The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  The patients on the bench shook their heads as she went by. One of them said something, and I saw she had not heard, so I walked over to them. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long. But you should all be home soon.’

  ‘It’s not good enough, Nurse,’ said one middle-aged woman irritably, ‘not good enough at all. I know you girls are doing your best, but there shouldn’t be all this hanging around. Can’t that doctor over there see us?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ I explained that Peter was a surgeon. ‘And you want to see the diabetic specialist, don’t you?’

  She said, ‘I’ve been waiting two and a half hours, Nurse. I don’t mind who I see.’

  I could understand her annoyance, but I could also understand why Dr MacGill was slowing down. He had been in that office since two-thirty this afternoon and had not even come out for tea, but had had a cup of tea and a cake sent up from the canteen. I explained this, and she seemed slightly placated. ‘But if that young doctor over there is doing nothing, Nurse, why can’t he help?’

  I wished Peter anywhere but in O.P.s at that moment.

  ‘Look,’ I said desperately, ‘if you break an electric fire, you don’t take it to the grocer’s to be mended, do you?’

  She asked what that had to do with it. The man beside her nodded wisely. ‘I see what you’re getting at, Nurse. A hospital’s split up into different departments like everything else. That young chap over there doesn’t deal with diabetics.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ I smiled. ‘This is difficult. He can treat diabetics, because he’s a qualified doctor, but he doesn’t here, because in a hospital of this size the various complaints have to be divided up. He’s a surgeon and you want a physician ‒ do you see?’

  They said they did ‒ sort of ‒ and they knew we nurses were doing what we could, but still it wasn’t right. But they were more cheerful now they were arguing the ethics of modern medicine, so I went back to the small note-littered table at the end of the corridor.

  Peter raised his eyebrows. ‘Mutiny quelled?’

  ‘I hope so.’ I looked back at the patients. ‘The awful thing is I do so agree with them; it isn’t right, but what can we do? We’re running a twenty-four-hour service with a twelve-hour medical staff ‒ and so is every other hospital in the country. Something should be done about it.’

  He said lightly, ‘You’d better climb off that soap-box, darling, and save it for the Committee. You talk to them and get them to double the resident staff. Then maybe the clinics will finish on time.’

  ‘Well, somebody ought to do something about it,’ I repeated; ‘those people over there are good and mad. And they think you are wasting time. But if I told them the hours you worked ‒ what is it?’

  He murmured, ‘One hundred and four a week, darling ‒ where’s my union!’

  ‘Is that what one half-day a week and every other week-end from Saturday midday to Sunday night come to?’

  ‘That’s what it comes to ‒ with luck! And don’t forget the night calls, my love! Each and every night!’ He grinned. ‘Why do we do it? It’s a wicked life.’

  ‘I dunno.’ I suddenly remembered that he must have come for something to be still hanging around. I asked what he wanted.

  ‘You.’ His voice was serious but his eyes laughed. ‘I thought you’d be clearing up and I wanted to talk to you.’

  Blakelock had come out of the office and sent the next patient in. The remaining seven shifted up the bench more cheerfully.

  ‘You still here, Mr Kier? Something we can do for you?’

  He bowed. ‘Helpful little bunch, you O.P.s nurses. Actually, I’m here for purely social reasons, Nurse. I wanted to give Nurse Snow a message. But she’s been reading the Riot Act to your family on the bench and I’ve not had the opportunity to deliver same yet.’

  Her pleasant, fat face stiffened. ‘You’ve done what, Nurse Snow?’ she demanded, turning instantly from a good-humoured young woman to a dignified St Joseph’s staff nurse.

  Peter said smoothly, ‘My little joke, Nurse. Nurse Snow was merely commiserating with the unhappy octet.’

  ‘I see.’ She smiled slightly, but she did not seem very reassured with his words. That was understandable. The staff in our hospital were not encouraged to lecture the patients; Sister Tutor’s maxim, ‘the patient is always right ‒ to his or her face,’ was certainly engraved on the classroom walls if not on all our brows.

  She said Peter had better go into Sister’s office and give me his message there. ‘Sister does not encourage stray housemen in this department, Mr Kier.’

  I said, ‘Thank you, Nurse,’ and followed Peter into the office.

  ‘Completely crushed,’ he observed and shut the door.

  ‘For the love of Mike, open that door,’ I said quickly, ‘or the fat will be in the fire! And you really shouldn’t have said that to Blakelock ‒ luckily she’s a nice girl. If Sister had been on, she would have slain us both.’

  He half opened the door. ‘You take too much notice of these tiresome women, darling,’ he said nonchalantly, ‘but listen ‒ I just came to tell you how sorry I am about all this nonsense tomorrow. I wish you hadn’t got me into this, as I would far rather take you, but I can’t very well leave your little friend out in the cold ‒ so I’ll have to go with her. I haven’t had any chance to say this to you, but I wanted to make sure that you’d understand.’

  I said of course I understood and I thought it very civil of him. I did not point out that he and I had been working in the same building for the past three weeks, and any time he had wanted to see me he had only to do what he had done tonight and walk along the corridor.

  He frowned. ‘I’m going to miss you, sweetie. I like dancing with you.’

  ‘You may manage it yet. Tom Thanet’s asked me to go with him. Perhaps we can meet in a jolly Paul Jones.’

  ‘Tom has?’ he asked sharply. ‘When?’

  I told him. I was suddenly very happy to see him so obviously annoyed.

  ‘Damn. Gillian’ ‒ he shook his head ‒ ‘you really are the darnedest girl. This is going to be a wicked party. Me with that Ash girl and you with Tom? Why in the devil did you have to do it?’

  ‘Well ‒’ I smiled helplessly, ‘Peter, it’s all got out of hand. I thought I’d be on nights.’

  He said, ‘Why the heck didn’t you keep your hands on those keys, darling? You’ve made everything so complicated. I loathe the thought of you dancing with someone else.’

  My heart felt as if it had turned over. I forgot everything but his last words and the way he was looking at me.

  ‘Really, Peter?’

  He did not answer immediately. Then he said softly, ‘I wish ‒’ But he had no time to tell me what he wished. Nurse Blakelock was at the door talking to someone over her shoulder.

  ‘Mr Kier is in here,’ she said. ‘I’ll get him for you.’

  John’s voice said, ‘I’ll do that for myself, thanks, Nurse. Don’t bother.’ He opened the door. ‘Oh, there you are, Kier. I’ve been ringing round for you. Have you seen the new girl in Martha?’

  Peter said, ‘Yes, sir. I saw her when she came in. I’m going back after supper to write her up.’

  John said pleasantly, ‘No, you aren’t ‒ you’re going back now. I’ve just been up there myself, and she said she had seen the doctor, but I discovered her notes were blank. How do you expect the nursing staff to treat her if she has no notes and no treatment ordered?’

  Peter said he was very sorry. ‘I’ll nip up there now, sir.’

  John said he was sorry too. ‘I want my own supper and instead I’ve had a wild-goose chase looking for you.’ He appeared to have just noticed me. ‘Evening, Nurse Snow.’ He did not wait for my reply, but sauntered away after Blakelock.

  ‘Darling,’ murmured Peter, ‘I’ll have to git. And snappy.’ He smiled. ‘I’d clean forgotten about those notes ‒ trust old Garth to check up! Ruddy man never misses a thing. Be seeing you!’ He disappeared from the office and down the
corridor towards the stairs and Martha.

  Nurse Blakelock had only five patients still to be seen. She told me to go into supper. ‘This is my party, so I’ll finish here and eat with the pros at eight. There’s no need for you to be late as well.’ John was standing a couple of yards away reading the list of the next day’s clinics that hung on the notice board. She glanced at him and lowered her voice.

  ‘Sorry I snapped at you just now, Snow. I didn’t seriously think you’d be ticking off my patients, but that young man gets in my hair. I cannot stand conceited young men.’

  ‘Mr Kier?’ I was surprised. I thought everyone liked Peter.

  ‘Mmmm,’ she was unusually vehement, ‘Kier. Thinks he’s the answer to a nurse’s prayer. Oh Lord!’ she grinned apologetically, ‘Snow, I do beg your pardon. I clean forgot he was a pal of yours. I’m verging on a diabetic coma myself after this afternoon ‒ do forgive me.’

  I said I did not blame her and would she like me to stand by with the insulin?

  She smiled again. ‘Mightn’t be a bad idea. I missed tea, and my blood sugar must be down to zero. I’m starving, but I can’t leave, so off you go and don’t forget to tell Sister Dining-room that I’m going to be late.’

  John overtook me when I was half-way to the dining-room.

  ‘Dr MacGill seems to have taken residence in Out-Patients tonight,’ he said.

  ‘It was an extra large clinic, I believe.’ I asked if the theatres were busy.

  ‘Moderately. We’ve finished the day’s lists in time, but we’re starting again in an hour.’ He walked with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as all doctors walk in hospital. I thought again about those irate diabetic patients and wondered if they had any conception of the hours worked by the resident staff, and what the reactions of an ordinary citizen would be if he were told at the end of a twelve-hour day to start work again at night, and still be expected to do his normal day’s quota of hours the following day, with no question of overtime or even thanks.

  I said suddenly, ‘Don’t you get very tired, Mr Dexter?’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘Don’t I ‒? Why?’

  I told him what was in my mind.

  He half smiled. ‘They do get so cross, don’t they? Yes, of course I get tired ‒ we all do ‒ including the nurses.’

  ‘But we do go to bed at night,’ I said. ‘I hate to admit this, because, like all nurses, I think no one in any job works as hard as nurses when on the job, but I’m talking of hours. At least when we’re off, we’re off.’

  ‘Nurse Snow,’ he said gravely, ‘you astonish me. Don’t tell me you are going to start a campaign for the rights of the medical profession?’

  I said, ‘Not a campaign. I just don’t think it’s right.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘That the patients should get cross or we should keep ’em waiting?’

  ‘Both,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘There are so many of them ‒ so many thousands of people flocking into hospital all the time. All this illness going on like a factory-belt. There’s never any let-up.’

  He said, ‘I’m not sure that one particularly wants a let-up. I don’t mean from the patients’ angle, but from our own. We none of us have to be here, we’re here because we like it ‒ factory-belt notwithstanding.’

  I was becoming so used to having him around these days that, temporarily, I forgot he was not just one of the boys. ‘Doesn’t the responsibility get you down? You and Dr Cutler carry the hospital between you. Isn’t it a dreadful strain?’

  He said, ‘No. Not at our stage. You get used to it, as you get used to anything. Cutler and I have been at this a good many years.’ He pushed his hand through his hair, and his white streak fell forward. ‘I’ve been qualified fifteen years. Those years make a deal of difference to one’s outlook.’

  I said I supposed they did. ‘I know how my own attitude to illness has altered in the past three-and-a-half years.’

  We had come to the end of the half-mile main corridor and were outside our respective dining-rooms. He stopped and stood with his hands locked behind him.

  ‘What,’ he asked curiously, ‘did you think of it all at first?’

  ‘There wasn’t time to think.’ I smiled at the query. ‘I was far too scared of Sisters and in too much of a hurry to do anything so constructive. And when I did reach the stage of doing things for the patients I was plain terrified.’

  His eyes were amused. ‘But now you take Sisters in your stride?’

  I said, ‘As you’ve just said, Mr Dexter, you can get used to anything.’ And I wondered whether I had over-stepped his dividing line. Apparently I had not.

  ‘Touché,’ he murmured. He looked at me for a few seconds in silence, and I was about to excuse myself and go into supper, when he spoke again.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said, ‘much like giving advice, and I very much dislike giving my advice on anything, unasked. But I’m going to do that now.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Mr Dexter?’ and waited, curious.

  ‘Don’t think that I’m criticising yourself or Nurse Blakelock,’ he said slowly, ‘because I’ve no wish to do that. But don’t you think you’d be wiser to keep your private life out of the hospital? You know,’ his voice was extraordinarily kind, ‘you’re still skating on somewhat thin professional ice. It’s not entirely your fault, but it’s a fact. So for God’s sake don’t play the fool on duty, or the balloon will go up properly.’

  I knew he was right, as I knew what he was alluding to. If Matron or Sister O.P.s had found me alone in that office with Peter there would have been the father and mother of rows. I was a little surprised to find that this time I did not mind John being right. It was probably because I was more used to him.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think. I know that’s no excuse, just an explanation. But thank you.’

  He did not answer; he looked at me and through me as if I was not there at all, and then I saw he really was not seeing me, but was smiling at someone over my head. I turned as Sister O.P.s came out of our dining-room. She was in mufti.

  She looked me over. ‘You are very late for supper, Nurse Snow.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ I held open the door for her, then went in myself, but not before I heard him say, ‘I’m glad I’ve run into you, Sister. There’s something I wanted to ask you.’

  I apologised for being late to Sister Dining-room, told her about Blakelock, and sat down at the fourth-year table. I remembered I had forgotten to say good night to John, but that did not matter as he had forgotten to say it to me. I remembered the dirty look Sister O.P.s had given me and was intensely pleased by the memory.

  None of my set were at supper, and I ate in solitary silence. I was glad of the opportunity to think about Peter and whether I would go with Tom tomorrow night or not. I wanted to work this out on my own before I got back to the girls in the Home tonight. I did not reach any conclusion; I was too occupied with thinking about Sister O.P.s. She was having a humanising effect on John, and for that I had particular cause to be grateful. He had been very civil tonight, when he could well have been very nasty. I hoped he would humanise her in return. She could do with it. And then I thought, does she need anything else? Really? With that wonderful hair, her face, and figure ‒ and now John Dexter thrown in? I decided that Frances Mack was a very fortunate young woman. I wished I could talk to Carol about this.

  I had not seen Carol for over two weeks. The chasm that divides the day and night staff is a very wide one. The night nurses live in a separate home, eat at different hours, and only synchronise with the day girls at lectures. Our own lecture years were over, so we did not even meet in Sister Tutor’s classroom, and Carol had had no nights off since her visit to her old school.

  She came into the bedroom the following evening, as I was finishing the hem of the stole I had decided to make to boost my one evening dress and sagging morale.

  ‘Gillian, I wish you were going with Peter.’

  ‘Don’t be da
ft, honey.’ I looked for my scissors, but they had vanished, so I bit the thread. ‘It’s all worked out according to schedule and Tom Thanet, and we’re all going to have a jolly evening ‒ I hope.’

  She said gloomily that Peter had told her I was going with Tom.

  I shook out the scarlet stole. ‘This’ll need ironing, which is a bore.’ I looked up at her. ‘Have you seen him today?’ I had only accepted Tom that morning.

  She said she had not seen Peter for a few nights. ‘I thought he told me on Monday ‒ but I might be wrong. You know how it is at night. You never know which day it is.’

  I agreed that I knew how it was. I thought how right my wild suggestion to Lisa had been. Peter had briefed Tom, and all that talk last night was just so much talk. Peter was having his cake and eating it.

  ‘How’s Ellen? Busy?’

  ‘No. Pretty quiet. There’s been nothing much to do but be sociable lately.’ She said Peter had taken to having coffee with her. ‘Now that you’ve left Robert I imagine he feels lonely. Kirsty is hardly the coffee-drinking type.’

  ‘Poor Peter. But Kirsty is a future Night Sister whatever else she isn’t. She’s a good girl and, for my bet, the best nurse Joe’s has turned out in years.’

  Carol was not interested in Kirsty’s future. She fingered my stole. ‘It’ll need a lot of ironing. Pity. It’s lovely material but I’m afraid it’ll crush badly.’

  ‘It shouldn’t, according to the shop.’ I draped it over my uniform and moved to the mirror. We stared at my reflection critically. ‘I think it’s just my manhandling,’ I said at last. ‘After all, I’ve only thrown it together in the last hour. Maybe’ ‒ I fingered it smugly ‒ ‘maybe I was wrong to panic about messing up my nursing life. I’d have done all right if I had been thrown on the cold hard world with my needle.’

  Carol, being a night nurse, took me seriously. Life is a grim affair after a couple of months of night work. She shook her head.

  ‘There’s a packet of difference between a good amateur and a professional dressmaker.’