Chapter 2: Heed
Morning offices and breakfast finished, Sister Bernadette took a moment to glance out the window at the bright sunshine. After a long winter it was encouraging to see the turn of the season. Sister Bernadette closed her eyes and offered up a quick prayer, asking for peace and serenity in service. Of late her thoughts had strayed from the work she had always been so proud of, and the spring sunshine seemed a chance to confirm her commitment anew. The bright sunshine lit the backs of her eyelids and she smiled, finishing the short prayer. She entered the prep room while the nurses finished their breakfast, looking in the book to make a plan for the day's appointments.
Sister Evangelina came in, placing her bag on the table. "What's ahead of us today, Sister?"
Before she could answer Nurses Franklin and Lee came into the room, ready for their assignments. She began to dole them out, projecting her voice to Nurse Noakes, who stood in the hall with Fred. "Nurse Noakes, just the person. We need a dressing change on Mr. Campbell."
The nurse stepped just into the room. "I'm afraid I can't visit Mr. Campbell or indeed any of my patients."
Sister Bernadette listened as Nurse Noakes began to explain that she and her husband were to become missionaries in Sierra Leone. It was unexpected and strange to realize that Nurse Noakes intended to leave, without so much as a hint that she might be looking beyond Nonnatus for fulfillment. The nurses were shocked, dismayed that their friend was seeking to depart. Yet Nurse Noakes made good argument for her timing.
"I believe God wants me there," Nurse Noakes said, in her voice a plea for her colleagues to listen and understand. "And I have to do it now, before the pitter-patter of tiny feet, or if they take after me, the patter of large feet."
God wants me there, Nurse Noakes said, and Sister Bernadette's peaceful sunshine prayer now seemed inadequate, and unable to be answered. She, too, had been struggling with her place in Poplar, at Nonnatus, and remembered when she was once sure of where God wanted her. She saw on the nurse's face a divine love that she remembered from her own countenance, a decade before when she had been confident in God's love and her place at Nonnatus House. And now Nurse Noakes had surety, a purpose, and choice in her future. The pitter-patter of tiny feet encouraged the young nurse to grab all life had to offer her in this moment. Sister Bernadette frowned to realize that she had no such deadline looming in front of her. Sometimes it seemed that each day was much the same as any other and they unfolded in front of her, interminable, counted in forty week periods of other women's lives.
Watching as the nurses hugged and made promises that everything would be just the same when Nurse Noakes returned, Sister Bernadette pulled back from them, smiling faintly as the nurses took their bags and left behind a still gobsmacked Fred. Closing her own case, Sister Bernadette exited to her bicycle, shivering without her coat. The early spring morning was cool, but the cold ride on the bike might serve to wake her, to remove her restless thoughts. If the cool air didn't remove them then the Bow Road Tenement would certainly do so, with its many patients and overcrowded conditions.
At the bike shed she spent some time affixing her bag to the rack, listening to the ruckus of small children in the road. She startled when Sister Evangelina threw her bag onto the back of her own bike.
"What do you make of Nurse Noakes?" Sister Evangelina said the nurse's married name is if it were only allegedly her name. "Swanning out like this after everything she's put us through? All that time spent getting her into order and now she's off. Just like that."
"She'll be back in six months time." Sister Bernadette pushed back her wimple as it blew into her eyesight. "It won't have been all for naught."
Sister Evangelina raised her eyebrows. "If you think she's going to come back here and la tee dah everything will be back to order, you've another think coming, Sister. Mark my words, the pitter patter of those large feet will be here before we know it. Heavens only knows how long we have Nurse Franklin before she struts off with some pearly-toothed looker, or Nurse Lee, with that boy that hangs around here. These girls care nothing for a continuum of care. We're nothing more than a stop in the road for them."
"Even if they make nursing their lives work we might still be only a stop in the road for them," Sister Bernadette said, mounting her bike. "They're young women. They have their entire lives ahead of them, with all the joys and heartaches that come with it. We can't keep them from that, Sister."
Pursing her lips, Sister Evangelina sat on her bike. She sighed. "I'll see to Mr. Collins today if you'll do so tomorrow."
Sister Bernadette nodded. She moved to push off on her bike, but Sister Evangelina was faster.
"At least we can count on one another, and our sisters, to remain consistent." Her elder sister peddled away, leaving Sister Bernadette to wince against the wind and the weight of her parting words.
Cycling away from Nonnatus, Sister Bernadette tried to scrub her mind of the disorderly thoughts and conflicted feelings of the morning. It was spring and life bustled once more in Poplar, with men shouting from the docks, snatches of music in the air, and small children sent outside by harried mothers. Block after block that she cycled past gave Sister Bernadette a new tableau, a peek into lives that she lived among but just now felt so far removed from. Here was a mother she had delivered only a fortnight before, waving and calling a hello as she pushed her new pram; on the next block a young boy she remembered from Clinic, healthy and strong even with his arm in a cast; there, stepping carefully onto the sidewalk from a shop, a heavily pregnant patient bound to deliver in the maternity hospital, waving as Sister Bernadette passed.
Each clothesline she peddled under drew her mind to the women who left those clothes to hang. She could hear them now, fussing after children, hands to their backs, their work never finished as they bustled to and fro, scratching out a life for their families. Given a chance, she wondered if they may jump to switch places with her, to experience the silence and peace lacked in their chaotic lives. Sister Bernadette was finding just the opposite. Silence was beginning to unnerve her. She did not mind noise and commotion, music or the cries of babies, and the shouts of children. It was the noise of life and she had come to crave it, listening in as the nurses played their records and smiling at the sound of children playing in the street outside of her cell window.
Sister Bernadette slowed to a stop at a cross-street, letting traffic pass. A group of women crossed in front of her, pushing prams and encouraging younger children to walk quickly before the light went. She listened idly to their prattle, thinking that bonds of sisterhood flourished in the East End, whether in the silence of the convent or a crowded tenement house. The women moved up onto the sidewalk and she watched them go, almost wishing she could walk, and talk, with them. The feeling was not unfamiliar. She recognized its pang from the evenings she watched the nurses leave the convent, their lively chatter drawing her to them as she sought to experience the delight they seemed to find so easily in their exploits. The delight would fade as the younger women would make their way out of the door, leaving her behind in the silence. The quiet would press in and she would become restless, yearning for something different. Something more than the unsettling feeling of being on the outside, looking in.
She pushed the thought away and reflexively asked a quick prayer for fortitude, but the prayer ended before it began, as she moved back in queue with traffic. Her fractured prayer would not leave her mind as she cycled her legs faster, her destination near. Yet she knew that she could not face her patients in such a state and so she veered off of the road, pulling to a stop under the overhang of a building. A steadying breath calmed her, and she tried to regain the moment of serenity she had felt while standing in sun-soaked prayer. A moment passed, and Sister Bernadette chided herself. "There's work to be done," she whispered, remembering Sister Evangelina's words to Nurse Noakes, that God had plenty of work for her in Poplar. It seemed that He also had plenty of work for Sister Bernadette. She remounted her seat, set to push-off on the bike.
A familiar green car caught her attention and she placed her foot back onto the sidewalk, watching as the vehicle was hurriedly parked on the next block. She continued to watch as Dr. Turner exited the vehicle, opening the boot to retrieve his medical bag. He paused for just a moment before stepping onto the sidewalk, weariness already evident, even so early in the morning. Sister Bernadette took a deep breath, wishing that she could offer him assistance, share his burden. He entered the building, but still Sister Bernadette kept her eyes trained on his vehicle, mind wandering to a button sewn. He hadn't seemed to notice the button on his clinical coat, but Sister Bernadette couldn't keep her eyes off of it during clinic. He looked all the more professional for it being back in place, and Sister Bernadette found that her eyes strayed toward him time and again, even as she knew that she should not look.
The button, and the care behind it, would remain unnoticed. As it should.
Nodding resolutely, Sister Bernadette pushed off into the sunshine, ready to greet the day, and her patients.
-end chapter 2