Glass Verge: The Forsaken Duty of the Estate Nurse
The history of Glass Verge, a manor known for its large, perpetually sickly household, is embodied by Miss Patience Hemlock, who served as the estate’s Live-in Estate Nurse from 1900 to 1914. Patience’s professional identity was defined by vigilance and necessary sacrifice. Her quarters, a small, practical room with an attached dispensary closet, was where the remnants of her dedicated service lay. The dispensary still contained neat rows of empty glass jars, labelled with medicinal compounds, and a large, heavy mortar and pestle, its stone basin stained a dull yellow-green from years of grinding herbs and pharmaceuticals. The air here was strangely devoid of the typical scents of decay, replaced by a lingering, dry, pharmaceutical smell. Patience’s domain spoke of relentless, taxing work, a life of duty abruptly rendered Forsaken, the cessation of her care leaving the entire house vulnerable.
The Nurse’s Daily Register
Patience Hemlock’s patient register was an unflinching, factual archive of the manor’s health crises. The entries were meticulously organized, detailing everything from minor chills to severe pneumonias. In the later years, the entries focused heavily on the mistress of Glass Verge, charting a complex and protracted illness that required Patience’s near-constant attention. The register notes the mistress’s persistent, debilitating fevers and the nurse’s specific opposition to the repeated administration of a certain ‘proprietary syrup’ provided by an outside physician, which Patience repeatedly recorded as “ineffectual” and possibly “contra-indicated.” The final, dated entry, November 1914, notes the mistress’s death, followed by a personal annotation in faint pencil, clearly scribbled: “My duty is Forsaken. I cannot remain where the truth is not sought.”
The Small Case of Identity
No records of Miss Patience Hemlock’s subsequent life or death were found. The final clue to her departure lay in the back hall, where a small, sturdy leather satchel rested beneath a coat rack. Unlike the abandoned tools in her sickroom, this object felt personal. The satchel contained a small, leather-bound volume of religious verse, its pages heavily annotated with her own handwriting, and a thick, official-looking document rolled and tied with white ribbon. This document was a formal deposition, addressed to the County Coroner, outlining her professional conviction that the mistress’s death was hastened by the external physician’s ‘proprietary syrup,’ citing specific contraindications she had observed and documented over three years. Patience Hemlock did not simply abandon Glass Verge; she formally documented her suspicions and then vanished, leaving her Forsaken duty and her professional reputation behind as a stark, written accusation preserved within the cold silence of the manor’s walls.
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