It forestalls impatient souls, upset at the prospect of missed connections and lost hotel bookings, being kept fretfully awake when they would be far better off dozing away such temporal qualms.
The school nurse was Lucy's crucial advocate, never needing to be convinced of the seriousness of Davis's asthma, confident enough in her own judgment to intervene at the moment he needed it, rather than allowing him to suffer while she tried to find Lucy or fretfully sought out approval from some higher medical authority.