Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the second floor
ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran upstairs to the
nurses’ quarters as fast as I could and looked down the corridor. Every
door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the first floor. The
noise came once more above me. Back to the second floor. All patients
were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one, “Did you get up just
now?”
“No.”
“Did anybody else get up?”
“No.”
Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough to
become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I said to
one of the older nurses, “I’m going to wake you up and see whether you
hear them too.”
“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.
“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”
The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake,
led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”
Her expression was confirmation enough.
Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the
“Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she
had heard it all right but it had come from over _her_ head. At least my
senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater
credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to
listen.
One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff
that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous
breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I
was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous
months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.
After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private
rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this
same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being
restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted
me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear
it?”
He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew
he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”
Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get
downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re
in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing
well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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