Betty would moan again, and Mrs Price and even old Miss Wilson would shudder and hide their heads. I didn't know why. The word was a peculiar one and no-one would explain it: I could only suppose it must involve being pumped, like a drain, with a black rubber sucker. That thought was so horrible that soon whenever Nurse Bacon said it I began to shudder, too.
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'I don't know what you're quaking at,' she would say to all of us, nastily, as she went back to her bed. 'Wasn't one of you that went off, was it?'
But then, one time, it was. We woke to the sound of choking and found sad Mrs Price on the floor beside her bed, biting her fingers so hard she was making them bleed.
Nurse Bacon went for the bell, and the men and Dr Christie came running: they bound Mrs Price and carried her off downstairs, and when they brought her back, an hour later, her gown and her hair were streaming water and she looked half-drowned.— I learned then that being plunged meant being dropped in a bath. That gave me some comfort, at least; for it seemed to me that being bathed could not be nearly so bad as being suckered and pumped . . .
I still knew nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
Then something happened. There came a day— I think it was the hottest day of all that stifling summer— that turned out to be Nurse Bacon's birthday; and on the night of it, she had some other nurses come secretly to our room, to give them a party. They did this, sometimes, as I think I have said. They weren't allowed to, and their talking made it harder than ever for the rest of us to sleep; but we should never have dared tell a doctor— for then the nurses would have put it down to delusions and, after, hit us.
They made us lie very still, while they sat about playing cards or dominoes, drinking lemonade and, sometimes, beer.
They had beer on this night, on account of it being Nurse Bacon's birthday night; and because it was hot they took too much of it and got drunk. I lay with the sheet across my face, but kept my eyes half open. I dared not try to sleep while they were there, in case I dreamed of Maud again; for it had got with me what you might call— or what Dr Christie, I suppose, might call— a morbid fear, of
giving myself away. And then again, I thought I ought to keep awake, in case they drank so much they drank themselves into a stupor; for then I could rise and steal their keys . . .
They did not, however. Instead, they grew livelier and more noisy and red in the face, and the room grew hotter. I think that now and then I did fall into a doze: I began to hear their voices like the far-off, hollow voices you hear in dreams. Then, every so often one of them would give a shout, or snort with laughter; the others would shush her, then snort with laughter themselves— that would bring me back to myself, with a horrible jolt. At last I looked at their fat red sweating faces and their great wet open mouths, and wished I had a gun and could shoot them. They sat boasting of which ladies they had recently hurt, and how they had done it. They fell to comparing grips.
They put their hands to one another's, palm to palm, to see who had the biggest. Then one of them showed her arm.
'Let us see yours, Belinda,' another cried then. Belinda was Nurse Bacon. They all had dainty names like that. You could imagine their mothers looking at them when they were babies, thinking they would grow up ballerinas. 'Go on, let us see it.'
Nurse Bacon pretended to look modest; then she put back her cuff. Her arm was thick as a coal-whipper's, but white. When she bent it, it bulged. 'That's Irish muscle,' she said, 'come down on my grandmother's side.' The other nurses felt it, and whistled.
Then one of them said,
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'I should say, with an arm like that, you're almost a match for Nurse Flew.'
Nurse Flew was a swivel- eyed woman with a room on the floor below. She was said to have once been a matron in a gaol. Now Nurse Bacon coloured up. 'A match?' she said. 'I should like to see her arm beside mine, that's all. Then we'd see whose was the greater. A match? I'll match her, all right!'
Her voice woke Betty and Mrs Price. She looked, and saw them stirring. 'Get back to sleep,' she said. She did not see me, watching her and wishing her dead through half- closed eyes. She showed her arm again, and again made the muscle bulge. 'A match, indeed,' she
grumbled. She nodded to one of the nurses. 'You fetch Nurse Flew up here. Then we'll see. Margaretta, you get a string.'
The nurses rose, and swayed, and tittered, and then went off. The first came back after a minute with Nurse Flew, Nurse Spiller, and the dark-headed nurse that had helped to undress me on my first day. They had all been drinking together, downstairs. Nurse Spiller looked about her with her hands on her hips and said,
'Well, if Dr Christie could see you!' She belched. 'What's this about arms?'
She bared her own. Nurse Flew and the dark nurse bared theirs. The other nurse came back with a length of ribbon and a ruler, and they took it in turns to measure their muscles. I watched them do it, as a man in a darkened wood might, disbelieving his own eyes, watch goblins; for they stood in a ring and moved the lamp from arm to arm, and it threw strange lights and cast queer shadows; and the beer, and the heat, and the excitement of the measuring made them seem to lurch and hop.
' F i f t e e n ! ' t h e y c r i e d , t h e i r v o i c e s r i s i n g . T h e n : ' S i x t e e n ! —
Seventeen!— Eighteen-and-a-half!— Nineteen! Nurse Flew has it!'
They broke their circle then, and put down the light, and fell about quarrelling— not so much like goblins, suddenly, as like sailors. You half expected them to have tattoos.
Nurse Bacon's face was darker than ever. She said sulkily,
'As to arms, well, I'll let Nurse Flew take it this time; though I'm sure fat oughtn't to count the same as muscle.' She rubbed her hands across her waist. 'Now, what about weight?' She put up her chin. 'Who here says they're heavier than me?'
At once, two or three of them got up beside her and said they were. The others tried to pick them up, in order to prove it. One of them fell down.
'It's no good,' they said. 'You wriggle about so, we can't tell. We need another way.
What say you stand upon a chair and jump? We'll see who makes the floor creak most.'
'What say,' said the dark-haired nurse with a laugh, 'you jump on Betty? See who makes her creak.'
'See who makes her squeak!'
They looked at Betty's bed. Betty had opened her eyes at the sound of her name— now she shut them and began to shake.
Nurse Spiller snorted. 'She'd squeak for Belinda,' she said, 'every time. Don't make it her, that ain't fair. Make it old Miss Wilson.'
'She'd squeak all right!'
'Or, Mrs Price.'
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'She'd cry! Crying's no— '
'Make it Maud!'
One of them said it— I don't know who— and, though they had all been laughing, now their laughter died. I think they looked at each other. Then Nurse Spiller spoke.
'Pass a chair,' I heard her say, 'for standing on— '
'Wait! Wait!' cried another nurse. 'What are you thinking of? You can't jump on her, it'll kill her.' She paused, as if to wipe her mouth. 'Lie on her, instead.'