In the Shadow of the Lamp by Susanne Dunlap

Author:Susanne Dunlap [Dunlap, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2011-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

We all soon learned to cope with the unpredictable schedule of battle casualties. Sometimes things would seem quiet as peacetime and there wouldn’t be enough to keep us busy. Then the older nurses would get wool from the market and start knitting socks, and we’d all roll bandages and help with washing linens. Mrs. Drake told us stories, most of them funny, about her grandchildren and about nursing in London. She’d sometimes do it in a way that was meant to teach me things, without making it too obvious. In turn I’d sit patiently while she wound a ball of wool from the skein on my outstretched hands. I never knew my grandmas, but Mrs. Drake was what I always imagined they’d be like.

We took turns in the laundry, set up as I’d heard it would be in a hut outside the hospital. There was another hospital about half a mile away that we didn’t know about when we first came. It was called the General Hospital, and had mostly convalescents. Only the Sisters of Mercy were sent over to work there. They didn’t want more than one female nurse per ward because the men were getting healthy.

Every day it seemed Miss Nightingale found some other almost impossible challenge to overcome. The first one, after the wards were cleaned up and real beds brought in, was the food the wounded and sick were given.

“Half the time the meat is raw and the other half it is overcooked and cold. They tear their food apart with their hands because they don’t have forks and knives. There are no fresh vegetables, and the bread is so hard the men can’t chew it. As for sick rations … there are those here who seem to think that a light diet means no diet!”

I thought for a while we were all going to have to learn how to cook. But the Muslims would not allow women to prepare food for the men. Mrs. Clarke was pretty happy about that. Though we did end up with a roster for serving food. Soon enough, everyone in the hospital was given wholesome meals according to what the doctors recommended. Whole rations, half rations, quarter rations, or spoon feeding. I swear the men began to heal more quickly.

But as soon as things started to get into a pattern, like a well-run household, something else happened that upset everything.

I had come in from taking my turn in the wards, watching over men who had just had surgery to see if they were getting past the crisis and would live. A moment after I hung my cloak on the peg, I heard a disturbance at the door and the bright chatter of many women’s voices, none of them familiar to me.

When the door burst open to admit another eighteen women in nurses’ uniforms and ten more who were plainly Catholic nuns, my first thought was that some of us might be going home. But it had only been a

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