Hilda's face by this time was genuinely sympathetic. "Oh, never!" she
answered, with truth. "That would be very bad nursing! One's object in
treating a case is to make one's patient well; so one naturally avoids
any sort of subject that might be distressing or alarming."
"You really mean it?" Her face was pleading.
"Why, of course. I try to make my patients my friends; I talk to them
cheerfully; I amuse them and distract them; I get them away, as far as I
can, from themselves and their symptoms."
"Oh, what a lovely person to have about one when one's ill!" the languid
lady exclaimed, ecstatically. "I SHOULD like to send for you if I wanted
nursing! But there--it's always so, of course, with a real lady; common
nurses frighten one so. I wish I could always have a lady to nurse me!"
"A person who sympathises--that is the really important thing," Hilda
answered, in her quiet voice. "One must find out first one's patient's
temperament. YOU are nervous, I can see." She laid one hand on her new
friend's arm. "You need to be kept amused and engaged when you are ill;
what YOU require most is--insight--and sympathy."
The little fist doubled up again; the vacant face grew positively sweet.
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