One Pair of Feet Quotes

“A decision loses its charm unless you can act on it immediately.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“I’m in charge here,’ she cried. ‘You can’t come breaking into the ward like this. Who do you want to see? You can’t see them now.’ I thought of bursting into tears and saying: ‘I’ve come to see me Mum,’ but as I looked up at her, my eye was caught by the fantastic equine length of her false teeth and I could think of nothing else. I stared.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“In ‘The Ethics of Nursing’, I learned that one should never sit in the presence of superiors and that conversation with them should be limited to essentials, personal matters and opinions being kept in the background. I wondered, en passant, what I would do if Sarah P. offered me a chair, leaned her deep bosom confidingly on the desk and said: ‘Now, tell me all about yourself!”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“The Nurses’ dinner party was as promised. There was plenty of food, both eaten and thrown about, and Mr Vavasour, the gynaecologist, was very giddy with a bit of mistletoe. Matron looked in to see how we were getting on, and we all had to give three cheers for her, goodness knows why, as she was not even responsible for the food. She had probably had a row with the Housekeeper about providing too much.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“I got mixed up and gave Gastric a leg of turkey and three roast potatoes, but it didn’t seem to do him any harm, and he was very difficult afterwards about his normal diet of flaked fish and puree.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“Mr Ripley, Fanny Adams and I fought all night for that baby. At about two o’clock, when it definitely decided to live, the mother decided to die. We thwarted her, however, and in the morning there they were, grey and unsubstantial both of them, but definitely there and likely to stay.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“Fanny Adams was the Senior Night Sister, a nut-coloured raw-boned woman, who prowled around the hospital on silent feet, with a venomous fang for a tongue… She was very tall and looked, in her uniform, like an iron column, because she had no ins and outs and her apron did not stick out like other people’s, but hung rigidly tubular.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet

“How did one ever learn their names? Except people like Mrs Greenbaum, whose name was indelibly printed on my mind after I had given her the wrong dinner tray. Knowing full well that it was not hers, she had eaten it and had nurtured the consequent pain until her doctor came round and she could tell him exactly how she got it.”
― Monica Dickens, One Pair of Feet