ADJOINING ROOMS

New Zealand Tablet, 28 January 1915, Page 7

ADJOINING ROOMS

-ft ' .■■■' ;» ->■ ■■ V•_ ' I,: . The faint but unmistakable odor of iodoform and carbolic that drifted through the long corridors and over the latticed swinging doors that afforded privacy to the long line of rooms flanking the hall had but one meaning —a hospital. A blindfolded visitor would have understood it.

But the patient in. room 20, corridor E, did not need any reminder. Pie understood perfectly where he was and why he had come there. • Young, well set up, with curly hair and smiling eyes, he sat in an easy chair and looked out of the window where twilight was blotting away the jagged lines of tall buildings and smoothing out the rough edges of the river front in the further distance.

A doctor was standing near'the young man, while a linen-clad nurse busied herself straightening out the small room back of them was Sister Alberta, head of the hospital. The quieting influence of the early evening had settled over the group, but Sister Alberta’s calm grey eyes were fixed appraisingly on the young patient. Her examination must have been satisfactory, for her expression softened, and she made a slight motion to the nurse, who stopped her perfunctory dusting of a room already immaculate, took up her pad and pencil, and stepped forward toward the patient to make the first entries in what was to be the opening page of a surgical chart, the patient’s ‘ history,’ taken the night before the operation.

Name?’ began the nurse

‘ Thomas McAvoy.’

Age?’

‘ Twenty-two.’

Religion ?’

Catholic, of course.’

‘Married or single?’

‘ Not even engaged.’ ‘ You must take good care of Mr. McAvoy,’ put in Sister Alberta. ‘ His sister was a favorite pupil of mine at our academy.’

The Sister and the nurse slipped quietly out through, the swinging door, leaving McAvoy alone with the doctor.

‘ Honest, has it got to be done ?’ he asked. ‘ There couldn’t be a better time,’ the doctor ex-

plained. ‘ You are in good condition. If you have your appendix out now there will be no further trouble —no more of these recurring attacks that give you so much pain and are so dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better’ to have a. couple of weeks’ rest in the hospital with the Sister and —here the doctor smiled—‘ the good-looking nurses than to get more attacks, perhaps one when you were away from home?’ A sharp-toned bell somewhere in the courtyard of the hospital broke petulantly into their conversation. * What’s that?’

‘An ambulance case,’ the doctor replied. ‘They ring hat bell so as to have the internes ready to meet the sick person at the door. Everybody does not come to the hospital in a taxicab, as you did, and feel as well as a. fish. Most patients are pretty sick before they reach, here.’ %

‘ I wonder if it’s anybody I know?’ ‘ In all this big hospital there must be somebody von know or ought to know.’ ‘What will Ido after the operation? May I smoke ?’

‘ For a day or two you will be glad to do nothing. After that you can find something in the hospital to interest you. What you are to do now is to go to bed and have a good night’s rest.’ The doctor looked at his watch. ‘I shall be here to help you get ready in the morning.’

There was a little group in the hall as the doctor passed. An interne and two orderlies were carrying a young girl on a stretcher. Despite the look of pain

on her face, she was pretty. The doctor who had just left young McAvoy watched until they had carried her to a room. It was 21, adjoining Tom’s. The doctor waited for a few minutes until Sister Alberta, always there to supervise the . reception of a new patient, had come out.

* Who is she?’ he asked.

M- ‘ That is Amy McClure, daughter of the contractor. You know who he is—he built this hospital. I used to teach her when she was a little girl. An appendicitis case. Nothing very serious as yet, but the surgeon thought she had better be operated on as soon as convenient.’

‘ When is her time?’

‘ The same as Mr. McAvoy’s, only in operating room B.’

■‘ Do they know each other, she and Tom?’ ‘ I hardly think so. Tom has been away at college and she has just finished at Trinity, in Washington. They ought to, though.’ Sister Alberta went on her way through the long hall and to the floor superintendent’s desk, making sure that everything was ready for the night. Sister Alberta always stopped at each corridor before she sought her own room in the part of the building reserved for the Sisters. The doctor took the elevator down to the main floor and went home, leaving the wheels of the great hospital to grind on in their daily routine.

Those wheels moved noiselessly while McAvoy slept the quiet sleep of the young and healthy, little disturbed by fears of the operation which was to be performed on the next day. They revolved during the painful hours that Amy McClure tossed on her cot, counting the minutes until an anesthetic should give her relief. They worked through internes, cleaners, and nurses, flushing and scrubbing two operating rooms, preparing sterilised bandages and laying out the white garments for the surgeons.

At 8 o’clock the next morning the telephone at the floor nurse’s desk in corridor E tinkled ever so faintly. The chief of the surgical staff as calling.

* Operating room ready for Mr. McAvoy.’ A few minutes after the young man, accompanied by an orderly, had made his way to the white-tiled room under the big skylight, the bell sounded again. This time for Miss McClure.

An hour passed and the cogs of the hospital routine rolled on, darkening the rooms that had just been vacated and arranging two beds for their unconscious occupants. In the operating rooms nurses handed shining knives to the surgeons, and the pungent odor of ether filled the air life paused for two young souls while the daily-recurring miracle of modern science was accomplished. There were no complications, none of those unforeseen troubles which test the skill of a surgical staff and prove the worth of the expert operator. The operations were finished simultaneously. The ascending elevator carried two-wheeled stretchers. On each of them lay an unconscious figure. Their faces, placed in the peaceful sleep of the anesthetic, _ were turned toward each other. Only the faces wore visible, peering out from the folds of voluminous blankets. Sister Alberta rode up with the patients. ‘Will you see that our boy and girl are tucked in

bed?’ the Sister suggested to the nurses with a smile

Sister Alberta was smiling when she left the nurses and started on her morning hospital rounds, and she was smiling again when, a few hours later, she saw two of .the nurses in whispered conversation near the doors of the patients’ rooms. * If she knew or guessed what the nurses were saying, she gave no intimation. Apparently she never heard when the phrase ‘ boy and girl drifted out from the undertones of the speakers. ■Sister Alberta had the faculty of inspiring rather than directing. The other Sisters in their community life and the nurses and employees of the hospital were never sure whether their purposes had been merely reexpressed by Sister Alberta or whether they had been orders or suggestions from her. Both Amy 'McClure and Tom McAvoy passed through the normal stages of recovery from an operation. There was a day or two when the whole world for them

comprised but one groat desire a longing for water, for any liquid that would dampen parched lips. Then came a period of general weakness and pain. /But life beats strongly in young pulses, and many days before the physicians gave them permission to leave their beds both patients took a lively interest in all that was going on.

‘ There must be lots of sick people here,’ Tom ventured one morning. ‘ Have any of them been cub up for their appendixes?’ ‘ Yes,’ the nurse said, * and your neighbor in the adjoining room is a little girl who was operated upon the same morning you were.’ ‘ A little girl! And is she tired of staying in bed ? Honest, nurse, this room seems awfully small to me. I suppose she is just as tired of hers.’

‘ Yes, it is hard for the little girl, too. 'She has dark eyes and such soft hair,’ mused the nurse, looking away from Tom and out of the window.

‘What’s her name?’

‘ Amy.’ ‘ Any last name?’

‘ Yes, Amy McClure.’ ‘ Is she getting well?’ ’ As fast as you are.’ ‘ Poor little girl, I’m so sorry for her.’ Separated by a sound-proof partition, Amy McClure sat propped up by pillows, nibbling a piece of candy. Even the brightest of morning sunshine could reveal no flaw in Amy’s dark Irish type of beauty. The regular features, the soft brown eyes, the sensitive mouth that appeared to be always on the verge of a —-the warm morning’s light brought each out in its perfection. Only two pieces, the doctor said,’ reproved the nurse.

‘And all this lovely candy to go to waste! Isn’t there anybody else like me in the hospital —just crazy about candy and only permitted to eat two pieces? Surely; somebody beside me has had their horrid appendix cut out and is getting better after it.’ ‘ Well, there’s a little boy in the next room.’

‘ Who is he V ‘ His name is Tom, Tom McAvoy, and he is a nice boy. ‘ Appendicitis?’ ' Yes his operation was the same day as yours.’ ‘ Do you think he would like it if I sent him some candy V

‘ You might try.’ Next morning the nurse brought in the present —- a box half-filled with candy. It was from the little girl next door, she explained. The candy had been sent to her, the nurse went on, but the house physician thought she had better not eat it all, and she wanted some of it to go to the patient who was next to her. ‘ Wasn’t that a thoughtful thing for the little girl to do?’ said Tom. ‘ And did she mean that I was to have it. all?’

Every bit, if the doctor will let you eat it.’ I won’t give him a chance to say anything about

it,’ Tom had finished the last piece. 11 is glance roamed about the room. It lighted on piles of daily papers and a few novels, but stopped at a vase of splendid big roses that his sister had sent in. How would a rose do as a return present, Tom suggested, and would it be all right to include a note with it not a long letter, but just a few lines to let the little girl know that he appreciated her gift The nurse brought a pencil and a pad of paper, while Tom, resting the paper on a book and that on a pillow, wrote in a. shaky boyish hand : ‘ Dear Miss Amy,— Thank you so much for the candv.— Tom McAvoy.’

Both the patients passed through the regular phases of convalescence, were allowed to have solid food, could sit up for a part of every day, and then all day, and every morning they exchanged greetings. Amy sent her companion a. tiny basket of fruit. He returned the basket, filled with carnations. Dear Tom,’ wrote the girl, can’t you get the nurse to let you come over, just once, before they take you home, to visit me ?’

Tom read and reread the note. Tie tried to picture the little girl,' as he sat bolstered up in bed during the long afternoon. Of coarse, she was prettythe nurse had told him that already—and probably her room was full of flowers and playthings. * She could not be so very little, either, or they would have put her in the children’s ward. He had visited the infants’ department of the hospital with his sister. The hospital was famous for its children’s wards. Charitable women had fitted them out, a girls’ section in delicate blue, with blue enamel beds, and a hoys’ ward in pink. McAvoy remembered the tiny babies and young children, with their bandages, and the convalescents playing in a sand pile in the big sun room. Amy, he guessed, must be older. Perhaps she was at the age when the glorious first light of young maidenhood starts to break over the child. In that case she must have long curls, gathered back with a ribbon. Or it might be that she wore her hair in a thick braid, as he remembered his sister doing.

Gilds had never much in Tom’s life. College had been filled with athletics and his studies. Since his graduation it had taken every minute and every ounce of energy to shoulder his way through the competition of the business world to a position where ultimate success appeared within reach. Now, in the quiet of the hospital, during the intervals between Tom’s occasional visitors, he thought of the occupant of the adjoining room. Girls, whether little or big, were made for men to protect, and here was an opportunity for Tom to use his man’s prerogative. ‘ Do you know, I would have been very lonely if that little girl hadn’t thought so much of me?’ Tom confided to his night nurse/ ‘lt’s hard enough to be grown up and sit here, day after day, with only four walls to look at, but it must have been harder for her away from her playmates, and her mother not being able to be with her all the time.’ ‘ Yes,’ said the nurse, it has been hard for her, but she is glad to hear from you, and I’m sure it keeps her from being lonely.’

* Tell her that Twill come on the first morning that I get a chance.’

& ‘ I’ll tell her now,’ and the nurse started for the door.

' It was only a few steps to the next room, and she was there in less than a minute. ‘ Did he say he would come?’ Amy queried.

‘ lie was so pleased he could scarcely wait. ‘ I love little boys. Tell mo, what would lie like when he yets here ? I think children are so fascinating don’t you ? And Tom has such a mature mind ! I can tell it from his notes to me, so remarkable in a child. I know what I’ll do. 1 will buy him a- little engine with a trackone of those toys you wind up and it runs itself. Or would it be 'better to get a miniature electric railway that goes by batteries? What would you advise V

But Amy was talking to an empty room. The nurse had found a sudden errand in the hall. She was gone. Meanwhile Tom was writing a note, this time to the biggest department store in the city. It ordered the finest doll in stock to be sent to bis room at the

hospital. ... , [ I can see her black eyes snap when I. give it to her, thought Tom. ‘I wonder if she has an older sister?’ Never was a morning prettier than the one when the nurse decreed that Tom could see his friend next door. Spring was in the air, even in the city. It had crept in from the soft new grass in open fields miles away, and the pink laces of the wild flowers in the distant woods smiled brightly enough to throw their little beams over the brick skyscrapers and into the big city hospital. Spring was in Toni’s eyes and in his heart. He would have to make the trip in a rolling chair; although he was fully dressed, the nurse said he could walk only a little.

Children ‘like bright colors best, don’t they, nurse?’ Amy argued, uncertain whether she should put on a boudoir gown of pale yellow or one of soft red silk with gilt chrysanthemums. ‘ ‘ Anyway, I look better in red.’ » Her dark hair caught back in a loose knot, her tin©

complexion rendered even more brilliant ,by a trace of hospital pallor and backed by a bowl of superb flowers, she might have been the spirit of spring blown in by a vagrant breeze. Her face was turned, a little away from the light, and ’so she could not catch a full view of the swinging door that screened her from the main hall. A small mechanical engine, on its track, had been placed on the table near the bed. • The door swung open' with a thud as the rubbertyred wheels of the rolling chair pushed against it. Tom, holding out the blondest and waxiest doll in the children’s department of the city’s best department store, was in the chair.

‘ See, Amy, what your neighbor has brought you,’ his voice boomed out.

Amy turned. The wheeled chair was directly in front of her. The nurse had fled. Amy and Tom looked in each other’s eyes with growing wonder.

1 I beg pardon,’ he stammered, ‘ but I wanted Amy McClure. Has she gone?’ Tom was still holding out the absurd doll. Amy’s finger pointed toward the table and the train of toy cars.

‘I am Amy McClure,’ she got out. ‘ Are you Tom McAvoy V

Yes, but

‘ I expected a little boy,’ she put in. ‘ I—l thought you were a little girl, and that was

why I brought this.’ Tom’s glance fell shamefacedly on the wax doll.

1 I don’t know what you will ever think,’ said the girl, 1 but they told me you were a lonely little boy, and that is why 1 wrote von to come.’

Tom’s glance brightened as he watched the girl. He began to smile—an infectious smile which turned into a laugh and drew responsive laughter from the girl.

But now that I’m here can’t I stay?’

He read the answer in her eyes

Among Sister Alberta’s treasured keepsakes is a wedding announcement, and at the bottom of the card is a quaintly-drawn device, or monogram, which looks for all the world like a wax doll playing with a toy train of cars. —Rosary .1 far/a:ine.