The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  He might not be roused now, but it would be easier to hold up an oncoming bulldozer with one hand than stop this cross-examination. I gave up trying.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you didn’t take that dope, and I didn’t. But someone has.’

  ‘Why should they?’

  He said that was precisely why he wanted to talk to me. ‘I wanted to ask if you thought there was anyone who might want to get you in a spot.’

  ‘Me? In a spot?’ I dropped my cigarette.

  He bent down and picked it off the grass. ‘You ‒ in a spot.’ He handed me the cigarette. ‘That may sound farcical, but this is hardly an amusing situation for you, is it?’

  But it might be amusing someone else, I thought. I did not like to mention Kirsty’s theory of the students. John was too closely connected with them, and if I told him he might start an investigation.

  I might as well have spoken, since he went on to tell me that he wondered if any of the men had done it for a bet. ‘But if they had I’d have heard. I hear most things. And a bet requires two people to give it any point.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely, although not impossible.’

  A duck stepped out of the lake and came across the grass towards us rolling like an old sailor. We watched the duck, as if we expected to see four ampoules of morphia hanging round its neck. He said, ‘It’s such an extraordinary dose to take. Too much for a joke ‒ a quarter would have proved any bet ‒ too little for an addict. People don’t just feel the need for one grain. The stuff would have been vanishing all over the place if we had an addict on the staff. And you can’t hide that sort of thing, not in a hospital. Apart from the checking, it’s something we all know about. And God knows’ ‒ he pushed his hand through his hair ‒ ‘we all know just about everything about each other. No’ ‒ the duck was by our feet now and seemed as fascinated by us as we were by her ‒ ‘it doesn’t add up.’

  ‘Nothing adds up,’ I said, ‘nothing at all. What good can it do anyone to get me out of Robert ‒ or the other wards?’

  He said, ‘So you know that?’

  ‘Matron told me yesterday.’

  ‘Do you mind very much?’

  ‘Having no patients? Yes, I do. I mind a lot.’

  He said, ‘Of course you wouldn’t be a nurse if you didn’t feel that way. But there are other departments in a hospital that are just as important as the wards.’

  I had purposefully avoided considering my immediate future. I could postpone that thought no longer. I wondered where Matron would send me. To help in the dining-room? Home Sister? The Diet Kitchen? I loathed the prospect of any of them.

  ‘Someone has to work away from the wards,’ he said drily, as if I had spoken.

  I was getting annoyed with his thought-reading. ‘I’d rather that someone wasn’t me. Unless you’ve been a nurse, that may be hard to understand, but it’s a fact. Nurses detest working in departments; they need patients quite as much, if not more, than the patients need them. I like flapping round sick-beds and people; I like people, and doing things for them. Not from any altruistic motives, but because I just like doing that. I am just not the admin type, Mr Dexter; and if I’ve to face the future as acting unpaid Sister Dining-Room or checking over the laundry in the Home with Sister’ ‒ I was really worked up ‒ ‘then I feel I may as well resign here and now, and go somewhere else and start all over again.’

  So help me, I thought, I’m going to cry! I was thinking of Peter and how empty life was going to be without him; and of Robert when the night rounds were over, and the ward was mine until daylight. My throat pricked and my eyes were smarting. The duck had wandered off, and the lake was empty. I stared at the water and held my breath.

  He said, ‘Stop dramatising, Nurse Snow.’ He sounded bored. I was so surprised that I lost all desire to cry.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You’re well away in a cloud of self-pity and having a wonderful wallow.’ He looked me over coolly. ‘I suggest you come down to earth and remember that everyone of us makes a cracking mistake once in a while. There’s nothing strange about that. But you have, through your carelessness, caused a considerable commotion and a great deal of inconvenience. And you’ve allowed someone to get unlawful possession of a mighty dangerous drug. And not the least inconvenience is to those chaps in Robert. You know how all patients dislike changes of staff. All right.’ He picked up his hat and stick. ‘You made a mistake; now you’re having to pay for it. That’s the usual form. That’s all. And you can thank Heaven that it’s no worse. Supposing one of the patients had got hold of that stuff ‒ they might have pushed themselves out. A grain could do that to a weak heart. Think of what might have happened then ‒ and what might still happen ‒ and how you’d feel.’ He stood up. ‘Now, I’m afraid I must get back. Are you coming, or do you care to sit here and watch the ducks?’

  I felt about two inches high and eight years old. I also felt rather ashamed of myself. I said I would watch the ducks, thank you.

  ‘As you wish,’ he murmured. ‘Afternoon, Nurse.’

  ‘Mr Dexter ‒’ He turned back. ‘I’m sorry ‒ but there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you since I met you. How’s the Admiral? Is he going to do?’

  He took off his hat, stroked his hair with the same hand, and put his hat back on again. ‘Still early days,’ he said, ‘but I think he’ll make it. He’s all right.’ Which in hospital language meant out of danger. He waited in case I had anything else to say; but I had not, so he nodded briefly and walked away.

  I stayed on the bench until he disappeared from sight. I concentrated on the Admiral. That at least was a cheering thought. Then I picked up my chocolates and walked slowly back to the hospital.

  Home Sister was waiting for me. ‘Matron wants you to move back to the day nurses’ home this evening, Nurse Snow.’

  I did not ask her where Matron was going to send me; Home Sister was a clam where Matron was concerned. She was still worrying about my lack of colour.

  ‘I’m probably a bit cold, Sister. I’ve been sitting in the park, and now the sun has gone it is chilly.’ That was not true, it had been perfectly warm in the park, but I was not going to explain that I was white because I was angry. John Dexter had been quite right, but that only made me more angry. And when in a rage I lose what little colour I possess.

  Next morning I saw Matron.

  ‘There can be no question of your returning to Robert yet, Nurse Snow.’ She said she had discussed my case with the Committee, and that they had agreed to leave me to her. ‘I intended sending you to help Sister Dining-room with the meals,’ she explained, ‘but it has been suggested to me this morning that you might be more useful ‒ and could do no harm ‒ in one of the Out-Patient departments.’

  So I had been right if only about that. I wondered who my friend on the staff might be; I suspected Night Sister or Sister Robert. Whoever it was, I was very grateful to them.

  Matron was still talking. ‘I know you have already had your period of training in that department, but the extra experience will be useful. And since you have recently worked in Christian, I want you to work in the Children’s Room.’ She looked hard at me. ‘I am relying on you, Nurse; so kindly remember that. I must admit that I agree with ‒’ She hesitated, then changed her mind and went on. ‘I must agree,’ she repeated, ‘that it would be a waste of a young and healthy trained nurse if I sent you, even temporarily, to some domestic sinecure. This hospital, like all hospitals, needs every nurse it possesses.’

  I said fervently, ‘Thank you very much, Matron.’

  She said, ‘I am not taking this step solely because it has been suggested to me. I am considering your past conduct. I feel that you should know that. You may go and report to Sister Out-Patients immediately.’

  I thanked her again, and she dismissed me.

  I walked quickly to Out-Patients thinking gratefully not of Sister Robert, but of Sister Christian. Perhaps it was she who had suggested this, I had worked in Christian be
fore going to Robert; Sister Christian and I had become good friends, and she had suggested that when I completed my training I should return, with Matron’s permission, to Christian as a Staff Nurse.

  As soon as I was free I would go up to Christian to thank her. I would also thank Sister Robert, who had sent me a private message via Home Sister yesterday, to say that whenever Matron considered it suitable, she, Sister Robert, would be pleased to have me back as her Night Senior.

  Sister Out-Patients was not at all pleased to see me. She was new to the hospital and had not been in Out-Patients during the four months I spent there the previous year. She came from St Martha’s, a rival hospital, with the reputation of being the best-looking girl at Martha’s and the possessor of that hospital’s gold medal for nurses. I had heard about Sister Out-Patients from my colleagues, but until now had never seen her.

  Her name was Miss Mack. She was a young woman in the late twenties or early thirties. She was the same height as myself, but whereas I was thin, she was slim. She appeared to have no bones at all. Her face, even to another woman, was breathtakingly lovely, and I wondered at the effect she was having on the boys and why I had not heard about this. Her hair was the gold of a Victorian sovereign. My grandfather left me three, so I know the colour. Her eyes were more violet than dark blue, her lashes improbably, but obviously naturally, black. Her skin was perfect, and there was nothing wrong with any of her other features.

  I had heard a good deal about Sister Out-Patients from my junior in Robert, but what I had heard did not tally with her appearance. Nurse Fraser said that Sister O.P.s was now the most unpopular sister in the hospital, from the probationer’s point of view.

  Looking at her, it was hard to see why she should be so tough with the girls; with looks like hers, she had no cause to feel put out by the presence of so many younger women around her. Yet, according to Nurse Fraser, the whole first year quaked at the suggestion of working in Out-Patients and longed to be transferred to the neighbouring care of fierce old Sister Casualty, who barked like a sergeant-major most of the time but was always impeccably fair in her attitude to pros. This particular aspect of life in O.P.s did not trouble me now, as it would have done had I been in my first year. I had passed the stage when an unpleasant Sister can ruin your working life.

  There comes a time in every nurse’s career, usually towards the end of the third year, when she discovers that Sisters are merely young women slightly older than herself, in navy blue dresses and frilly caps, and that their feet still hurt, and their backs still ache as her own does; only since they are older, their feet and backs possibly hurt and ache even more than her own.

  Sister Out-Patients frowned at me as I stood in front of the desk in her small office, my hands correctly behind me. Her lovely eyes were empty of everything but displeasure.

  ‘I cannot conceive,’ she said, ‘why Matron should consider you suitable to work in my department, Nurse Snow. I was not consulted; if I had been, you would not be here now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister.’

  She sniffed. ‘Apparently you are to work in the Children’s Room.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  She clearly did not approve of my agreeing with her. ‘At least,’ she said coldly, ‘there are no drug cupboards and no keys in that room. I suppose I will just have to make the best of it.’

  I did not like to say ‘Yes, Sister,’ and could scarcely say ‘No, Sister,’ so I smiled weakly. I was not surprised that she reminded me of the lost drugs; I was fairly certain that I was in for a good many such reminders.

  The Out-Patients nurses did not follow Sister’s lead. The Staff Nurse, a fat, cheerful girl called Blakelock, who had once been my senior when I was a night pro, welcomed me warmly.

  ‘Between ourselves I’m more than glad to see you back, Snow. We can always use an extra trained nurse in this dive. We’ve got even more clinics than we had last year, and you know what it was like then!’ She said the business in Robert had been a bad show. ‘Nasty thing to happen when you’re in charge. Could have happened to me dozens of times ‒ thank goodness it never did. I always dumped my keys in the mending box on the desk when I was having a panic!’

  Lisa Smith, the other senior nurse in O.P.s and a member of my own set, greeted me with open arms. ‘It’ll be bliss having one of us girls to work with again.’ We called our set ‘us girls.’

  ‘But I’m afraid you are in for a tough time with our luscious Sister, dear girl.’

  I said I had heard that toughness was routine in O.P.s nowadays.

  ‘But, Lisa, why is she so tough, with that face? And what were the Martha’s men doing letting her go? She’s really beautiful.’

  Lisa said grimly that the Martha’s men had more sense than she had previously credited them with, after seeing their behaviour at the last finals of the rugger cup. ‘But seriously, Gillian, this is more than her usual line. I’m so used to that by now that I take for granted the fact that all the pros will be in tears each morning before we open. I always bring a couple of dozen extra handkerchiefs. No. This concerns you. She’s been up the wall about you for the past hour. I wouldn’t mention it if I did not think you ought to be warned.’

  ‘You mean she takes life ‒ and crime ‒ seriously? Maybe you have to if you win a gold medal. And maybe Martha’s Sisters are not so human as ours. Sister Robert’s been a honey, and old Home Sister has been clucking round me like a kind old hen, and saying, “There, there, Nurse dear, we all make mistakes, and after all no one seems to have come to any harm yet.” ’

  ‘Dear girl,’ said Lisa, ‘this has nothing to do with her gold medal ‒ or the fact that she comes from the rival firm. You could personally have rifled every drug cupboard in the hospital as far as she was concerned. I’m certain of that, because, like the whole hospital, we’ve been talking drugs for the past two days. When we described you to her she said she knew which was Nurse Snow, and you looked one of those insipidly pretty, frail girls, who would do an insipidly frail thing like leaving your keys around. And that, did you but know it, is open-hearted charity from dear Sister Out-Patients.’

  I asked, ‘Then what’s got into her?’

  We were cleaning the Children’s Room. Lisa dropped her duster, and stared at me.

  ‘Dear girl, is it possible you don’t know?’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  She retrieved her duster and polished the arms of a wheelchair furiously. ‘Of course ‒ you’ve been buried on nights and this has only been going on for the past couple of weeks.’

  ‘What has been going on? Get to the point, Lisa,’ I begged.

  ‘Sister and our John.’ She grinned. ‘That’s it, Gill. True love has blossomed at last. Or rather ‒ we are all hoping and praying that it has, as it makes Sister so much happier.’

  ‘Sister and John Dexter? That’s who it was!’ I suddenly remembered the hair I had glimpsed under that black hat. ‘No wonder I did not recognise it.’ And I told her about yesterday afternoon.

  ‘You don’t tell me!’ She laughed. ‘My, my! So he takes her out to tea! That’s big stuff from John. I hate to admit it, loathing her guts as I do, but I’ve got to hand it to her. No Joe’s girl has ever rated so much as a stroll in the park with our John.’

  I did not want to contradict her, so I asked instead if she was sure it was a big thing. ‘I can’t believe John has fallen at last.’

  ‘To be truthful, that I couldn’t say. Who can say what John D. thinks about anything? But I’m certain about her. Life in the department is almost bearable when he’s around. Sister turns into a little woman. All smiles and charm. Wonderful sight.’

  I said I was delighted to hear it. ‘They’ll make a good pair.’

  ‘Dear girl,’ said Lisa seriously, ‘you can’t really wish her on John? He’s a sweetie, even if he isn’t susceptible to our charms. Besides, he’s got nice manners and that fascinating white streak. I think John’s a dear.’

  ‘I still think they’ll make a
good pair. All right,’ I added quickly, as I saw she was about to protest again, ‘I’ll grant he’s always civil. I’m just allergic to giants. But, anyway, what’s all this got to do with me?’

  She dropped the tin of polish this time. ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘All I know is that Matron wants me to work in this department.’

  Lisa said I had better hold on to something. ‘The reason you are here and not lost in the outer darkness of the dining-room is because the dear S.S.O. asked Matron how she dared complain of being short-staffed when she went around wasting her trained staff in sinecures! He actually said that. Matron was so shaken that she told Sister O.P.s all; Sister was so shaken she told Blakelock, who told me. So you are here, dear Gill, by courtesy of the S.S.O., and dear Sister O.P.s is out for your blood!’

  Chapter Four

  A MORNING WITH THE CHILDREN

  I had no time that morning to consider what Lisa had said, nor was I anxious to consider it; the last sensation I cared to feel towards John Dexter was gratitude. The thought that I should be very grateful to him made me even more annoyed with him.

  Sister Out-Patients frowned each time she passed the open door of the Children’s Room. Her frown did not trouble me. I knew she would shortly discover what little cause she had for anxiety about my relationship with the S.S.O., and that eventually she and I would get along all right. I was sanguine about this because I was used to getting along with Sisters. Falling in with their little ways is something you learn in a general nursing training. I felt mildly sorry for her; she must be very taken with him, if she could seriously imagine that he had designs on me. She and I might not have met before, but she must have heard from the other Sisters of his general attitude to the nurses, and she knew enough about hospitals to appreciate the glorious gossip that would follow if he so much as glanced, unprofessionally, at a nurse in training.