Sisterhood Read Online Free PDF Page B

all right,” she managed. “How’s
my
girl?”
    Charlotte’s lips twisted in a half-smile that said, “You should know better than to ask.” She brought a bruised hand up and tugged lightly at the red rubber tubetaped to the bridge of her nose and looping down into one nostril. “I don’t like this,” she whispered.
    Christine shook her head. The tube had not been there when she had left last night. Her words were forced. “You … must have had some trouble with your stomach.… The tube is keeping it from swelling with fluid. It’s attached to a suction machine. That’s the hissing sound you keep hearing.” She looked away. The tubes, the bruises, the pain—Christine felt them as if they were her own. She knew that with Charlotte more than with any patient she had ever cared for her perspective had gone awry. Many times she had wanted to run from the room—from her own feelings. To turn Charlotte Thomas’s care over to another nurse. But always she had stayed.
    “How’s that boyfriend of yours?” Charlotte asked.
    The change in subject was her way of saying she understood. There was nothing that could be done about the tube. Christine knelt down and with accentuated girlish embarrassment said, “Charlotte, if you’re talking about Jerry, he’s not my boyfriend. In fact, I don’t think I even like the man very much.” This time Charlotte did manage a thin smile—and a wink. “Charlotte, it’s true. I’ll have none of your sly winks. The man is a … a conceited, self-centered … prig.”
    Charlotte reached out and silently stroked her cheek. All at once, through the dim light, Christine fixed on her eyes. They held a strange, wonderful glow that she had never seen in them before. There was a force, a power in Charlotte’s voice that Christine could almost feel. “The answers are all within you, my darling Christine. Just listen to your heart. Whenever you must really know, listen to your heart.” Her hand dropped away. Her eyes closed. In seconds Charlotte was in exhausted sleep.
    Christine stared down at her, straining for the meaningbehind her words. She isn’t talking about Jerry, she thought. I just know she isn’t. Trancelike, she walked down the hall to shift report.
    The lounge was filling up. Eight nurses—six from the outgoing group and two from Christine’s shift—were seated around a table covered with papers, charts, coffee cups, ashtrays, and several squeeze bottles of hand lotion. One of the women, Gloria Webster, was still writing notes. Gloria was Christine’s age, had bleached platinum hair, and wore thick, iridescent eye makeup. She looked up, took a sip of coffee, then returned to her writing. At the same time, she spoke. “Hi, Beall.”
    “Hi, Gloria, busy day?”
    The blonde continued writing. “Not too bad. The same old shit. Just more of it than usual, if ya know what I mean.” She put down her coffee.
    “Report soon?” Christine asked.
    “In a minute. As usual, I’m the last one to start these damn shift notes. I think what we should do is just mimeograph one set and paste ’em in each chart. They all say the same thing anyway, if ya know what I mean.”
    Christine’s brief laugh was purely for the sake of the other woman. One of the other nurses had summed up Gloria’s skills when she quipped, “She may be careless as hell doing meds and notes and things, but just the same she doesn’t give a shit about the patients.”
    The last two nurses arrived and took their places at the table. Report began with a discussion of the new patients who had come onto the floor during the two shifts since the evening crew had last been on. They were discussed in more detail than the rest of the patients would be. Even so, most of the remarks from around the table were not about the patients, but about their doctors.
    “Sam Engles, patient of Dr. Bertram …”
    “…  Uh-oh, Jack the Ripper strikes again.”
    “Bert the Flirt, ten thumbs in the operating