The Twisted Root Page 0,51
to the training of nurses. But it was a battle against stubborn and entrenched interests that held great power. Fermin Thorpe was merely one of many, a typical example of senior medical men throughout the country.
And poor Florence's health had declined ever since her return. Hester found that hard to accept, even to imagine. In Scutari, Florence had seemed inexhaustible - the last sort of woman on earth to succumb to fainting and palpitations, unexplained fevers and general aches and weaknesses. And yet, apparently that was now the case. Several times her life had been despaired of. Her family was no longer permitted to visit her in case the emotion of the occasion should prove too much for her. Devoted friends and admirers gave up their own pursuits to look after her until the end should come, and make her last few months on earth as pleasant as possible.
Time and again this had happened. And lately, if anything, she seemed to be recovered and bursting with new and vigorous ideas. She had proposed a school for training nurses and was systematically attacking the opposition. It was said nothing delighted her as much as a set of statistics which could be used to prove the point that clean water and good ventilation were necessary to the recovery of a patient.
Hester smiled to herself as she remembered Florence in the hot Turkish sun, determinedly ordering an army sergeant to bring her his figures on the dead of the past week, their date of admittance to the hospital and the nature of their injuries and cause of death. The poor man had been so exhausted he had not even argued with her. One pointless task was much like another to him, only his pity for his fellows and his sense of decency had made him reluctant to obey. Florence had tried to explain to him, her pale face alight, eyes brilliant, that she could learn invaluable information from such things. Deductions could be made, lessons learned, mistakes addressed and perhaps corrected. People were dying who did not need to, distress was caused which could have been avoided.
The army, like Fermin Thorpe, did not listen. That was the helplessness which overwhelmed her - injury, disease and death all around, too few people to care for the sick, ignorance defeating so much of even the little they could have done.
What an insane, monstrous waste! What a mockery of all that was good and happy and beautiful in life!
And here she was, lying warm and supremely comfortable in bed with Monk asleep beside her. The future stretched out in front of her with as bright a promise as the day already shining just beyond the curtain. It would be whatever she made of it. Unless she allowed the past to darken it, old memories to cripple her and make her useless.
She still wanted to wake Monk and talk to him - no, that was not true, what she wanted was that he should talk to her.
She wanted to hear his voice, hear the assurance in it, the will to fight - and win.
She would have liked to get up and do something to keep herself from thinking, but she would disturb him if she did, and that would be the same thing as having deliberately woken him. So she lay still and stared at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling until eventually she went back to sleep again.
When she woke the second time it was to find Monk waking her gently. She felt as if she had climbed up from the bottom of a well, and her head still hurt.
She smiled at him and forced herself to be cheerful. If he noticed any artificiality about it, he did not say so. Perhaps he was thinking of Miriam Gardiner already, and still worrying about what he could do to help her and what he would say to Lucius Stourbridge.
It was midmorning, as she was coming down the main corridor, when she encountered Fermin Thorpe.
"Oh, good morning, Miss - Mrs. Monk," he said, coming to a halt so that it was obvious he wished to speak with her. "How are you today?" He continued immediately so that she should not interrupt him by replying. "With regard to your desire that women should be trained in order to nurse, I have obtained a copy of Mr. J. F. South's book, published three years ago, which I am sure will be of interest to you and enlighten you on