundry in one of the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school in Moncton. But I'm so strong, you know, and I like to move things round so,--and everything,--maybe--I could get a position somewhere as general housework girl."

With a roar of amus.e.m.e.nt as astonis.h.i.+ng to himself as to his listeners, the Senior Surgeon's chin jerked suddenly upward.

"You're crazy as a loon!" he confided cordially. "Great Scott! If you can work up a condition like this on coffee,--what would you do on," he hesitated grimly, "malted milk?" As unheralded as his amus.e.m.e.nt, gross irritability overtook him again. "Will--you--stop--rattling that brown paper?" he thundered at her.

Innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored the temper.

"But I'm not rattling it, sir!" she protested. "I'm simply trying to hide what's on the other side of it."

"What is on the other side of it?" demanded the Senior Surgeon bluntly.

With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around.

From behind her desk the austere Superintendent twisted her neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics.

"_Don't--Ever--Be_--_b.u.mptious_!" she read forth jerkily with a questioning, incredulous sort of emphasis.