Nurses: Claire and Jan

by Bette Paul

  The dressings trolley was in place. She filled a bowl of water, swished in some antiseptic and began to wash Nick’s rapidly swelling face.

  “I heard you were a dab hand at dress­ings,” he muttered through bleeding lips.

  “Shhh!” Claire ordered. “Keep quiet and this won’t take long.”

  It didn’t. Claire gently mopped the blood off and soon Nick’s wounds were clean and covered and his nose had stopped bleeding.

  “You might need a stitch or two on that eyebrow,” Claire told him. “I’ve just pulled it together with a butterfly suture for now. Right. Off you go to X-ray. Jan?”

  She turned to ask Jan to go with Nick, but his eyes were dull, black, blank.

  “Don’t worry, I can find X-ray all by myself,” Nick smiled. “You’d better look after the other two.”

  Certainly his colour had come back, Claire noted, and he seemed quite steady. “Right.

  I’ll catch up with you later – there’s bound to be a hold-up in X-ray.”

  Claire was bending over Katie when Ahmed looked in.

  “One down, two to go,” he commented cheerfully. “I saw your other patient on his way to X-ray. Well done, Nurse Donovan!”

  Katie was already breathing calmly, Claire assured him, and determined to avoid a night in a hospital bed.

  “Kelham’s is close to the hospital,” she told Ahmed, “and I’ll keep an eye on her all night.”

  Ahmed looked into Katie’s eyes, felt her neck, checked her pulse and breathing and declared she was fit enough to go back to Kelham’s under Claire’s supervision.

  “Straight to bed, mind; nothing to eat or drink. And if she starts vomiting again, call Emergency,” he told Claire. “Now, what about this young man. . .”

  “No!” Jan stood up abruptly. “I was not hurt, not anywhere. I take the girls back, then come for Nick.”

  Without waiting for Ahmed to agree, Jan lifted a protesting Katie off the bed and pushed his way through the curtain.

  “Is he all right?” Ahmed asked Claire.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think he was actu­ally injured,” she said. “But he’s behaving rather oddly.”

  The doctor sighed. “Well, I haven’t time to deal with trauma right now.” He hesi­tated. “You put the girl to bed, and when this young man comes back for his friend I’ll give him a quick check-up. Just to make sure.”

  Claire nodded. “Thank you for seeing us all so soon,” she said. “I feel I should stay on duty here.”

  Ahmed shook his head. “Not allowed, I’m afraid. Though we could do with another good nurse just now.”

  Claire followed Jan down the corridors and out across the grounds to Kelham. With Katie protesting loudly all the way and Jan plodding on in grim silence, she wondered just how she would cope when they got in.

  Well, “another good nurse”, Dr Durahni had called her. And perhaps he wasn’t just exercising his charm this time. Whatever it was, it gave her a glow, a buzz, a surge of energy. Suddenly she ran to overtake Jan and his burden.

  “I’ll see to Katie once we’ve got her upstairs,” she told him briskly. “You get back to Nick, and get yourself checked over, right?”

  In the lamplight she saw Jan blink and shake his head rapidly, as if to clear it.

  “All right, Nurse Donovan,” he smiled. But it was a stiff, rather painful smile.

  Chapter 7

  Claire slept badly that night. Katie’s floor wasn’t very comfortable, and between waking to check Katie’s breathing, worrying about Jan and Nick, and trying to convert a rather thin duvet into a sleeping bag, she had very little rest. It was quite a relief when Katie began to stir next morning.

  Claire had slept in tracksuit and socks – ideal for camping out, she’d decided the previous night. Now she moved silently over to the bed. “Katie? Katie, how’re you feeling?” she whispered.

  “Claire? What are you doing in here?” Katie asked in a cracked, hoarse voice.

  “Looking after you,” Claire told her.

  Katie sat up cautiously. “Ooh, my ribs ache!” she rasped hoarsely.

  “You got a bit battered in the crowd,” Claire explained. “You’re bound to have a few bruises.”

  “But what’s happened to my voice?”

  “Ahmed warned me about that. Apparen­tly there’s a bruise right across the front of your neck, probably deep enough to have strained the larynx. It needs rest, so no talking!”

  “Well, thank you, Nurse Donovan!” Katie managed a grin. “Am I allowed a cup of coffee?”

  “Only if you drink it silently!” Claire padded off to the kitchen.

  As she went along the corridor she paused at Jan’s door but decided against knocking; if he was asleep he shouldn’t be disturbed. And the way he’d looked last night, he might even have ended up in bed in St Ag’s.

  So she went on into the kitchen, which, to her surprise, was already occupied.

  “Nick, how are you?” she asked, delighted to see that one of the gang had recovered.

  “All the better for seeing you, Claire.” He grinned painfully through a split upper lip. And she saw he had two black eyes, a battered nose and a cut across one cheek.

  “Oh, Nick – I’m so sorry,” she wailed. “I should never have taken you down there.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Claire,” he assured her. “Though for a quiet convent girl, you certainly know the hot-spots in town!”

  Claire flushed. “Honestly, it’s not usually like that. I’ve never seen any trouble there before.”

  “Well, I don’t think it was anything to do with the club, not directly.”

  “So what started it?”

  “Oh, gang rivalry, I suppose. Somebody uses the club to pass on drugs, somebody else wants paying for them, you know. . .”

  “No, I don’t,” said Claire thoughtfully. Patrick had been right, then, about the dangers in the club.

  “Well, the regular music fans make a good cover.” Nick stirred two mugs of coffee. “And how’s Katie this morning?”

  “She’ll be better when I take her a drink,” said Claire. “Is one of those for Jan?”

  He nodded. “We had to wait an hour in X-ray, then Ahmed Durahni wouldn’t let us leave until he’d checked us both. It was four o’clock by the time Jan brought me back. Thought I’d say thank you with coffee.”

  “Was Jan all right when you got back?” she asked.

  “Well, I think the whole episode brought back memories he’d rather forget, you know.”

  Claire nodded. “I thought as much,” she sighed. “I could kick myself for dragging you all into this.”

  “Nonsense! You mustn’t go taking other people’s responsibilities on to yourself, Claire. We chose to come with you; you didn’t make us – you couldn’t.” He smiled at the idea. “Nobody can make Katie Harding do anything she doesn’t want to.” He quickly made two more coffees and offered them to her.

  Claire laughed. “Thanks! She’ll be in here bossing us all around again if I don’t get back with the coffee.”

  “Well, tell her I’ll be in to see her later, but I’ve got to go into town to rescue the van.”

  “Are you all right to drive?”

  “Oh, yes – clean bill of health. Could turn out for the Rugby team this afternoon, according to Ahmed. Cheers!”

  Two down, one to go, thought Claire, remembering Ahmed’s comments the previous night. And if only the one to go was as easy to deal with as the other two!

  But in spite of her worries, or because of them, she fell fast asleep in front of her revision notes that afternoon, stirring just enough to stagger over to her bed. She slept until dark, wakened only by someone knocking hard on her door.

  Her first thought was that it was Jan, but an unknown female voice called, “Claire Donovan? You in there? Phone call for you.”

  “Coming.” Claire roused herself, shook the fug from her heavy head and staggered out to the phone. Bound to be Da, wanting to know what she was doing on he
r weekend off. Well, she certainly wouldn’t be telling him.

  But she didn’t have to.

  “Claire, are you all right?”

  Patrick Geary! Claire’s heart sank. “Patrick, is that you?”

  “Yes, of course it is.” He sounded impa­tient. “I’ve just heard about the riot outside the club last night. You weren’t there, were you?”

  Claire hesitated. Something about his tone irked her; he was as bad as Da. She was tempted to lie, to tell him she’d been elsewhere. But he’d obviously heard about the riot – heaven knew how – and she couldn’t be sure whether he’d heard any reports about injuries.

  “Well, yes. I’d just been there with a group of friends,” she said, trying to sound casual, as if facing a street fight were part of the everyday story of nursing folk.

  “Did you meet any trouble?” he asked sharply.

  “Oh, there was some hassle as we came away – on the street, you understand, not in the club. The club was terrific, Patrick; Kathleen’s farewell, you know, she’s—”

  “Yes, but were you all right? How did you get away?”

  “Oh, er . . . just walked away, you know.” She suddenly decided to tell him the truth – or part of it. “A couple of our party got separated; they were a bit squashed.” Claire crossed her fingers; that wasn’t an out-and-out lie. “So the police—”

  “The police?” Claire was surprised that Patrick sounded so horrified. This was England; people were fairly relaxed about their police, weren’t they? Twice recently she’d been involved with the police and both times they’d been kind and helpful.

  “They gave us a lift back to St Ag’s,” she said, more firmly now. “I got my friends into A & E – Accident and Em—”

  “I know, I know,” he said impatiently. “But you’re all right yourself, then?”

  “I’ve told you, we’re all of us all right,” she said sharply. No point in sharing her doubts about Jan with Patrick, now, was there?

  “I told you not to go back there,” Patrick ranted on. “What the hell is your father going to say?”

  “He’s not going to say anything because I’m not going to tell him.” Claire was really indignant now. “There’s no point in worrying him,” she said defensively.

  “I did warn you,” he said, not answering her question. “I told you not to go there alone.”

  “But I wasn’t alone, I was with my friends.” Claire almost shouted down the phone. Really, who did this man think he was – her keeper? She felt a sudden twinge of doubt about Patrick. Taking a deep breath, she went on more steadily. “You know, even if you’d been there you couldn’t have done anything.”

  “If I’d been there we’d have left long before the fighting broke out.”

  “But nobody knew it was going to happen.”

  “Somebody did,” he pointed out. “Somebody waited in the street to start it all off.”

  “But nobody inside knew—”

  “Don’t you believe it.”

  “Well, they didn’t tell us,” she said sulkily.

  “Of course they didn’t, but I’d have sussed it out.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Oh, I have ways of getting to know things.”

  “Yes, I noticed that,” she said pointedly. And as soon as the words were spoken, her suspicions hardened. Why was Patrick Geary setting himself up as her guide and protector?

  There was a pause. Claire wondered, without caring a great deal, whether her last remark had upset him. But suddenly he spoke again.

  “Well, at least there’s no fear of your going there again.”

  “Why not?” Claire had privately vowed never to go near that area again, but she wasn’t going to have Patrick telling her what to do.

  “The club’s been closed down.”

  “But that’s not fair – the street fight was nothing to do with the club.”

  “Oh, yes, it was, but don’t you worry your little head about it any more, Claire. Now, how about dinner next weekend?”

  Irritated by his attitude, and by his reference to her “little head”, Claire told him she was too busy. How could she ever have found this patronizing know-all attractive? she asked herself.

  “Now you surely have a spare hour or two for your long-lost cousin?” he pleaded.

  “I have not, Patrick. I have a full-time placement and exams coming up. I have to study in all my free time.”

  “Your Da will be pleased to hear you’re working so hard,” he said. And for a moment she felt a glow of pride. But then he went on, “And your Mammy will be relieved to hear you’re safe and sound.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire was genuinely puzzled. “I thought we’d agreed not to say anything.”

  “Actually, we haven’t agreed on any­thing.” He suddenly sounded very English again, very cool. “That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about when I’m up there again. So – next weekend, I’ll ring you.” The line went dead.

  Claire put the phone down and stood looking at it thoughtfully. Patrick Geary always left her with a feeling of unease, she reflected; it was part of his mysteri­ous charm. But this time he’d overdone it. There were too many unanswered ques­tions. She’d simply have to see him, talk to him. And yet, for some reason she didn’t want to see him again, felt almost afraid of him.

  How could he have heard about the incident? Presumably from the news on radio or TV. But surely it would be only local and he wasn’t in Brassington now, was he? Well, where was he? And why all these references to her parents? “Long­lost cousin” he called himself; and he’d promised Mammy he’d look after Claire, the first time he met her. Why? She’d survived six months in Brassington without anyone to look after her; why did he suggest the idea to Mammy?

  Claire had a sudden picture of him at the going-away party, standing at the bar, talking seriously with her father. With Da. What had they been discussing – herself? She felt a sudden chill, as if she were being watched.

  She ran the rest of the way upstairs, stripped off the crumpled tracksuit and stood under a hot shower for a long time.

  “Jan – can I come in?” Freshly showered and changed, she was tapping at Jan’s door. “It’s me – Claire. I wondered whether you’d like—”

  Her voice faded as the door opened and he faced her, pale, tense, with dark patches under his eyes and his nose quite nar­row and pinched. He suddenly looked years older.

  “Claire, thank you for calling,” he said formally. “But there is nothing I need; just to be alone, you understand.”

  “But Jan—”

  “Thank you,” he repeated. “And good night.” He closed the door so quickly that Claire was taken by surprise. She stood for a moment wondering what to do. If she knocked again she was sure he would ignore her. Sighing deeply, she returned to her room. Perhaps he knew best how to treat himself, she reasoned. He’d been through experiences the rest of them could only imagine; and even now he was living in a foreign country, with no family (what had happened to them?), few friends, little money – and that charity. Claire’s eyes filled with tears. Best leave him to it; there was little enough she could do for him anyway.

  So she decided to do something for her­self: she went down to see whether Sister Thomas was in her ground-floor flat. It would be as well to check up on her new placement, if only to take her mind off Jan – and off Patrick and his various mys­teries. And this time, when she tapped at a door, she was invited in.

  “Ah, Claire – lovely to see you. Will you have a cup of tea with me?”

  Claire suddenly realized she hadn’t even been over to the cafeteria for lunch. Sister Thomas had a tea-tray and a plate of small sugary scones on a low table in front of her gas fire.

  “Please, I’d love a cup of tea,” said Claire.

  “And a Welsh-cake; I’m sure you have room for one.” Sister Thomas passed the plate over.

  There was silence for a few minutes, as Claire nibbled the buttered Welsh-cake and sipped her tea. />
  “Anything bothering you?” asked Sister Thomas when she judged Claire was ready to talk.

  Claire hesitated. There were so many things bothering her just then she hardly knew where to begin. She decided to stick to the business in hand. “I’ve just come to check my placement, make sure I’d got all the details right, you know.”

  “Let me see . . . Gynaecology for you this session, is it?” said Sister Thomas. “Well, it’ll be a nice change from A & E,” she smiled. “Quite calm and peaceful usually.”

  “A & E wasn’t as hectic as I’d imagined,” said Claire. “Well, not on weekdays, at any rate.”

  “I hear it was quite busy last Saturday night, though,” said Sister Thomas. “Every­one recovered now?”

  Claire nodded. “We were just unfortunate to be caught up in that gang-battle,” she said. “Jan and I have been to that club before and the only violence we saw was in the jigs and reels.”

  Sister Thomas laughed and offered Claire another Welsh-cake. “And how is the college work going?” she asked, picking up Claire’s hint.

  Claire groaned. “Slow and hard, that’s how,” she said.

  “Well, I did notice a distinct improvement in your grades.”

  “Only until exams,” Claire assured her. “They’ll sink again then.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” smiled Sister Thomas. “Your course work shows real understanding now. And if you have any problems with revision, you know where to find me.”

  “Thank you, Sister; it’s good of you. . .”

  “All part of the Kelham service,” she smiled. “We’re all very pleased with your work on the ward. Keep up with the study­ing and you’ll be fine, exams and all.”

  Claire left the flat smiling. It was good to know that Sister Thomas had so much sympathy with her academic struggles. Jan didn’t, it seemed; not at the moment anyway. She was obviously on her own. Well, in that case she’d better tackle the problem on her own.

  Starting right now, she decided, running back upstairs happily. Time for a couple of hours’ study before supper!

  She felt even happier next day. Jan put his head round the door of the kitchen, where she was making coffee. His pale face looked livelier, his eyes brighter.