A Nursing Orderly's Day ...

... Continued

Noon comes like a flash, and we're in the whirl of fetching and serving dinner, after which the big dinner-tin (a most unwieldy brute of a thing to handle) must be washed - ugh! - and returned, speckless, whence it came, pudding dishes - ugh! ugh! - likewise. Thereafter I help some of my crippled patients to dress, and wheel them out into the grounds or on to the verandah. At 1.15 (I'm often unavoidably later) I sneak off for my own meal, feeling I've earned it even if I'm rather too tired to eat it.

Two o'clock prompt: Parade again, and back to the ward. The afternoon spell is supposed to be somewhat slacker, but, personally, I generally find plenty to do. Perhaps there are patients to take to the baths, there is the lawn to mow, and the vicinity of the hut to tidy, there are repeated trips to the dispensary, or the fumigator, or the clerical departments, or the X-ray room, or goodness knows what other portion of this labyrinthine machine of ours. Tea must be made ready, then some patient conveyed to the Recreation Room concert in a bath-chair or on a stretcher. By 4.45 or 5 my own tea is not unwelcome; it is often the case that by this time I haven't sat down - haven't ceased to be on my feet and generally on the run - for more than, at the outside, half an hour in all since dawn. On alternate days I have the afternoons off and go on duty from 5 p.m. to 8. The programme is much the same, except that for supper I have to fetch cocoa from the kitchen.

Is that all? No, Dick, it isn't all. There are hosts of things I've forgotten to mention. But what I've chiefly left out, I see, is the human element - the patients, sisters, nurses, and my fellow orderlies, and the doctors. I've told you merely what I've been doing - but not what they've been doing. Some day, perhaps, I'll try; meanwhile, you must endeavour to imagine lots of other folk as busy as I am, or busier, all the time, simultaneously. Not too busy though, thank goodness, for growth of camaraderie. It's the sense of that camaraderie - the social side - which I've left out. Which means that I've left out what's most important. Of course I'm very fatigued and footsore, but the reason I'm happy in spite of that is not because I have discovered a sudden fondness for the rôle of super-housemaid; perhaps not even because I'm helping the helpless. No, it's chiefly because of the intangible and indescribable something-or-other which I've egregiously omitted from this letter - the hospital's atmosphere of sociability. I used, once, to pick and choose my friends. It's odd, but I don't think I shall ever trouble to do so again. Here I'm plumped down in the middle of a certain crowd; I didn't pick and choose them - I couldn't if I would. And lo, I find that there's no need. Everybody is a friend when you only know him. It's a discovery, Dick. And with it I'll wind up this screed.

Yours ever, C.