The Smile (A true story)

I'm going to try another experiment: let's see if I can paste into this blog one of Janet Wendy's stories, this one a true story:


The Smile

I closed my eyes and lifted the top lid down and over the bottom lid to remove the grit which had blown into my eye. The bus pulled away from the shingle edge on to the bitumen, stirring up a great cloud of dust, leaving me with two bags on the side of the road. Not a soul in sight, not a sound.

I was the first of the junior nursing class to be sent to the TB sanatorium in the country, and as I hadn’t met anyone who had been there before, I had no idea what to expect. What I did know was that I resented being separated from my friends, who after five months of living together in the nurses’ home, had bonded into a close group, full of fun and support for each other.
The week before, the Matron of the Main Hospital had given me money for a bus ticket and a time table, and had told me to take Saturday off and to be at the Sanatorium on Sunday, for a three month stay. I had packed my bags, tugged them to the city bus stop, arrived at the inter- city bus depot half an hour early, bought a one-way ticket, and waited for the bus to pull into the departure area.

There were only three other passengers, so I was happy that I would be able to sit near the front of the bus. The route was a winding road around the coast with many ups and downs around rocky promontories, along golden sweeps of sandy beaches, and glorious views of rolling breakers. As the bus was also the paper route, the pace was spasmodic, slowing for every tin mail box beside the road, where the driver threw the rolled up newspaper, then revved up the engine to attack the next hill. After about an hour the bus swung away from the coast, between hills, dense pine forests crowding the road, and cleared farm land. By this time my old childhood malady of car sickness was making me miserable and apprehensive. I hoped I could stay the distance without asking for a stop. My brow was sweaty and my mouth dry. The driver, a chain smoker, had lit up another pungent “roll your own” which he had stacked on the dashboard at the beginning of the journey. I had tried to open a window earlier and knew that they were sealed shut, not for any luxury like air conditioning, but just from rust and old age. I was getting desperate, trying to ignore the storm in my stomach, when the driver turned and called out

“Waikouaiti San, Miss!” I had arrived.

I clambered stiffly down the steps. I wanted to sit on my bags and cry. No welcoming person to meet me, not even a dog. Across the road the steep driveway disappeared into thick, dark pine trees, the few silver birches were already bare, and a carpet of brown and yellow leaves spread over the shingle. I picked up my bags and started to climb the hill, and as I went up, my heart went down. It was a steep puff to the top and I was unprepared for a sharp turn, sudden sunny open space and a lonely hut back from the edge of the drive.

I put the bags down to change them over – one was much bigger than the other – and then I noticed a wizened old man looking at me from his bed on the balcony at the entrance to the hut. Three walls were solid but the fourth was open with a sliding glass door pushed back to give the maximum amount of fresh air. He was looking at me with no expression or gesture, but he was undoubtedly human, so with a tremendous effort that I was sure would crack my face, I gave him as cheerful a smile as I could, and a wave of my hand. I called over to him, “Where is the office?” Still no voice but a weary finger pointing ahead “Many thanks. See you later. ‘Bye.”

After unpacking in my own room on the ground floor of a three-storey residence, I was shown over the building, the layout of patients’ huts, the main building containing treatment rooms, x-ray rooms, the patients’ dining room, ablution block, recreation room, and finally taken to the nurses’ sitting room where four or five nurses were sitting around a bright-burning wood fire. The room was cosy after the crisp late afternoon autumn air outside and everyone looked pleased to see me.
As usual, the new recruit was given the early morning duty, up at 5 am, but what a difference, rising in a centrally heated nurses’ home with a hot shower next door, from leaving a warm bed in an unheated room where the window was fixed open two inches from the bottom, and the ablution block was at the end of a long cold corridor. I congratulated myself on having had the foresight to put my underwear beside me in the bed so that at least it was relatively warm to put on.
After reporting to the office where the night staff gave me a flashlight, a trolley with instructions to load it up with jugs of fresh water, a holder with twelve thermometers in phials of spirit, and a clip board with names of patients and hut numbers, I was launched into the darkness. Between the huts the path was without lights, but the flashlight helped me to find the door latch and the light switch inside the hut. At 5.30 am I was not a welcome visitor and these long stay patients knew just how to make one feel unwanted. However, the job had to be done, so thermometers were popped into mouths, fresh water jugs and glasses put on bedside tables and the stale ones removed. In late April it was cold before the sun rose, but by June, the ice was on the surface of the jugs, and even in bright daylight many nurses wore mittens to stop their fingers from freezing.
By the end of May my hands had become so chapped there was quite a lengthy ritual at bed time, a generous coating of lanolin rubbed on my hands, then white cotton gloves to keep the grease off the sheets. After a hot, hot bath, a mad dash back to the bedroom, a quick leap under the sheets where a hot water bottle made a warm oasis, woolen socks on my feet, and all the underwear for the next morning stashed beside me in the bed so it would be warm to put on.
Finally, when the wind from the Antarctic blew in the permanently open window, a woolen ski cap warmed my head. Romantic, huh?

During my stay at the sanatorium, I saw quite a lot of the man in the end hut. On inquiring his name I was told it was Paddy Stuart.

“Was he Irish?” “ No, but he had one, didn’t he?”
“Had an Irish?” “No, silly. A paddy.”

Well, having been in isolation for several years and definitely no sign of healing, he had cause to be a bit short-tempered, didn’t he? I never found him anything but quiet and polite.

Because meals were so important to the patients, especially the bedridden ones who had neither the interest nor the energy to lift up a book and read, or had never read, it was necessary to get the food to them in as attractive a state as possible and in most cases this meant hot. Because it was such a long way to Paddy’s hut, even the insulated covers for the plates were not sufficient to keep his dinner hot, so the first time I was the “runner” I grabbed a thick hand towel off a laundry trolley parked at the kitchen door and wrapped it around the tray, then took off and ran as fast as I could, arriving at his bed red in the face and breathless. He needed help with eating as he was so weak, but he kept stopping to say “It’s so good, nice and hot.” He must have said something to the Matron, because from then on I was the “runner” to the end hut, and against all the rules I used to let my mask slip down so he could see my face, and although not much was said, we seemed to be in harmony.
You have to understand that tuberculosis was highly infectious and in 1943 there were no drugs to combat it. Thus all nursing staff wore masks when treating patients.

After a week or two, I felt completely at home, became fond of the patients, even the crabby ones, found the rest of the staff helpful and fun, and loved my one day off each week, when I would pack my lunch, put on my hiking boots and take off across the country, with rolling hills and the coast so near it would have been hard to get lost. It was bliss to climb to the top of a hill, sit there eating a sandwich, listening to the larks singing, the crickets chirping, and gaze over the cleared farmland, or the wide Pacific Ocean.

I was in my fifth week at the Sanatorium when Paddy became much worse. He had several hemorrhages from his lungs and it was obvious that he was dying. He said so himself in a matter-of-fact voice. It had become tradition that a staff member would sit with the patient while he was fading away, and often a particular nurse was requested. To my surprise, Paddy asked for me.

So it was one sunny May day with crisp cold air making my feet freeze, that I sat with Paddy, holding his hand, giving him sips of water, changing the cool cloth on his forehead and listening to the labored breathing and gurgling in his throat. About four in the afternoon, when the sun was setting, he stirred and tried to speak. I leant closer as his blue eyes opened, and he whispered, “The best thing that ever happened to me was your smile the day you arrived.” Then the hand in mine relaxed, and a long shuddering sigh shook his body.

The last sun’s rays tipped the pine tree tops, and all went dark.


(Originally written as a present for Sonia Kumar on the occasion of her ‘Coming of age’ ceremony, this was submitted to the Over 55 Ottawa Writers’ competition in 2005 in the Memoirs category. It is an account of real people, places and events, written many years later.)

Well, that worked! So now I know how to do it - one way to do it anyway, I can paste installments of Janet Wendy's writing to this blog from time to time. This true story is enough to go on with for today, however, so I'll quit while I'm ahead.