by Sheila Burns
At twenty-six one had one’s dreams.
Perhaps you will think that a quite plain nurse with no prospects at all ought not to have any dreams, but they were surging about one hero for me; and he was the hero. No one need ever know, I told myself, and looked upon it as being a precious secret which I could hold fast with myself.
But I was wrong.
Tenny suspected it.
‘Never mind, you’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘We have all felt that way about him at some time or other, but it isn’t any good. He is wrapped up in his work. Nothing else ever happens for him, so don’t you think it.’
‘I’m not thinking it.’
She laughed at me and said, ‘Oh, yes, you are. Indulge the feeling for a while, it will fade.’ Only it didn’t fade.
I had been at the home a couple of months, I suppose, and had worked hard as theatre nurse; I had watched him operate, and had seen patients come and go and had heard the nurses chatter, when one day Miss Vaughan sent for me herself.
She and I got on very well together on the whole; she was a demanding matron ‒ she always wanted the best of her nurses, and nothing second best would do, but at the same time she was fair and just. A lot of the matrons in hospital are nothing of the sort, and I always have said that you can work where there is justice, even though it may be a carping justice.
Directly I saw her I knew that she was agitated, although she appeared to be outwardly so composed; but by this time I had got to know her fairly well and knew what lay behind her outward demeanour.
‘An appendix case is being rushed in,’ she said, ‘and she is going to number eighteen.’
Number eighteen was one of our most expensive rooms, which meant that it must be an important person who could afford to pay an important sum of money.
‘Her husband has telephoned to us, and he asks particularly that you should take charge of the case. She is highly strung and imaginative, and will need most tactful handling. Her husband is confident that you will look after her very well.’
Her husband! I had no idea who this might be, and racked my brain to think, but could not put a name to the patient. I would have asked, but Miss Vaughan had given us all a lecture only a few days previously, saying that names were matterless, and that individuality did not count in hospital; the great thing was to think of your patient as a case.
So far having done nothing but theatre work in the home, and being dead sick of sterilizers and swabs, the idea of having a case of my own was an enchanting one. I felt myself colouring.
‘I will do all I can,’ I promised, and then it struck me as being very peculiar that the husband (whom I could not possibly know) should have asked for me. I inquired, ‘What is her name? It seems so queer that the husband should have asked for me.’
Outside, in the little corridor beyond the comfortable room which was Miss Vaughan’s, I could hear the sound of a new arrival, and guessed that it was the patient who was coming in for her appendix.
Miss Vaughan drew herself up a little. She said, ‘In nursing we all have to keep secrets. I don’t suppose that anyone here knew that Dr. Harper was married. It is his wife, and I think by the sound of it she has just arrived.’
She got up and went to the door, and I followed her with my eyes, thankful that, for the time being, she seemed almost to have forgotten that I was here at all. I did not know what to think. I suppose until that moment I had not been so horribly sure of my own feelings, but then (when she said, ‘I don’t suppose that anyone here knew that Dr. Harper was married’), I realized the truth. This was not just a light, happy-go-lucky, quick-come, quick-go emotion, but something a great deal deeper.
It seemed dreadful to me at that particular moment that I could feel this way. Life is topsy-turvy. It is allowed that a man should fall in love, and if his affections are unrequited, then people only feel pity for him. But with a woman life is not so kind. I knew that I was just a silly girl who had committed what is the unforgivable sin for a nurse, fallen for the first good-looking doctor with whom I had worked. It was the very thing that I had so often condemned in others, yet here was I doing it myself. I wanted to think. I wanted to pull myself together, and I had a horrid idea that I wasn’t going to get time. I wanted to tell Miss Vaughan that I would not work for Dr. Harper’s wife, and that I hated the idea of nursing her.
I did not get the chance.
Miss Vaughan had hurried out into the hall, and luckily my common sense and training came to my aid. I found myself, outwardly completely calm, hurrying after her. Directly I got outside I saw Mrs. Harper sitting there. She was drawn and white; her little face had faded under its mask of make-up so that the rouge looked clown-like under the sunken eyes, and merely emphasized the ghastly pallor of her skin.
She was obviously in great pain, and although she wore luxurious clothes, looked pathetic as she sank into a little heap. It was funny, but before I had seen her I had been deeply prejudiced against her. I can’t think why. After all, Dr. Harper had every right to be married, just as she had every right to marry him; it was no business of mine. Then, seeing her, I suddenly realized that she was wretchedly ill, and I suppose all my nursing instincts came to my aid.
I went to her gently and took her arm.
‘Come,’ I said, ‘I’ll see after you; I am here to make you better.’
She turned and clung to me. She was very, very pretty. She had eyes which reminded me of violets, the kind that you find in country lanes at the beginning of April, very dark and dewy. She had a peevish little mouth, but an exquisite skin, and hair like silk. She had everything, this girl, beauty and charm, and the one man in the world. Yet something told me then that she wasn’t happy.
I got her up to her room. It was the luxurious one with the soft, pale green silk cushions and eiderdown, and the creamy white walls. When she saw it she gave a little gasp. ‘I oughtn’t to have come here; green isn’t lucky.’
I knew that we were absolutely full and that there wasn’t another room to give her, and I knew that Dr. Harper liked our home and trusted Miss Vaughan, therefore he would not want to take his wife somewhere else.
‘Oh, but green can be terribly lucky to some people,’ I told her, ‘and this is one of our brightest rooms. Nothing has ever gone wrong here yet. The best patients come here.’
She looked at me helplessly, and then sank down on the end of the bed and began to cry. ‘I’ll die. I know that I’ll die.’
A nurse is used to difficult patients. I put an arm round her comfortingly, because I knew instinctively that she needed consolation. She was not one of those patients whom you can scold into doing what you want. Sympathy, and she would do whatever you asked her. ‘Come now,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t get that idea into your head. People don’t die with appendixes, you know. Not nowadays. I’m here to see you through it and to make quite sure that you get well and strong again.’
And all the while I was trying to forget that she was his wife. I was trying to tell myself that I was behaving like a silly schoolgirl myself. He was a doctor whose work I had watched and admired, a man whose personality had made itself felt in the theatre and who was undoubtedly brilliantly clever. Beyond that I ought not to think. Yet I did think. I wish people could help their thoughts; I wish so much that I could be prosaic, and calm, and realize that the first duty of a nurse is to be an automaton, and that dreams, of the kind that I was dreaming, were not for people like myself.
I helped her out of her things.
I realized then that she was extravagant for everything was of sheer silk, stockings like gossamer, and absurd little satin shoes. She shivered, poor little soul, and I felt sorry for her. I wouldn’t like to be on the verge of an operation myself. I tucked her into bed with a hot water-bottle in case the pain came on again, and I tried to allay her fears as best I could.
‘You won’t know anything about it,’ I said. ‘You’ll just wake up to find that it is all over, and that the pain has gone away and you only feel a
bit weak.’
‘The pain was awful when it came on,’ she confessed, ‘and I am not awfully good at bearing it.’
She began to cry again.
‘You shan’t have to bear any more,’ I promised her.
When I had got her a little quieter I unpacked her bag for her. It was a crocodile dressing-case containing a tortoiseshell dressing set with her monogram in brilliants on it, and I guessed this had been his wedding gift to her. It hurt me that she could have so much wherewith to add to her attractions, for everything about her was exquisite. There were nighties made of satin, and wisps of dressing-jackets. I thought, ‘No wonder she attracted him when she was so lovely, and he could afford all this extra beauty.’ It did not seem to be fair to think that one woman could have so much.
Then he came into the room.
A doctor on duty and a doctor off duty are two very different men. I was to realize that.
‘You’ll let me see Iris?’ he asked, and then with a smile, ‘I asked for you. I knew you wouldn’t be a dragon and you’d be sweet to her.’
What could I say?
I hoped that my eyes did not give me away as I stood aside for him to go to her bed, and stand there gazing down at her. There are some things in life that hurt too much to bear; that was why I slipped out of the door and into the corridor beyond. I had got a lump in my throat. I was still thinking it seemed so hard that Iris Harper should have so much and I so little. All the time I knew that I was wrong.
Outside I met Tenny.
She turned an amazed and gaping face to me. ‘They say it is his wife? Surely it can’t be? And he has asked for you to nurse her?’
‘Hush!’ and I tried again to be calm and collected so that Tenny should not guess how much she was worrying me. ‘She is his wife. Miss Vaughan said that very few people knew about it; I don’t know why I took it on, but apparently he did ask for me.’
‘My goodness! I should think very few people did know about it! Nobody knew. Nobody guessed. We all thought that he was a handsome bachelor. What a bombshell to drop on to us!’
At that particular moment I knew that I was on the verge of breaking down, and whatever happened I must not do it. I had got to stick this somehow.
I said, ‘This ought to be enough to convince you that all your teasing was just nonsense. She is terribly pretty, and I think when she has got over the op she will be rather amusing.’ Outside the porter was bringing up flowers. There was a great basket of mimosa, hyper-sweet, and a little note attached to the golden basket full of golden flowers.
The little note said: Love from Bill.
The porter carried also a sheaf of lilies, a bunch which must have cost a young fortune, and, becoming used as I was to seeing expensive flowers, I just stood and stared at these.
‘Yes, they’re good, aren’t they?’ said the porter. ‘It was Dr. Harper who brought these in for her. Fancy him being married! We all thought that he was a bachelor gentleman.’
I took the flowers in. I don’t know why, but I did feel then that some people got all the fun, and all the luck. I’d have to go on working hard all my life, and never have anybody to send me flowers like this. If I got ill I should be pushed away into a corner to get over it with scant sympathy and very little understanding. And I’d never have anybody to love me. Perhaps that hurt most of all. This girl seemed to have so much, too much for one person. Then I told myself not to be unreasonable. Each of us has a different chance in life, each has a different destiny, and it isn’t much good complaining. Iris Harper had been born with what you would call a silver spoon in her mouth, and mine was nothing of the sort.
I went into the room.
The doctor was leaning over her tenderly. He had laid his hands on either side of her face, and was speaking in a low voice; somehow the sight of him like that, looking at her so wistfully, speaking so kindly, hurt me more than I liked to think. I mustn’t be a fool, I told myself. I must treat it all as part of the day’s march.
‘Some flowers for you,’ I said, and tried hard to assume that bright ‘nurse’s voice’.
I set them down beside her. That was when he called me to him. He came across the room with me, to the passage outside. He said, ‘You’ll take care of her, won’t you?’ and I realized that he was desperately nervous. ‘She’s frail, she isn’t strong. She is more highly strung than most people, and therefore she feels things more. You’ll be good to her?’
‘There isn’t any need for anxiety.’ I found myself talking to him as one always talks to all anxious relatives. It seemed queer that, although he knew so much about surgery, that knowledge was not helping him now. He was nervous as a kitten.
‘Yes, of course you’ll see after her, and of course she’ll be all right,’ he pulled himself together, and smiled at me. There was something quite childlike about that smile. ‘Funny that I should get this way, isn’t it? It is all so different when it is a person you love.’
I left him because I knew that I was not the one to comfort him, and the most distressing part is that there is so little that you can do to comfort anyone like that. Facing an operation for a relative is so very different from facing one in the theatre when it is no relation, and you are not personally affected by it.
‘She’ll want me,’ I said.
As I went back into the room, I told myself, ‘I’ve got to treat her impersonally. I’ve got to forget that she is his wife, and that is the only way I shall be able to worry through.’
She was lying there fingering the mimosa which stretched out from the golden basket. She turned her head to me weakly. ‘Oh, I’ll be so thankful when all this is over,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course you will. It won’t be half so bad as you think,’ I promised her.
‘From Bill.’ She had the card in her hand, and was turning it over and over. ‘Nurse, can you keep a secret?’
‘I have to keep a good many in my job.’
‘I’ve got a tiny note that I have scribbled. When I have gone down to the theatre will you get it posted for me?’ She began to cry a little, they were the usual tears of self-pity which are so natural in anybody before an operation. ‘Don’t tell anybody, specially Ray. He must never know.’
I promised, of course, and it was a promise that I meant to keep, but I was dreadfully worried by it. I connected the two, ‘Love from Bill’ and ‘Don’t tell anybody, specially Ray’ and somehow I distrusted her. I knew then that there was something underhand going on, something which I hated to think about, because she had the best husband in the world. He was one of those men who would do anything for her, kindness itself, I knew, and he must be desperately in love with her.
He was one of those men that any woman would have wanted, with that whimsical yet tender mouth, and those eyes which looked right down into your soul. I knew that I should never forget the first time that I saw him, when he was fighting for that woman’s life in the operating theatre; I knew that then he had made an impression on me which I should never lose. I couldn’t help it, I should always be attracted to him whatever anybody else said, and even though it might be wrong, it was something that I should never be able to choke down entirely.
I got her ready for the theatre. I gave her the first dose of that merciful and kind anaesthetic which sends people to sleep in their own beds, so that they know nothing of the theatre itself, or of going down to it, or of the coming back again. When she was dead off, they came for her, and wheeled her away, a limp, white little figure, pathetically small.
I turned to, and got the room ready for her return. There were things to be put straight, the bed to be warmed, and everything made comfortable so that she should be as happy as possible.
Whilst I was doing this I heard the door open behind me, and, thinking it was Tenny come in to give me a hand, called, ‘You would come when I am almost through.’ Too late, I saw that I had made a most dreadful mistake. It was Ray Harper.
He laughed. ‘You weren’t expecting me?’
‘
Oh no, I thought it was one of the other nurses,’ and I was ashamed that I had turned crimson.
He came to the foot of the empty bed which was waiting for her, and stood there watching. He said: ‘She is going to be all right, isn’t she? She is going to be all right?’ and I saw that in this afternoon he had aged, and that his face was white and drawn.
I did not know what to do.
Behind him stood the trolley, white-covered with the dressings, and the medicines all shrouded and ghost-like, before him the empty white bed waiting for Iris to be laid back in it. The room was stripped of flowers, it was gaunt and bare, and in it I could only see his eyes tormented by doubt, the eyes of a man who had forgotten his medicine in his love for his wife.
‘Appendicitis is not dangerous when caught in such an early stage,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’m being a fool, aren’t I? They always say that a doctor makes the biggest fuss!’
‘It is only natural. You see dangers ahead for your own which you would never think of for a stranger.’
‘It does worry me.’ Then he jerked himself together. ‘I’m glad you are seeing after her; I asked particularly for you. Iris isn’t an easy person to nurse, it has made all the difference in the world, knowing that you have her in your charge. You won’t leave her, will you?’
When he looked at me like that, I could not say no, and yet I would have given everything that I had if I might have refused to take on the case. Iris had so much in comparison with myself; she could look so lovely, while I am a plain woman and in my hard little cotton uniform had nothing wherewith to make myself look better. I suppose that I was jealous.
More and more flowers kept arriving for her, and I made the excuse to see after them, yet all the while I knew that he was pacing that bedroom, and realized that he dare not have gone to the theatre with her, and was feeling too sick with anxiety to be anything but restless.
I heard the lift coming up with the stretcher in it, and I went to meet it. They wheeled her out of the lift, and I knew by her colour that she had done well. The theatre Sister was at her side.
