The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  One of the most consoling features in any nurse’s life is the necessity for speed. That speed, which was the terror of all first-year pros, once acquired, is a great defence. You move so quickly, there is so much work to be done in any appointed time, and that time is never sufficient, but has to be made sufficient, with the obvious result that during your working life you have no time for any other problem but will you beat the clock? And when you are doing that from seven-thirty in the morning to nine p.m., for six days a week, even allowing for three hours of that time off duty ‒ three hours that always include a meal, and into which you have to fit your whole private life, so that consequently you are racing against time then also ‒ the night becomes solely the time for sleeping. Nurses in training do not suffer from insomnia. I always meant to worry about the future when I got into bed, but I never remembered to do more than switch off my light.

  I fell back into the routine of the department as if I had never left it. And although Sister still frowned on me when we met, even she was so occupied with patients, almoners, Consultants, forms, and training the junior pros, that she was only able to spare the occasional moment in which to criticise what I was doing and inform me that at St Martha’s Hospital, London, such behaviour would not have been tolerated. I decided that John must have stilled some of her fears by his constant presence, and total and habitual disregard of myself, because she now distributed her displeasure equally between Lisa and myself, and we automatically chanted, ‘Yes, Sister, sorry, Sister’ whenever she approached us.

  The days were filled with endless clinics, clinics that inevitably overflowed into each other, while the patients grumbled, not unreasonably, and the men fingered their collars, and thanked Heaven and the hospital committee that there were no sterilisers in Out-Patients as there were in every room in Casualty. Consequently Out-Patients, when full, fell slightly short of the inferno that Casualty could become.

  My children arrived with lollypops ‒ iced and sugared ‒ bags of toffees, and boiled sweets; some of them cried, some of them were sick, but the majority seemed alarmingly healthy and not in need of any medical care; their spirits were constantly high. There was nothing wrong with any of their lungs either, whatever their notes might say.

  They continued to bellow, ‘Hi, Snow White,’ and roar with goblin laughter at my lack of dwarfs. ‘Garn, Snow White, ain’t you never going to get none?’

  Sister disapproved of these unprofessional welcomes, and her lips would tighten to a thin line whenever she overheard one.

  One afternoon she beckoned me to her table. ‘Nurse Snow, this must stop. You will kindly take steps to see you are not addressed in that undignified manner in my department again.’

  I apologised, and returned to the latest arrival to my clinic, who was grinning at me from the doorway.

  ‘Listen, Joy,’ I whispered, ‘you heard what the Sister said. Now be an angel child and don’t call me that again or I’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘O.K. Sno‒’ She swallowed obediently and started again. ‘O.K., Nurse.’

  I explained that the room was full up. ‘Would you and your mum just sit by the door for a few minutes? I’ll shift them up the benches, and then you can move forward.’

  Joy was an intelligent eight-year-old. She had broken her leg in a street accident, and had been admitted to Christian in my first month there. Her leg had been badly broken and there was a small sinus still to heal which necessitated her coming back frequently for treatment.

  ‘But you know what,’ she went on thoughtfully, as I began unwinding the crepe bandage that covered the gauze bandage on her leg, ‘I got a book at home with pictures, see ‒ the real thing sort of, what they had in that picture me mum told me about’ ‒ she turned to her mum ‒ ‘didn’t you, Mum?’

  Her mother was busy with her knitting. ‘That’s right, ducks,’ she said encouragingly.

  Joy said again, ‘And you know what, Snow White?’

  ‘What, honey?’ I looked up from the bandage.

  Joy bent forward and touched my cap. ‘You look just like that picture, see, with that white hat an’ your black hair. Ever so black ain’t it, Sn‒’ she remembered this time, ‘Nurse?’

  ‘It isn’t.’ I smiled up at her. ‘I wish it was, but it’s not. It’s just dark brown.’

  ‘’Sblack,’ said Joy stubbornly. ‘Truly.’

  The bandage was off. I stood up, leaving the under-bandage until she was ready to be seen. ‘Have it your own way, honey. The patient is always right.’

  A voice murmured, ‘An admirable sentiment, Nurse Snow.’ Tom Thanet was standing beside me. I had not seen him since I left Robert. ‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘how goes it, Nurse Snow? When did they let you out? I heard you were behind bars in the Nurses Home.’

  I said I was on parole. ‘Something I can do for you, Mr Thanet?’

  He said he wanted Sister. ‘Or rather I hear she wants me.’ His eyes creased with amusement ‘Think I ought to stay or run?’

  ‘She was at her table a few seconds ago.’ I put my head out of the door but there was no one at the table. ‘You’d better hang around.’

  Tom said that whatever he did was bound to be wrong, so he might as well stay. ‘Somehow I appear to lack the technique of the house-surgeons in St Martha’s Hospital, London,’ he added sadly, ‘but then what can you expect of poor old Joe’s?’

  I said ‘Et tu? I thought you men were all splendid.’

  Tom said he was far too junior to be splendid yet. ‘Just a simple Conjoint man, Nurse. Very low.’

  Joy tugged at my apron. ‘Ask the doctor what colour it is.’

  ‘Ask him what, duckie?’ I had forgotten my hair.

  ‘Always happy to oblige,’ said Tom helpfully; ‘something I can do?’

  Joy began, ‘Well ‒’ and sucked in her breath, ‘you see ‒’

  ‘Excuse me‒’ I leapt across the room and caught the arm of the anxious-faced elderly man who had rushed by me, and was already half-seated on the children on the front bench.

  ‘Now then, you lads,’ he was saying, ‘move over.’

  I smiled, ‘Good afternoon. Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh, Nurse,’ he said, ‘ta.’ He handed me an envelope. ‘I got a letter from me doctor,’ he announced proudly. ‘To see the doctor, like.’

  The envelope was addressed to the House-surgeon in charge of Out-Patients, St Joseph’s Hospital. That meant the S.S.O. in Casualty. No one as junior as a house-surgeon ever saw a patient who arrived with a letter from a doctor. And only very rarely, by special arrangement or string pulling, were new patients seen in Out-Patients.

  I asked if he could tell me what was wrong with him?

  He was pained. ‘That’s what I wants the doctor to tell me, miss.’

  I looked at the long lines in his cheeks, his thin face, tired eyes, and general air of gloom, and guessed, not altogether wildly. The medical wards were full of men looking like him. ‘Your stomach worrying you?’

  He brightened. ‘That’s it, miss. Worries me! Murder, that’s what it is an’ all. Sheer murder. Can’t keep a thing down ‒ and the pain! Cruel it is!’

  I said I was sure it was, which was true. ‘And if you’ll just come with me, I’ll show you the way to the Casualty department, and you must give your letter to the Sister there.’

  He twitched the envelope from my hands. ‘I got to give it to the House-surgeon, miss. Like it says.’

  This was not the time to go into hospital procedure, so I agreed on that point, ‘Sister Casualty will see that he gets it.’

  He nodded uncertainly, but did not move from the seat, and the squashed children beside him watched him with interest.

  ‘I ain’t no casualty, miss, I’m a patient ‒ an out-patient like what it says on that notice outside the big door.’

  I explained that in Out-Patients we saw only old patients, and that all new patients were first seen in Casualty. I left out the exceptions so as not to confuse him.

  He was not
at all happy at my explanations, and for a few seconds seemed determined to remain among the rows of enthralled infants, but he finally allowed that I might be right at that, and let me lead him to a porter.

  Tims, one of the six O.P. porters, was a paternal young man. ‘You just come along of me, Dad,’ he said comfortingly, ‘like the nurse tells you. You’ll see your House-surgeon, don’t you worry.’

  The poor man had a fresh anxiety. ‘Will he give me some more of them powders, Nurse?’ He clutched my hand. ‘Won’t tell me as I has to do without ’em, will he?’

  I said I was sure he would not.

  Tims took the old man’s arm. ‘You come along of me, Dad,’ he said again. ‘I’ll see you gets your powders. You just leave the nurse to her parcel of nippers ‒ got her hands full an’ all she has ‒ and you and me’ll go and find your House-surgeon.’

  The waiting mothers smiled sympathetically as I tried to restore order among the children who were now quite out of hand, and swapping places and sweeties with a total disregard of my appointments list.

  ‘Don’t get much chance to get fat, you girls,’ said one lady; ‘what a life for you!’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed another, ‘and I think I’m busy with my four! Talk about on your feet! Rather you than me, duck, that’s what I say!’

  The first mother said that was a fact, and I left them happily comparing hospital experiences and shaking their two heads over a nurse’s lot. ‘But you got to be born to it,’ they reckoned, ‘you got to be born to it.’

  Were they right? I often wondered and generally doubted. Perhaps. I certainly had always wanted to be a nurse; but nursing, when I discovered what it was, bore no relation to what I had imagined nursing to be. Not that that made me want to change jobs. This was the only job I ever wanted to do and I still felt that way. There was only one thing I wanted more, and that was to marry Peter.

  I settled the back benches in reasonable order, then crossed the room at the double, and caught a small boy who was swinging on his crutches. ‘Johnny Brandon, if you do that on this polished floor you’ll probably break your other leg. Be a good boy and sit down and read your comic.’

  ‘Finished it,’ he said laconically, and went on swinging under my hands.

  ‘If I find you a new one will you sit down?’

  ‘Spaceman stuff?’

  I nodded. ‘Dan Dare?’

  ‘O.K., Snow White.’ He subsided obediently, and I went to the cupboard for fresh literature. I handed these to Johnny and Johnny’s friends, who had promptly begun to slide on the floor, and the room was quiet again.

  Tom was still chatting with Joy. ‘We’ve agreed you’re black, Nurse Snow,’ he announced when I returned to my official stand by the door.

  ‘Anything you say. Doctor.’ I counted the heads and checked them with the list in my hand. ‘Where has Mr Rufford got to?’

  Tom said he had left his temporary boss looking at wet plates in the darkroom. ‘He said he was starting in here any minute. Shouldn’t be more than another hour.’

  ‘Nurse,’ said one of the mothers, ‘will it be all right if I slip along to the canteen? Ever so dry I am.’

  I promised to keep her and her son’s places, and then two-thirds of the room developed acute thirsts, so the trip to the canteen became an official exodus, each bench going in rotation.

  Tom peered down the corridor. ‘Where is that wretched woman?’

  ‘Search me.’ I was counting heads again. ‘I wish you could see these kids for me. There’ll be murder done if the clinic doesn’t start soon.’

  He nodded. ‘Wish I could at that. Still, Rufford will soothe ’em when he comes. He’s a good chap. Expect those plates were washouts, and he’s waiting for fresh pictures of that last woman we had across the way. Conscientious bloke, Rufford. He’ll only hurry when it doesn’t matter.’ He asked how long I was to be in O.P.s.

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything.’

  He swung his stethoscope. ‘They don’t tell me much either,’ he said casually, ‘but I keep my ear to the ground, I hear one or two things.’

  A fight broke out on the front bench. I broke it up, smiled artificially at the mothers concerned, who said placidly, really, Nurse, they didn’t know how I did it, they just wouldn’t heed a word they had said.

  ‘The uniform,’ I suggested, and retired to the door again.

  Tom was talking to Joy. He glanced round. ‘Strong arm stuff, eh, Nurse?’

  ‘More or less.’ I asked if he heard interesting things.

  Tom, who, like all hospital employees, was more than capable of carrying on two conversations at the same time, said ‘I liked him very much as Hans Christian Andersen,’ to Joy, and, ‘Sometimes. I did hear you might not be booked for the rugger dance tomorrow night,’ to me.

  I had forgotten it was tomorrow. ‘No, I’m not.’

  He handed Joy his stethoscope. ‘You hear the noise through this bit ‒ it works like a microphone,’ then turned to me. ‘No time like a quiet afternoon with the nippers to make a date. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come with me? I realise it’s late notice ‒ but you know how time flies.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ I did not answer his invitation directly, because although I liked Tom, I did not much want to go to a dance with him, or anyone but Peter.

  He noticed my hesitation. ‘Or maybe you’re booked by the big boss?’ He leered horribly. ‘I understand he is taking an interest in your welfare.’

  I smiled. ‘My welfare nothing. He sees me as a pair of hands and moderately good feet. Can you see him breaking down and asking a nurse in training to gallivant with him?’

  Tom said, ‘Frankly, no.’

  Sister rustled into the room. ‘Nurse Snow, perhaps when you have finished gossiping with Mr Thanet you will be good enough to attend to your clinic.’ She looked at Tom. ‘I would like to speak to you, Mr Thanet.’

  Tom said meekly, ‘Yes, Sister, certainly, Sister,’ and clicked his heels.

  Sister looked at him and then back to me. His face was expressionless, and I knew that mine was the same. Mr Rufford roared into the room. ‘Terribly sorry ‒ got held up! I hate to have kept you all waiting this way, but we’ll get things moving now. All right, Nurse Snow! Let’s have the first pair. Mothers with their children, please!’

  Sister drew Tom out into the corridor and said whatever it was she had to say to him. Then John appeared at her elbow, and she dismissed Tom with a belated smile, ‘Thank you, Mr Thanet. So sorry you had to wait.’ She turned back to John and smiled even more charmingly. I could not hear what she said to him, but I saw him glance my way.

  ‘Really?’ he inquired disinterestedly.

  Lisa, who was standing in the opposite doorway, rolled her eyes at me, and then composed her face quickly as Sister looked round.

  Later, as we sat at tea, Lisa said, ‘Gillian, what’s all this I hear about you and Tom Thanet?’

  ‘Me and Tom?’

  ‘Yes.’ She buttered her bread thoughtfully, ‘I heard Sister telling our John that she hardly dared let you loose among the housemen, or words to that effect. Really, dear girl, I had no idea you were such hot stuff.’

  ‘Was that it?’ I laughed. ‘Poor Tom has obviously been stood up by some girl and got two tickets to spend.’

  She smiled, but there was something wrong with her smile. She said she had not known that Tom and I were buddies.

  ‘We aren’t. We only met in Robert. I’m as surprised at his asking me as you are, but he’s a pleasant type, and I suppose he’s between girl-friends. Who was his last, do you know?’

  She said she had simply no conception. Her voice was as unnatural as her smile had been.

  ‘I thought Tom was an old pal of yours, Lisa?’

  ‘Dear girl,’ she said airily, ‘Tom Thanet and I are as one. We have been for years. We came from the same home town ‒ didn’t you know? We almost grew up in each other’s back yards, only we hadn’t any back yards as we both lived in flats.’<
br />
  I suddenly realised why she was behaving so oddly. I said, ‘I think Peter probably asked him to take me.’

  ‘You do?’ Her eagerness proved my secret point.

  ‘Yes.’ I had not thought of this before, but now I wondered if unconsciously I had hit on the truth. Tom and I were casual professional acquaintances, nothing more. But he was a friend of Peter’s and he was also a kind young man. He was the sort of man who would ask a girl to a dance to oblige another man. I told Lisa this, and she beamed.

  ‘He is rather nice,’ she said carefully, ‘isn’t he?’

  I assumed the expression of utter imbecility which I always used when talking to Sister O.P.s, and agreed that Tom Thanet was a credit to the medical profession and a pearl among housemen.

  Chapter Six

  TOM THANET GETS FRATERNAL

  Peter came into the department that evening. Sister and Lisa were off duty, and I was helping the Staff Nurse with the end of the diabetic clinic.

  Blakelock tucked a wisp of hair under her cap and cursed quietly.

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever finish tonight, Snow? It’s ten-past seven and O.P.s officially closed at six.’

  I looked down the corridor. ‘I doubt it, Nurse. There are still eight to be seen.’

  She sighed. ‘The poor dears. They’ve been here hours, but what can we do? They all take so long, and old MacGill is slowing down. There just aren’t the men to go round.’

  ‘Short of a man, Nurse Blakelock?’ Peter was beside her. ‘Can I fall into step?’

  She shook her head. ‘No good, Mr Kier ‒ thanks. What I want,’ she said grimly, ‘is another high-powered physician.’ She handed me the list. ‘Keep them in the right order, Snow. I’m going to see if I can’t hurry things up in the office.’