The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  He said, ‘You ought to be in bed. The second night,’ he added to remove any misapprehension that he was concerned with my personal welfare, ‘is often far heavier than the first. And I’m doing two more men from Robert this afternoon.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Mr Dexter,’ again, but as he still lingered, obviously expecting a further explanation, I went on lamely, ‘I had to get up, and thought I’d have some cocoa before I went to bed. It’s a cold morning.’

  The canteen door opened, and Peter and Tom Thanet came in together. Tom saw me and touched Peter’s arm. Peter glanced round and waved.

  The S.S.O. was watching the two housemen. He said, ‘It is cold for September ‒ I’m just going to raise some hot coffee for myself,’ and moved away towards the counter.

  Peter threaded his way through the crowded tables, put down his cup and saucer, and dropped into the chair beside me.

  ‘Hi, darling! What are you doing up at this hour?’

  ‘I had to see Matron.’ Now that he was here I knew that subconsciously it was the hope of seeing him that had brought me to the canteen. I wanted to talk to someone on my own side. I wanted him to help me get rid of the worry that was nagging, like toothache, in my brain.

  He smiled. ‘Poor Gillian. What hadn’t you done? Forgotten to order the milk? Mislaid one of the chaps in Robert?’

  Tom called from the next table, ‘Burning the midday oil, Nurse Snow?’

  ‘Just about.’ I grinned feebly, then turned to Peter. ‘Peter, something grim has happened. Someone swiped a grain of morph. in Robert last night.’

  ‘Someone swiped what? Don’t tell me we’ve an addict in our midst! It isn’t me, miss, I swears it isn’t me. Always stick to coke, I do!’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this is serious.’ I told him everything.

  He was silent for a short while after I had finished.

  ‘Of course,’ he shrugged, ‘someone can’t count. That’s what’s happened.’

  ‘It isn’t.’ He knew as well as I that the dangerous drugs were checked by the dispenser on issue, and rechecked by the sisters when they arrived in each ward. ‘Sister Robert had a new lot in yesterday morning, which was why she spotted something wrong the moment she had occasion to open the box. I had reported all we gave in the night. Ward Sisters don’t make mistakes over the D.D. cupboard.’

  He lit a cigarette. ‘You say your pal Carol went to the cupboard. How about her?’

  ‘I don’t think she even opened the box. It was under her arm, and her hands were occupied with the hypodermic dish. Also ‒ why should she? I know Carol ‒ she’s no fool ‒ and apart from all moral aspects, only a complete goon would run such a risk. It was bound to be discovered. Every nurse in Joe’s knows that.’

  ‘How about your pro? Or is she too bright too?’

  I was getting desperate. ‘Peter. It’s something we have drummed into us from the moment we set foot in the P.T.S. Pros never even lay a hand on the D.D. keys. They’re hot.’

  He said mildly. ‘Well, someone has, darling ‒ so why not one of the girls?’

  ‘But why should they?’

  ‘My sweet,’ he said, ‘you do ask stupid questions. It’s not “why” that matters, but who. But all right. If you rule out your girls how about the chaps?’

  ‘In Robert? None of them are capable of even walking.’

  He laughed. ‘Can’t you just see that old Kerry nipping across craftily, clasping his bottle of blood in one hand and the packet of morph. in the other?’

  ‘Peter ‒ do be serious.’

  He said he was grimly serious. ‘My middle name is Dexter. But you aren’t giving me much help with my sleuthing. Or do you think it was me? Or old Garth? Or Tom?’ Garth was his name for Dexter. He glanced round. ‘Let’s ask old Tom how he slept last night? Sweet opium dreams?’

  ‘Not now. Please.’

  ‘Anything you say, love.’ He relaxed. ‘I quite agree. Let’s leave it to rest. You are brooding overmuch. We’ll talk of other things.’

  He had misunderstood my reason for not wishing to question Tom yet, but I let it pass. I did not bother to explain that I wanted to put off the moment when I should have to face the curiosity and sympathy of my friends. The hospital would hear all about my missing drugs only too soon. The grapevine in any hospital is as efficient as a radar set. I was thinking this over and wondering what the general reaction would be when I realised that he was still talking and I only caught the end of what he was saying.

  ‘‒ so I said that I knew it would be fine with you as you haven’t got the right nights off. She said she’d be happy to save me from the horrors of a partnerless evening and the possibility of having to dance with the Sisters.’

  ‘Sorry, Peter. What was all that?’

  ‘Darling, you’re out on your two feet. I was only telling you I’ve asked your pal Carol to the rugger dance as you aren’t off. I was being a Girl Scout ‒ as per your instructions.’

  I wondered sleepily why Carol had not mentioned this. Then I remembered how she had had to hurry off this morning and how busy we had been in the night. There had been no time for light chatter.

  ‘That was nice of you,’ I said. ‘But you know what? If I haven’t been chucked out I’ll probably be free after all. I very much doubt whether Matron will let me go back as Night Senior anywhere. That’s the pick of all our jobs.’

  He whistled quietly, ‘Bad as that?’

  ‘I expect so. I did tell you that this would be going to the Committee.’

  He looked sober. ‘So you did. Well, well, well.’

  I waited for him to tell me how sorry he was that this had happened to me; that the drugs would turn up; that at least it was not as serious as I imagined. Peter was good at getting things in proportion, and he was good at making me laugh. I wanted badly to be able to laugh at something now.

  He said nothing for several seconds, and his eyes narrowed as if he was calculating it all. ‘Your job,’ he said eventually, ‘is somewhat in the air, eh?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you really think she’ll give you the bird?’

  I thought over my interview again. Thought was becoming very difficult. My brain was clouded with my desire to sleep. ‘Maybe not. But, whatever happens, my nursing reputation here has gone for six.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked at me reflectively. ‘I suppose you haven’t any conceivable notion where ‒’

  I interrupted him. ‘Peter. If you or anyone else asks me where again, I shall burst into womanly tears.’

  ‘Darling,’ he said coolly, ‘don’t do that. While on the subject of reputation, I beg you to consider mine at this minute, if at no other.’

  The meaning of his words took a little time to penetrate the haze that was between me and normal people who go to bed at night.

  I said, ‘I won’t weep on you, Peter. I’m not really the little woman type. I’m just suffering from night nurse’s blues.’ And those, I thought, are two of the biggest lies I have ever told.

  He gazed across the canteen, as if the queue at the counter fascinated him. ‘I always said you were a sensible girl, Gillian,’ he murmured. ‘The thing to do is to go on being sensible. Don’t let this business get you down. Matrons have to get tough ‒ they wouldn’t be Matrons if they weren’t tough!’ He pushed back his chair. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst ‒ well, you are State Registered, and there are dozens of jobs going in the provinces. Who wants to stick at old Joe’s indefinitely?’

  I fiddled with my empty cup. ‘Who indeed?’

  ‘I’ll have to push off.’ He stood up. ‘My boss has been giving me dirty looks for the past ten minutes. If I dally any longer ‒ much as I’d like to ‒ old man Garth will probably heave me bodily through the door.’ He grinned and leant over the back of his chair. ‘Do you suppose it was him after all? Perhaps he chews it instead of shag? Perhaps that’s why he’s so ruddy big?’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Could be. Glass and all. Stimulates the pituitary no end.’ />
  He said he must try it some time and I really was a splendid soul, darling, and he hated to leave me, but ‒ ‘Be seeing you, Gillian. And remember, any time you want your own or anyone else’s morale boosted, send for Uncle Peter.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ I pretended to be oblivious of his anxiety to get away. There was no reason why I should not have left the canteen with him as we usually did ‒ no reason beyond the fact that he did not desire my presence any further.

  I sat on for some time longer, staring at my empty cup and thinking of nothing. Once I felt someone looking at me. I glanced round. John Dexter was talking to a man in the doorway and watching me. His expression was unusually anxious, and I wondered if anything had gone wrong in the theatre. The man to whom he was talking was the Resident Anaesthetist. The S.S.O. caught my eye and looked straight through me. That did not worry me. He and I had never been on smiling terms. I looked through him.

  The canteen cleared; it was midday, and the hungry students were off to lunch. The voluntary workers collected the stray cups from the tables and wiped the plastic table covers. One elderly woman flapped her dish-cloth over my table, then hesitated.

  ‘Off duty, Nurse?’

  I smiled. My smile was a reflex action now, requiring no effort from me. ‘Nights.’

  She clucked like a kindly hen.

  ‘You should be in bed, dear. You look ever so tired.’

  ‘I’m just going,’ I assured her.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t like to see a young girl like you looking so tired. Mrs Symonds ‒ that’s the lady with the tea urn, dear ‒ and I were just talking about you. That poor dark nurse in the corner, we said, looks really ill. We were wondering if anything was the matter.’ She twisted her dish-cloth anxiously. ‘I’m so glad to hear it’s only tiredness ‒ Mrs Symonds will be too.’

  I stood up. ‘It is very kind of you both. Thank you so much. I’m sorry you should have been worried.’

  I went back to my room, undressed, and got into bed, but I was too tired to sleep. I lay and thought about Peter and how clearly he had shown me that he wanted no part of my problems or my future. I was a ‘sensible girl’ who was good for an evening at the movies, or as a partner at hospital dances, but that was all. And then I thought, in fairness, why blame him? He had always been most careful in our relationship. He had never once hinted that he felt for me as he must have guessed I felt for him. And I could have refused his many invitations and so have prevented him from monopolising my off-duty. I wondered now if he would give me many more opportunities to refuse his invitations? Whatever happened over this affair in Robert, as I had told him, a certain amount of mud would stick to me. ‘Gill Snow? Oh yes. The girl who was mixed up when that dope was missing in Robert. Nasty thing to happen.’

  Very nasty.

  Peter was an ambitious young man. I knew he saw himself as a future S.S.O. at Joe’s. Young doctors who wish to get on do not get involved in scandals. I was the centre of a glorious scandal. Peter would certainly not wish to be involved with me any longer.

  I smiled wryly at the ceiling. Poor Peter. He was probably as strung up as I was today, wondering how much this was going to affect him. Then I smiled properly as I realised that, in my panic over the possibility of losing him, I had forgotten the drugs and my job in Robert. I had never had much faith in counter-irritants before; now I began to wonder if they might not be a very good thing.

  Home Sister sent for me after supper that night.

  ‘Matron wishes you to have two nights off, Nurse dear, while she decides what is to be done about you.’

  The ‘Nurse dear,’ showed that Home Sister was on my side.

  ‘Do you think I’ll ever get back to Robert, Sister?’

  Her old, creased face grew some more lines. ‘I’m afraid it is unlikely, Nurse Snow.’ She went on to say that Matron had contacted Carol, who, as I had expected, knew nothing of any spare morphia. ‘Matron will send for you, Nurse, when she has reached a conclusion.’

  I asked if she knew anything of my Admiral.

  ‘Sister Robert was fairly sanguine about him at supper tonight.’ Her myopic eyes peered through her thick spectacles. ‘You liked working in Robert, did you not, Nurse?’

  ‘Very much, Sister.’

  She sighed, then smiled. ‘I liked Robert too,’ she said conspiratorially, ‘I did so like all those seamen and dockers.’

  We had a pleasant quarter of an hour exchanging stories about the men in Robert. I forgot my own problems, and I think old Home Sister forgot her arthritic knees and the fact that she had not nursed in a general ward since before I was born. Nursing was our job and our hobby, and when you are lucky enough to have work which is that, you have to pay for it with painful joints or set-backs over drug cupboards.

  Home Sister laughed reminiscently, ‘You know those weighing machines, Nurse ‒ the wheel-barrow type? Well, when I was in my third year ‒ during the first world war, that was ‒ we had a very difficult gastric patient in Robert. It was both surgical and medical in those days. He so disliked being weighed it was quite a business to get him on the scales. One night he was so difficult that I said, “Mr Yeo, if you let me weigh you ‒ you may weigh me!” ’ Sister pulled at her cuffs primly. ‘Of course, I never dreamed he would say yes. But he did.’

  I was enchanted. ‘What happened, Sister?’

  She sighed, but not unhappily as she had done earlier, ‘I was rather plump in those days, Nurse ‒ and the machine was in the middle of the ward. Mr Yeo had to put on all the weights as I went over eleven stone! The men were all laughing, and then suddenly there was silence.’ She blinked through her glasses. ‘Sister Robert and Dr Greet ‒ he became Sir Gaston Greet ‒ had come in. Sister,’ she said, with simple pride, ‘was furious and sent me to Matron. But Dr Greet told his houseman ‒ who told me ‒ that I had made a new man of Mr Yeo, and he thought I ought to weigh all his gastric patients.’ She straightened her old, well-corseted back, and came back to the present. ‘You had better go back to bed, now, Nurse. You will look very tired. Did you sleep at all?’

  ‘Not very much, Sister.’ I thanked her for telling me of her time in Robert.

  She coloured slightly, but did not comment on her burst of reminiscences. ‘Good night, Nurse.’

  The girls in my set came to visit me; the day staff that night, the night staff next morning.

  ‘Poor old Gillian. What rotten luck! Let’s hope the miserable bod. who pinched it is suffering from acute deprivation symptoms!’

  Kirsty Forbes, the girl who had taken my place in Robert, was doubly sympathetic. ‘I’m not surprised you mislaid a grain, Gill. After one night in Robert I’m surprised you didn’t lose the lot! What a ward! I’ve not been off my feet all night!’

  I asked after Admiral Kerry and my favourite, Toms.

  ‘All doing nicely and ever so sorry to hear their Nurse Snow is poorly. That’s the official gen on you ‒ via Matron. But you’ve a lovely ward, Gill. Not a difficult type among them.’

  ‘There never is. Robert men are always honeys.’

  Kirsty wondered why it was that only pleasant men appeared to suffer from perforated appendices or strangulated hernias.

  ‘Must be Sister Robert,’ I said. ‘After all, a Sister makes or breaks a ward.’

  ‘That’s so.’ Kirsty looked thoughtful. ‘She had a little chat with me last night, and, reading between the lines, I got the impression that she wanted me to tell you not to fret too much, that she knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with you ‒ apart from your leaving your keys around, of course.’ She took off her shoes and tucked them under her arm. ‘And, you know, I’ve got a sort of feeling this is someone’s idea of a joke.’

  I said drily, ‘I’m killing myself with laughter.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Her expression was very kind. ‘But seriously, Gill, it has to be a joke. It’s such a wee dose.’

  ‘Kirsty! It’s near-lethal.’

  ‘Och,’ she said, ‘it’s no
t enough to bump off anyone but a child ‒ and who ever heard of even a maniac using that on a kid? No. I consider this is one of those daft students, either taking it for a bet or for some stupid experiment on himself. You know what fools medical students are! They’ll try anything. And only a daftie, not on the staff, would not have known the immediate bust-up that would follow. All the staff know they are checked constantly. But the student boys have no conception how we check and recheck. They just think we rush round shoving in needles, regardless.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Nor did I, until I caught one of the lads helping himself to some milk in Robert kitchen last night. Fraser was in the sluice, and it was pure chance that I caught him. He was very civil and said he hadn’t bothered to ask as he knew we had masses and were busy and so on; but it put a whole lot of ideas into my head. If milk can disappear unnoticed they’re daft enough to think drugs can do likewise. And anyone finding the drug keys need have no doubts about which keys they are, since they have that whacking great red plastic label with “D.D. Keys” stamped on it for all to see. It’s too easy.’ She yawned. ‘I must get to bed. But I’ll keep my eyes skinned tonight for stray visitors, and for as long as I’m in Robert. I doubt that I’ll be there long. You’ll be back after your nights off.’

  The other girls were as kind as Kirsty, and most of them admitted leaving their keys on the table at various times.

  ‘Might have happened to any of us, Gill. Wretched that it had to be you.’

  In the middle of the next afternoon Carol returned to the hospital. She came up to my room.

  ‘I’ve just met Peter. He said you were off nights, and he thought warded in your own room. What goes? Are you really ill?’

  She looked ill herself and not at all as if she had had a night in bed. Her round face was pale and haggard, and her skin hung in soft, fleshy folds.

  I said I was not ill. ‘How were the Old Girls?’