A Hospital Summer

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘You don’t do anything so foolish. Let me have my hands.’

  He let me go immediately. ‘Have you got to be going? Perhaps you had better. It’ll be dusk soon. You oughtn’t to ride back in the dark alone.’

  I laughed at him. ‘Dear Joe. May I remind you that I reside in the heart of a camp filled with a couple of hundred thousand brutal soldiers who couldn’t be more chivalrous? You really don’t have to worry about me alone in the dark ‒ on a bike!’

  He smiled, reluctantly. ‘Maybe not. I still don’t like it.’

  I explained I was only going to bring the locker in from the garden. I pushed it by his bed. ‘It is getting cooler, and I want to sit down. I shan’t go until they throw me out. Let’s sit and watch the gloaming hand-in-hand and pretend we’re an old married couple. Real Darby and Joan types.’

  He took my hand and I sat down by him. ‘Do you think that day’ll ever come? There are a few snags in the way.’

  ‘There are.’ I looked at the wood ahead. The pines looked feathery in the soft evening light, and threw long, pale shadows on the clearing between them and the hospital. ‘Let’s face them as they come. They aren’t worth worrying about. We only live one day at a time. This has been such a good day. Let’s not spoil it by wondering about the day after to-morrow. We aren’t doing too badly, Joe. We’ve had to-day, and we have got tomorrow.’

  He stroked my hair, then tilted my face towards him. He was smiling down at me. His face was illuminated with the same happiness I had glimpsed when I first appeared in his room; this time the light did not fade from his eyes. ‘This has been more than a good day, my darling. This has been the finest day any man ever lived. And you’re right; we’ve still got to-morrow. What in hell have we got to worry about, sweetheart? Not one ruddy thing,’ said Joe softly, ‘not one ruddy thing.’

  One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews

  If you enjoyed A Hospital Summer, you will also want to read One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews. This moving and gripping novel recounts one night in a busy London teaching hospital during the Second World War, as bombs and rockets rain down on the city.

  Chapter One

  The Thames was the colour of blood that night. Venous blood, Nurse Carter registered absently, and emptied her bucket of wet sheets into the damp-laundry bin on the ward balcony. On the opposite embankment the uneven frieze of jagged black shadows and the great gaps that even in the blackout stood out like missing teeth, were splashed with pink, and the face Big Ben turned to the river had a rosy glow. The colour came from the arclights of the rescue squads digging for the people buried by a V2 rocket sometime that afternoon. The diggers had to work slowly. No one knew for sure exactly where all the bodies were or how many of the bodies were still alive.

  Nurse Carter glanced at the lights across the river, then turned her head and didn’t look back. She was now twenty-two and before she had been out of her teens she had learnt that she needed both physical and mental effort when she wanted to suspend thought and imagination. Earlier in the war she had only managed to practise this technique consciously, but as the war dragged on and particularly after the last two months, it had become one of her conditioned reflexes. It was two months to the night since she had been transferred from the sprawling conglomeration of Nissen huts sixty miles from London that was the evacuated home of her parent hospital, to work in what remained of St Martha’s Hospital, London. During that time, though fewer V1 flying bombs were reaching London, the V2 rocket attacks had started. Very occasionally she wondered what the V3s would be like, but never for more than a few seconds as that involved thinking of the future. By that night in October 1944 she had long learnt never to think of the future. Today was enough, unless one happened to be a night nurse, and if so, tonight.

  She had to go back into the ward, but paused before opening the heavily-battened balcony doors and gulped in the clean cold night air, like a swimmer about to dive under water. Once inside, with the doors quickly closed behind her, she wondered once again how Wally’s patients endured, slept, and more often than not survived in the ward air.

  Walter Walters Ward, named after a dead and otherwise forgotten Martha’s physician, had for the past century been ‘Wally’s’ to patients and staff, with two present exceptions. One was the Senior Night Sister, who objected to all abbreviations on principle; the other was Wally’s present night senior, Nurse Dean. Nurse Dean was a staff nurse who had won the gold medal for her year when her training ended and had nothing against abbreviations in general, providing they were nice.

  Wally’s had initially been a men’s medical ward, but during the blitzes and again since the flying bombs started, in common with every other ward in Martha’s, London, Wally’s admitted surgical and medical patients. Technically, medicals were on the left, surgicals on the right, unless, as now happened regularly, the surgical overflow swamped both sides and emergency beds were put up down the middle. In normal circumstances Wally’s had forty beds, eighteen in line up each side, two set facing down the ward on both sides of the balcony doors. There was room for ten emergency beds in single file down the middle, but none were up that night and only one of the twenty-nine occupied beds held a medical patient. The long wide ward had once had a window between every bed, but shortly after the first blitz in September 1940, every window in the still usable parts of the hospital had been bricked-in. And every night Wally’s smelt as if it hadn’t been aired since 1940. The hot, stuffy atmosphere reeked of sweat, warm bed mackintoshes, pus, ether, iodiform, carbolic, tobacco, anaesthetics, and, when Nurse Carter came in from the balcony, especially of the sickly-sweet aroma of fresh-spilled blood. Half-an-hour ago one of the senior medical students up from the country hospital that day to start his week in residence as a Casualty dresser ‒ a job that currently trebled with that of unskilled porter and general messenger boy ‒ had heard his first rocket. It had fallen a good way off on either Fulham or Acton, and the vacolitre of whole blood in his hands had fallen onto the ward floor.

  ‘Jolly lucky it’s Group O,’ said Nurse Dean in a brisk murmur. ‘Cut yourself, Mr ‒ sorry, don’t know your name. No? Jolly good. Press on regardless back to the In-Patients’ Path. Lab. for a replacement ‒ where’s Carter? Oh, there you are. Carter, get weaving on this mess. Any minute now the theatre’ll ring to say the Major’s ready to come up.’

  Only a few of the heavily sedated patients had been woken. The bedsprings creaked as neighbour leant towards neighbour. ‘If you ask me, mate, that young student don’t want us to feel out in the cold, seeing Jerry’s giving our side the miss tonight.’

  ‘Fair’s fair. We’d our turn last night.’

  ‘Too true. Oh well. Best get me head down again.’

  A row of small red night lights cast crimson patches on the ward ceiling and the lights from the shaded bedhead lamps filtered through the open red screens round beds 11, 29 and 31, and dappled in soft crimson the beds on either side. Bert Harper, propped into a sitting position in 27, saw the raised head of his neighbour in 28 outlined against the dividing screen. Bert Harper clutched his large, bandaged abdomen with both hands before leaning to his left. ‘Give you a bit of a start, mate? You don’t need to worry. Just one of the students, clumsy-like.’

  George Mercer in 28 was a tall, red-faced man in his late thirties, with the bone structure, colouring, and, until he was wounded in North Africa, the physique of his distant Viking ancestors. Yesterday, the farmer for whom he had worked since he left school at thirteen, up to his call-up in the Territorials in 1939, and who had given him back his old job earlier this year, had given him the day off to come to London to meet one of the mates he had made in the prison camp. It had been a good day even if it hadn’t ended rightly. All he could now remember of last night was waiting on the platform for the last train back to Kent. It had been midday when he discovered he was back in a hospital bed with his chest, shoulders and extended left arm and hand covered with bandages, and a bedcradle over his body from the wai
st down. The black-haired doctor with the Scotch voice had said he’d been in luck. ‘Flattened your artificial foot, laddie, but your stump and good leg are fine.’

  George Mercer turned his head towards the big, grey-haired man on his right. ‘Reckon he was having hisself a smashing time,’ he announced in his slow Weald voice.

  Bert Harper nodded approvingly. Bert was a Londoner and 28’s silence had worried him all day. ‘Feeling more like it tonight? That’s nice. Mind you, nasty do, last night. Watched them fetch your lot in, I did. Coming in all night you was. Nasty do. Where’d he get you then?’

  ‘Station ‒ can’t rightly remember the name ‒’

  ‘Don’t you worry, mate, it’ll come. It’s the shock that’s what. Not from London then?’

  ‘Down Kent. Appleden. Tenterden way.’

  ‘Doodle-Bug Alley, eh? Home from home. Still, here you are ‒ er ‒ not with your missus like, was you?’

  ‘On me own.’

  ‘Ah. Best. Nasty,’ mused Bert Harper in a stage whisper, ‘when you got the missus and kids along.’

  George Mercer braced himself, ‘Where’d he get you?’

  Bert’s solid, squashed, ex-heavyweight’s face creased in a delighted grin. ‘He never! Strangulated hernia, I am. Harper’s the name. Bert Harper. Newsagent, three streets down ‒ nice little business though I says it meself ‒ had it the fifteen years since I packed in me gloves ‒ well, I mean, past it wasn’t I ‒ and then this pain in me guts has me out for the count. Well, I says, never, I says. When that Mr MacDonald tells me ‒ he’s the Scotch bloke ‒ surgeon like ‒ never, I says. If you’ve not got enough custom, what with Jerry bunging over them doodles and them rockets, without me twisting me guts. Not to worry, he says, we’re still open for business for guts. War’s never stopped no one twisting a wee bit of gut nor never will, he says. Bit of a card, times, that Mr MacDonald, but he knows his job, he does.’ He took a new grip on his stomach and his springs squeaked painfully. ‘You got a real poorly neighbour in 29.’

  George Mercer glanced at the dividing screen. ‘Seemly.’

  ‘DIL,’ intoned Bert. ‘Dangerously Ill List. Tom Briggs. Poorly. Always spot the DILs by the red screens, see. Over there in 11 ‒’ he nodded his bullet-shaped head directly across the ward, ‘poor old Sam Jarvis. Ticker. Shocking ticker has poor old Sam. Mind you, as well he was in here last night seeing as his home’s in that row Jerry fetched down opposite. Come down like a pack of cards, the paper boy says this morning. Upset poor old Sam shocking, but lucky his missus and his old mum gone down the Piccadilly Line for the night and didn’t know nothing till them come up this morning. Whole row flat as cards. The blast. Cruel blast them doodles got. Mind you ‒’

  ‘Gentlemen, please.’ Nurse Dean swept up on soundless feet crackling starch. ‘Terribly sorry, but do you mind not chatting now as you should try and get back to sleep. I’ll just do your pillows and give you drinks …’ After she had gone George Mercer glanced back at the dividing screen and through a narrow slit between curtain and frame glimpsed a face hidden by a green rubber oxygen mask and a small, thin girl in a staff nurse’s uniform. He hadn’t seen her before. He watched her pick up, then quickly put down again, the white china spouted feeding cup on the locker-top and dry her hands on the back of her apron skirts. He lay back, looking up at the ceiling and found he was thinking of anchovies.

  There were strange shadows on the ceiling above Briggs’s screened bed. The slumped, emaciated figure was lost in the mound of pillows and the grotesque hump of the large bedcradle supporting the top sheet and blankets. The bottle of glucose hanging from the infusion stand drawn up to the bedhead was transformed into a spindle; the rubber tubing of the drip-apparatus into a long, thin strand of wool; and the new staff nurse into an elongated, curveless, pantomime fairy floating over mound and hump with wings growing out of her head instead of her shoulders. The wings were the tails of the starched bow on the back of the clean, small, starched, lace cap the staff nurse had made-up in her bunk during her sleepless afternoon in the night seniors’ basement shelter-dormitory.

  ‘I did not mince matters to Matron this morning, nurses,’ said Sister Wally in her handing-over report to her night staff at nine p.m. ‘If we’re to have more nights like last night, Matron, I said, my night senior must have a senior relief. And who can say we won’t? All that talk about the invasion ending the war ‒ huh! Allies’ve been in France since June and haven’t reached the Rhine yet. Last night, as I reminded Matron, was quite as bad as those nights in June and July when as Mr Churchill himself had to admit, over one hundred flying bombs were being aimed at London every day. And if not all got through, as we all know, enough arrived to fill every ward in this and I daresay every other London general hospital. And then ‒ as I reminded Matron ‒ no rockets. Nor then were the Senior Medical and Surgical Officers sending me DIL admissions who should have special nursing. Take Briggs, Matron, I said ‒ carcinomatosis ‒ a total gastrectomy ‒ secondaries everywhere ‒ of course, he needs a special. As does Jarvis. Jarvis.’ Sister Wally’s cap frills rustled with indignation. ‘Naturally I appreciate the SMO’s predicament, nurses, and when Jarvis was admitted four days ago in a state of collapse after his first coronary thrombosis, as there wasn’t a spare medical bed in a basement or ground floor ward and he was unfit to be moved more than across the road from his home, I agreed we must take him. But, as I reminded Matron, he is an acute cardiac patient and acute cardiacs need absolute quiet, and absolute rest, which means special nursing day and night. I asked her how anyone could expect my two night nurses to special any single patient in a ward filled with bed-patients and with casualties coming in all night. I found forty-eight patients in my ward when I arrived on-duty this morning, Matron, I said, and to the great credit of my two night nurses, Briggs and Jarvis were amongst them. But I refuse to risk a repetition, for my patients’ and my night nurses’ sakes. Unless you can send me a senior Special to help out tonight, Matron, I am afraid I shall refuse to go off-duty. Not,’ Sister Wally added unemotionally, ‘that I expect poor Briggs to last another night, but you’ll shortly have this Major Browne. You’ll have to divide yourself in three, Nurse Smith ‒ and very glad I am to see you.’ Sister paused to study the newcomer’s pinched, taut, intelligent face. Nurse Smith was twenty-six but at that moment looked ten years older. ‘I know you’ve done a great deal of specialing. I’m sure you’ll manage nicely. You’re very pale. Not much sleep today?’

  ‘Not much, Sister.’

  ‘I never slept much my first afternoon back on nights. What time did you arrive up from the country hospital?’

  ‘Just after one, Sister.’

  ‘Good. Time for a nice rest if not much sleep. I expect you’re glad to be back? Everyone feels so out of things down in the country.’

  Nurse Smith said politely, ‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’ Nurse Carter glanced at her covertly. Nurse Dean correctly kept her gaze on the hands correctly folded in her lap.

  ‘When was it you left us here, Nurse Smith?’

  ‘End of August, Sister.’

  ‘Nice little break in country air. However, back to business and this Major Browne ‒ with an E ‒ still in the theatre. I’m afraid the SSO is having to amputate the right leg. Poor Mr MacDonald.’ The cap frills rustled sympathetically. ‘Amputations so distress him ‒ there it is. Apparently a tram went over the leg just outside our main gates this evening. I’m afraid the War Office aren’t too pleased at our taking him in as we’re a civilian hospital, but how were Casualty to know he was in uniform until they’d washed off some of the blood? I’ve just had the War Office on the ’phone again. I’m afraid I was a bit short with my caller. Well, really, I said, if the British Army imagines St Martha’s Hospital will ever refuse admission and treatment to a dying man because of some nonsensical red tape, then the British Army knows nothing about St Martha’s Hospital and isn’t it time it did since St Martha’s Hospital has been caring for the sick of London since 1428? I’m af
raid he didn’t like that. But, as I was saying, still in the theatre and not too well. Nearly died on the table. However, Mr MacDonald has been able to continue with the fore-quarter ‒ Nurse Carter, you are a senior second-year. Tell me what I mean by a fore-quarter?’

  Nurse Carter looked at Sister with wide, dark blue, intentionally blank eyes. ‘It is an amputation of the leg that requires the surgeon to disarticulate the hip-joint and remove the limb from that joint, Sister.’

  Sister nodded briefly and addressed her senior night nurse. ‘Put him in 31, Nurse Dean. Much less disturbing for the other patients to have all three DILs on either side of my ward table, and less disturbing for the three not to be close to the entrance. Always so much coming and going at night. Leave that student with the cracked ribs in 30. He shouldn’t be in more than the one night or need much attention and having him there leaves more room for the screens on either side. Nor do I ever think it a good idea to have DILs side by side. So upsetting for the relatives if they peep between the screens ‒ and, of course, they always do. That reminds me, I haven’t told you about the Major’s next-of-kin. His wife. A ‒’ she checked in the large ward log book, ‘a Mrs Adela Browne, home somewhere in Hampshire ‒ not too far ‒ address in our Address Book ‒ on her way up now. We haven’t been able to contact her but the War Office say they have and she should reach us some time tonight. I hope the trains aren’t too delayed. The Major doesn’t sound too well to me. Now about tonight’s emergencies; as I’ve just told you, we packed nineteen off on this evening’s convoy to the country and as you can see, we’ve managed to get the middle clear again and I’ve left you five empty beds on either side up the balcony end. And what’s more, Nurse Dean,’ Sister Wally smiled with pride, ‘I’ve actually managed to get hold of ten proper mortuary sheets so for once you won’t have to manage with ordinary sheets. I think ten should be adequate, don’t you?’