Although a digression from the present subject I am reminded of the confusion that occasionally took place in the identity of cases. All patients in the hospital who are seriously ill, whether they have been long in the wards or have been only just admitted, are placed on “the dangerous list” and have their names posted at the gate so that their relatives might be admitted at any time of the day or night.
A man very gravely injured had been taken into the accident ward. He was insensible and his condition such that he was at once put on the dangerous list, or, in the language of the time, was “gated.” During the course of the evening a youngish woman, dressed obviously in her best, bustled into the ward with an air of importance and with a handkerchief to her lips. She demanded to see the man who had been brought in seriously injured. She was directed by the sister to a bed behind a screen where lay the man, still insensible and with his head and much of his face enveloped in bandages. The woman at once dropped on her knees by the bedside and, throwing her arms about the neck of the unconscious man, wept with extreme profusion and with such demonstrations of grief as are observed at an Oriental funeral. When she had exhausted herself she rose to her feet and, staring at the man on the bed, exclaimed suddenly, “This is not Jim. This is not my husband. Where is he?”
Now, in the next bed to the one with the screen, and in full view of it, was a staring man sitting bolt upright. He had been admitted with an injury to the knee. This was Jim. He was almost overcome by amazement. He had seen his wife, dressed in her best, enter the ward, clap her hand to her forehead, fall on her knees and throw her arms round the neck of a total stranger and proceed to smother him with kisses. Jim’s name had been “gated” by mistake.
When she came to the bedside of her real husband she was annoyed and hurt, so hurt, indeed, that she dealt with him rudely. She had worked herself up for a really moving theatrical display in the wards, had rehearsed what she should say as she rode along in the omnibus and considered herself rather a heroine or, at least, a lady of intense and beautiful feeling which she had now a chance of showing off. All this was wasted and thrown away. An injured knee, caused by falling over a bucket, was not a subject for fine emotional treatment. She was disgusted with Jim. He had taken her in. “Bah!” she exclaimed. “Come in with water on the knee! You might as well have come in with water on the brain! You are a fraud, you are! What do you mean by dragging me all the way here for nothing? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” With this reproof she sailed out of the room with great dignity—a deeply injured woman.