The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,15
grinned.
‘Quick, before the seniors get hold of it!’ The girls at the far end of the table passed it around eagerly, watched in bewilderment by Dora and the other new students.
‘The senior students get first dibs on everything,’ the girl opposite her explained. ‘The pros have to make do with whatever’s left. And being new, we’re right at the bottom of the pile.’
‘How do you know that?’ the girl beside Dora asked.
‘My sisters trained here. One of them is a staff nurse on the Male Orthopaedic ward now.’ The girl was plump and dark-haired, with a sweet, round face and a lilting Irish accent. Dora wondered what Sister Sutton had made of her.
Their food arrived in front of them. The girl next to Dora poked squeamishly at the contents of the bowl. ‘What is this horrible stuff, anyway?’
‘Dripping,’ the Irish girl said, digging her knife in and ladling a dollop on to her bread. ‘Try it, it’s delicious.’ She sank her teeth into the crust, her eyes closed in bliss.
‘It looks disgusting.’ The girl grimaced. ‘I’m sure my mother would just die if she knew I was eating such awful food.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ the Irish girl mumbled, her mouth full. ‘My sister reckons you get so hungry you end up eating whatever they put in front of you.’ She filled her cup with cocoa and offered the jug to the student next to her, a timid-looking girl with spectacles.
Before she could move to take it, the girl beside Dora reached out and grabbed it, then filled her own cup. ‘Ugh, this is revolting too.’
‘We wouldn’t know. We haven’t had a chance to find out.’ Dora sent her a sideways glance. The girl was pretty, with neatly plaited shiny chestnut-brown hair and a disdainful expression. Her small nose pointed towards the ceiling, as if permanently turned up at the world and all it had to offer.
‘Sorry, did you want this?’ The girl offered her the jug. Dora took it and handed it back to the timid-looking girl, who smiled shyly across the table at her.
Over supper, the new students chatted amongst themselves, swapping stories of their schools, their families, and how they had come to be at the Nightingale. Dora found out the Irish girl was called Katie O’Hara. She had come over from a tiny village in Ireland to train at the same hospital as her three sisters. ‘It was either that or become a nun!’ she laughed.
She also found out the girl with the turned-up nose was called Lucy Lane. She was an only child, her father had made a fortune manufacturing light bulbs, her mother did charity work, and she was simply the best at everything. Dora felt her eyelids begin to droop as Lucy listed the prizes she had won at her school, from needlework to Most Polite Pupil. If they’d given a prize for talking the hind legs off a donkey, she would have won that too.
‘Everyone expected me to go on to university after school, but I decided I wanted to be a nurse,’ she announced. ‘It’s such a worthwhile profession, isn’t it? And of course, once I’d decided on nursing, I had to come to the Nightingale. Everyone knows it’s the best teaching hospital in the country. Only the best will do for me, Daddy says.’
Dora stayed quiet. Apart from Katie O’Hara, who was very down to earth, the other girls seemed so posh, talking about their schools and their ponies and what their fathers did for a living. She felt out of place already.
She glanced across at Helen Tremayne who looked out of place too. She was surrounded by chattering nurses, but no one seemed to be speaking to her as she sat in silence, shredding a crust of bread between her fingers.
It seemed as if they’d barely started eating before the serving hatches clanged shut and the sisters rose to their feet. Instantly the room fell silent. Dora sneaked a look at the grey-uniformed women as they filed out of the dining room. Tall, short, thin, plump, they seemed a forbidding bunch, not a smile among them.
‘They look terrifying, don’t they?’ Katie whispered across the table. ‘Thank the Lord we don’t have to meet them for another three months. I hope I’ve managed to get some nursing knowledge in my brain by then!’
The silence held until the last sister had left. Then there was a stampede of nurses towards the doors.