“You seem to have a lot on your mind, Hildemara.”
“Too much to talk about.”
“I know how that is.”
Mama drove Hildemara to the bus station. Hildie felt edgy with guilt. “I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to insult your cooking or your housekeeping or—”
“I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I’m sorry.” Mama put her foot down harder on the gas pedal.
Hildemara almost said she was sorry again, but bit her lip. “Old habits are hard to break.”
Mama let up on the gas. “The world is dirty, Hildemara Rose. It’s never going to be as clean and neat as you want it to be. You’ll have to find a way to live with that.”
Hildie sat up straight, blinking back tears, staring out the window as the vineyards and orchards flew by. She sat within two feet of her mother and felt a million miles between them.
Mama parked behind the bus station. She kept her hands on the steering wheel, the car idling roughly. “Will you be home for Easter?”
“Would you like me to come home?”
“What do you think?”
Hildie thought Mama would like it a whole lot better if she stayed in Oakland.
30
Now that probation had ended, Hildemara had moved upstairs to the higher realms of student quarters. Her new accommodations consisted of two rooms sleeping four each and divided by a bathroom with one toilet, one basin, and one bathtub. “Paradise!” She hardly had time to get to know her new roommates. Another washed out after a month, packing and disappearing quietly after a night shift.
Weeks passed in a flurry of eight-hour duty shifts, doctors’ lectures, classes, and examinations. When Hildie came down with a sore throat, Mrs. Kaufman checked her into the hospital for a tonsillectomy. It gave Hildie the excuse she needed not to go home for Easter.
Once back on her feet, she was assigned to work with Mrs. Jones on the general ward. “She’s a warhorse,” Boots told her. “Old as Methuselah. Served in the Great War and probably knows more about medicine than half the doctors in this hospital, but I’m warning you: Jones will expect you to be busy all the time. When you finish your duties, look for something to do to help out or she’ll skin, skewer, roast, and eat you alive for breakfast. Or lunch. Whichever comes sooner!”
Hildie found backs to rub, pillows to fluff, bedpans to scrub, cupboards to clean, linen cabinets to straighten.
A new patient arrived and pressed his buzzer within minutes. Hildie went running. He waved his hand frantically. “A bowl.” She held it for him while he coughed violently and gagged, spitting into it. He collapsed back. “I’m so tired of this cough.” He wheezed, his face white. Hildie made a notation on Mr. Douglas’s chart.
Another patient buzzed and Hildemara helped him with a bedpan. As she carried it to the utility room, Jones appeared. “Let me see that.” Shocked, Hildemara handed over the bedpan, wondering why anyone would want to look at such an oozing mess. If that wasn’t surprising enough, Jones lifted it and took a whiff. “Smells like typhoid to me.” She looked grim. “We’re sending a sample of this to the lab.”
“Don’t we have to have a doctor’s order?”
“He’s away right now, isn’t he? I’ll fill out the lab slip. We’ll get it down before he can make a fuss.” She took the sample to the lab herself.
The doctor stormed onto the ward and asked who she thought she was to fill out lab slips and give orders. She wasn’t a doctor, was she? Jones waited for his tirade to wind down before handing him the lab report. His face reddened. Without an apology, he handed them back. “He’ll have to be quarantined.”
“It’s already taken care of, Doctor.”
He stormed off the ward.
Boots laughed when Hildie told her about it. “She’s gone horn-to-horn with more than one doctor. She can’t abide fools, no matter how well educated. If she sees a hint of blood or pus, she’s on it. And thank God she is. Have you ever seen a doctor hang around to look in a bedpan? Ha! That’ll be the day!”
Mr. Douglas buzzed again the next morning just as Hildie came on duty. Hunched over, wracked with pain, he coughed. Exhausted, he could barely spit into the bowl she held for him. She rubbed his back and said comforting words. Jones stood in the doorway. As he flopped back in bed, gasping, she drew the curtain around the bed. She didn’t have to ask this time. Hildemara held out the bowl. Jones barely glanced at it. “How long have you had this cough, Mr. Douglas?”
“Couple of months, I guess. Can’t remember . . .” He panted.
“Too long. I can tell you that much,” his roommate grumbled. “Keeps me awake all night coughing.”
“Sorry about that.” Mr. Douglas started to cough again.
“Can’t you do something for him?” his roommate called out.
Jones edged Hildemara back from the bed and took her place. She put her hand against his back. When he finished coughing, she let him spit into the bowl again. “Try to rest. We’re going to move you to a private room.”
Hildemara wiped Mr. Douglas’s forehead while Jones read the chart hanging on the end of the bed. She put it back, eyes bright with anger. She hid her emotions quickly and patted Mr. Douglas’s foot. Motioning Hildemara away, she closed the door behind them as they left. “If that’s bronchitis, I’ll eat my nursing cap!”
“What do you think he has?”
“Full-blown tuberculosis.”
The next morning, another doctor appeared, livid and ready for her blood. “I hear you quarantined my patient.”
“I’m protecting my patients and nurses from contagion.”
“Can you read a chart, Mrs. Jones?” He thrust it in her face. “Can you read bron-chi-tis?”
“If Mr. Douglas has bronchitis, no one will be happier than I. But until I see his test results, I’m taking precautions.”
“You’ve overstepped your authority, and I intend to have you fired!”
His white jacket flapped as he headed down the hall. Jones turned calmly to Hildie and the two other nurses hovering at the station. “All contagion safety measures stand until such time as Mr. Douglas is removed from our ward or I’m proven wrong. Is that clear, ladies?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jones went about her business without so much as a wrinkle on her brow.
Mr. Douglas disappeared from the ward a few days later.
* * *
Tension mounted and tempers flared among the roommates. “You have a dresser, Patrice. Use it!”
“My tennis racket won’t fit.”
“When do you have time to play tennis? Would you answer me that?”
“Would you all shut up! I’m trying to study.”
“Wait until you work in pedie. That Miss Brown is a frustrated old maid. She never gives time off. I’ll be lucky if I ever have a date.”
Hildemara gave up and began studying in the library and sleeping in the upstairs sleeping porch. Nurses came and went. She often met Boots in the cafeteria. “When you graduate, you can move off grounds. We could find a little place to share, something close to the hospital.”
Boots took Hildemara to the pediatric ward her first day. “Nice and quiet, isn’t it?” She grinned. Only the soft step of their rubber-soled shoes sounded in the corridor. A cart squeaked; a door opened; another cart of breakfast trays; the metallic clink of knife, fork, and spoon; quiet voices—all the usual sounds of a working hospital. The doors to pediatrics lay just ahead.
Boots snickered as she planted her hands and shoved them open. “Hang on to your cap, Flo! You’re about to find out why this section has heavier insulation and soundproofing!”
Hildemara stopped, assaulted by the sound of howling infants. Shrill and loud, low and plaintive, tempestuous whimpers and wails struck her heart. One pitiful voice among the rest cried, “Mommy, I want my mommy!” Like a wave the word moved down the hall from room to room.
Hildemara didn’t know whether to cover her face or her ears. “I don’t know if I can do this, Boots.”
>
Boots grimaced. “I know it’s hard, Flo, but you haven’t been on the terminal ward yet. I cried, too. You’ll get used to it. Dry your tears, honey. Put a smile back on your face and get busy. They need you. I’ll see you later in the cafeteria.”
Miss Brown gathered the nurses and introduced Hildemara, then led them from one patient to the next on rounds. Miss Brown explained every diagnosis, treatment, and home background before talking to each patient. Hildemara’s heart broke at so many young patients—some in the tonsil ward, others in the surgical group. She reviewed an appendectomy, a hernia repair, plastic surgery for cleft palates. One child had a feeding problem, another pneumonia, another flu, and on to the long-term cases of post-polio, dystrophy, malnutrition, to the preemie room for babies in need of the most careful and specialized care. All through viewing the misery, Miss Brown smiled. She talked to each of her patients, knowing each one’s history. She patted a bottom here and stroked a forehead there. She took extended hands, squeezed a toe, picked up another little one for a gentle rocking and back rub before putting the child back in bed.
“She’s like another mother,” one of the nurses whispered to Hildemara.
A mother with nursing skills beyond the ordinary.
Later in the afternoon, Hildemara went to check on a little boy who had been badly burned. She found Miss Brown sitting by his bed, holding his hand and reading him a book. “I thought you were off duty, Miss Brown.”
“I only live a block away. Nurse Cooper said Brian asked for me.”
Hildemara wondered if she would ever be as good a nurse as Miss Brown.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Flo.” Boots sipped coffee in the cafeteria later that afternoon. “You’re doing well. Better than most, in fact.”
“I dream about my patients.”
“Well, you’d better stop that. You won’t be much use to them if you don’t get a good night’s sleep.” She put her cup down. “You’ll learn to do all you can and let go of them when you walk off the ward. If you don’t, your nursing days are numbered.”
Awakened one night, Hildemara found her face wet with tears, her heart still pounding. She had been dreaming of Brian and how his father had held him down on a floor heater.
She tried to run and stop him, but her feet had been chained. She had tried to claw free, sobbing. Wiping her face, she sat up, trembling.
The sleeping porch did little to block out the sounds of the hospital. An ambulance siren came closer. Delivery trucks came and went. A nurse tiptoed across the sleeping porch and sank onto her cot. Two others whispered.
Hildemara knew she had to stop getting so involved with her patients. How could she be a good nurse if she allowed her heart to become attached to every patient she served? She rubbed her face, exhausted, heartsick. Papa came to mind. Closing her eyes, she could see him sitting in his chair, his Bible open, his face relaxed. Papa would tell her to trust in the Lord. Papa would tell her to pray.
Curled on her side, Hildemara prayed for Papa. Then she prayed for each of her patients. Names came to her mind, one after another, a dozen, two dozen, as though God was reminding her. At the end of each individual prayer, she let them go with a simple thought. “Brian belongs to You, Lord, not me. I give him into Your mighty, healing hands. Your will, not mine, be done. . . .”
Her body relaxed. She felt at peace. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t wait until after midnight to pray. She would pray her way from one patient’s bed to the next. She would imagine Jesus walking beside her from room to room. She would do what she could as a nurse and leave the rest to God’s tender mercy.
* * *
From pediatrics, Hildemara went on duty in geriatrics. From one extreme to another, she thought, depressed at the sight of the long wards, bed after bed, filled with cantankerous old men to the east and restless old ladies to the west. No matter how hard the nursing staff worked, the place often reeked of bowel movements and urine.
Hildie found herself talking to the Lord all day. Lord, what can I say to give comfort to Mary today? What can I do to brighten Lester’s mood?
Some patients stared vacantly while Hildie checked their vitals or changed their diapers and bed linens. Others complained or stood at windows, staring out as though trying to find some escape. Some mumbled to themselves. Those still ambulatory roamed the hallway, pausing to talk to anyone who would listen. Hildemara tried to take time, but often had to rush to some patient in more dire need. She always had so much work to do and so little time. And so many had needs.
Before breakfast trays arrived, Hildemara helped awaken and refresh patients by washing faces, scrubbing dentures, smoothing sheets and blankets she would change later. Sometimes patients didn’t want to cooperate. If she couldn’t cajole them, she left in hope they might allow her to help them later.
The head nurse took her aside. “You can’t give in, Miss Waltert. Mr. Mathers has to be moved every two hours or he’ll develop bedsores. I know he complains. I know he curses like a drunken sailor. But you cannot let that stop you from doing what’s best for him. Now, go back in there and be firm!”
She had to be like Mama.
Old Ben Tucker, a diabetic who had had his right leg amputated, became her favorite.
He often had his bed raised and table in position before she came in. He’d grin. “I’ve been waiting for you, darling. Feed me or shoot me.”
“You slept well, I take it.”
“The nurse woke me up last night and gave me a sleeping pill.”
For all his good spirits, he looked ashen. How many hours since his last pain pill? “How do you feel?”
“With my hands.” He reached out.
She pushed them down. “Behave. I need to take your pulse.”
“Go ahead, but bring it back. I need it.”
When she came on duty one morning and found he’d died quietly in his sleep, she stood by his bed, crying. The head nurse came in and put her arm around her. “Your first death?” Hildie nodded. The head nurse sighed and released her. “Dry your tears, Miss Waltert. Close his eyes. That’s right. Fold his hands. Now cover him with the sheet. Go back to the nurses’ station and call the hospital morgue.”
Work healed a wounded heart. Hildie had hours to go on the shift, and others to see, to cheer, to encourage.
Nursing wasn’t what she had expected, but she loved it all the same. She loved being part of a team that helped people get back on their feet and back to the business of living. She loved easing those who faced death. She loved feeling needed and useful. She loved serving others. She felt she had found her place in the world. She had purpose. She had value.
Despite the hard work, the anguish of seeing so much pain, the grief of losing a patient, Hildemara knew she was exactly where God wanted her.
31
When summer rolled around, Hildemara used a portion of her hard-earned savings to attend Bernie’s college graduation. Elizabeth came with Mama and Papa, Cloe and Rikki. When she asked Hildemara to be her maid of honor, Hildemara laughed joyously and said of course, then worried how she’d afford a fancy dress. Elizabeth whispered, “My mother wants me to have a big ceremony, but I want something simple.” Bernie could not have picked a better girl. When the wedding day arrived, Hildemara wore the navy blue dress with white cuffs and red buttons Cloe had made for her. She wore it again to Cloe’s graduation and got a pinch from her sister after the ceremony.
“I’m going to have to make you a new dress.”
“Please.” Hildie grinned. “I suppose you’ll be dreaming up designs for wedding dresses one of these days, too.”
“Ha!” Cloe thought marriage a boring waste of time and talent. “I have a career to build. Mama’s taking me down to the Otis Art Institute in a few weeks. I can’t wait!”
Clotilde had looked confident and happy as she strode across the stage to receive her diploma. Laughing, she’d tossed her mortarboard in the air. Her hair had darkened to wheat, and she kept it cut short in a bob that suited her
heart-shaped face. Both of Hildie’s sisters had a confidence she had lacked until recently.
“Nursing seems to suit you, Hildie. You look happy.”
“I’ve found where I belong.”
“Met any guys?”
Hildie laughed. “Half of my patients are guys.”
“I don’t mean patients.”
“I know what you mean, Cloe, but I’m not looking for romance.”
* * *
Boots graduated and hired on full-time at Merritt. Hildemara still met her in the cafeteria every chance they got. “I’ll give it a year or two here, and then I’ll look into hospitals in Hawaii or Los Angeles. Might be nice to be somewhere warm and sunny all the time.” The Bay Area fog got to her.
Hildemara completed her second year of nurses’ training. When she started the last year, she received a blue SMH patch to sew onto the corner of her cap. Six months later, she removed the patch and pinned a tiny gold replica of the school in its place.
Every hour she wasn’t on duty, she studied for her upcoming examinations. The final would cover all three years of training. She gathered with the other students from her dwindling class, which had dropped to thirteen, and joined in quizzing one another on medical and surgical procedures, diseases, pediatrics, obstetrics, bacteriology, materia medica, psychiatry, measurements, and dosages.
Toward the end of her third year, the academic load lightened and began to focus more on job prevalence, requirements, salaries, professional organizations, and available college courses. Hildie thought of Mama’s push to go to UCB. Maybe she would end up taking classes there, after all.
“You must keep up with new methods and ideologies, ladies,” the General lectured. “Every year brings changes in medicine and nursing. Those who don’t keep up fall behind and eventually find themselves out of a job.”
Hildemara talked to Boots about it. “How many nurses can afford college or have the energy to attend classes after a full day’s work?”
“It’s a fact of life, Flo. Remember Miss Brown? She’s been demoted to ward nurse. No college degree.” She shrugged. “It’s a pity, but that’s the way it is. If you want a supervisory position like Mrs. Kaufman, you’re going to have to go to college.”