The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,20
wooden desks, nervously fiddling with pencils and notebooks. She spotted her new room mate at the back of the class and went to sit next to her.
‘Hello again.’
‘Hello.’ The red-haired girl barely looked at her. Millie knew she hadn’t got off to the best start, waking her up in the night like that. It was entirely her fault; she hadn’t even remembered they were getting a new room mate until the poor girl started screaming.
She had tried to apologise that morning as they queued up for the bathroom, but the girl had barely spoken to her. Millie hoped it was just first-day nerves, and she wouldn’t turn out to be as unfriendly as Helen Tremayne. They had shared a room for three months and the only time they spoke was when Helen was taking Millie to task for her untidiness.
The door opened and they all rose to their feet as Sister Parker entered the room and made her way to the raised dais at the front of the classroom. The class skeleton, christened Algernon, dangled limply beside the blackboard behind her.
‘Good morning, Nurses,’ she greeted them. ‘Welcome to the Nightingale Preliminary Training School. As your Sister Tutor, I will be teaching you basic nursing skills and preparing you for life on the wards during your first three months of training. Should you be fortunate enough to pass your preliminary examination,’ she fixed Millie with a meaningful look over the top of her glasses, ‘you will be returning here for weekly lectures for the next three years. These will be fitted in with your nursing duties on the wards, until you pass your hospital and state examinations and become nurses at the Nightingale.’
A ripple of excitement ran through the classroom. Sister Parker clapped her hands, demanding silence.
‘Really, Nurses, if you’re going to chatter like monkeys every time I say something, we shall never get anywhere.’ Once everyone had calmed down, she continued, ‘Usually at this time we will be having lectures on anatomy, physiology, nutrition, first aid and so on. But as it is the first day in PTS for most of you –’ again she glanced at Millie ‘– we will commence by getting to know each other. You will go around the class and each tell me your names and where you come from. Then later in the morning, we will have a visit from the bookseller and you will be able to purchase some textbooks. I will advise you on what you need. Now,’ she swung round to face the bespectacled pro on the far end of the row, who looked as if she was about to burst into tears, ‘we will start with you. Name?’
‘J-Jennifer Bradley, Miss. I mean, S-Sister.’
‘Do speak up, Bradley. You’re not a mouse.’
A couple of the girls in the front row sniggered unkindly as poor Jennifer Bradley turned puce with shame. Sister Parker rounded on them.
‘Since you seem so sure of yourselves, perhaps we should start with you instead?’ she said with a lift of her brows.
The morning dragged on. Millie idly practised drawing the human heart on a corner of her notebook as they went around the class introducing themselves.
And then it came to her neighbour’s turn.
‘My name is Dora Doyle, and I come from Bethnal Green.’ She said it with an air of defiance, her chin lifted, her unmistakable cockney accent ringing around the room.
All eyes turned to Millie then. ‘Amelia Benedict,’ she introduced herself. ‘But you can call me Millie.’
‘You most certainly cannot,’ Sister Parker snapped. ‘All nurses are to be addressed by their surnames at all times.’
As the girl behind her started to recite her name, Millie noticed a girl with plaited brown hair in the front row turning to look at her with interest. She stared at her for such a long time that Millie glanced down at the bib of her apron to check she hadn’t spilled anything down herself.
They stopped for a tea break in the middle of the morning. As the other students chattered together, Millie noticed Dora Doyle standing by herself, looking out of the window over the courtyard, lost in thought.
She was so intriguing, the way she scowled out at the world from under that extraordinary red hair of hers, as if she was afraid of nothing and no one. And yet the way she had screamed out in the night, anyone would think the Devil himself was after her.
Millie went over to her, determined to break the ice. But before she’d had