Carlotta Harrison, back from her vacation, reported for duty the next
morning, and was assigned to E ward, which was Sidney's. She gave Sidney a
curt little nod, and proceeded to change the entire routine with the
thoroughness of a Central American revolutionary president. Sidney, who
had yet to learn that with some people authority can only assert itself by
change, found herself confused, at sea, half resentful.
Once she ventured a protest:-"I've been taught to do it that way, Miss Harrison. If my method is wrong,
show me what you want, and I'll do my best."
"I am not responsible for what you have been taught. And you will not
speak back when you are spoken to."
Small as the incident was, it marked a change in Sidney's position in the
ward. She got the worst off-duty of the day, or none. Small humiliations
were hers: late meals, disagreeable duties, endless and often unnecessary
tasks. Even Miss Grange, now reduced to second place, remonstrated with
her senior.
"I think a certain amount of severity is good for a probationer," she said,
"but you are brutal, Miss Harrison."
"She's stupid."
"She's not at all stupid. She's going to be one of the best nurses in the
house."
"Report me, then. Tell the Head I'm abusing Dr. Wilson's pet probationer,
that I don't always say 'please' when I ask her to change a bed or take a
temperature."
Miss Grange was not lacking in keenness. She died not go to the Head,
which is unethical under any circumstances; but gradually there spread
through the training-school a story that Carlotta Harrison was jealous of
the new Page girl, Dr. Wilson's protegee. Things were still highly
unpleasant in the ward, but they grew much better when Sidney was off duty.
She was asked to join a small class that was studying French at night. As
ignorant of the cause of her popularity as of the reason of her
persecution, she went steadily on her way.
And she was gaining every day. Her mind was forming. She was learning to
think for herself. For the first time, she was facing problems and
demanding an answer. Why must there be Grace Irvings in the world? Why
must the healthy babies of the obstetric ward go out to the slums and come
back, in months or years, crippled for the great fight by the handicap of
their environment, rickety, tuberculous, twisted? Why need the huge mills
feed the hospitals daily with injured men?
And there were other things that she thought of. Every night, on her knees
in the nurses' parlor at prayers, she promised, if she were accepted as a
nurse, to try never to become calloused, never to regard her patients as
"cases," never to allow the cleanliness and routine of her ward to delay a
cup of water to the thirsty, or her arms to a sick child.