Answer:
The answer to your question would be that the correctly punctuated sentences are the following ones: "It's going to be a long wait," the nurse confided and "Charles' essay was much too long, mine, on the other..."
Explanation:
"It's going to be a long wait," the nurse confided. This is a direct quotation which is correctly punctuated because the comma is included within the quotation marks. These are words that were said by another person, so they should be quoted.
Then, among the other set of sentences, the last one is the correct option ("Charles' essay was much too long...") because of the use of the apostrophe. As the proper noun "Charles" ends with an -s, you should add only the apostrophe. Use only an apostrophe for places or names that are singular but have a final word in plural form and ending with an -s.
