Free The Nightingale Nurses by Donna Douglas

give her a bath.’
    The new patient sat on the edge of her bed, her coat pulled tightly around her in spite of the warm spring day outside. Katie O’Hara, another second-year student, was trying to coax her out of it.
    ‘Come along, Mrs Lovell,’ she was saying in her gentle Irish lilt. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a nice warm bath.’
    ‘I ain’t staying,’ Mrs Lovell growled. Her expression was truculent under her wild mane of grey-streaked hair. ‘I need to go, see. My family are off on the road and I’ve got to go with them.’
    ‘I’m afraid you won’t be going anywhere until the doctor has been to see you, Mrs Lovell,’ Millie said.
    ‘I don’t hold with no doctors. And I don’t hold with no hospitals, neither. I told ’em, I didn’t ought to be here.’
    ‘Yes, well, I’m sure the doctor will explain everything when he comes round.’ Millie went to remove her coat, but Mrs Lovell lashed out at her like an angry, spitting cat.
    ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ she snapped, her black eyes gleaming. ‘I told you, I ain’t staying. I ain’t slept under a roof in my fifty years, and I ain’t going to start now!’
    Millie turned to Katie. ‘You hold her down, I’ll get it off her.’
    Katie shook her head. ‘I’m not touching her,’ she whispered. ‘You know what she is, don’t you? A gypsy.’
    ‘What of it?’
    ‘You have to be careful of gypsies. They have powers. They can put a curse on you, just like that.’
    Millie laughed. But then she saw the terror in Katie’s eyes and realised she was deadly serious.
    ‘What superstitious nonsense!’
    ‘She’s right, my wench,’ Mrs Lovell murmured. ‘I can put a gypsy curse on someone, if I have a mind to do it.’
    ‘You see?’ Katie retreated a few steps towards the curtains. ‘I’m not risking it, Benedict, and neither should you.’
    ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Millie turned to Mrs Lovell. ‘Look, I’m awfully sorry you haven’t been able to go on the road with your family, but you’re ill. You have an abscess on your kidney, and you need proper medical treatment.’
    ‘I can treat myself,’ Mrs Lovell insisted stubbornly, her arms folded across her chest. ‘Romanies don’t have any need for doctors and medicine.’
    Millie suppressed a sigh. ‘I daresay you’re right, but we can make you better a lot quicker. And surely the sooner you recover, the sooner you can catch up with your family. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
    Mrs Lovell eyed her suspiciously. Millie saw Katie out of the corner of her eye, edging towards the curtain, but she stood her ground.
    Finally, Mrs Lovell said, ‘All right, then. Do what you have to do. But don’t think I’m happy about it,’ she added, shooting a malevolent look past Millie at Katie, who ducked away.
    ‘Thank you. Right, let’s start by making you more comfortable, shall we?’
    She reached to take off the woman’s coat, then let out a squeak of shock as Mrs Lovell’s hand shot out, fixing around her wrist like a claw.
    ‘Your young man’s over the water, ain’t he?’
    Millie frowned back at her. ‘How did you know that?’
    Mrs Lovell grinned up at her, showing a few stumpy, misshapen teeth. ‘You’d be surprised what I know, my wench.’
    Ruby ran the tap in the sink and plunged her hands into the warm soapy water. It was so much easier to do the washing when you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to heat up the water in the copper, or drag the dolly tub out into the freezing yard. She pitied her mum, getting up on a Monday morning, knowing she had a back-breaking day’s work ahead of her.
    But she missed it too. She and her mum would usually have a good laugh together while they worked, gossiping about all the neighbours and the goings-on in Griffin Street. It wasn’t the same, rinsing out Nick’s shirts on her own in the kitchen.
    She’d thought she would enjoy the peace and quiet of having the place to herself, not having to put