Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
The Orders I Take in Advance
A night ward clerk finds her order book already written for requests that have not been made yet, and the ward keeps answering the pages as they come due.
- dated: "the quiet weeks"
- narrator: "Margery Dunn, ward clerk"
*Third Tuesday of the quiet weeks.* The quiet weeks run from the last visiting to the new list, and the ward is glad of them: forty-four beds mostly sleeping and the bells mostly keeping quiet. I take the night orders as I was taught, time against bed, in the book. Tonight at handover Sister Rowe put in front of me a page already written through to dawn: five entries, timed, for requests that have not been made. She said the book saves the ringing, and to read it as it comes due.
*Thursday.* The page came due entry by entry. At 1.15 Bed 21 asked for an extra blanket, and the book had the blanket at 1.15. At 2.05 the radio at the long bay was asked down two notches, and the book had the notches. I tick the lines as they are taken, as I would tick any order. The ward moves to the book a little ahead of the asking, and nobody on nights considers that anything but efficient, and it does save the ringing.
*Sunday.* The hand is the thing I had not bargained for. It is set out as mine is set out, with the threes crossing the way mine cross, and the nib is a soft one, and the office issues biros, and my biros are all in my cardigan pocket. If I write in this book at some hour I am not at the desk, I have not yet caught the hour. The night staff tick and go on. It is the quiet weeks.
*Friday.* The book keeps the standing gap: no entries between three and the half hour's end, the ruling left free, as the standing instruction wants. Last night the gap carried one line, timed 3.19, for Bed 9, the window. At 3.19 the line stood already ticked. I was at the desk from three and did not leave the desk, and the tick is not my tick, being smaller and set to the left of the time where mine sit to the right.
*Second Sunday.* Tonight's page was on the desk at handover, five entries, four of them for beds and sensible as ever. The fifth is for this lamp, a spare bulb, timed for an hour after I go off, and the bulb is going, and the time is sensible, and I expect I shall ask for it at the time given. The question I am keeping for Sister Rowe, and I will ask it plain once the bulb is seen to: who it is that writes the pages in the nights this ward stands empty, and who it is that ticks.