A Nurse's Duty: A 1930s Medical Romance

by Sheila Burns

  ‘Ring up the surgeon.’

  I got ice for her. She was quite unconscious, and Sister came in to help me. We worked hard from the beginning, but I realized that this was going to be a difficult case. As we worked I heard the door behind me open, and knew without having to look that he was there.

  He came across to the bed, and he got down to the dressings. I have been working for doctors most of my life, but it certainly seems that I have never seen a man work as he can. Ray Harper refused to allow his patients to die if he could possibly help it.

  ‘She has got to live,’ he kept saying between his teeth.

  He took great chances, but with him they were not so great, because he knew that his sheer magnetic personality would pull a patient through. He had that bleeding under control inside a couple of minutes, then he did the bandaging himself.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ he said resolutely.

  ‘Staying?’

  ‘Yes. I’m staying until she is round. We can’t risk this again, and if it does happen it may be fatal. I’ve got to be here on the spot.’

  He waved Sister aside and took a chair at the head of the bed. I don’t think he even realized that I was there. He was oblivious to everything save his patient.

  Sister said, ‘Very well,’ and went out of the room. We were alone. He took no notice of me whatsoever, but sat there much like pictures I had seen of trappers sitting in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, without moving a hair, just watching the movements of a particular animal. He never took his eyes off her face, nor his fingers from her pulse. He did not care what went on around him, because he was concentrating solely on her.

  I sat down opposite. There we sat, intensely still, with only the light fluttering of her breathing, only the little gasps every now and then.

  At last I think he became vaguely aware of my presence.

  He said, ‘This has been a tough case.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’ll be all right. I thought she had gone on the table, but she is rounding the corner all right. That haemorrhage, I don’t think it will come again.’

  I said ‘No’ like an automaton.

  He was not wholly satisfied even then, as I knew, but a quarter of an hour later he released his hold on her wrist, which I realized showed that he felt better about her.

  He got up. Then he looked at me, almost as though he were seeing me for the first time.

  ‘I am afraid that you thought I was unkind when I spoke to you in the theatre. If I hadn’t snapped just when I did you would have fainted.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We couldn’t have that happening to add to all our other troubles. It was one of my most difficult moments; I thought we had lost her.’

  ‘Will she live now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  I felt that I had got to talk about the patient, because concentrating on ourselves was far too dangerous a subject, but apparently he did not feel quite the same way.

  ‘I hope you are not angry with me,’ and his voice was pathetically pleading. I met his eyes; they were the eyes of a little boy who thinks that he is not going to be forgiven.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘I am a very unhappy man,’ and his voice was so low that I could hardly hear his words.

  There wasn’t any time to answer. At that very moment the patient’s eyes had flickered open quite unexpectedly, and I knew that she was looking fully into my face. She gave a tiny, brave smile.

  ‘You’re back in bed,’ I told her; ‘it is quite all right, and you are splendid, only you mustn’t try to move. Promise me that you won’t move.’

  I had become all nurse again.

  ‘If you’ll hold my hand.’

  I put my hand in hers, and so we sat on, hand in hand, with the seconds ticking by. In a moment or two I knew by her deep breathing that she was sound asleep and that it was the natural sleep which would restore her more than anything else in the world.

  He glanced at me.

  ‘You’re fine,’ he said.

  He wasn’t a doctor any more. He was just a man, and I knew by the way that he spoke that he cared. Gently I released my hand from that of my patient, and as I did so his touched mine. For one second we remained like that, and I felt his fingers gripping mine so that they almost hurt me. I felt all the tenseness, all the pain, and the emotion which he had been experiencing through these few days.

  We stood there probably only for a minute, but there are moments in your life when time stands still. It was like an eternity.

  Then he said, ‘Forgive me,’ and turned quickly, hurrying away from the room.

  Chapter Four

  After that we had to meet as strangers, normally and naturally, just as though neither of us knew that the other one cared.

  I cannot begin to explain how hard all that was, or what a strain. It was dreadful to be constantly seeing him whom you adored, with other people always round you. To be constantly talking of unimportant general subjects when in your heart was the burning vital subject that hurt so badly.

  I wanted to ask him what was happening to Iris. Had he settled the affair with Captain Dawson, or was that wretched man still hanging round their home? I wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but of course I never got the chance to put one to him.

  He cared for me, I knew that, but whether it was the feeling that I had for him I could not tell, and, anyway, I had no right to that feeling, because he and I were in two different types of life, and he was a married man.

  I lay awake in bed at night trying to reason this thing out. What was the end of it? There were, of course, the papers which I had got from the Crown Agent people, and which I kept in a little pile. Tenny was all for going on with it. She wanted to get away from the monotony and the routine, but I knew that when it came to the actual break I should be sure to fail her. I had not got the courage to go right away and never to meet him again or see him again. It was absurd, because I knew that I was resenting the fact that we had to meet and speak, because it made me feel so dreadful, but I could not end that dreadfulness.

  ‘You’re growing thin, Nurse,’ Miss Vaughan announced to me one day in the middle of our cold mutton meal.

  ‘I was too fat before,’ I told her.

  I think she guessed a little, for she is a very discerning woman. But she said nothing. She just smiled.

  Birdie announced her engagement with a half-hoop of sapphires, and Tenny went on with her work. Routine had got us all again and there was no escape from it.

  People think that a nurse’s life is full of change and enchantment and thrill, but that isn’t so. You change one patient for another, one disease for another, but it is no more than that. You do not meet exciting people, for when they come to us they are generally weary, and sick, and crotchety. They are never at their best. When they become at their best again, then they go away.

  Occasionally through that dark patch I would see Ray operating, see that masterful being standing over the table, compelling his patients to live. Or I would meet him across somebody’s bed, when I was only the nurse. That hurt. I hate being just Nurse and never Katy.

  ‘This will go on for ever and ever,’ I told myself frantically, ‘and I can’t face it. I just can’t go through with it.’

  Although it seemed that nothing I could do would change it.

  Life was carrying me along on its tide and bearing me away with it. I’d grow old at the nursing home as some of the nurses had done before me. I saw them quite often, and they always reminded me of what lay ahead for me also. Nothing. Just nothing at all.

  I don’t remember now how long that period lasted. To-day it seems like a bad dream and I can hardly believe that it ever happened, yet during it all I used to watch for Ray, and watch the days come and go, and wonder how on earth I could make a change in them.

  The change came on its own.

  One night Ray came in to see a patient of his whom I was nursing. He was awfully pleased with her, and
she was going home the next day; he had come in to bid her good night. He said the same to me, and then slipped off downstairs. I busied myself with her, and then, having finished, drew off my cuffs. The long day had ended. The night nurses would be coming on duty, and I got ready to make off down the stairs.

  I found Ray at the second bend.

  Apparently I was the first person who had come down since he had left me, and he had fallen there in a heap. I knew at once that he must have fainted. I knelt down and loosened his collar. I took his head into my arms, and I am afraid I felt almost glad to have the chance of holding him like that. How I had always longed to touch him, to stroke that thick dark hair. Yet now, when for a moment I held him gently, I was afraid for him because I knew that he was in danger.

  I laid him back as comfortably as I could, opened his collar, and felt for his pulse.

  The dark eyes opened, and I saw that he recognized me.

  ‘You, Katy?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go again,’ he begged just like a child.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I fainted?’

  But I had had my fingers on his pulse and knew that it was not quite that. I heard the rustle of a starched skirt passing by, and still holding him in my arms, called for help. It was Tenny who came down the stairs, coming off duty.

  ‘Get Miss Vaughan,’ I told her.

  She stared at me and then at him.

  ‘My goodness!’ she said.

  I don’t think it even occurred to me that we must have looked strange, because I was so anxious about him, so worried that he was going to be really ill. Of course the moment Miss Vaughan arrived everything had to be niched and orderly. Luckily the room behind us was vacant, as a patient had just gone out. The porters carried Ray into it and laid him on the bed, and Miss Vaughan sent for the consulting physician, who usually treats people in the home.

  ‘You had better go down to your dinner, Nurse,’ she said. ‘You came off duty at seven-thirty.’

  It was now eight.

  ‘Can’t I stay?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not. You won’t be fit to see after your own patients in the morning. Now run along with you.’

  I could think of no excuse, so I began, perhaps rather foolishly, ‘You see, having nursed his wife, I know more about him than the others, and I think that he would want me to be here.’

  But I saw her eyes and knew that I had got to go. I was indignant about it, because I knew that he was ill. I had not been a nurse for so long without recognizing danger when I met it, but I had to leave him. I went down to that awful meal in the basement with the silly chatter of the nurses, and myself on edge all the time to know what was happening upstairs.

  ‘You’ll let me know what the doctor says?’ I asked Birdie, whom I managed to button-hole on the stairs.

  ‘Why is it such an interest to you?’

  ‘Well, I found him, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, but that isn’t enough for your interest, surely?’ Then when she saw that I was in no mood for teasing, ‘Oh, all right. I’ll do my best, and I’ll let you know even if I have to listen at the doors.’

  I had to let it go at that.

  Much later she brought me the news. The doctor had been and had diagnosed the trouble as brain fag, which might even turn to brain fever if he were not very careful. I knew that he had been over-working for a very long time, and that he had been warned about his health being undermined, but had never had the opportunity to give up. It is very difficult for a big doctor. He has to go on, or to give up for a time and run the risk of being forgotten. I had understood how Ray had felt about this, and how he had gone on and on while there were people who needed his services, with the result that he himself had snapped.

  What none of these others realized so acutely was the fact that he had had trouble with his home life, that he had been strung up to breaking-point about Iris, and that he had had to stifle all that and pretend that everything was all right. None of this had helped him.

  Quiet was ordered him, perfect rest. He must not be disturbed, whatever happened, and the doctor advised that his wife should be sent for.

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  ‘Iris coming back here?’ I demanded.

  ‘She is in Vienna,’ said Birdie; ‘he gave that away before he had time to think. Would you believe it, but Miss Vaughan has already wired for her, and has told her to come back at once. He does not know that, of course.’

  ‘I don’t believe that he will want to see her.’

  ‘Oh, of course you know all about it. Tell me something,’ besought Birdie.

  But I went up to bed.

  I could not sleep. I might have guessed all along that he would collapse if he were not careful. A man cannot go on as Ray had been going for so long, working day in, day out, at extreme nervous tension, and all the while with the miserable home to go back to. He had asked me not to leave him when I had first found him only semi-conscious on the stairs, yet the first thing that had happened was that I had been forced to go away.

  Sleep was elusive. I tossed and turned, first this way and then that, and all the while I was seeing things out of all proportion, seeing them strangely distorted as they become at night, imagining that he was going to die, and that they would not let me go to him again. Finally towards morning I drifted asleep, to wake with a start when we were called at six.

  When I went on duty the night nurse told me that Ray had had a fairly good night, and that the doctor had ’phoned through about him and was quite pleased over the report. Meanwhile there had been a cable from Iris which said that she was coming from Vienna by air.

  ‘She must be keen,’ said Birdie.

  ‘She must want something,’ I thought.

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Birdie, waxing confidential, ‘there is something more in it than we thought.’

  I did not like to tell her that it all seemed to be like coincidence, because on opening the morning paper I had seen the announcement of Bill Dawson’s engagement. He was marrying a well-known society heiress who had been left a fabulous fortune by her father the year before, and of course the papers were making a lot of chat about it. They had a whole column of publicity, and it was announced that there had been some hint of the ‘romance’ in the evening editions of last night.

  I thought to myself that Iris must have seen that announcement, and having seen it, she had probably got her white hyacinths and had realized that the game was up. She had quite likely decided to come back from Vienna before she had ever known that her husband was ill, because I could never believe that his illness would disturb her very much.

  Only, as I realized too truly, if the affair with Bill were at an end, then she might turn again to Ray. It would be terrible if they tried to pick up the broken pieces of their marriage and make them whole. Somehow I had not thought of such a thing happening until now, and it struck me sharply.

  Nothing ever went right in my life. I ought to have gone abroad before any of this happened. I ought to have gone right away, where this sort of thing could not hurt me any more.

  I went on duty. Tenny was in charge of Ray, and very full of her job.

  ‘Let me see him!’ I begged.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I can’t, Katy. The doctor said that he was to be kept as quiet as possible, and there were to be no visitors. Don’t ask me to do it.’

  I knew it was unfair to ask her any more, but oh, how I wanted to go inside his room and see with my own eyes how he looked. It was to be an interminable day for me. I had to go about my ordinary routine work, and all the time I was worried to death as to how Ray was getting on. Flowers had to be arranged. Patients had to be washed and made trim for the day. Visitors were ushered in and ushered out again. Mercifully there were no operations; I was glad of that, because I do not believe that I could have concentrated on any serious work.

  His patient with the bad
appendix asked where he was, and I tried to put her off with a story.

  ‘You’re getting better these days,’ said I, ‘and you can’t expect him to be popping in all the time to see you. This is the first step in the right direction.’

  I must have sounded very truthful, for she did not doubt me for a moment.

  ‘I’d never have got on so well with any other doctor,’ she said.

  I agreed.

  ‘I hope he’ll come in to-morrow,’ she said, a trifle wistfully.

  ‘Oh, I expect he will be along, but you know he does get called away to urgent cases in the country ‒ you can’t claim all his time.’

  On and on with the work, and all the time I was so desperately anxious for him that I hardly knew what to do. When anyone is ill, then you realize how deeply you care for them.

  It was in between answering bells and flying about on duty that I got word about him from Tenny.

  ‘He’s doing all right,’ she whispered as she passed me; ‘he sleeps a lot and he has been asking for you.’

  ‘Tenny, you must let me go to him!’

  ‘I daren’t.’

  ‘Tenny, be sporting over this. Risk it, and I’ll take the blame for it.’

  ‘Yes, and supposing that old Vaughan caught us?’

  ‘I’ve got to see him,’ I told her.

  But Tenny could be a dragon in her own way, and she was not going to be cajoled into this.

  ‘You’re behaving like a fool, Katy,’ she said, ‘losing your head over a married man like that. It won’t do you or him any good. There is nothing to be gained by it, and the sooner you forget him the better. I’ve learnt my lesson about men, thank goodness. Don’t be an idiot. Learn yours.’

  And she turned away from me and went back to his room.

  I didn’t blame her for being angry. I suppose I was behaving like a fool, but I felt so terribly anxious for him that I could not stop myself. It was almost worse that I had had my training, and knew everything that he might be suffering and all the dangers that might accompany his condition. As I went about during that afternoon I tried to put the whole case out of my mind, but although you can exhort other people to do that, you cannot do it so easily for yourself. I kept thinking of all his symptoms. A man who had worked as Ray had done would not be able to face a really bad illness with impunity. He had been calling on his reserve of strength for too long.