The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  I thought Sister would probably give three loud cheers. I said, ‘No, Matron.’

  She told me that four night seniors had been in the latest batch of victims, ‘and the entire Christian night staff. That was one of the reasons that decided your case. I cannot have two new night nurses in that ward; one of you must know the ward, and you were there as a senior relief and a day senior.’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She said she was glad I did not mind forgoing my half-day. ‘And I am afraid you will have to manage without off-duty today, Nurse. Will you ask Sister to send you to lunch at half past one, and then you must go straight to bed if you are to work tonight.’ She picked up a list. ‘I shall be sending Sister Out-Patients a spare Senior Probationer to take your place, and a junior probationer to stand in for Nurse Waller and Nurse Dulain, who were warded this morning. Would you tell Sister that for me, and say I am sure she will be able to manage?’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She had not dismissed me, so I waited, holding my hands behind my back in the traditional stance of Joe’s nurses.

  ‘I sincerely trust,’ she said, ‘that this epidemic terminates shortly. If it does not we will have to close some of the departments, possibly even more wards. We have thirty-one nurses either at, or on their way to, the isolation hospital. And it has now spread to the resident staff. Two of the house-physicians woke with suspicious sore throats this morning, so Dr Cutler tells me.’ Her eyes were anxious and yet amused. ‘I may find myself back in a ward yet, Nurse ‒ if I do not find myself in the isolation hospital.’

  ‘Have you not had it, Matron?’

  She shook her head. ‘I have not, Nurse.’

  I said I hoped she did not get it.

  ‘None of us are indispensable ‒ but I hope not, too. My nursing staff are quite sufficiently pressed without their having to do my work as well.’ Then she asked if I felt well. ‘You have been looking very tired recently, Nurse.’

  I said I felt quite well, thank you.

  ‘I do not like having to send you back on night-duty,’ she said. ‘You have already done two months as a night senior, but, apart from any other concern, I need night senior nurses.’ She pursed her lips. ‘That morphia has never been traced, Nurse. It appears quite inexplicable.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She nodded. ‘Home Sister tells me you were extremely upset about leaving Robert Ward.’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  She looked at me steadily, and then she smiled. ‘You will enjoy going back to Christian. Not,’ she added quickly, ‘that that in any way enters into why you are going back there, but I am happy that you will be able to settle down again. That will be all, Nurse.’

  Lisa was at lunch, and delighted for my sake. ‘Dear girl, how splendid for you. But I’m going to miss you at the daily round, the common task! There won’t be a soul to laugh with!’

  ‘Try Sister. Learn to love her. Maybe that’s all she needs.’

  She leered. ‘Is it, dear girl?’

  ‘The love of a good woman.’ I told her how nice Matron had been. ‘Really matey.’

  She said Matron was crafty. ‘She’s got us all taped. She knows just when to crack the whip and just when to relax. But she’s not a bad old soul at heart. I like her ‒ quite.’

  ‘A Joe’s girl, that’s why. Can you imagine what she’d be like if she came from Martha’s?’

  She had lost interest in Matron. ‘Seen John this morning, Gill?’

  ‘No. The pundits have rallied, and O.P.s was stiff with titles taking clinics. Also the fishing season is over. I expect he was in the theatre. Not that it makes any difference. He and I are back to square one. “Morning, Mr Dexter,” “Afternoon, Mr Dexter,” “Good night, Mr Dexter.” Our sole conversation.’

  ‘Snappy dialogue,’ she said, ‘keeps a man interested.’ She sighed. ‘I dunno, Gill. Wish I did. I’m fond of that man, you know. I think he’s a good type ‒ and I hate to think of him spending a lifetime hanging round that woman ‒ but what can you do when a girl looks like she does? Expect he just doesn’t see what she’s really like.’

  ‘So she’s so damned lovely that you can’t expect any man to see through it.’ I turned to her. ‘Except your Tom. He doesn’t like her.’

  She said thoughtfully, ‘I’d love to say Tom was perfect, but he’s not the only one. I’ve told you that before. In the days when the young men and I were well acquainted I gathered that most of them loathed her guts.’

  ‘Oh well, John’s just different. That’s what we like about him.’

  She said, ‘Trouble is, he’s been too busy. Now he’s fallen ‒ whang. Always happens that way ‒ and he’s getting on ‒ nearly forty ‒ dangerous age.’

  ‘He’s not forty ‒ he’s thirty-seven.’ I was indignant.

  She laughed, not unkindly. ‘He was thirty-seven last year, dear girl. But, if you like, time can stand still. Anything you say.’ She stood up and pushed in her chair. ‘Back to the inferno. How well I know how Dante felt. You’re lucky to be out of it.’

  ‘Very lucky.’

  She said, ‘And you’ll be glad to get back to a ward. That’ll be fun for you.’

  I agreed, and thought how even she, who was the soul of optimism these days, could not pretend that she saw any future for me anywhere in anything but my job.

  Christian was very quiet, and the twenty-two children were asleep. Two cots in the ward, and the small room in which Clifford Brown had been, were empty. Sister Christian told me the ward had closed that morning.

  ‘We are keeping these children until they are clear, then we’ll wait until we empty, fumigate, and spring-clean before readmitting. One good thing about scarlet is the short incubation period. We won’t have to wait long to see if those two this morning have handed it round.’ She told me her staff nurse had gone off with a suspicious sore throat that afternoon. ‘I expect she’s on the way to the isolation hospital now.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘That place is going to bless the name of St Joseph’s.’

  When she had finished giving me her report I thanked her for telling Matron that she was willing to have me in her ward.

  ‘I was quite satisfied with your work when you were last here, Nurse Snow. Why should I not be willing to have you back?’ She unpinned her drug keys. ‘I don’t suppose I need remind you not to leave these out of your possession.’

  ‘You don’t, Sister.’

  I felt a new woman with those keys jangling against my bib, and normal for the first time in nine weeks. I was sorry the girls had scarlet, but was selfishly grateful that there was this staff crisis. Christian was a pleasant and peaceful ward, although not often as silent as it was tonight; Sister Christian was the closest thing to a friend I had among the Sisters, and there would be no strain. It was wonderful to be able to look forward to going on duty again; until this bout in O.P.s I had been able to do that since my first year. First years ‒ irrespective of your private affairs ‒ are terrible things. No nurse in her senses can enjoy that year ‒ I have never met one who did ‒ but once you have passed it, slowly, your attitude alters, until half-way through the second year you discover that it is not bad at all, and in the third, that yours is a very pleasant job. Fourth years are the best. You have not the responsibility of a staff nurse, but you are treated as a semi-staff nurse, you know what you have to do and why, you know where everything is, and who everyone is. These are important points. One of the worst points of most hospitals, when you are new to them, is the state of profound ignorance in which you find yourself. Sister says, ‘Have you seen the pathologist?’ ‘Get this or that from the steriliser,’ ‘Set a trolley for a lumbar puncture ‒ a dry dressing ‒ a cut-down transfusion,’ and you have no notion of what she means, or how to do it. Sister Tutor has taught you all this in the classroom; but no classroom resembles a ward with forty beds and forty pairs of eyes watching you all day long. Naturally you are not supposed or expected to manage alone; but you do not discover this until you
are past caring. Pros are frightened of doing things wrong, never realising that they are never given anything of importance to do, and if they get a setting in the wrong order the staff nurse is there to correct it.

  Pros are also taught never to make excuses, and that ‘I haven’t time,’ or, ‘I don’t know,’ are forbidden explanations; you have to make time, you have to learn how to do this, that, or the other, and the quicker you learn the easier your working life becomes. Consequently whenever a ward was slack at Joe’s the pros flocked to the staff nurse for instructions, and passed quiet half-hours laying unnecessary trolleys, and learning the positions of the bowls and instruments parrot-wise. It may seem a peculiar system, but it worked. And the day appeared when you stopped being a parrot and found yourself thinking: what’s he going to need for his dressing? But when a ward is rushed a mechanical pro is a useful person.

  My new junior, a girl called Stane, was an intelligent child. As soon as she had finished her routine she came up to me.

  ‘Nurse, can I do some settings?’

  ‘What don’t you know?’

  ‘Aspirations ‒ tappings ‒ I’m hopeless at that.’

  ‘How about transfusions?’

  She said she thought she was all right on them.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you must know them backwards. Set an emergency transfusion with the blood box, and a cut-down, on one trolley, and a chest aspiration on the other. Don’t bother to cook the things ‒ we don’t want the steriliser on, so do them in the bathroom. I’ll come and go through them with you when you’ve finished.’

  She said, ‘Child or adult?’

  ‘We’ve masses of time. Why not do both?’

  Tom was the first houseman to come round. ‘Well now, isn’t this a nice surprise, dear Nurse.’ He grimaced. ‘I know. I’ve caught it from “dear Lisa.” ’

  After we had dealt with his half-dozen surgical children, we sat down at the centre table that in Christian, unlike the adult wards, was not hidden behind screens at night. I handed him a sheaf of forms. ‘Sister wants these filled in, Tom.’

  He murmured, ‘I wish to God they’d let us use carbon paper,’ and obliged. ‘That the lot?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from one thing.’ I turned to smile at him. ‘I gather I have to congratulate you. I certainly do.’

  ‘Aw-shucks!’ He looked faintly embarrassed but very happy. ‘I rather think I owe you a vote of thanks. You ‒ and that splint cupboard.’ He wagged his head. ‘Splendid co-operation went on there, Gill.’

  I said both he and Lisa were dead crafty. ‘It wasn’t until I saw the way you were looking at her back that I really tumbled to it. You are a couple of goons to have wasted so much time.’

  He said he had no conception how he looked, he only knew he had his ears pinned back. ‘You aren’t the only person who didn’t tumble. I can work myself into a state of acute neurosis when I consider how narrowly we missed going on wasting time. I had practically given up. There didn’t seem any point in pushing myself in among the encircling horde.’

  ‘You don’t seriously mean you would just have done nothing at all?’

  ‘If you hadn’t let Lisa give me that lead ‒’ He smiled self-deprecatingly, then shrugged. ‘Possibly.’ He sat quiet for a few seconds, then he said, ‘Want some more fraternal advice?’

  ‘Love some.’ I was interested.

  He shrugged again. ‘You asked for it. It’s this question of laughter. It’s no good. It’s all right for a jolly evening, but no man can take the thought of being laughed at ‒ when he’s serious. Lisa is a gay girl; she laughs at everything and everybody. Which put me off.’

  I said, ‘She never laughed at you.’

  ‘So I’ve discovered,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s been a pleasant discovery.’

  My pro came out of the bathroom as Tom left the ward. She rushed up to me. ‘I’m sorry I missed Mr Thanet, Nurse.’ She looked quite upset.

  ‘Why? Did you want to see him specially?’

  She said, ‘I mean ‒ he didn’t get any coffee. It’s all ready in the kitchen ‒ I’m sorry, I should have been on the look out.’

  ‘Hey! What is all this?’ I was intrigued. Sister Tutor never taught us this in my first year. ‘Are you supposed to be running a ward or a coffee stall? The housemen don’t have drinks as a routine. That’s for bad nights ‒ crises.’

  Apparently I had not reassured her. ‘I’m sorry. Nurse,’ she repeated diffidently, and turned to go.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ I looked round the circle of cots. Not one had stirred. ‘Sit down,’ I pulled out the chair beside mine, ‘and tell me how long you’ve been on nights and where you’ve worked.’

  She said she had been seven months in the hospital and spent the last two as night junior in Ellen.

  Her mouth turned down when she said ‘Ellen.’ I asked why she hadn’t liked it. ‘Don’t you care for convalescent surgery?’

  ‘The women were sweet.’

  ‘Was Sister Ellen the snag? She can be ‒ I know. I was a second-year in Ellen. But you don’t want to let Sisters get under your skin. They always have a thing against night pros, it’s nothing personal. The technique is to keep out of their way as much as possible, and when you can’t, always have a spare clean apron with which to confront them, put your hands behind you and say “yes, Sister, sorry, Sister” to everything. And for goodness’ sake,’ I begged her, ‘never make excuses ‒ even if you have a good one. If you do you get a reputation for being argumentative, and God help,’ I added piously, ‘any pro that gets that.’

  She nodded to herself, as if I was only underlining facts she already knew. ‘Thanks, Nurse ‒ that’s useful to know.’ She smiled. ‘The Senior Pro in the Home told us that our first night. I had forgotten it.’

  I did not think she had for one minute; I thought she was an intelligent and tactful young woman. ‘Then what was wrong with Ellen?’ I asked curiously.

  She hesitated, ‘Well ‒ I suppose it was my fault. The S.P. told us juniors just had to get on with seniors, and that was all there was to it ‒ but I couldn’t hit it off with mine.’

  ‘You couldn’t?’ My surprise was honest. ‘That’s odd. I suppose Nurse Ash was feeling tired and sickening for this illness. Most juniors get on with her.’

  ‘Oh, but they don’t,’ she assured me; ‘they dread working with ‒’ She broke off, ‘Nurse Snow, she isn’t in your set?’

  ‘Not only in my set, my child ‒ she’s’ ‒ well, I thought, what could I say, when everyone considered Carol and I a female David and Jonathan ‒ ‘she’s a great friend of mine.’ I smiled. ‘You want to watch out, Nurse. You can never tell in a place this size who’s a buddy of whose.’

  ‘Oh, Nurse,’ she said, ‘that was a brick.’

  ‘Don’t let it bother you. But I know how you feel. Dropping bricks is one of my favourite pastimes.’

  She said quickly, ‘It was bad luck that morph. being taken. Jean Fraser told us all about it ‒ she was your pro’ ‒ I nodded ‒ ‘and she’s in my set. She was terribly sorry when they took you off. She said she’d never had such an easy ‒’

  ‘Hush’ ‒ I held up a hand ‒ ‘don’t drop any more or you’ll wake the kids. You nip back to the bathroom ‒ or have you finished the settings?’

  She said, not yet. ‘Wouldn’t you like some coffee, Nurse Snow?’

  ‘I’ll help myself later when the men and Night Sister have been.’ Since she seemed to have a fixation about coffee I thought we had better get it straight. ‘Don’t ever wait on the housemen. If they want any, they can help themselves and wash up their cups, or they don’t get it again. I don’t hold with pros waiting on housemen. The only people we have to run round are Night Sister, the S.M.O., and the S.S.O. And running round offering them drinks is my job.’

  She said thoughtfully, ‘Of course, Sister, Dr Cutler, and Mr Dexter are different. I mean, they’re pretty old, aren’t they, Nurse?’

  She was only saying what I would have said myself at e
ighteen, but now I rushed in to defend them. ‘They aren’t old, Nurse.’

  She gaped, ‘But, Nurse ‒ they must be forty. And Mr Dexter has got white hair.’

  ‘So he has,’ I said, as if I had just realised this, ‘it is quite white in front.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going round. Call me when you want me.’

  We had three children with rheumatic fever. Mabel, Margaret, and Joe. The little girls were comfortable, but Joe was damp and twisting in his sleep. I warmed a towel, blankets, and clean nightgown, then dried him, redressed him, and remade his cot. He did not wake properly, but kept his eyes firmly shut as I moved him. When I had finished I said quietly, ‘Like some lemonade, Joe?’ I hated having to disturb him to drink, but he needed the extra fluid to compensate for what he had just lost in perspiration.

  He mumbled, ‘I’m thirsty, but I don’t want to wake up.’

  ‘Then don’t you. Just pretend you’re asleep, and I’ll pretend I’m filling a motor bus.’

  ‘Petrol or oil?’ he asked intelligently.

  ‘Petrol.’

  ‘What make?’

  ‘Oh ‒’ I thought of a well-known advertisement. ‘That do you?’

  ‘It’s good,’ he remarked. ‘My dad uses it in his delivery van.’

  I slipped my hand under his head and raised it slightly, then held the spout of the feeding-cup to his lips. ‘Swallow, Joe.’

  He squeezed his eyelids even tighter and drank half the cup. ‘Do I have to have more?’

  ‘Buses need a lot of petrol,’ I suggested, and he drank the rest, sighed, murmured ‘’nk you,’ and was asleep again.

  I added the amount of drink I had given him to his fluid-chart and moved on to the next cot. We had five infants in a row, separated from Joe by one empty cot. Their ages ranged from eleven to nineteen months. They were all dry, but one of them had removed his napkin in the last fifteen minutes and had it tucked round his ears. I lifted him out, found the missing pin ‒ happily closed ‒ underneath him, and fixed him up back to front. ‘You’ll have to be Houdini if you are going to get that off now, honey,’ I told him, but he took no notice and went on sleeping.