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The tuition cost me the price of the trinkets my well-to-do grandparents had sent me over the years, and since my relationship with them was practically nonexistent, I felt no shame in selling them for my education.
I looked away, playing with the straps of my bag. “Why don’t you get to bed, Father? You look tired.”
His eyes flashed, and he charged toward me. “Do not think you can tell me what to do, Claudia.”
At his approach, I instinctively backed away, suddenly fearful of the man who raised me. I stumbled into the open cupboard door, which slammed shut.
One moment, my father was snarling and storming toward me, and the next, at the bang of the door, he gasped, his eyes clouded as memories took him. He threw himself on the floor and covered his ears. He whimpered, and the panic inside me ebbed.
The doctors said it was shell shock. That many men returning from war were suffering night terrors and that loud noises could send them back to the battlefield.
Peace wasthe only known cure. Except not even that seemed to help my father. He found his own cure in the bottle.
“What in the world—” Mother came into the kitchen and, having spotted Father on the floor, rushed to him, muttering words of reassurance and stroking him like you might a frightened animal. “It’s all right, my love. You are here. With me. You are safe.”
With her polka-dot skirt pooled around her as she kneeled on the tiles next to her husband, Margaret Angela Smith looked every bit the perfect housewife. All evidence of the independence she had, the knowledge and experience she gained from employment with women from all walks of life while he was at war, was gone.
While my parents named me after my mother, and shared her blond hair and bow lips, our similarities ended there. I enjoyed working. I supported the suffragists, protesting for my rights to be an equal, and didn’t want a husband. No man had ever appealed to me, and the thought of a marriage night turned my stomach. What’s more, a husband would mean he would be my highest priority, and I didn’t want to forget all else for a man.
My mother’s support of my father in all things meant I’d been forgotten now. Over the past few weeks, my mother did not deflect his verbal jabs at me. Instead, she watched quietly. The comradery we’d built as the women of the house left alone, the trust we’d built to look after each other, disintegrated more with each time she ignored father’s treatment of me.
When his whimpers quietened, she looked up at me sharply and said, “You’d best be on your way now.”
I nodded and quickly snatched my satchel from the table and dashed from the house. I closed the door quietly behind me, so as not to further shock my father, and left. After letting out a shaky breath, I tug my satchel strap over my head and head to the bus stop.
The walk was quiet since it was still early and many people in the neighborhood were only just rising. Bird song and the rustle of autumn leaves brushing the pavement were my only company as I strolled to the bus stop.
I exchanged pleasantries with other passengers as I walked down the aisle to an empty seat. My uniform, a black dress with a white apron pulling in my waist, drew stares.
I wasn’t the most typical of nurses, being so young. With so many men killed at war, many women were turning to a career instead of marriage.
Smiling at the women at the desk as I walked into the London Royal Free Hospital, I wondered about my patients.
Mr. Devlin will need to be discharged this morning.
He’d fallen off his ladder when lighting a streetlamp, and the accident had aggravated a previous injury on his leg. Despite his pain and complaints, he only needed to keep it rested, and he could do that from home.
Mrs. Allsop will need checking and rebandaging.
She’d cut open her hand with a knife when chopping vegetables, and the wound continued to open and bleed when she moved in her sleep.
My small heels tapped along the corridor’s wooden floors as I turned into the staff room and dropped my bag off.
“Good morning, Margaret.” Sister Martha greeted me with a bland smile, revealing a crooked tooth.
While I hated to think it, Sister Martha perpetuated the stereotype of a suffragist. She was a rotund woman, with shoulders that could carry patients of all sizes without breaking a sweat. She was intelligent and had a lot to teach as my mentor but preferred to shout orders rather than explain.
She also called me Margaret even though I asked to be called Claudia. She knew it bothered me, but I pretended it didn’t. “Good morning, Sister. How are you?”
“Very well. I’m just admiring the press of your skirt. Did your mother do that for you?”
I bit back a huff at the attempt to patronize me. “No, I manage the washing of my uniform so she doesn’t pick up anything lingering on me from the hospital.”
She sniffed. “How … thorough of you.”
I followed her out onto the ward and began my rounds, pleased to see the improvement of a young boy who had a severe fever.
Every day, I walked around these hardwood floors and looked into the eyes of a thankful patient; I was grateful for this opportunity. Being a student nurse at the Royal Free Hospital was a dream come true for me.
