Rebecca Nurse Quotes

She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.

Just a breath ago, an eighteen-year-old nurse was bending over Rebecca’s father’s father, a wounded soldier in a Soviet hospital, saying, yes, Shura, we are going to have a baby.

An aptitude test established architecture as an alternative [career]. But what decided the matter for [Teddy Cruz] was the sight of a fourth-year architecture student sitting at his desk at a window, drawing and nursing a cup of coffee as rain fell outside. 'I don't know, I just liked the idea of having this relationship to the paper and the adventure of imagining the spaces. That was the first image that captured me.

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head. “We’ve got a treat today, you know,” said the nurse, “watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don’t we?

You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. These days are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive-care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life.

Strange to think that the same life that is so full of wisdom, happiness and love can be condensed into nothing more than a brief dash between two dates.

Rebecca Nurse’s, Mary Esty’s, Elizabeth Procter’s, and Mary English’s mothers had been rumored to be witches.

I propitiated the knife-wielding deities with presents of books. The gifts to them and the head of nursing were also meant to acknowledge that although people get paid to do their jobs, you cannot pay someone to do their job passionately and wholeheartedly. Those qualities are not for sale; they are themselves gifts that can only be given freely, and are in many, many fields.

I stood in front of the stranger again. Now that I saw him in a lifeless state, I noticed that there was no change in the world around him after he had gone. Babies were being born on the floor above, their cries of life breaking off and floating down through the open window. Outside, trains still whizzed on by, the passengers oblivious to the tragic events that unfolded here every day. People in the next room laughed. Life went on. Life went on and the world continued to turn.

It's only just turned the half-hour, Madam," said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the nurse. I wondered if Maxim's grandmother realized that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, "They think I'm getting old, how very ridiculous," and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background.

Hopkins was one of the top hospitals in the country. It was built in 1889 as a charity hospital for the sick and poor, and it covered more than a dozen acres where a cemetery and insane asylum once sat in East Baltimore. The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills. David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to get there, not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients. This was the era of Jim Crow—when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot. Even Hopkins, which did treat black patients, segregated them in colored wards, and had colored-only fountains. So when the nurse called Henrietta from the waiting room, she led her through a single door to a colored-only exam room—one in a long row of rooms divided by clear glass walls that let nurses see from one to the next.

Nurse Rebecca Walker held the wounded Union soldier by both shoulders, pressing with all her weight to keep him from jerking off the table. The man stared up at her with wild terror, biting down hard on a dirty cloth. Doctor Thomas Johnston stood at the lower

Death is cruel, so cruel that even just its presence causes suffering. The constant anxiety, sadness and irritability, knowing that nothing will last forever. That all the things we do, make, and achieve, will vanish or be forgotten, including us. All this from the quiet, miserable, senseless neighbour that often visits when we least expect it.

The nurse brought out some knitting, and clicked her needles sharply. She turned to me, very bright, very cheerful. “How are you liking Manderley, Mrs. de Winter?” “Very much, thank you,” I said. “It’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it?” she said, the needles jabbing one another. “Of course we don’t get over there now, she’s not up to it. I am sorry, I used to love our days at Manderley.” “You must come over yourself sometime,” I said. “Thank you, I should love to. Mr. de Winter is well, I suppose?” “Yes, very well.” “You spent your honeymoon in Italy, didn’t you? We were so pleased with the picture-postcard Mr. de Winter sent.” I wondered whether she used “we” in the royal sense, or if she meant that Maxim’s grandmother and herself were one. “Did he send one? I can’t remember.” “Oh, yes, it was quite an excitement. We love anything like that. We keep a scrapbook you know, and paste anything to do with the family inside it. Anything pleasant, that is.

Maxim’s grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o’clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red-gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”? Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold? I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with color in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head.

For those who feel alienated from their sex, who feel like they can’t get warm in their bodies, no matter how many layers they put on, Jesus offers hope. Not the hope of a differently sexed body, but the hope of a new reality that no longer feels like labor pains. The transgender person I met after my talk in England thanked me for treating these questions with tenderness. But Jesus’s tenderness utterly surpasses ours. It’s the tenderness of the God who likens his love to that of a nursing mother (Isa. 49:15). We can trust our fragile bodies to this God, however out of joint with them we feel, because he loves us with an everlasting love. One day he will wipe away every tear from our eyes and make our groaning bodies new.

could have just killed her straightaway. We know they have no issue with murder. Dead, she solves their problem. Alive, she’s still a pain in their asses. But they might have sweated her for information. If she knew too much about their plan, they could still cancel the whole thing. It could have been the Clan proper. They might be trying to stop the assassination attempt and would have a reason for kidnapping Rebecca, to find out all she knew about the assassination. But I don’t see them killing her.” “Hell,” Victor said, “the police chief himself might even have ordered her kidnapping as a personal matter just to bury her knowledge that he’s a Clan na Gael leader. If that were the case, why would he let her go?” There was no denying Victor’s logic, but the most immediate thing now was the threat to Maureen Brogan and her child. “We need to get to Maureen’s now. She’s in danger. When she’s safe, we can think about Rebecca. Can you arrange for someone to stay with Maureen if we put her in a hotel with the child?” “Of course.” Conor heard Dr. Camp’s voice from behind them in the hallway. “Mr. Dolan, there’s a Detective Flynn down at the information desk. He wants to see you. Should I have the nurse let him up?” So the case is already assigned to Flynn. The last thing Conor needed now was to deal with the murderous detective. “Do me a favor, Doc. Hold him there until I can get dressed and get out of here. Victor and I will find a side door.” *** On the cab ride to Maureen’s flat, Conor tried to get into Flynn’s head. The detective landed this case either because of its relationship to Kevin Dolan’s supposed suicide or because the police chief specifically wanted him on the investigation. In either case, his objective would be to go through the motions of an investigation while protecting himself, the chief of police, and his Clan associates. He would, of course, make certain the kidnapping was never solved. At the same time, he would use the investigation to figure out how much Rebecca and Conor knew about the Clan’s internal problems. Whichever Clan group

I never felt close to death myself, but I knew it better than anyone else. I sat with it every day, stroking its hand, chatting to it, even laughing with it. Yet, I never quite understood it. It was as if death had employed me as its secretary, and as such, a certain level of respect was to be given.

I stood in front of the stranger again. Now that I saw him in a lifeless state, I noticed that there was no change in the world around him after he had gone. Babies were being born on the floor above, their cries of life breaking off and floating down through the open window. Outside, trains still whizzed on by, the passengers oblivious to the tragic events that unfolded here every day. People in the next room laughed. Life went on. Life went on and the world continued to turn.

This presents another wrinkle. As one nurse wondered, in a marriage class attended by journalist Katherine Boo in “The Marriage Cure,” her 2003 story on pro-marriage initiatives in Oklahoma, “How do you tell if he wants to marry you for the right reasons . . . ? When I wear my white uniform, guys around here know I’m working and chase me down the street to get their hands on my paycheck.”59

Rebecca Nurse was one of three sisters from the Towne family, each of whom was arrested and accused of witchcraft by the teen bad girls of the day. Rebecca and her sister Mary Eastey were both found guilty thanks to the girls' spectral evidence claims that the elderly sisters were pinching them, poking them with needles, then somehow graduating from pinching and poking to infanticide. Rebecca Nurse was herself the mother of eight. Perhaps the health of her own babies made those less fortunate in that regard suspicious.

DID ANN PUTNAM SR. name Rebecca Nurse because of the border dispute, because her husband opposed Parris and had opposed James Bayley, because—although relative latecomers—the Nurses had managed to secure a large tract of village land, because Rebecca hailed from an intolerably harmonious family, or because she took the sacrament in Salem town, occupying a former Putnam pew in the village when she did not? Would she have been named had she visited the parsonage girls, which she did not do from fear of contagion?

More than half the women who were hanged in 1692 had previously been accused. Rebecca Nurse’s, Mary Esty’s, Elizabeth Procter’s, and Mary English’s mothers had been rumored to be witches. Samuel Wardwell had a Quaker uncle; the Nurses had raised a Quaker orphan; Alden had Quaker relations. Abigail Hobbs was happy to sell her parents down the river as only a fourteen-year-old will.

Might Ann Putnam Sr. have named Rebecca Nurse simply because the Nurses prospered where the Putnams did not? It is because Miss Gulch owns half the property in town that Auntie Em cannot say what she thinks of her to her face; witchcraft permitted a good Christian woman to speak her mind.

Nurses pass by, unmoved. This is the chemo floor, after all. Nothing new to see here. Just the end of the world over and over and over again.

I never felt close to death myself, but I knew it better than anyone else. I sat with it every day, stroking its hand, chatting to it, even laughing with it. Yet, I never quite understood it. It was as if death had employed me as its secretary, and as such, a certain level of respect was to be given.

This, of course, became part of the appeal for me. He was another one in a long line of broken boys I could nurse back to health.

Sara’s interest in Charlotte and Elizabeth prompted us to look for other women medical pioneers and heroes, leading us to Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first black woman doctor in the United States. Born in Delaware in 1831, she grew up in Pennsylvania watching her aunt care for sick people in their community. Rebecca worked as a nurse until she was accepted to medical school. After she graduated in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College, she started her career as a physician caring for low-income women and children in Boston. When the Civil War ended, she moved to Virginia, where she worked for the Freedman’s Bureau to care for freed slaves

expert witness in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. NEW YORK CONSUMERS’ LEAGUE. Executive Secretary. 1910–1912. Surveyed businesses and managed a team of volunteers to identify problems and propose regulations. Remained on the Board of Directors following departure. PHILADELPHIA RESEARCH AND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. 1907–1909. Found facts regarding the exploitation of women and girls from minority communities and devised solutions to help. HULL HOUSE. VOLUNTEER. 1904–1907. Assisted nurses, political campaigns, research on social problems, and publications, as well as other duties as assigned. FERRY HALL. TEACHER. 1904–1906. Taught chemistry at all-girls college-preparatory school outside Chicago.