The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

I was so used to being lectured by everyone with whom I came into contact these days ‒ and also so used to his calling me absurd, with reason ‒ that I stood docile and waited for the lecture to proceed, ready to murmur a mechanical, ‘Yes, Mr Dexter, no, Mr Dexter, anything you say, Mr Dexter,’ at appropriate intervals. He did not say anything. He seemed to be still waiting for my explanation. I had no energy for invention, so I repeated that I had wanted fresh air.

  He said, ‘And you find the air up there peculiarly beneficial? I must try it some time.’ His voice sounded as if he was smiling.

  ‘Yes.’

  Roughly thirty yards from where we stood, and almost hidden by the block on our right, was the concrete-covered ramp that connected all the blocks of the hospital. Now we heard more footsteps, and then men’s voices. This was to be expected, and was one of the reasons why I had chosen to come down by the irregular route. The resident staff walked miles up and down that ramp every night as they went on their rounds.

  Peter and one of the obstetrical house-physicians were walking in our direction. The O.H.P. said, ‘I’ll hop on to Mary, Peter. Give her my regards!’

  Peter called back, ‘I’ll do that. See you later, Roger. This little sociability won’t keep me long. I’ll be back for that beer before I start my round.’

  The O.H.P. walked across the grass in the opposite direction, and Peter disappeared round the block.

  John said, ‘I won’t keep you, Nurse,’ and was gone before I realised he was moving. For once my reflexes worked quickly. I shot after him without bothering to work out why I wanted him back.

  ‘Just a moment, please, Mr Dexter.’

  He was near the ramp. When he turned, his face was in the darkness again. ‘Want something, Nurse?’ he asked coolly.

  I said, ‘Yes,’ and ran out of courage.

  I knew there was no point in what I had done; what did he care if I hung around corners waiting for young men? He did not care to help me explain either. He said, ‘Oh?’ and I dried up completely. Possibly this was apparent from my expression. The ramp light was now on my face. He said at last, ‘Why not say it and have done, Nurse Snow? You do want to tell me something, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I hesitated. ‘I wanted to tell you that I was doing what I said, taking the air. I wasn’t hanging around waiting for Mr Kier.’

  ‘Would it have mattered if you were?’

  I said, ‘Not to you, naturally. But it would have to me. I don’t like ‒ dark corners.’

  He said he was sure I did not.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been visiting Nurse Ash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Good.’

  I wished I had never started this asinine conversation. I wished all the routine wishes you have when you are acutely embarrassed: that I would fall through the ground, be struck by lightning, or simply dead. Anything was preferable to this.

  I mumbled, ‘I’m sorry I’ve delayed you. I just wanted to explain.’

  He said evenly, ‘That wasn’t necessary, but thank you.’

  I shivered and clutched at my cloak. ‘I think I’ve had enough fresh air. I’d better get back to the Home.’

  He nodded. ‘Far better. But if you are cold why not go back through the hospital and out of Casualty? It’s the shortest way.’ He noticed my hesitation. ‘Or are you anxious for exercise as well as air?’

  ‘No. I’ve had enough exercise. I’ve been on all day.’

  He walked down the ramp, and he told me he was going to Peter and Paul. ‘I did four chaps from there this evening. I thought I’d look at them before I started my round.’ He asked again how I had found Carol. ‘Cutler told me she had a nasty chest when she came in. I’m glad she’s picked up again.’

  He was being extremely civil, and I was grateful to his flow of hospital small talk. I was dumbfounded by my own folly, and above all by the new folly that I could no longer ignore. I was so busy with my thoughts that he had to ask the same question twice before I answered it. He wanted to know if I had any idea how Carol had become so ill.

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose it just came on. She probably got very run down through being on nights.’

  ‘Hardly, in her fourth year. You get acclimatised to it by then. We wouldn’t have any night nurses around if you didn’t.’ We were in the hospital now. I glanced up at him.

  ‘If it isn’t the effect of nights, I’ve no idea.’

  He grinned quickly. ‘Off the record, Nurse, what did go on at that last party in the Medical School? I can’t help feeling it must have been some party, judging by the aftermath.’

  ‘What aftermath, Mr Dexter?’

  ‘Nurse Ash has had bronchial pneumonia,’ he announced calmly, ‘two of the dressers, who were the hosts, I gather, are down with feverish chills, and one of the clerks has a broken nose. And they all went down the day after the party. I remember one or two affairs in my past, and I merely wondered what particular line of student hilarity caused this. That’s all.’ He looked down at me. ‘I hoped you could assuage my curiosity.’

  I was just going to say that I was unable to tell him anything, since I had not been present, when he went on.

  ‘Once ‒ just before I qualified and we were all pretty lit up, as everyone is at the prospect of finals ‒ we had a terrific affair. We asked some Martha’s men across; they came over the river in hordes and brought roughly a hundredweight of flour and a gallon or so of gentian violet to make the party go. It certainly went.’ He grinned again. ‘I can’t describe what we looked like.’

  I looked at his spotless coat, equally pure shirt collar, and neat tie. ‘You got in a mess?’

  His eyes were disappearing with amusement. ‘Mess is an understatement. We were soaked in deep purple.’

  ‘What did you do?’ I forgot my embarrassment in my fascination at the idea of a purple giant.

  ‘Only one thing to do. We frog-marched them to the lake in the park and threw them in. Then we jumped in after them, and the party degenerated into free for all water-polo. We used an air-cushion as a ball,’ he said reminiscently, ‘until the cops broke it up. And this was in November ‒ and colder than it is now.’

  ‘Did any of you get ill?’

  He said he thought they all got colds. ‘My main recollection of those next few days is hazy with the smell of eucalyptus, swallowing aspirins and whisky, and trying to rub that wretched gentian violet off myself.’

  ‘Did you get it off in time?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only on the more visible areas of my person. I hoped the examiners would consider my pale mauve face and neck as an unusual symptom of examination shock. And that,’ he added, ‘is why when I heard about Nurse Ash and those boys, I wondered if perhaps the party might not have contributed to their being warded. After all, Nurse,’ he said reasonably, ‘you don’t break your nose because you are on night-duty.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you about the party. I wasn’t there myself, but I haven’t heard of anything unusual going on and I would have done. Three of my set besides Nurse Ash were there.’

  We had reached the foot of the stairs that led to Peter and Paul.

  He stopped smiling at the past and came back to the present.

  ‘But Kier was at that do?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’ he asked curiously.

  I said, ‘I wasn’t asked.’

  He put his hands behind him and stood with his feet apart like a guardsman at ease. He looked genuinely concerned that an unimportant young man should not have asked an equally unimportant young woman to a party. I was reminded of something a man in Robert once said: ‘You feel that big chap minds what happens to you, Nurse. Not just that he wants to get you better and out, but that it makes him feel bad to see you’re bad.’

  I knew the other patients felt that too in different ways; they all liked John, and not because of his skill. Patien
ts in reality care very little about the skill or qualifications of the doctor treating them; a doctor is a doctor, any doctor as skilled as another ‒ to them. But they care a great deal whether a doctor is kind or not, and whether he is able to project that kindness.

  I had never experienced his concern when applied to myself before. I understood what that man in Robert meant very well.

  He said, ‘How old are you, Nurse?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘Dust and ashes? That’s how it seems, doesn’t it?’ His voice was very gentle.

  I had avoided thinking of Carol since I left her; I could not avoid the thought any longer. I nodded.

  He said, ‘And this is where I’m supposed to tell you that you are very young and have your life ahead, and all you need is hard work and a good digestion to see you through.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Only I’m not going to. You’ve endured enough strictures from me on a variety of subjects and occasions. You,’ he said deliberately, ‘are a very patient young woman, Nurse, and you’ll pick yourself up very nicely without any assistance from me.’

  I said, ‘It gets exhausting.’

  ‘Picking up the pieces?’ I nodded again. ‘It does. And the snag there is,’ he went on slowly, ‘that every time one gets floored, although one can get up again, one leaves a piece down there on the floor.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t know other people felt that way, too.’

  He did not answer for a few seconds, then he said, ‘Oh yes. They do.’ He shifted his shoulders. ‘And now I had better get moving on to Peter and Paul. And I expect you are anxious to get moving back to your colleague Nurse Smith, and the cup of cocoa, or whatever it is you drink at this hour of the night.’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Tea, is it?’ He smiled slightly, ‘And I expect it never keeps you awake?’

  ‘Never, Mr Dexter.’

  ‘So much for its powers as a stimulant,’ he said briskly. ‘Right. Good night, Nurse Snow.’ He turned and walked up the stairs two at a time. I did not move away immediately. I stood and stared at the empty space where he had been standing. Then I heard someone coming down the stairs; I walked away slowly, in case it was him coming back. It was one of the housemen. We exchanged good-evenings, and I went back to our Home.

  Lisa was presiding over the tea-cups. ‘How’s Carol?’

  ‘Much better.’

  She said soberly, ‘Carol’s dead lucky to have got away with it. Blakelock told me tonight how bad she had been. She heard it from Miggins.’ She filled the cups. ‘Really, Carol Ash is a complete fool to play about with her chest in that way.’

  ‘She couldn’t help it,’ I remonstrated. ‘Anyone can get pneumonia. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘Phooey! It’s not one of those things if you rush round to parties and dances with a temp. of 102.’

  ‘She had that temp. at the dance?’ I recollected now how ill Carol had looked that evening. I had put it down to night-duty; a temperature half-controlled by aspirins would give the same appearance. ‘How do you know all this, Lisa?’

  ‘Straight from Carol ‒ via a couple of Staff Nurses. She told Miggins how she’d worked it ‒ staying in bed all day and causing no talk because she was a night girl, and then getting up and gallivanting by night, Miggins told Blakelock that Carol was very pleased with herself. Thought she’d been no end cute.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve no patience’ ‒ she spoke sharply for her ‒ ‘with people who fool around with their health. Surely to goodness, we see enough of what can happen to the poor unfortunates who get these things through no fault of their own! Playing the fool for the fun of it makes me mad! It’s plain stupid ‒ and plain inconsiderate. There’s Ellen without a Night Senior ‒ and have you heard that Kirsty’s got scarlet? Night Sister will be having kittens.’

  ‘Night Sister never has kittens. She says, “Och aye,” and copes.’

  ‘Dear girl,’ said Lisa, ‘don’t be dense. You know how Night Sister loathes not having a spare senior up her sleeve for emergencies. And you know how whenever we are short that’s the time when the emergencies come flocking in.’

  Which was true, as I agreed.

  ‘I know she’s a friend of yours,’ she continued, ‘but really she is a trying girl. Why couldn’t she have been decently ill and left you to go to that dance with Peter? Then Tom might even have asked me, and we’d have had none of the soul-searching we’ve been through lately.’

  ‘John,’ I said thoughtlessly, ‘wondered if she had been chucked into the lake among the ducks.’ I had then to explain myself and she was so enchanted at the prospect of John heaving the Martha’s men into the lake, that she forgot to ask why I was taking air on the fire escape.

  ‘If only I’d been born twenty years sooner, Gill! I can’t bear to have missed seeing our cool, calm, and collected S.S.O. dressed in flour and gentian violet and going berserk with an air-ring.’

  ‘Cushion.’

  ‘Ring, dear girl, makes a better story. Tom will die laughing.’

  I said, ‘No. This isn’t for publication. He probably wouldn’t mind ‒ but I’m not spreading it abroad.’

  She took no notice. ‘It’s the best thing I’ve heard in years. The old devil ‒ keeping it quiet all this time.’

  ‘Hey!’ I said firmly. ‘Listen. No.’

  She stopped laughing. ‘No?’

  She looked at me for a long time. Then she groaned. ‘Oh, no ‒ dear girl ‒ you don’t tell me?’

  ‘I don’t tell you anything.’

  Her eyes appraised me intelligently. ‘So that’s why we can have a jolly laugh at dear Peter?’

  I said, ‘A girl has to laugh at something.’

  She said that was fair enough. ‘And you can have another little bout of hysteria.’

  ‘Sister O.P.s?’

  ‘No. I was thinking of your pal, Carol. Her pneumonia was all in vain. You’ve got a laugh coming to you there, dear girl.’

  I said carefully, ‘How come?’

  ‘You know very well how come. She was determined to risk anything ‒ even, glorious melodrama though it sounds, her life. People,’ she reminded me, ‘do still hop it with pneumonia. She must be pretty attached to your ex-young man.’

  I said I thought she probably was.

  She said, ‘Well, take my tip, and don’t give her your blessing. It won’t go down well.’

  ‘Why not?’ I had always known Lisa was quick on the uptake, but not that she was as quick as this.

  She hesitated. ‘To be candid ‒ which isn’t easy or wise as you are fond of her, but what the hell ‒ because sometimes a kind thought gets read as patronage.’

  She said she had to go and ring Tom. ‘Help yourself to more tea, only don’t wait if you want a bath. I may be chatting quite a while.’ She put on her shoes. ‘One thing,’ she added slowly, ‘they aren’t officially engaged yet. That’s a point.’

  I agreed that it was, and poured myself another cup of tea.

  Chapter Twelve

  CHRISTIAN IS A QUIET WARD

  That seemed to be that. All the ends neatly tied, and only my own was flapping loose. I concentrated on work, and was very conscious how lucky I was to be able to do that. Blakelock went down with scarlet, which meant an extra pressure of work on all the O.P. staff; oddly, Sister’s temper improved as the work increased. There was no time to worry over trifles and she even ignored Johnny Brandon’s yell of ‘Watcha, Snow White!’

  Lisa and I each ran two clinics simultaneously, as Sister had to deal with the whole administration of the department single-handed. A staff nurse’s job resembles that of a Commander on a ship in the Royal Navy. The Sister owns the ward or department, the staff nurse runs it. Matron sent us an extra first-year pro; all the other pros moved up a step, and the Senior Pro took over from myself in the Children’s Room; I was substituted for Lisa, and she, to her horror, was officially acting staff nurse. Sister, with a complete staff again, re-tightened her lips and her discipline, and we were on
the verge of going to Matron to demand a transfer en masse when two of our pros caught scarlet fever.

  ‘The dear children,’ said Lisa when I told her this, ‘aren’t they just too wonderful? I suppose Sister hasn’t got it?’ she added hopefully. She was having a morning off and was still in bed. We were too busy to have whole days off, and so our weekly day off had been split, and we had either an afternoon or a morning.

  ‘She hadn’t got it this morning.’ I had rushed over to change my apron. ‘I’ll have to scoot now ‒ she was livid with me for getting in her way when she spilled that carbolic, and only sent me to change because she said I was bound to get the ugly gangrene.’

  She clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘You are so trying, Gill. Fancy letting yourself get burnt with raw carbolic?’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘Now if you’d been a senior nurse at St Martha’s Hospital, London, it would have rolled off you like water. Seriously, did you burn yourself?’

  ‘No. Only a few drops got through and I washed ’em off at once. But Sister was mighty narked. And it was she who didn’t cork the jar. She used it last for her instruments.’ I buckled my belt. ‘See you on duty this afternoon. Enjoy your breakfast.’

  I did not see her on duty that afternoon because Matron sent for me half-way through the morning.

  ‘Christian ward is now in quarantine for scarlet fever, Nurse Snow. You have had it?’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’ I guessed what was coming and looked at her right ear to hide the relief I felt at the thought of leaving O.P.s.

  She said the night staff was very depleted.

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I had not intended moving you from Out-Patients as soon as this, but circumstances have forced my hand. Night Sister and Sister Christian are both willing to have you back on night duty, so you may return to Christian as night senior tonight.’

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

  She asked if I had had a day off this week. ‘I had the morning on Sunday, Matron. I was due for a half-day tomorrow, but I am not doing anything special.’

  She looked up at me. ‘I dislike you nurses missing your off-duty ‒ you should have sufficient free time. You have been very busy in Out-Patients recently,’ she said reproachfully, as if I personally was responsible for Blakelock’s scarlet, ‘and, now those two probationers have contracted the disease, Sister will be even more rushed.’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘I do not know what Sister will say to me when I remove one of her two remaining senior nurses, but there is no alternative.’