Within a short period I considered myself thoroughly inured to what many look upon as the unpleasant aspects of nursing; the sight of blood never made me squeamish and I had watched operations, even on the brain, with none of the usual sick giddiness. Then one day the driver of a Macy delivery wagon, who had fallen off the seat, was brought in with a split nose. I was holding the basin for the young doctor who was stitching it up, when one of the other nurses said something to tease him. He dropped his work, leaving the needle and cat-gut thread sticking across the patient’s nose, and chased her out of the room and down the hall. The patient, painless under a local anesthetic, gazed mildly after them; but the idea that doctor and nurse could be so callous as to play jokes horrified me. When pursuer and pursued returned they found me in a heap on the floor, the basin tipped over beside me, instruments and sponges scattered everywhere. The patient was still sitting quietly waiting for all the foolishness to stop. I am glad to say this was the one and only time I ever fainted on duty. The training, rigid though it was, would have been far less difficult had it not been for the truly diabolical head nurse. In the morning she was all smiles, so saintly that you could almost glimpse the halo around her head. But as the day wore on the demon in her appeared. She could always think up extra things for you to do to keep you from your regular afternoon two hours off. This was particularly hard on me because I had developed tubercular glands and was running a temperature. In my second year I was operated on, and two weeks later assigned to night duty, where I stayed for three awful months. My worst tribulation came during this period. People then seldom went to hospitals with minor ailments; our patients were commonly the very sick, requiring a maximum of attention. There was no orderly and I could use only my left hand because my right shoulder was still bandaged. I took care of admissions, entered case histories, and, when sharp bells punctuated the waiting stillness, sometimes one coming before I had time to answer the first, I pattered hurriedly up and down the three flights, through the shadows relieved only by the faint red glow from the gas jets. I suppose adventures were inevitable. One night an Italian was picked up on the street in a state of almost complete exhaustion, and brought to the hospital. He was so ill with suspected typhoid that he should have had a “special,” but instead he was placed in the ward. An old leather couch stood across the windows, and whenever a pause came in my duties I lay down. From there I could keep an eye on my new patient. Sick as he was he insisted on making the long trip through the ward to the bathroom. I could not explain how unwise this was, because he could not understand a word of English. He must have reeled out of his bed between thirty and forty times.