I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes by Mary Tennant Read Free Book Online Page A

and, as the tables progressed towards the back of the room, the status of the nurses diminished.
    The next day we began our training. We started with a six-week block of lectures. Apart from consuming the content of the book I had already read twice, we learned how to ‘make a tray’. There was a tray for nearly every procedure that a nurse had to perform in her first year. At night, at our desks in our rooms, we made accurate diagrams in binder folders. This was to enable us to remember all the items required for each procedure. Our tutors taught us about swabs, kidney trays, forceps and catheters, items that were familiar to me since I had read about them during my days at the home and had used some of them when I was in hospital. When we learned how to use a bedpan and had to practise placing one under one of our colleagues, I was especially careful with my instructions.
    ‘We’re the bottom of the pile,’ I announced one lunchtime, as we sat watching how the dining room functioned.
    ‘You’re not telling me,’ said Catherine. ‘My mum’s a nurse and she warned me that I would spend first year either in the pan room or at the end of the dining room!’
    In the evenings in those first six weeks, we began to get to know each other, cigarette in hand. Suzie was a little older and seemed very worldly. She had worked in Western Australia as a nurses’ aide so she knew a little about nursing and hospitals. Dee came from a farm near Beaudesert. She had tried university but decided it was not for her. Her mother, also a nurse, suggested nursing. Linda had worked at Binnaburra Lodge on the Lamington Plateau, a few hours’ drive from Brisbane. She told us stories about working as a chambermaid at the Lodge and hiking in the forest on her days off. Because we started in September, every one of us had done something in between finishing school. I made up a vague story about looking after my grandmother. Of course it had been the other way around.
    Bryan and I continued our relationship. Some of the other girls had boyfriends too. When they came to visit or pick us up, the men had to park their cars outside the building and the home sisters would page us to come to reception. No men were allowed inside the building except the few male nurses who lived on a separate floor. If we received phone calls, the home sister on duty would page us on a loudspeaker and transfer the call to a phone located on our floor. Our every move in and out of the hospital was vetted.
    After the six-week introduction to nursing we were assigned our wards. Mine was a medical ward. The patients were mostly old and needed a lot of bedside care. As Catherine had predicted, the pan room was where I spent most of my days. Despite the nature of the work – lifting patients on and off bed pans, and assisting them at meal times – I took to it with great enthusiasm. I loved getting into my uniform and going to work. I even enjoyed the shift work, though not night duty. On those nights I struggled to stay awake and forced myself to stay in bed when I heard my friends returning from day shift. I relished studying, making new friends and getting a pay cheque each fortnight. I was on a roll.
    When we went into our second block training, we realised what a bonus it was to be in the classroom, off our feet and able to go out at night together. We made the most of it. I was a bit bored with the textbook and one day I noticed Suzie had another book hidden behind her text.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Oh, this is a great book, Mare. Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs .’
    As soon as I could I bought myself a copy and read it in classes too. At lunchtime we discussed our star signs and once we knew each other’s, we studied them with gusto and moved on to friends and parents, even our tutors. In this way we were sure we could predict the nature of everyone around us.
    My second rotation was another medical ward. My friends had told me about the lighter wards and I was