TWENTY-FIVE
I WAS A GOOD NURSE. Not like some of these who are in and out of my room in two minutes. I hear their coarse laughter a few minutes later at the nurses’ station down the hall. You’ve seen them, Jude. Because I can’t speak they conclude I’m blank inside too.
I would never have done that. I was good at my work. If you were to check the registry you’d find no record of my name after 1957 but it wasn’t for lack of desire. I assumed that carrying on with my life was the best thing for me and didn’t anticipate a problem finding work in the field. There had been strides in making the work less risky and many developed immunity but fear of infection still kept nurses away. Most of us had seen one friend off to the san so when I turned up at a TB hospital in Quebec City in late 1952 I
