The four ranks of beds, without a crease on their brown
blankets, are bare of occupants. The Sister and her probationers have
vanished. The Pack Store orderlies have carried off their loot of dirty
khaki tunics and trousers for the fumigator. The clerical V.A.D.'s have
gone to enter "particulars" in ledgers and card-indices. The cookhouse
people have removed their cocoa urn. The sergeant is inspecting the
metal ward-tickets left in his rack. A glance at them tells him how many
beds, and which beds, are free in the hospital; for the tickets have no
duplicates; any given ticket can only reappear in the rack when the bed
which it connotes is out of use and awaiting a newcomer; the ticket
hangs from a nail in the wall beside the patient's bed just so long as
that bed is tenanted. So the rack of metal tickets might almost take the
place of that important document, of which a freshly-compiled edition is
typed every morning, the Empty Bed List; and the sergeant is meditative
as he sorts into the rack the tickets which have newly been sent in from
the Sisters of wards where there have been departures.
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