A Nurse's Duty: A 1930s Medical Romance

by Sheila Burns

  I was getting pretty desperate about it all. I wished at that particular moment that I could have a pleasant little nervous breakdown ‒ something that would pop me to bed for a week or two while everything sorted itself out, something which came right in the end.

  Only life isn’t made as easily as that.

  Suddenly we got a tetanus in the home.

  The man came in and developed it almost at once; there we were with the whole home in a flap about it, and everybody naturally thrilled to the core.

  ‘Of course he’ll never live,’ said Nurse Johnson with great superiority.

  ‘I never thought I’d have the luck to see one of those,’ said Birdie.

  Extra nurses went off the floors to see to this special case, which meant that others were left with their hands full, with the result that I got precious little time to think about myself, which was probably a very good thing.

  It was just what I was wanting ‒ life to pass by in a whirl until I got to Australia. I wanted to forget that there was such a person as myself, or such a man as Ray Harper, and the best way to sink all personal feelings was in work. I had got to work really hard.

  The tetanus case in the home made us so busy that it did not look as though I should have much time to think, and when I went off duty for my lunch at twelve Tenny leant over the banister and called after me:

  ‘There has been a telephone message up from downstairs. There is a lady there who has called to see you.’

  ‘To see me?’

  ‘So they said.’

  ‘There must be a mistake.’

  Sometimes, of course, old patients come back to see us, but more often they forget. A home is useful when one is ill, but the interest soon flags when they get well again, and to come back to visit us is a bother, and reminds them too much of a time when they were in pain.

  ‘George said that he was sending her up to the nurses’ sitting-room,’ said Tenny, and then she picked up the tray which had just arrived for the patient, and off she popped with it.

  I was rather annoyed that somebody should call on me at the first chance I had had for a moment to myself in a very busy morning, and I went along in an ill humour.

  Who would it be? I did not care very much. There certainly was nobody whom I wanted to see, because I have very few friends. My life is so very much at the mercy of my patients that I have no time to cultivate friends of my own.

  I opened the door swiftly, and shut it again behind me, just as quickly. I heard myself give a quick exclamation, a sudden intake of breath, and then steeled myself to face what I knew was going to be an ordeal.

  Iris was standing there.

  Her colour was coming and going, and I knew by the darkness of her eyes that she was in a furious temper. She stood before me, steadying herself against the closed door, her arm stretched along it, her eyes surveying me, her lip curling.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I wanted to have a word with you.’

  I could not think of any reply to make, but stood there, gaping helplessly, as though I were a guilty person.

  Then I said, ‘I was just going off duty.’

  ‘I dare say, but you won’t get round me that way. I have got to see you, whatever you may think about it. It is quite time you and I had a talk.’

  I felt my mouth going dry. Iris’s face was dreadful, and the crazy look in her eyes quite frightened me.

  ‘I don’t know what it is that you want to talk to me about,’ I protested.

  ‘You do know. Of course you know. You have been trying to steal my husband from me for some time. You fell in in love with him when you first met him.’

  ‘I have done nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you have, only you have been so sly over it that most people would not realize it for what it was. You know that you have been aiming at it ever since you met him. What was the good of our going away on a second honeymoon like that, when you intended coming too?’

  I thought that she must have taken leave of her senses.

  ‘I come too?’ I demanded. ‘Such a thing was never suggested by anybody nor thought of for a moment. I have been here for nearly a year save for the two days that I spent with you down at Ventnor. You know perfectly well that I have never left the place.’

  ‘I know perfectly well that in spirit you came with us. He was always talking about you, always thinking about you, always comparing the two of us. Oh, yes, you played your cards well enough.’

  ‘I’ve never played any cards.’

  ‘Yes, you have. All women fall in love with him on sight, and he is mine. I’ve got him. You needn’t think that I am going to let him go, because I am not. It’s been a nice life for me with a whole body of hysterical women imagining themselves in love with him, with a whole crowd of people going googly-eyed whenever they saw him coming. Oh, the life of a doctor’s wife isn’t all fun, as you may find out one of these days when you’ve baited your hook cleverly enough and have landed one of them. But you won’t get my man; I intend fighting for him till my last breath. Nothing will ever induce me to let another woman have him, even if I don’t want him myself.’

  She looked at me defiantly.

  It was a dreadful moment, because I knew quite well that she was perfectly right in what she was saying. She meant to hold on to Ray tooth and claw, even if it were at the sacrifice of all our happiness. She would hold fast to him, whatever happened, and she would never let him go.

  I don’t think she cared what anybody suffered as long as she was all right. I don’t think she minded even if her own emotions were torn as long as she had the satisfaction of the realization that she was keeping what was her own. She was vindictive. She was one of those lovely women whose beautiful eyes are hard and cold as stones, and they looked right down into me.

  I knew that I did not flicker.

  I told her then what I felt about her.

  ‘I know what you are, and I know also that even though you may keep him chained to you, it is with a chain of iron, and you will never hold his heart that way. You have played with fire; you have thrown away all the best that he had to give you. You never really cared for him, and now you will never regain his love. You say that he is yours, but his heart is his own, and you’ll never have that again.’

  ‘How dare you talk to me like that?’

  ‘I have done nothing of which I could be ashamed,’ I said. ‘I have the right to say what I think.’

  ‘You have deliberately tried to coax away another woman’s husband.’

  ‘I have never tried to steal him.’

  ‘Except when you say that I shall never have his heart, you are boasting about the success of your cunning,’ and her lips curled. ‘You may look upon my hold upon him as being a chain of iron, and talk horridly about it, but anyway the law supports that chain of iron, and it looks upon any claim you may think that you have as being a rotten one. You will never have him, not if you go on trying from now until Doomsday.’

  ‘Then there is nothing more to be said.’

  I knew that she hated my coldness.

  I knew that here was something with which she could not compete, because Iris had never been the type of woman who could fight reserve, and it frightened her. She had hoped to sweep everything before her with bombast, and with her arrogance, and she had not succeeded.

  I had been ready for her.

  As we stood there I heard the door behind her opening slowly, and saw Miss Vaughan herself standing there framed in the lintels. For one moment I would have put out an involuntary hand to stop Iris going on talking, because she had not heard Miss Vaughan, but she was so furious that she was past seeing what I was doing. She went on remorselessly.

  ‘I made a mistake in ever coming to this beastly home. I might have known that it was rotten, rotten to the core. You nurses always fall in love with the doctors whom you work for. You are a designing set of hussies, and all the while you try to pretend that you are so good and sweet and so prim, but all the while yo
u know quite well what you are getting at. It is disgusting.’

  Miss Vaughan stepped forward.

  Her face was more agitated than I had ever seen it before, and she put out a hand and touched Iris on the arm.

  ‘That will do,’ she said.

  Iris turned sharply and gazed at her in surprise. Then she was so angry that I think it was impossible for her to stop herself. Seeing her in this violent temper of hers, it was easy to imagine what a ghastly life Ray must have had with her, what a terrible lot he must have endured.

  She said, ‘So you have been spying on me? Listening at the door? Coming sneaking in behind my back? Oh, yes, I thought it was this kind of place from the very beginning. I thought that you were out to get everything that you could out of people by fair means or foul. You were actually stooping to spying, although you don’t like my calling it so, but that was what it was.’

  ‘Mrs. Harper, you are overwrought; it isn’t wise to disturb yourself so much.’

  ‘I’m not overwrought. For once I have had my eyes opened to a lot of things. This nurse has been trying to take my husband from me. Oh, you’ll defend her, you’ll back her up, but it is true. There is a sort of frightful trades union between all you medical people, but all the same you can’t diddle with truth. She has come between me and Ray, and what’s more I’m going to tell the world about it.’

  She gave a last look at us, and then grabbed at her bag and gloves, snatching them up from the table. One of the gloves, a long soft piece of velvet, dropped to the ground, and with courtesy Miss Vaughan stooped and lifted it, handing it back to her.

  She accepted it without a word.

  I don’t know why, but that gentle little act stood out etched in my mind as something that I should not forget in a hurry. The older woman in her prim uniform, with her sadly wise face, offering the glove to the other girl, who flung herself out in a fury.

  ‘Well, now you know what I think of you, both of you,’ snapped Iris defiantly.

  She opened the door, and I saw her standing there for a moment before she banged out. She slammed it after her, and we could hear her running off down the stairs like a crazy thing. She was quite uncontrolled. I think that we just stood and stared helplessly at one another.

  I felt deeply humiliated, not only for myself, but also for Miss Vaughan, who was so good and sweet and who had never deserved this horrible scene which had been forced upon her.

  We stood there staring mutely at one another, then she spoke. She did not reproach me; I think that it might have been almost better if she had done.

  ‘Sit down, my dear. You are over-strung,’ she said, and gently pressed me into a chair.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I tried to explain.

  ‘Better sit down.’

  I believe that her kindness hurt more than anything else. I felt the tears coming, and though for a moment I tried to blink them back, it did not work, and I burst into tears. It was the relief of that tension and the knowledge that Iris had gone. I hoped that I might never see her again. It was something that I did not think that I could bear.

  I suppose Miss Vaughan thought that it would relieve my feelings to cry, for she made no attempt to stop me, but let me go on.

  Then she said, ‘Now you must listen to me.’

  ‘I am very sorry to think that this happened. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘I know that. I know quite well that she was beside herself, and that she did not know what she was saying.’

  ‘It was terrible.’

  ‘I am glad that you are going to Australia, though when I first heard of the project it worried me. But it seems to me now that it is far better for you to get right away, somewhere where she cannot follow you. She is a dreadful woman. A temper like that borders on madness.’

  I heard myself murmuring tearful gratitude. Then, when I could control myself a little better, I felt that I had to tell her something about it, even if she did not want to hear.

  ‘Do believe me, Miss Vaughan, when I tell you that none of this had been my fault. There has been nothing wrong in what has happened, nothing that either of us could help or avoid. We have hardly seen one another, and all through it we have been thinking of her.’

  ‘I do believe you.’

  ‘I’ve got to go away.’ I don’t think that I even realized that Miss Vaughan was listening, because my thoughts were now running away with me. ‘I’ve got to go right away and try to forget that this happened.’

  She held out her hand and took mine.

  ‘My child, I am terribly sorry for you. Words will not help you. Sometimes I think that sympathy is almost harder to bear than reproach. I know you have not been to blame, because I once suffered in like circumstances. You could not have gone on like this, and it is far, far better that you are leaving almost at once and starting in a different place and with entirely different people. Even though it may seem the hard thing to do now, do realize that it will be the right thing in the long run.’

  Of course at that particular moment I felt that to go away was like sentence of death. It was banishment. I could not imagine how I should go on with life if I should never see Ray again, nor hear his voice, nor talk to him.

  ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘the clean break is the only way. It leaves no jagged ends.’

  I knew she was right, yet the clean break was going to hurt me far more than anything else. The telephone bell went, and I think that I was glad of something concrete, something which would give me a job to do, so that I might forget myself for a moment. I became a nurse again, a nurse who was still on duty.

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Is Miss Vaughan up there?’

  ‘Yes, she is with me now.’

  ‘She is wanted down here very urgently. An accident case has been brought in. Will you ask her to come as quickly as possible?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I rang off and told Miss Vaughan that she was wanted, and on the instant she stiffened. All that gentle understanding manner seemed to go in the one supreme knowledge that her services were needed. She went off and I heard her footsteps dying away on the stairs.

  But in that interview I had seen her heart, and I knew that she was a grand woman, and probably the memory of her greatness was going to help me start the new job better than anything else.

  I hoped so.

  I sat on in the nurses’ sitting-room, not feeling that I could go down to lunch yet and join the other nurses in the basement dining-room and listen to the fatuous conversation with very visible signs still on my face that I had been crying.

  When a bell tinkled I went to see the patient, even though it was not my duty time, but it helped me to prop up her pillows (she had sunk too low in the bed), and she was a friendly, kindly sort of patient, whom I liked.

  Then Tenny came in.

  ‘Miss Vaughan sent me up to relieve you,’ she said. ‘She thought you might be feeling a bit worried about things.’

  ‘To relieve me? But I’m not on duty. I was just going downstairs to get my lunch.’

  ‘Miss Vaughan wants you to go down to her sitting-room.’

  That seemed queer to me, and I said so. ‘But we have been talking and have said all that there is to say. I don’t see why she wants me to go down there? Whatever else is there?’

  ‘She just said that she wanted you to go down to her room at once,’ and it struck me as she said it that Tenny was looking a little odd. Her voice did not appear to be natural, and I realized that she was avoiding my eyes.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I’m going down to get my lunch.’

  ‘Katy, please go to Miss Vaughan. Honestly she wants you there, and it is urgent. Something has happened. Do listen to what I am saying ‒ you must go down.’

  I took another look at Tenny’s face and saw that she had gone extraordinarily pale. I don’t know why, but with the silly, abrupt reasoning of the brain I suddenly wondered if Ray wanted me. If something had happened to him and now he wanted me to b
e with him. I turned quickly, and I think I ran all the way down the stairs, though when I got to Miss Vaughan’s room I found her standing there quite alone.

  Her dignity seemed to have gone. When she had left me to go down to the accident case she had been calm and very professional. Now she was harassed. I knew it the second that my eyes lit on her; she was agitated about something that had happened.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ she said.

  I sat down. She was never one of those people with whom you could argue, but rather she commanded you and you found yourself doing her bidding.

  She said, ‘Just now when they called me down here you took the message for me on the telephone. Have you any memory of why it was they wanted me?’

  Of course I had. The whole thing had happened but a few minutes ago and was quite fresh in my memory. ‘It was a case that had just been brought in. They said that it was an accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated slowly, ‘that was it; it was a street accident,’ and I saw her looking at me with that meaning look as though she would convey something to me. I was strung up. I had just been through that frightful scene with Iris, and the only person I could think of was Ray. Surely she was not trying to tell me that he had had an accident in his car?

  ‘Ray?’ I said at last. ‘You don’t mean …’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, Dr. Harper has not been hurt; he is on his way to us now. You see, it was his wife.’

  I might have known as much.

  ‘She must have dashed out of the house in that crazy temper of hers, and then rushed straight into the road without looking what was coming. It is so unthinkable that anyone should ever allow themselves to get into such an awful mental state.’

  I felt my lips going dry, and I stared at Miss Vaughan as though it were through a haze. The strange thing was that everything in the room seemed to go misty, everything save her eyes, which were staring at me, and her reassuring voice, doing its best to calm me.

  ‘She isn’t very seriously hurt?’

  ‘It is rather difficult to tell, and the doctors are with her now. Luckily Dr. Clements was just coming down the stairs on his way from a patient here. She is quite unconscious, and he said something about her skull being fractured.’ I thought instantly of what that meant, and was horrified.