Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

But it wasn’t home, not home as she thought of it, with Jasper Lane awash in autumn fire and the smell of wood smoke in the air, the yellow-tinged birches by the pond pointing proudly to the sky, and Rose and Dyle and all the children, Jed and Lucas... but she wouldn’t think of them. She refused to give in to homesickness, not on her first day.

“It’s not home,” she said to Amity, “but we shall get used to it, I should think.”

“Our first half day off is next Sunday,” Amity said with a sigh. “It seems ages away. What are you going to do, do you think?”

Ellen thought of Lucas. She could send a note to his residence, and perhaps he would take her out to a tearoom, as he’d promised. Or would he be too busy? She didn’t like to impose on him, not when they hadn’t been friends—proper friends—for so long. Yet the thought of a familiar island face made her ache inside with longing.

“I’m not sure,” she said cautiously. “I have a friend at Queen’s. I might take tea with him.”

“Oh, a beau!” Amity exclaimed, delighted, and Ellen shook her head.

“Not at all,” she said. “He’s just a friend.” But something in her voice made Amity nod knowingly, and Ellen frowned. Lucas was just a friend. She’d never thought of him that way at all. She thought of Louisa trying to get Jed to fall in love with her, and how she’d determined not to be like that, at least when she’d just been fifteen. But she was nearly eighteen now, old enough to fall in love or even to marry, not that she ever would. In any case, nurses were not allowed to marry. If she intended to pursue this career, she would be single for the foreseeable future.

“Just a friend from home,” she told Amity firmly, yet just the thought of a beau—a proper one—left a strange, yearning ache in her middle, and she found herself once more thinking of Jed. Jed laughing at her, that mocking yet affectionate glint in his eyes, his hands on his hips and his head tilted back as he called her Miss Bossy...

She didn’t even like Jed, she reminded herself, but the sentiment seemed hollow. He might have annoyed her a time or two—or ten—but she certainly didn’t dislike him. They’d developed a friendship of sorts... hadn’t they? Or did Jed just tolerate her a little better after all these years?

A creak of floorboards alerted them to Superintendent Cothill’s presence. “Lights out,” she called out, and Amity scooted off Ellen’s bed.

“Goodnight, Ellen,” she whispered as she hurried to her own bedroom down the corridor.

“Goodnight,” Ellen whispered back. She glanced at Harriet, who was already asleep. A wave of exhaustion crashed over her and she turned down her lamp

and snuggled under the covers, too tired to wonder if she was meant to be a nurse, or if she would ever have a beau, or even if Jed thought of her as anything but the bossy girl from their childhood days.

TWO

The next few days fairly flew by in a flurry of lectures and duty on the wards. Ellen was up at six and did not go to bed until ten, the intervening hours filled with work and lectures and barely a moment of rest.

At first the junior nurses’ ward duty consisted of the lowest kind of drudgery: changing sheets, scrubbing floors, and emptying bedpans. The very first morning was enlivened by Harriet knocking a full bedpan straight across the floor while several medical students jumped out of the way, their noses wrinkled in disdain although one lifted up a hand to hide his guffaws.

Poor Harriet’s face turned bright red and then dead white as Superintendent Cothill bore down on her with a quelling frown. Ellen braced herself for a ringing set-down, but Miss Cothill simply nodded to the puddle seeping across the floor. “Clean that up at once, Miss McIlvain. And use the disinfectant.” As Harriet hurried to clean the mess, she added in ringing tones, “And in future, please do not be so clumsy.”

Ellen hurried to help her, and as she knelt on the floor she saw tears start in Harriet’s eyes. “Don’t worry, it could have happened to anyone,” she whispered. Harriet shook her head.

“But it happened to me.”

“Even so—”

“All I’ve wanted, my whole life, is to be a nurse,” Harriet whispered. “I’m not clever, you know, and I barely made my Year Eight Certificate.” She turned to Ellen with bleak despair evident in every line of her unhappy face. “What if I’m dismissed? I couldn’t bear it.”

Ellen felt a pang of something close to envy at the evidence of Harriet’s passion. She certainly didn’t feel that strongly about staying at KGH, not yet at least. “I don’t remember Superintendent Cothill saying anything about bedpans in her lecture yesterday,” she told Harriet. “Accidents happen. And your love of nursing will shine through, Harriet, no matter how many bedpans are knocked across the floor.”

Harriet gave her a watery smile, and Ellen reached for the pail.

Besides the routine work of changing sheets and the like, Ellen listened to endless lectures on every kind of subject—anatomy, physiology, biology, hygiene, and medicine. This was far more rigorous than any high school she might have attended, and Ellen wasn’t sure she liked it. She liked the doing of nursing more than the learning part of it, and she knew the examinations she was meant to take at the end of the first year would not come easily to her. Perhaps, she considered with a sudden bleakness, none of it would.

She pushed that thought away as soon as she’d considered it. She did not have many other choices in life, and she was not about to give up on this one. Surely all junior nurses felt the same when they first started. Ellen refused to think it could be anything else.

By the time her first afternoon off arrived on the following Sunday Ellen felt both relieved and exhausted. She’d written Lucas a short note, and he’d replied with alacrity, declaring he’d call for her at one o’clock, after church. Ellen thrilled to think of wearing a proper dress, the rose wool Aunt Ruth had sent, and eating fine pastries in an elegant tearoom, in a city no less. It felt like a wonderful, decadent luxury.

“You look lovely, Ellen,” Lucas said when she came into the sitting room where Miss Cothill had had him cool his heels. He looked every inch the Queen’s man in a frock coat and tie, his brown hair slicked back from his blushing face with pomade. Ellen had to take a few seconds to gather her wits for the sight of him looking so sophisticated and grown-up had quite shocked her.

“You look quite the university man, Lucas. I’m proud to be seen on your arm.” Immediately she wondered if that was too forward, although Lucas looked only delighted by her remark.

The tearoom he took her to was in the center of Kingston and was every bit as elegant as Ellen could have wished for, with fine linen tablecloths and dainty little cups made of porcelain, the bow windows in front looking out onto Princess Street where a new electric-powered street car rattled by.

“Are you surviving?” Lucas asked frankly after the tea had been served.