Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
The Round I Write Ahead
A ward sister keeps writing her night round-up in the past tense before the round is walked, and the book keeps agreeing with her.
- dated: "the long-watch weeks"
- narrator: "Edna Pike, ward sister"
Monday. The long-watch weeks begin with the winter cover sheet, and the routine is fixed: at ten I write up the round-up book for the hours I will walk it, and at three I walk it, and the book I have written stands as the record. Thirty-one years of writing it the proper way first, observations after the walking, and thirty-one years of cold ink at six in the morning are enough. I have begun to write the round-up at ten, before, all in the past tense, in the form the record takes. Sisters have written things in the past tense for less.
Tuesday. The round went to my book exactly. The round-up read: Ward quiet 2 to 3, no calls. Baker's oo steady. Also small hours passed without a bell in Bay 3. All of it so. I walked the round and there was Baker, oo as written, and Bay 3 with its bell-push silent and its screen unkicked, and nothing between two and three but the clock and me. One night does not make a habit. I will try it again, keeping the entries to what a round may honestly carry.
Thursday. Again to the letter, and I made the entries dry on purpose — no second glass for the man in bed 9; the lift pinging twice at twenty past; Matron's round ran short and hers will want watching. Pinged twice, it did. I signed the book at the end of the round the way I always sign it, and the signature is honest. In the morning the notes had done their proving for me already and I found the night staff had taken my word for everything without checking a one of it, which is the other thing I am watching now.
Friday. I have been sitting over the entry for tonight since half past nine, and I have written it as I have written the others: all quiet, no calls, everybody sleeping, the small hours passing without incident. And then my pen, being the pen it is, put one line in that I did not mean to put in, in my own hand, in the same past tense. It reads: Bed 7 left empty and found so at three. Bed 7 is Mrs. Enright. Mrs. Enright went down to theatre last Wednesday and is nursing along as well as anyone could ask, and I do not have an empty bed and I will not have one at three. I have read the line back twice and it is in my book now either way, and the book has been right nine nights out of nine.
Saturday. It was right. I am not writing what it takes for a round to be right on a point like that one, and I am not writing it down here either. Sisterly of me, you may say, and you may say it where the night staff cannot hear.
Sunday. Matron has asked, since the book keeps proving so true, why I don't simply give it the whole week at ten o'clock and sleep of a Monday. I said a round still wants walking, and that was the whole of my answer, and it satisfied her.
It satisfies nobody, that question, and least of all me: ten nights from now, when I sit over the round-up at ten with the ward full behind me, whose empty bed will my pen have written for — and will the bed have had time to hear about it by three, or does my line go into the book to fetch it.