FIRES

Fires that require lighting and feeding were, we are convinced, invented by a close relative of the evil one. Whether as penance for our sins or as a foretaste of things to come is beside the mark; and from this you will gather that we have suffered, and you will not be mistaken.

Imagine yourself in charge of a ward full of sleeping men and a coke fire, and, having kept a vigilant eye on your stove (of surely the most diabolical pattern created) up till about 11.15 p.m., you leave it while you hastily devour your supper, in fear and trembling lest something should befall it in your absence, for naturally your fire is your chief consideration, and needs far more nursing than the general run of patients. Within fifteen minutes you return, to find that it has “burnt hollow,” abstains from giving heat, and is badly clinkered underneath. In a silence heavy with unspoken – er – phrases you attempt to dislodge the clinker from the top, the bottom, and the sides; but it is useless. So, tucking up your sleeves and immaculate apron, and at great risk to your dainty fingers, you proceed to drag out its “innards”: red coke, black coke, clinkered coke, and – clinker!

Having arrayed them artistically around you – pausing every other second, lest your palpitations awake the slumberers – you rise gingerly to go and seek for wood, at which moment the top of the stove crashes to the ground, scattering the embers far and wide, wakening the majority of patients; and Night Sister walks into the ward and says, “How very careless of you, nurse,” and “what are you doing?” Her brief visitation concluded, with black rage and despair in your heart, you once more seek wood and coals. Of the latter there is, naturally, none – only coke of a peculiar vileness – and of the former a handful of thoroughly wet lumps (which you dissect in the kitchen with a table-knife – your only weapon). And having made monumental bonfires of the “Sydney Bulletin,” “Daily Wail,” and others for the rest of the night, in a vain endeavour to make what seems to be asbestos disguised as wood burn – a patient lights it for you at six o’clock in the morning!

Whether it is man’s aptitude for a certain luridness of speech that aids him in such tasks we do not presume to know. All that we do compree, from personal experience, is that we were far more successful with the stove in a certain ward last winter, when the patients on each side of it were awake to stimulate it with a few pointed remarks (one was an Irish Australian and the other a Scotchman!) and the pressure on our own feelings was considerably relieved! However, it breaks the tedium of a lonely vigil to keep a “pipe stove” made up to the mark with only your fingers as weapons; and, of course, in the days before the coal boxes there was always the scuttle to fill – a joyful occupation, especially when the supply box lived on the balcony and was too heavy to tip up, so the coke of necessity was shovelled out by hand, and on those occasions the weather did its worst: winds that galloped round corners and nearly lifted you, coal box and all; rain that teemed down, stinging your face and ruining your cap. But, on the other hand, there were those glorious nights when the largeness of the darkness and the stars brought all small things into focus, including coke and coke boxes!

Of course, coke fires are not the only ones that blaze in hospital. There are regular conflagrations of hearts – epidemics of la grande passion – and Wednesdays and Sundays are the most popular days of ignition. Some are the real thing – fires that blaze “happily ever after,” as it were; others are the “three years or duration” kind, that need a fair amount of stopping; and then, of course, there is the pour passer le temps flame, attracted this way by the glimpse of a pretty face, or flickered that way by the swish of a flaunting skirt – “flames that pass in the night.” But of these things it is not wise to talk. Strictly business, please!

A GIRL ORDERLY.