Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of
a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must
know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he
fled to catch his train.
He devoted just five minutes, no more, to teaching me how to be a
ward-orderly. Four of those minutes were lavished on the sink-room--a
small apartment that enshrines cleaning appliances, the taps of which,
if you turn them on without precautions, treat you to an involuntary
shower bath. The sink-room contains a selection of utensils wherewith
every orderly becomes only too familiar: their correct employment, a
theme of many of the mildly Rabelaisian jests which are current in every
hospital, is a mystery--until some kind mentor, like Private Wood, lifts
the veil. In four minutes he had told me all about the sink-room, and
all about all the gear in the sink-room and all about a variety of
rituals which need not here be dwelt on. (The sink-room is an excellent
place in which to receive a private lecture.) The fifth minute was spent
in introducing me, in another room, the ward kitchen, to Mrs.
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