Making Good on Private Duty | Page 4

china or glass and bric-a-brac, if she is very ill, and you
need space for necessary glasses or other articles. It will be a pleasant
way of beguiling the tedium of some long day in her convalescence to
bring forth and arrange them in their accustomed places. Be careful of
books, table-covers, and all the articles of luxury and beauty you will
find in many of our city houses. Remember that these things belong to
some one else, though you are for the present custodian, and think how
provoked you would feel if some stranger should come to your home,
and, even if she did nurse you back to health, she left many nicked
plates, broken vases and handleless cups behind her. I think you would
not want her to nurse you again.
I saw recently in an English magazine devoted to nursing, a very clever
article on "Talk." The writer, a nurse, thought subjects were scarce. She
says: "We must not talk to the patient about her own complaint, that
would make her morbid; or about the doctor, for that would be gossip;

or the hospital, for hospitals are full of horrors; or the other nurses, for
that might lead to talking scandal; or about other patients, for that
would be betrayal of confidence. Now what are you to talk about when
a patient is well enough to talk, and your talking to her will not hurt her
(but on this point be very sure before you air your eloquence)? It is
indeed quite a question, and the nurse must often use all her ingenuity
to keep the patient to the right subjects, for even patients, though they
hold it so reprehensible in a nurse to talk gossip, do not disdain to serve
up their neighbors occasionally to the nurse, with some very highly
seasoned scandal sauce, and here the honor of the nurse must come into
play; let her forget it if possible, as woe will betide the poor girl if in
her next place she unwittingly lets out any of the secrets she has heard
in these long talks. Try then to steer clear of the neighbors. If your
patient be a cultivated person, and you yourself know anything about
books, you have a never-failing topic. All the latest books, the famous
books, the most entertaining books, and if you can read aloud and the
patient likes to hear you, read to her, and it will do both good--only be
sure not to tire her by reading too much at one time. Talk of interesting
places you have visited and she will do the same, of pictures you have
seen, and last, but not least, you can talk about clothes. Generally the
first serious piece of business a convalescent concerns herself about is
the purchase and making of some new clothes. She wants something
new and fresh, and if you can give her any new ideas on the subject or
tell her of any pretty materials you have seen in the shop windows, you
will prove as entertaining as if you talked on any of the forbidden
topics, and many times more useful."
I would like, in closing this chapter, to say a word as to reading the
daily papers. If your patient is a woman, she will want to know just
about what you, yourself, would be interested in, and this is very easy;
but if your patient is a man, it is harder to know what he will want;
politics, the money market, etc., which most women skip over. If then
your patient is a man, commence on the first page and read slowly the
headings of the news items, when one strikes him, as desirable to hear,
he will tell you to read it; when you get through the news you may turn
to the editorial page and do the same there. Unless you know your
patient very well do not attempt to enlighten him as to the stock market

quotations, for it is, I suppose, well nigh impossible for an ordinary
woman to read them so that a man will understand her. He will
probably laugh over your well meant endeavor, and ask you to "kindly
let him look at the paper," when he will in a moment find out what you
have been trying to say.

II
THE NURSE AND THE DOCTOR
I suppose no nurse goes through a training school without being duly
impressed by all the doctors on the staff of lecturers that they, the
doctors, are the generals of the campaign. She and her fellows are the
aids, and that she will be kind enough to remember this fact, and not
make suggestions to him, the doctor, or give him the fruits of her ripe
experience of three years in