The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Thanks.’ He pulled out his chair and sat down. I sat beside him, as etiquette demanded, and gave him the book. He turned the pages absently, found what he wanted. ‘They seem all right.’

  ‘They are.’ I asked after the road accident.

  ‘Which one, Nurse? We’ve had three more since then. Two motor-bikes and one cyclist.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Not too bad. They had no pillion passengers and were both wearing helmets; they’re rather knocked about and shocked, but they haven’t done anything serious. The cyclist is in the theatre now. Compound tib. and fib.’ He was silent. He closed the report. Then, ‘I lost that first girl ‒ the car passenger.’

  I said, ‘I am so sorry. Was she young?’

  He glanced at me. ‘About your age. I think she was on her way to or from some dance. She was,’ he said very slowly, ‘wearing an evening dress. A blue one.’ He was silent again. He sat staring at the pool of light on the table that came from the pulled-down centre light that barely cleared our heads as we sat there. Then he said, ‘She was a nice-looking girl.’

  I said nothing, because there was nothing I could say that would not sound superficial or hackneyed.

  At last he roused himself. He looked round at the children. ‘They are quiet tonight.’

  ‘It’s been like this for the past week. Makes me feel very guilty to be sitting here doing nothing when the place is so busy.’

  He said, ‘Someone’s got to sit here. Another night you’ll be up to your eyes in it, and the rest quiet. That’s the way the swing goes. Are you on alone?’

  ‘My pro is writing notes in the kitchen. Night Sister can’t use her elsewhere as we’re still in quarantine.’

  He nodded. His face was drawn and heavy, and he looked as old as my pro considered him. He also looked deathly tired.

  ‘The rush is over now,’ he said laconically. ‘It’s all quiet. Until the next time.’

  I asked if he was doing Mr Henderson’s night round anywhere else.

  He did not answer me directly, ‘This is my last ward. I knew you were slack in here; I thought I’d finish on that note.’

  Peter had said something like that to me once, but his meaning had been different. John meant only what he said. Christian was a peaceful ward.

  ‘Would you like a hot drink before you go to bed?’ I wanted him to have one; he looked in need of it, but I expected him to refuse. We all offered him coffee nightly, but I had never yet heard of him accepting it from any nurse. I was much surprised when he said, ‘I’d like some coffee it you’ve got any handy.’

  ‘Coffee? If you’ve finished?’ I hesitated. ‘Won’t it keep you awake? Won’t you have cocoa, Mr Dexter?’

  The ghost of a smile lit his eyes. ‘Nurse Snow, nothing will keep me awake tonight. And I detest cocoa ‒ thank you very much.’

  I got up. ‘Black or white, Mr Dexter?’

  ‘Black as you can make it, please. I have still to get from this ward to our house.’

  My pro had finished her notes and was sitting on the bread bin in the kitchen knitting a highly complicated jumper. She jumped up and dropped a needle.

  ‘Relax,’ I said, ‘I’m only getting coffee for Mr Dexter.’

  She took two cups off the dresser and laid a small tray while I reheated the much stewed coffee. I saw what she was doing. ‘Thanks. But only one cup, Nurse. I’ll have some later in here with you. I’m not yet a member of the upper classes.’ I smiled. ‘Nurses in training do not drink coffee in the middle of the ward with the S.S.O. Quote, Sister Tutor.’

  He was standing by Joe’s cot when I went back to the ward. He jerked his thumb at Joe. ‘That chap’s looking better. Cutler was worried about him when he came in.’ He walked back to the table and sat down again.

  I put the tray in front of him. ‘Do you take sugar, Mr Dexter?’ As I asked that I thought how odd it was that I knew so little about him; and then I thought of the one-dimensional view we all had of each other. The hospital was too large for you to have more than a handful of close friends; you made a host of familiar acquaintances who were part of your life today, forgotten names tomorrow. It was like living with a set of playing cards, seeing just that one professional side and never knowing what went on behind the white starch. I did not know if he took sugar, had parents, read thrillers, liked the movies, was kind to dumb animals, had any serious political views, or views on anything beyond surgery. All I did know was that he was good at his job, infinitely calm, and that as far as I was concerned he did not have to do anything, he just had to be around, and that was all I wanted.

  He glanced at the tray, ‘What about you, Nurse? Don’t you take coffee?’

  ‘Not just now, thanks.’ I offered him the cup and saucer.

  ‘Thank you.’ He frowned briefly at the coffee.

  ‘Isn’t it black enough, Mr Dexter? I can make stronger.’

  He looked up at me. ‘It’s quite right, thanks,’ he said absently. He asked about the closing of the ward. ‘What’s happening to you nurses?’

  ‘The day staff are having two days off, then coming back to spring-clean when it’s all fumigated; my pro and I are having five nights off.’

  ‘Going away?’

  ‘Yes.’ I explained about Ann. ‘It’ll be pleasant to see her again.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be. What’s her husband’s name? Is he a Joe’s man?’

  ‘Edinburgh. He’s a David Black. But he’s got an English M.R.C.P.’

  He nodded. ‘I met a couple of Blacks in the Army. One was a Scot. Might be the same chap?’

  I said I would ask David. I knew he was not really interested in my friends or my affairs, but that he wanted me to keep on talking to take his mind off his own thoughts, so I told him all I could remember of David Black, and then we went on to discuss G.P.s in general and country G.P.s in particular.

  He finished his coffee but made no move to go. ‘Holidays’ ‒ he glanced round the sleeping children ‒ ‘are a problem when one hasn’t a fixed home, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wondered again about his background, and that house by the river in which he had grown up but which was now a block of flats.

  ‘Of course there are advantages in that situation,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘especially in this line. Take tonight.’ He looked at me. ‘This is supposed to be my weekend off. I’ve scrubbed it ‒ doesn’t make any odds to me. But it’s the sort of thing that would make a deal of difference to one’s wife. Which is fair enough. A wife has a right to expect to see her husband on his weekends off.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I wondered about Sister O.P.s. Was this the snag? But surely, being a nurse, she knew what marrying a doctor entailed.

  ‘You agree with that, Nurse?’

  I hesitated. ‘Yes and no. I’d say it depends on whether you marry someone who knows anything about hospitals or not. If she’s used to hospitals she’ll understand that kind of thing is inevitable ‒ and, come to think of it, not only to resident men. G.P.s wives never know when they are going to see their husbands, and they certainly never have a meal on time.’

  He twisted his empty cup. ‘Perhaps you’re right. But it’s always seemed to me that to hand a woman that set of circumstances with a proposal of marriage is hardly a fair bargain.’

  That was it, indeed. He did not feel it was fair to ask her to marry him.

  I said, ‘Resident doctors do marry, Mr Dexter.’

  He looked at me. ‘And lots of their marriages go astray, Nurse Snow. Cause and effect?’ He was still watching me. ‘I see you do not agree?’

  ‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘I don’t think I do.’ He waited for me to go on, so I did. ‘Obviously I look at this from a different angle to yourself; but most women probably feel as I do. When you marry a man in a specific profession like medicine ‒ the Church ‒ even farming ‒ you marry the profession as well. I think you’d accept the peculiar snags as part of life and not want to change it.’ I remember my mother’s urban upbringing; h
er dislike of early meals and mud; her love of summer holidays. Yet she made a very successful farmer’s wife; she accepted the holidays in late November, the mud, the twelve o’clock dinner hour, and the loneliness of our marsh, not merely with equanimity, but with whole-hearted enjoyment. She wanted to be where my father was and, when that was not possible, she wanted to be waiting for him. Her marriage was a happy and successful one. I explained a little of this. ‘Precious few women would want to change their husband’s jobs; because a job is so much more part of a man than it is of a woman. If you change the job you’ll probably change the man. And if you love someone you wouldn’t want to change anything about them.’

  ‘Academically’ ‒ his expression was reflective ‒ ‘supposing ‒ for the sake of argument ‒ you were my wife, and you’d been expecting me tonight and I hadn’t turned up. Wouldn’t you have been annoyed?’

  I felt as if I was driving a nail into my own coffin; I also felt consciously grateful for Sister Tutor’s training. ‘A good nurse,’ she lectured us, ‘should always look pleasantly interested, or gently compassionate.’ My facial muscles were stiff with the effort of assuming the former expression.

  ‘I might have been annoyed because some food had been ruined, but not seriously so.’

  ‘Why not? Go on, Nurse,’ he prompted. ‘This interests me.’ He sounded as if he were discussing the weather.

  ‘Partly because I’d know roughly why you were held up, and partly because’ ‒ I shrugged ‒ ‘this may sound absurd ‒ but I should think that if you were fond enough of a person to marry them it wouldn’t make much odds where they were. In hospital ‒ South America ‒ anywhere. You wouldn’t really be apart.’ And as I spoke I thought how extraordinary and how easy it was to talk to him this way.

  He said very quietly, ‘You would just have to put your hand out in the darkness and not feel alone?’

  That was exactly how I did feel. I nodded.

  He had not taken his eyes off my face. He half smiled. ‘I wonder which you are ‒ very young or very old?’

  I shrugged, wishing now I had not talked so much. He was silent. We sat there for some time, and there was no sound in the ward beyond the soft breathing of the children; and the occasional chewing noise babies make in sleep. Even Harry had stopped snoring. It was a peaceful silence, one in which there was no strain.

  I glanced sideways; he had not moved anything but his eyes, and he was staring again at his empty cup. I recognised the way he sat. I myself had sat as he was sitting, on mornings that followed heavy nights, when I was too tired to get out of a chair. I knew he was a very strong man, not only because of his build, but because of the years he had spent walking the wards of Joe’s. Tonight he had reached his limit. He was temporarily too exhausted to make the effort necessary to walk the approximate half-mile of corridor and park to the doctor’s house.

  ‘Would you like some more coffee, Mr Dexter?’

  ‘No thanks.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘I must push off.’ I looked at my watch. It was nearly two.

  I said, ‘It’s getting late.’

  I took up my sewing without thinking, then saw he was watching my hands and dropped the nightgown on the table. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I apologised, ‘I forgot what I was doing.’ Nurses do not sew when waiting on a senior member of the resident staff.

  He said, ‘Don’t stop. It’s soothing to watch. I’m hardly doing an official round. What is it? Operation gown?’

  I held it up. ‘Yes.’

  He moved his hand and pushed it through his hair, and I discovered I had been waiting for that gesture. Since Tom drew my attention to his reason for making it I had watched out for it. At first because I was curious and then because I was always watching him. Tom was right. It was a reflex action when John was worried. I suddenly understood why he had made it now. I said, ‘Did you have to see her family?’

  His lips were a straight line. ‘All their families. The police told them, but they came up. I saw them.’

  I said, ‘I know you told me you can get used to anything, but I don’t see how you can. I don’t see how you can stand it.’

  He turned in his chair and was facing me. ‘At times,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’

  He stood up slowly and pushed in his chair. He put his hands in his pockets and his shoulders were back. He looked down at me impassively. ‘I seldom admit that to myself. I’ve never admitted it to another person. That way I like to delude myself into believing that it does not happen. But like most delusions, it doesn’t hold water. Thank you’ ‒ he inclined his head ‒ ‘for your ‒ coffee. Good night.’

  He walked out of the ward and closed the door quietly behind him. I put down my sewing and went round the children. They were perfectly all right and needed nothing from me. I went back to my sewing.

  Next morning Christian was closed and fumigated. The convalescent children were bathed and had their hair washed and were sent home; the majority in tears, after what had been for them a gloriously protracted party. The few that remained were taken to the private ward to be nursed there until Christian reopened. They were extremely proud of their lingering ailments.

  ‘’Spect I’ll be in for years! Not like you, just an appendix! Now me ‒ I got glands! Will I see them students again in the private ward, Nurse?’

  Joe, the one stretcher case, was the smuggest of all. ‘Got to be carried, I have,’ he announced to the admiring ward, ‘not just be pushed in one of them wheelchairs.’

  But before he went there was a minor crisis caused by Harry, who said hopefully that he was sure his throat felt ever so sore and he felt very itchy. This was at six o’clock in the morning. I could not see anything down his throat, nor any sign of a rash; he had no temperature, but he swore that he could not swallow. ‘It hurts, Nursie, it does.’

  I rang Night Sister; she called a house-physician. The house-physician was a solemn and conscientious young man; he was also very recently qualified; he called the medical registrar.

  The medical registrar arrived with his white coat over his pyjamas. ‘Tell me the worst at once, Nurse Snow. How many have got scarlet?’

  I said I did not personally think anyone had scarlet. ‘I’m only a nurse, Doctor ‒ I don’t diagnose. I just report. Harry says he’s got a cruel throat ‒ and he feels itchy. I thought I had better ring Sister.’

  He smiled coldly, ‘At six in the morning, Nurse?’

  ‘We close this morning,’ I reminded him. ‘Some of these children are supposed to be breakfasting in the private wing. I couldn’t risk not reporting it.’

  Mr May, the house-physician, said, ‘That was why I called you.’ He sounded as smug as Joe.

  The registrar gave us both an ugly look and said he was damned if he hadn’t forgotten. He looked at Harry’s throat and apparently unblemished skin without comment, walked over to the table, and damned himself again.

  ‘I’ll swear that’s not a scarlet throat, and that’s not a scarlet rash. But I won’t,’ he said mournfully, ‘swear it isn’t measles. Anything can be measles.’

  ‘I didn’t see any Koplikses,’ said the house-physician helpfully.

  The registrar scowled. ‘Nor did I. But I’m going to get Dr Cutler out of bed. We’ll see what he sees.’ He turned to me. ‘No temperature?’

  ‘No, Doctor. That’s what’s so odd.’

  ‘Think it’s polio?’ said the cheerful ghoul of a house-physician.

  The registrar did not deign to answer. ‘I’ll talk to Dr Cutler, Nurse.’

  I thanked him. ‘I’m sorry to get you up so early.’

  He touched his unshaven chin. ‘You have my sympathy too, Nurse,’ and walked away.

  Dr Cutler, a pleasant, round little man, bounced in like a ball.

  ‘What’s going on, Nurse? More scarlet?’

  ‘Harry has a sore throat and feels itchy, Doctor.’

  The house-physician, who was having the time of his life thinking up different diagnoses, said, ‘He’s very red in the f
ace. Perhaps he has pinks disease, sir?’

  Dr Cutler was a better early riser than his registrar. He said politely, ‘Might be so. Of course, it could just be plain health.’ He looked down Harry’s throat, then went carefully over Harry’s body. Harry was delighted, and the other children began unpacking.

  ‘Reckon we’ll have to stay, eh, Nursie?’

  Dr Cutler looked round at their expectant faces. ‘If you think, my little dears,’ he said, ‘that we are going to keep you all in here because Harry’s got a pair of mildly inflamed tonsils, you’ve got to think again.’ He turned round and looked at the registrar, house-physician, and myself, who were standing in a line behind him.

  ‘Mild tonsillitis,’ he said shortly, ‘I’m going back to bed. I advise you to do the same. Good morning, Nurse Snow.’

  ‘What about Harry, Doctor? Can he go to the private wing?’

  ‘Harry,’ said Dr Cutler, ‘may take his tonsils ‒ to the private wing. With my love.’

  The house-physician said seriously, ‘How could you tell it wasn’t scarlet, sir?’

  Dr Cutler looked up at the earnest young man. ‘I’ve been looking down scarlet throats and at scarlet rashes for the past four weeks. I eat, sleep, think, and dream scarlet. I’m a walking encyclopaedia on fevers. And you ask me how I know? May I tell you? Because it don’t look like a scarlet throat and it isn’t a scarlet rash! Good morning.’ He bounced off again.

  The registrar was happy at last. ‘I didn’t think it was,’ he murmured basely, ‘but I always like to pass the buck. Morning, Nurse.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said the house-physician when we were alone, ‘have I done the wrong thing, Nurse?’

  I was very sorry for the poor boy; he was really upset.

  ‘If it had been scarlet and you hadn’t called them they’d have murdered you. I don’t think you did wrong, Mr May.’

  He did not seem at all satisfied. ‘How could Cutler tell?’

  I recollected that he had only been qualified three weeks. ‘He does get a bit of experience in these things.’