The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Come on, chum,’ said John, ‘try breathing.’

  The baby hung lifeless. John slipped his hands up and held both the feet in one hand, then slapped the fat, perfect little back.

  ‘Come on, chum,’ he said again, ‘say something.’ He squeezed the minute chest wall, ‘Sister, I may need ‒’ but he did not need anything. The baby suddenly disapproved of his manhandling and let out a pathetic little wail. A faint sigh echoed round the theatre, as if we too had all been holding our breath.

  John wrapped the baby in a clean towel and handed him to the staff midwife. ‘He’s all yours, Nurse.’

  She took the baby and laid him in his cot. She tilted the foot of the cot, so that the baby was nearly standing on his head; he went on crying for a few minutes, and then there was silence. I had a free moment, so I crossed over to look at him. The staff midwife jerked her thumb upward. The baby was lying with one hand pressed like a starfish over his mouth. He looked very bored, and very normal.

  When it was all over, and the mother had been wheeled away, John peeled off his gloves. ‘Is that girl’s husband around, Sister?’

  She said he was waiting in Mary.

  He said he was glad. ‘I’d like a word with him. I think it’s time someone told him the facts of life. I wonder what he would have done with his wife today if he had been somewhere where there was no general hospital on tap?’

  Sister sorted her instruments. ‘I understand they consider childbirth a natural occurrence, and did not bother about the possibility of complications.’

  John stretched his fingers. The O.H.P. whose case this was said, ‘I had a chat with him, sir, but I don’t know that he took in any of what I was saying.’

  ‘He didn’t, eh?’ John took off his cap and gown and dropped them on the table. The other men did the same, with the exception of Peter, who dropped his on the floor and then stepped on the gown as he walked out of the theatre.

  Sister said, ‘I think that husband thought I was just a fussy old woman.’

  ‘One of those?’ John nodded to himself, then smiled briefly. ‘Right.’ He nodded again, at her this time. ‘Thank you, Sister ‒ I’ll see you in Mary later,’ and followed the other men to the surgeons’ room.

  Sister Mary ‒ who, like all midwives, could at times be terrifying, but was always more human than any general ward sister could ever be ‒ said with satisfaction, ‘Well, Nurse Shaw ‒ there is one husband who is going to have the fear of God put into him! And he deserves it. The selfish boy.’ She pushed her trolley towards me. ‘I dislike doing this, Nurse, but I’m afraid you must do my cleaning for me. I must get back to Mary.’

  I said Nurse Davis and I would be happy to clear up. ‘We’ve nothing else to do now.’

  She surprised me by thanking me for what we had done. ‘You must come along to Mary and see that baby. He’s a lovely child.’

  When she had gone I called Davis. ‘You had better go to first supper. I’ll start on this mess and go when you get back. We ought to eat now as we’re free, in case anything else comes up.’

  She agreed. ‘This is obviously one of those days. What do you think we’ll get next?’

  ‘I dunno. What have we had, general ‒ urological ‒ and now midder? Oh, we haven’t had any fractures, and it’s not yet eight! Lots of time before we finish.’

  She looked at the mackintosh sink. ‘And lots of scrubbing. Do you know, Nurse, until I worked here I always thought everything stopped when the case ended?’

  I said I had thought the same. ‘I’m not all that keen on scrubbing brushes. Maybe that’s why I’m no theatre girl. I’d rather be asked to boil an egg.’

  She laughed and went out to change.

  I washed the dishes and bowls, stacked the sterilisers, switched on the electricity, and placed the large silver egg-timers on each steriliser as I closed the lid. The sand dropped slowly through the glass waists. I washed the trolleys with carbolic solution, then remembered the nailbrushes, and had to dirty one of the sterilisers. I took a bowl, scrubbing brush, soap, and clean cloth, and started on the table.

  My hands were busy, but my mind was now tolerably free. I wondered what John was saying to that husband. I wondered when I would have the opportunity to tell Peter what I thought of surgeons who dropped their gowns on the floor for nurses to pick up. I thought about that baby and what would have happened if he had not started breathing. And then I thought about midwifery generally, and whether I would train for that when I finished here in a few months. I had never bothered about my future previously, not only because of Peter, but because I knew my record here was reasonably good, and even if I was not in the gold-medal class I had a fair chance of getting that staff nurse’s job in Christian. That would fill the next year, and beyond that I had never looked. Well, that job would not be mine now; Matron would not, and probably could not, overlook that business in Robert, so I would have to think of something else.

  Peter? Not him. Not any longer. Tom and Carol had only told me what my subconscious had always known, and his recent behaviour merely underlined. He never had the faintest intention of marrying me, or to give him his due, had pretended that he had. I could hardly blame him for not fulfilling my wishful thinking.

  Midder, I decided glumly, seemed the only answer. But did I really want to do midder? I did not.

  I straightened my back; the water in my bowl was too cold, and I needed a refill. I carried the bowl half-way across the theatre and then stopped. What did I want to do? I had to do something.

  And then a most peculiar thought arrived in my brain. Two words, unasked and unexplained, that shook me physically as well as mentally. I dropped the bowl I was holding, then gaped idiotically at the mess on the floor. A steriliser spluttered and boiled over. I leapt at it, switched it off, and stupidly pulled back the lid. Quite naturally, a cloud of boiling steam hit my forehead. I yelped and jumped back.

  A voice behind me said calmly, ‘Nurse, have you gone quite mad? Don’t you know that steam burns?’

  I turned round, cursing inwardly. What on earth had he to come back for? I said, ‘Thank you very much; it was nothing, Mr Dexter.’

  He ignored my words and wandered round the theatre. ‘Where’s the soda bic.?’ He took down the large glass jar marked ‘Soda Bic.’ from its place on the glass shelf by one of the sinks.

  ‘Come here, Nurse. Take off that mask, and let me see what you’ve done to your face.’

  I did as he said. He looked up from the solution of the stuff he was mixing in a small bowl. ‘Oh. I hadn’t realised you were behind that yashmak, Nurse Snow. I should have guessed. Come and put this on that forehead of yours.’

  I felt an utter fool. ‘It really is quite all right, thank you.’

  He reached for the unsterile swab jar. ‘Don’t be absurd, Nurse. You don’t want a blistered forehead, and you’ll get one if you don’t do something about it. Now, stand still and look up.’

  I had expected him to leave me to apply the wretched stuff, but he did it himself, and since I could scarcely wrench the swab from his fingers I again did as he said. He did not take long, and then he threw the swab into one of the dirty-dressing buckets and looked at my forehead critically.

  ‘Shift around, the light’s behind you ‒ I can’t see if the line of demarcation has gone.’

  ‘It isn’t stinging any more.’ I half turned. ‘Has it?’

  He looked down at me. ‘Going. Did it hurt much?’

  ‘Not really. Just gave me a bit of a shock. Good thing I had a mask on.’

  He said dryly, ‘Very good. How long have you been behind that mask? I didn’t know you were in the theatre. You’ve done your time here, surely?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Last summer.’

  He washed out the bowl, left it to dry, and washed his hands. ‘I remember. You were in on that last Caesar they did here. The one Mr Craddock did.’

  I was quite surprised that he should remember so well. He had never given any sign of knowing that I existed at
that time. I agreed that I had seen the previous Caesar in this theatre.

  ‘Are you back for good?’

  ‘Only one day, as far as I know.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘You’re having quite a postgraduate tour of the departments, Nurse. Good experience.’

  I said, ‘Perhaps I need it ‒ if I do daft things like leaning over a boiling steriliser.’

  He said, ‘Perhaps you do.’ Then he asked me why I had dropped that bowl.

  ‘Oh ‒ that bowl?’

  He nodded. ‘Did you just feel you had to throw something?’

  ‘No.’ I hesitated. ‘I just dropped it.’

  He said mildly, ‘That’s what it looked like. Most extraordinary sight ‒ a respectable Joe’s nurse suddenly heaving bowls around an empty theatre.’

  ‘Well ‒ I didn’t know anyone was watching.’

  He seemed much amused. ‘I was aware of that. I only came back for my watch ‒ I’d left it somewhere and thought it might be by our sink.’

  ‘I’m afraid you haven’t. I’ve cleared over there and there was no watch about.’

  He stepped across the pool on the floor and saw that I was right.

  ‘Perhaps it’s in Henry.’

  ‘Yes. I hope so,’ I said vaguely. I had noticed that all the egg-timers had run through.

  He saw the direction in which I was looking. ‘Instruments boiling to a jelly?’ he inquired pleasantly. ‘Hadn’t you better get them out? Only watch out for the steam.’

  ‘I think I had better.’ I turned off the heat, stood back, and opened the lids gingerly.

  He said, ‘Nurse, before you start, hand me that squeegee beside you, please.’

  I did as he asked automatically, then realised what he proposed doing. ‘I’m going to do that later, Mr Dexter.’

  He took the squeegee from me. ‘You haven’t got any sharps cooking in there, I hope?’

  I said the needles, knives, and scissors were soaking in carbolic. ‘Please don’t bother about the floor.’

  He was obviously in a very good humour tonight, and he had reason to be. He had had a successful day; eight adult patients were the better for his surgery, and in Mary there was a black-haired baby, who, but for him, might have been dead tonight, and there was his tea-party. Sister O.P.s was free, and I wondered if he had been out with her. By the way he was smiling, I thought it must have been a successful tea.

  ‘You get on with your instruments, Nurse,’ he said calmly, as he pushed the rubber squeegee and the water across the floor to the curved drain. The floor was almost dry when he finished; he left the squeegee to drip in the drain and washed his hands again.

  ‘I have to go up to Henry now; I’ll see if they found any spare watches there.’ He walked over to the trolley on which I was unloading the steaming instruments. ‘I hope we don’t have to bother this theatre again tonight.’ He picked up an artery forceps, swung it by the thumb grip to cool it, tested the spring, then snapped it shut. He replaced it in one corner of the trolley, as if it was the marker on a parade ground.

  I said I hoped he would find his watch and I hoped there would be no more operations necessary that night. I thanked him for doing my floor. He nodded absently as if he was not listening.

  ‘Turn to the light again, Nurse; let’s see that forehead.’

  I raised my chin and twisted my head round, reluctantly. I was very conscious of the fact that the steam and the soda bic. must have removed the last traces of powder from my forehead as successfully as my mask invariably removed it from the rest of my face. The only consolation was that he was unlikely to notice that I resembled a boiled egg; that my turban had risen and was now high on the back of my head, and the hair pulled on the skin of my brow. The light was directly on my face as he had requested, so I could not look up; I looked instead at his neat white shirt and sober tie (S.S.O.s always wear sober ties), and thought of my irrational dislike of men who wear coloured shirts. Peter once had a pink one; it took me months to get over the shock.

  He said, ‘Right. You can be quite happy about that. No marks.’

  Oddly, he did not sound at all happy, and when I looked at him his expression had altered. He looked as if he was regretting having wasted the last ten minutes in here, and murmured, ‘Good night, Nurse,’ so formally that I was very sure he was.

  I said, ‘Thank you, Mr Dexter, good night,’ in a similar tone. I knew my place; I was quite happy to stay in it; I had not sought his ministrations or assistance. I made quite a point of telling myself all this as I heard him walk out of the theatre corridor. But when the outer door had closed and I was alone, I discovered I had picked up the artery forceps with which he had been fiddling. I held it in my hand for a long time and looked at it although it was not the first artery forcep I had ever seen. Then I put it back on the trolley and went on drying the others. The light behind me caught the metal instruments, and they glittered as if they were really silver and not merely plated.

  Lisa limped into my room when I was undressing.

  ‘Dear girl, my feet are killing me. This ward work is too much for a decadent O.P.s girl. I’m going to make some tea. Want some?’

  ‘Love it.’ I told her about my day in the theatre. ‘It was such a relief to work with a pleasant Sister again.’

  She said she was delighted to hear it; she personally wouldn’t know. ‘Dear Sister Ellen and dear Sister Out-Patients are blood-brothers ‒ I won’t say Sisters; I loathe puns.’

  I giggled feebly and said Carol got along all right with Sister Ellen, and maybe Sister Ellen was just allergic to jobbers.

  ‘She’s always been allergic to me,’ said Lisa sadly. ‘She gave me hell while I was a pro ‒ and she gave me hell today, the dear one. But I’m happy you were rescued from the stock scissors in O.P.s. Making stock all day is the bottom.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I threw off my dressing-gown and pulled on my dress and blue belt. ‘Lisa!’ I struggled with my collar. ‘I opened the department this morning and I haven’t shut it. I’ll have to go back.’

  She groaned sympathetically. ‘You will, dear girl. Sister will tear you to teeny weeny little pieces in the morning if you don’t. Nip off, and I’ll have the tea all set when you get back.’

  I rushed downstairs, across the park, and through the hospital to Out-Patients. Fortunately I met no one, and I was able to close all the windows and doors I had opened, check on whether or not I had turned on the radiators (I had not), and leave it all as it had been when I arrived there alone this morning. I had switched off the last light, and was about to leave, when I heard someone coming down the stairs. I stepped back into the first dark doorway and waited. Two people came down the stairs and then walked along the corridor in the opposite direction to my doorway. They switched on the corridor light, but did not look round. I stepped gingerly round and up the stairs. I was moving slowly in order to be quiet. I had seen who it was, and as I went up the stairs I could not help overhearing a fragment of their conversation.

  John said, ‘I’m sorry to have been so late this afternoon.’

  Sister O.P.s said that really didn’t matter at all, she had so much to do over in the Home. ‘But I wanted to see you tonight to ask you about your letter ‒’ I heard a door close and nothing more. They must have gone into her duty-room.

  Why not? I suddenly felt very tired. It was her duty-room. I went quickly up the rest of the stairs to the first floor, then along the corridor, and down by the next staircase. As I reached the main corridor that joined all the ground floors of the hospital I saw Peter loitering by the statue of one of our famous deceased physicians. Without stopping to consider why I did it, I shot into one of the telephone booths that lined that particular stretch of the corridor and, turning my back on him, pretended to make a call. After a little while I glanced round and saw he had gone, so I left the booth. Outside in the darkness of the park I smiled at my cloak and dagger act, but I was not really

  amused ‒ I was only very puzzled.

  W
hen I was in that booth I had looked at my reflection in the small glass. There was no sign of any scalding on my forehead. If I had been alone like most nurses I should have done nothing but curse the perversity of sterilisers, and probably have had a blistered face as a result. I did not feel that it made any odds if a face like mine was blistered or not. It was too thin and too pale, and the only colour anywhere was in my eyebrows and eyes, if near black is a colour. That mirror had only confirmed the suspicions I had had since childhood, that I resembled a horse that had gone into a decline. If only, I thought, as I reached the steps of our Home, I had golden, hair and violet eyes, I would not have to skulk in phone boxes because I looked too plain to meet my young man. I was quite savage about all this until I realised that my skulking in that phone box had had nothing

  whatever to do with Peter.

  Lisa said the tea was stewing nicely and any moment now should be drinkable. ‘O.P.s all serene?’

  ‘Quite serene. I nipped in and out like a ghost.’

  She glanced at me casually, then looked back a second time. ‘You look rather like a ghost ‒ has that miserable man been upsetting you again?’

  ‘No. Actually he’s been rather nice this evening. And he did a good job of work on that Caesar. He got a lovely baby.’

  ‘Dear Gillian,’ she said patiently, ‘since when have the dear house-surgeons been doing Caesars?’

  ‘Oh ‒ you mean Peter?’ I shook my head. ‘No ‒ he hasn’t been upsetting me. I’ve been too busy today to remember his existence ‒ apart from the time when he dropped his gown on the floor.’ I told her how this had infuriated me.