A Nurse's Duty Read Online Free PDF Page B

and the school was closed.
    ‘I did it! And all because of you. Oh, thank you, thank you,’ she cried as the teacher opened the door to her. Miss Nelson’s face creased into a wide smile of delight.
    ‘I knew you would,’ she said, though in truth she had been worrying about it all summer. They celebrated by going to the cafe in the Co-op store for tea and cream buns.
    ‘My treat,’ said Miss Nelson, ‘you are going to need all the money you can save. Probationer nurses are not well paid, as I have told you before.’
    ‘Do you think I will get into a training school now?’ asked Karen, suddenly doubtful, and Miss Nelson smiled.
    ‘I don’t see why not. You’ve earned a place, I would say.’
    Karen cut her cream bun in half and spread strawberry jam from a fancy glass dish on it. ‘Jam and cream an’ all,’ she said softly.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just something my gran always says when we want something out of our reach. “You want your jam and cream an’ all”, she says.’
    ‘Well, why not?’ demanded Miss Nelson, and Karen went home light-hearted and full of anticipation of the future.
    ‘It’s because I come from a pit village,’ she said dismally. The euphoria of her examination results had soon fallen flat when she began to receive rejections from one hospital after another. She was sitting at the kitchen table one Wednesday afternoon. All the way home from work her heart beat painfully in her chest for she was waiting for a letter from Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary saying whether she had been accepted for training. She had played the game she and Joe had played years ago, adding up the numbers on her horse bus ticket and dividing them by the lucky number, seven. If the result was nothing remaining, then her wish would come true but if there was only one left over then it would not. But the total had divided evenly and when she saw the letter propped up on the sewing machine cover under the window she had been so sure it was good news.
    Da would think it served me right for being superstitious, she thought numbly, gazing at the curt message on the sheet of paper.
    ‘Well, what does it say?’ asked Mam eagerly, and Karen looked up.
    ‘I didn’t want to go as far as Newcastle anyroad,’ she said, throwing the letter down on the table.
    Karen had been trying for over a year to get into a nursing school and was running out of hospitals to try.
    ‘Look, pet,’ said Rachel, ‘I think you’ll just have to settle for something a bit lower. You know Oaklands said they would take you on as an assistant nurse. Why don’t you take that? You’d be able to get home, mebbe even live at home. I know we’ll be all right with our Kezia living up the street but it would be nice if you were close by, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘I don’t want to be an assistant nurse. That’s not what I’ve worked for all these years, and certainly not in a workhouse hospital. I want to be in a
big
hospital,’ Karen answered, close to tears. She clasped her hands tightly together, frustration and anger building up inside of her.
    ‘I know you’ve worked hard, and you’ve done real well, you have, Karen,’ said Rachel, her face twisting in sympathy with her daughter’s pain.
    ‘And I know why it is no one will take me,’ said Karen savagely. ‘It’s always the same when I go for the interviews. “And what does your father do, Miss Knight?” And when I tell them he’s a miner they look at me and down at my matriculation certificate as though they think it must be forged. They think pitmen are ignorant savages, that’s what it is.’
    Rachel was distressed. ‘Nay, lass, you’re wrong. I know some folk think like that but it’s the twentieth century now, things are different from the way they used to be.’ She clutched a hand to her chest and sat down quickly, a sweat breaking out on her pale face. Stricken, Karen rushed to her side, her own troubles forgotten.
    ‘Oh, Mam, I’m sorry. I