“I won’t, Papa.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “But I didn’t get to say thank you to Mama. I couldn’t say it last night.”
“You didn’t have to say anything, Hildemara.” His voice caught. He waved and headed off, calling back over his shoulder. “Go on now. Make us proud!” He strode across the station platform.
Hildemara climbed aboard the train and found a seat. Her heart leaped as the train lurched forward and began to move smoothly along the tracks. She caught a glimpse of Papa sitting on the high wagon seat. He wiped his eyes and untied the reins. When the train whistle blew, Hildemara raised her hand and waved. Papa never looked back.
28
1935
Farrelly Home for Nurses stood on the grounds of Samuel Merritt Hospital. Hildie stood gazing up at the grand four-story, U-shaped brick building that would be her home for the next three years. Excitement pulsed through her as she asked directions to the dean of nursing’s office.
Mrs. Kaufman stood a head taller and considerably broader than Hildemara. Her dark hair was cropped short. She wore a dark suit and white blouse and no jewelry. She greeted Hildemara with a firm handshake and handed over a pile of clothing. “This is your uniform, Miss Waltert. Laundry services are available. Do you have your laundry bag clearly marked with your name? You don’t want anything lost. Remember to remove all jewelry, and no perfume.” She explained that bracelets and rings carried bacteria, and perfume became cloying for patients in the already anesthetic-rich environment of a hospital.
“I’m glad you have short hair. Some girls complain bitterly about having to cut it, but short hair is more hygienic and easier to keep up without all the fuss and bother. Be sure to keep it above your collar. Do you have a pocket watch and fountain pen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Keep both tucked in your apron pocket at all times. You’ll need them.” She picked up her phone. “Tell Miss Boutacoff her probie has arrived.” She hung up. “Probie stands for probational student nurse. Each new student has a big sister to welcome her and answer any questions she may have.”
Hildemara heard the squeal of rubber soles on linoleum outside the door and saw a flicker of irritation on Mrs. Kaufman’s face. A tall, slender young woman stepped into the office. Curling black hair framed an impish face dominated by dark eyes and winged brows. “Miss Jasia Boutacoff, this is your little sister, Miss Hildemara Waltert. Please try to teach her good habits, Miss Boutacoff. You’re dismissed.” Mrs. Kaufman began to sort through a stack of papers on her desk.
Jasia led Hildemara down the hallway. “I’m to give you the grand tour. Orient you to your new surroundings.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “Come on.” She waved Hildie along. “Rule number one.” She leaned in and whispered loudly. “Don’t get on Kaufman’s bad side. I was supposed to write you a welcome letter, but I’ve never been much for correspondence.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue as she winked.
Hildie had to take two steps to every one Jasia did.
“I remember my first day,” Jasia reminisced. “I was scared to death. The General had me quaking in my boots.”
“The General?”
“Kaufman. That’s what we call her. Behind her back, of course. Anyway, I didn’t meet my big sister until the second week. She forgot all about me. Oh, well. I had to learn all the ropes the hard way. By making mistakes. Plenty of them. I didn’t endear myself to the General. I’m counting the days until I have my certification and I can depart the nether regions of Farrelly Hall. If I’m lucky, I’ll be hired as a private duty nurse by some lonely, wealthy old man with one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel.” She laughed. “You should see your face, Waltert. I’m kidding!”
Jasia took the stairs two at a time. Hildie raced after her. “We’ll start at the top and work our way down. Call me Boots, by the way, but never in front of the General. She’ll skin you alive. We’re supposed to call one another Miss So-and-so. All very prim and proper. Come on! Keep up! This is going to be a whirlwind tour!” She laughed again. “You’re puffing like a steam engine.”
Boots took Hildemara from a large auditorium to a reception room to the library, kitchenette, two classrooms, and a dietetic laboratory. Hildie ran to keep up, wondering if everything would go like this. The second floor held a nurses’ dormitory; the third, an open-air sleeping porch with cot beds and another auditorium.
“People are coming and going at all hours up here, but you’ll get used to it. It’ll be a while before you’ll move up here anyway, if you make it through probation. The first six months, everyone on staff will try their best to wash you out, and anyone lacking in stamina and dedication goes! You look a little thin. You’d better get some meat on those bones. Oh, and I forgot to tell you: you can use the radio and piano. Do you play? No? Drat! We need someone around here to start up a glee club.”
Boots pointed this way and that as they rushed along.
“There’s a sewing machine in there. The shelves contain a fiction library. Two hundred books, but you’re not going to have any time to read even one of them. A magazine in the bathroom, maybe. What a slowpoke. Come on! Let’s move, Waltert!” She laughed easily, not winded at all. “You’re going to have to learn to fly if you want to be a good nurse.” She went down the stairs quickly, head high, not even holding the rail. In awe, Hildemara followed at a safer pace.
Boots waited at the bottom. She whispered, “As you already know, the General is on the first floor, guarding the gates to the outside world.” She pointed. “She has a helper, Mrs. Bishop.” She pointed to another office door. “Bishop’s a peach. If you’re late, she’ll sneak you in. But be careful. We don’t want to get her fired. Come on. Down we go into Probie Alley, or the Dungeon as I call it.”
The corridor bustled with new students finding their bearings.
“You’ll be down here in the gloom for six months, with a roommate, hopefully more fun than mine.” She shuddered dramatically. “Do whoever she is a big favor and keep everything put away. There’s barely space to change your mind in these cells, let alone your clothes.” Her shoes squeaked to a halt. “Here’s where I dump you. This humble abode is your new home! Enjoy!” She waved her hand airily.
Hildie peered in at a room with two narrow beds and two tiny dressers.
“Oh, before I forget, the most important room in the building—the communal bathroom—is just down the hall on the right, and on the left farther down is the itsy-bitsy kitchenette you’ll have to share with twenty classmates. Of course, there’ll be fewer by the end of the month.”
With that encouragement, Boots glanced at her pocket watch and squealed. “Holy Godfrey! I’ve gotta run! Duty in fifteen minutes! Cute doctor.” She raised her eyebrows up and down. “See ya!” She ran for the stairs. Her shoes squealed again. “Let me know if you have any questions or problems!” Her voice echoed in the corridor. Girls stuck their heads out doors to see who was making all the noise, but Boots had already bounded up the stairs.
Laughing under her breath, Hildemara entered her new home. It wasn’t any smaller than the room she had shared with Cloe and Rikka. And here she’d have only one roommate.
Smiling, she unpacked her blue dress with the white cuffs, red shoes, purse, and belt and put them in the bottom dresser drawer. She put two other dresses in the second drawer, along with her extra underwear. Unfolding the clothes Mrs. Kaufman had handed over, she admired the blue- and white-striped dress with puff sleeves. A pair of stiff-starched removable cuffs and a collar lay between the folds. A full white apron, long white silk stockings, and thick-soled white oxford shoes finished the ensemble. Hildie ran her hands over the garments, heart swelling with pride. No nursing cap, not yet. She would have to earn that. But even so, she couldn’t wait to wear the uniform tomorrow for her first morning orientation class.
Keely Sullivan, a redheaded, freckle-faced girl from Nevada, came in an hour later and unpacked her things. Over the next few hours, Hildie met Tillie Rapp, Charmain
Fortier, Agatha Martin, and Carol Waller. They all crowded into the room to share how and why they had decided to become nursing students. Tillie, like Hildemara, had dreamed of becoming the next Florence Nightingale, while Agatha wanted to marry a rich doctor. “You can have doctors,” Charmain said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “My father’s a doctor. Give me a farmer any day. Farmers stay home!”
“Farmers are boring!”
“Excuse me?” Hildemara pretended offense. “My brother’s a farmer. Six feet two; blond; blue-eyed; football, basketball, and baseball star of our high school. He’s a senior in college now.”
Charmain’s eyes shone. “When do I get to meet him?”
“Maybe I’ll take you to his wedding. He’s marrying my best friend.”
Everyone laughed. They talked through dinner in the cafeteria and went on talking long after dark, too excited to go to bed. “Lights out, ladies!” Bishop called from the end of the hall. “It’s going to be an early morning!”
Sometime after midnight, the last girl crept out of Hildemara and Keely’s room. Hildemara put her hands behind her head and smiled in the dark. For the first time in her life, she felt completely, utterly at home.
* * *
Everything moved fast the first few months. Up at five in the morning, Hildie lined up for a shower and time at the mirror or sink. She had to be at the hospital by six thirty, ready for uniform inspection at seven. After that, she helped deliver breakfast trays to patients and had lessons in how to properly make a bed: sheets folded in square corners and tucked tight enough to bounce a quarter.
Hildemara and the others followed the General like ducklings down the hospital corridors, pausing as she introduced “our new probies” to patients and then demonstrated various skills they needed to learn over the next few weeks: taking and charting temperatures and pulse rates, changing bandages, doing bed baths and massages. Hildemara got her first sight of a naked man and felt her face go hot. Mrs. Kaufman leaned close as Hildie filed out the door with the other student nurses. “You’ll get over being embarrassed about anything soon enough, Miss Waltert.”
By the end of the week, Hildemara received her ward assignment and reported to the registered nurse who would continue her training and then wrote a daily progress report for Mrs. Kaufman. Just when she felt she had built some kind of rapport with one registered nurse, Hildie found herself reassigned to another.
After lunch in the cafeteria, Hildemara attended class lectures conducted by the General or various doctors: ethics, anatomy, and bacteriology to start, adding nursing history, materia medica, and dietetics later. She felt the hot breath of the General on her neck frequently and feared being culled.
“It’s not called Hell Month for nothing.” Boots lifted her mug of hot chocolate in salute. “Congratulations on making it through.” Though they addressed one another properly during duty hours and in class, Boots was Boots anywhere else. She made up nicknames for everyone. Tillie became Dimples; Charmain was Betty Boop; Keely became Red. Agatha with her impressive bosom became Pidge. She dubbed Hildie Flo for Florence Nightingale.
The days didn’t get easier, but Hildemara fell into the routine: up before dawn, shower, dress, breakfast, songs and prayers in the rec room chapel, uniform inspection, four hours of ward duty, half an hour lunch break in the cafeteria—sometimes all of it standing in line, which meant going hungry—four more hours on duty, thorough shower and shampoo to disinfect herself before dinner, classes until nine, study until eleven, fall into bed in time for Bishop’s “Lights out, ladies!”
She prayed constantly. God, help me through this. God, don’t let me blush and embarrass this young man while giving him a sponge bath. God, help me pass this test. God, don’t let me be culled! I’d rather kill myself than go home with my tail tucked between my legs and my dreams in tatters! Please, please, please, Lord, help!
“Miss Sullivan!” The General’s voice boomed from the hallway. “Where do you think you’re going at this hour of the night?”
A muffled response. Hildemara had barely looked up from her book while Keely got herself dolled up for a date with some young doctor in training.
“Probies do not date, Miss Sullivan! Get your mind off men and onto nursing.” More muffled words from Keely. “I don’t care if you have a date with the apostle Paul! If you leave this residence without permission, take your possessions with you because you won’t be allowed back in. Do you hear me?”
Everybody in Probie Alley heard the General.
Keely came back into the room, slammed the door, and sank onto the bed in tears. “I’m so sick of her snoopervising. I had a date with Atwood tonight.”
“Atwood?”
“He’s that cute intern on the obstetrics ward we’ve all been swooning over. Well, everyone but you, I guess. He’s going to think I stood him up!”
“Explain to him tomorrow.” Too tired to care, Hildemara put her book on her dresser, rolled over, and fell asleep dreaming of sutures, knives, instruments, and a frustrated doctor standing over an unconscious patient and shouting at her, “He’s not even shaved and prepped!”
Every waking moment, she worked and reviewed details on how to do throat irrigations, barium enemas, Murphy drips, and concise and acceptable case reports. Boots called her a workhorse. “You look pale, Flo. What did I tell you about getting some meat on your bones? Ease up a little or you’re going to end up sick.” She slung an arm around Hildie’s shoulders as they walked to the hospital.
* * *
“Miss Waltert,” the General breathed into her ear. Hildemara’s head snapped up and heat flooded her face, but no one laughed. Everyone sat in some state of exhaustion, trying to keep her eyes open and listen to Dr. Herod Bria’s history of medicine. His monotone voice droned on and on. Hildie glanced surreptitiously at her pocket watch and groaned inwardly. Quarter past nine. Old Bria should have finished his torturous, meandering lecture fifteen minutes ago, and he was still going strong, referring to a pile of notes still to go through.
A soft yelp sounded behind her as the General pinched Keely. The sound made Dr. Bria look at the clock on the wall instead of his mound of notes. “That’s all for this evening, ladies. My apologies for going over time. Thank you for your attention.”
Everyone made a rush for the door, crowding through. Boots, a night owl, was waiting in Hildemara’s room to see how her day had gone. Hildie sighed and nudged her over so she could sprawl on her bed. “And to think, I used to love nursing history.”
Keely grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste. “That old geezer loves to hear himself talk!” She disappeared out the door.
Boots gave Hildie a catlike smile and purred. “Perhaps our beloved Dr. Bria needs a lesson in punctuality.”
The next evening, while Hildemara struggled to stay awake and attentive, Dr. Bria lectured until an alarm went off so loudly all the students jumped in their seats. The tinny-sounding bell continued to jingle as the General stormed across the room, yanked the sheet cover off John Bones, the dangling human skeleton, and tried to pry the clock from its pelvis. Bones clacked and clattered as the skeleton danced.
Mouths twitched, muscles ached with control, but no one laughed when the General held up the clock and snarled, “Who did this?” They all looked around and shook their heads. The General marched up one aisle and down the other, studying each face for signs of guilt.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Bria. Such rudeness . . .”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Kaufman. It is nine o’clock.”
Mrs. Kaufman dismissed the class and stood at the door, surveying each girl as she slipped by. Hildie hurried downstairs and ran along Probie Alley, her rubber-soled shoes squealing to a stop at her door.
Boots was lounging on her bed. “Ah. Class let out on time tonight.” She laughed.
“You did it.”
She gave Hildie a look of wounded surprise. “Would I do such a thing?”
Hildemara closed the door quickly before gi
ggling. “I don’t know anyone else around here that would play a prank like that.”
Keely ducked in and closed the door quickly. “Shhhh. The General is standing at the foot of the stairs.”
Boots sighed. “Oh, boy. My goose is cooked.”
They were surprised to hear a deep belly laugh. It faded quickly, as though someone was heading upstairs at a run.
“Well, what do you know?” Boots drawled. “And here I thought the General’s face would crack if she ever smiled.”
* * *
“It’s fine to have compassion, Miss Waltert, but you must keep a professional detachment.” Mrs. Standish stood outside the closed door of a patient’s room. “You won’t last otherwise.” She squeezed Hildie’s arm and walked away.
Even Boots warned her not to become too attached. “Some will die, Flo, and if you let yourself become too close, you’ll break your heart over and over. You can’t be a good nurse that way, honey.”
Hildemara tried to keep a distance, but she knew her patients had other needs beside physical, especially those who had been in the hospital for longer than a week and had no visitors. She felt Mr. Franklin’s hot glare as she changed his soiled sheets. “Fine way to treat an old man. Load him up with castor oil and then fence him in.”
“It was that or leave your plumbing stopped up.”
Surprisingly, he laughed. “Well, from where I sit, you got the raw end of this deal.”
Boots worked a ward with her. “Check on Mr. Howard in 2B, Flo. He’s a cotton picker, always at his dressings.” From there, Boots sent her to check vitals on Mr. Littlefield. “Cheer him up. He’s got his feet braced against getting well.” When Hildie came on duty the next morning, Boots told her she had to report to a private room patient. “He’s been here a week. Another face might cheer him up.”
“What’s his story?”
“He’s a doctor, and he doesn’t like hospital rules.”
Hildie’s mouth fell open when she found her patient standing buck naked at the window, grunting and swearing as he tried to pry it open. “Can I help you, Dr. Turner?”