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Show 17G and did battle for me. What I could do to improve myself was to time myself and learn to work faster, without sacrificing the quality of work I put out, which Miss Eagar agreed was important. The first morning on my new floor took me thirty-five minutes and I was not on hand to help pass trays. My new charge nurse, Mrs. Thackly, or some such name, said nothing. Each morning I cutoff five more minutes of time, and still no odor, until I could do it in fifteen minutes. I timed myself on each job, thought ahead what I would do next. An array of patients troops past my memory: the bitter young man with TB of the spine, contracted in the damp hold of a ship during the war. He had been a basket-ball player, a high school champion, engaged to a pretty girl. His tongue was now so mean none of the nurses would do much for him. My heart melted when I saw his bedsores and I gave him special care, in spite of his fire-tipped sarcasm, warmed his sheets and supported his tender skin with cotton rings where the sharp bones were wearing through. The night I overheard him turning his vitriolic words on his sweetheart I gave him up as a bad job. "Can't you get it through your head I don't love you any longer?" he asked her. When she wouldn't believe it he went further: "Do you think I want you coming to see me? All you do is bawl and snivel." Convinced at last, she left him, never to return. My heart broke for him when he turned over in the bed and sobbed. That morning the doctor had put off his operation again, saying that "we can't prove it is service-connected. " He demanded to be moved to a California hospital and died on the way there, somewhere in Nevada. |