by Jane Grant
A Sister’s Life
The ups and downs of life as a 1950s Theatre Sister
Jane Grant
Copyright © The Estate of Jane Grant 2014
This edition first published by Corazon Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
www.greatstorieswithheart.com
First published in Great Britain in 1965 as Sisters Under Their Skins
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Other titles available in this series
A Nurse’s Life
More from a Nurse’s Life
A Country Life
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Preview chapter: A Country Life
Preview: A Country Practice
Preview: The Country Doctor
Preview: Home from Home
Preview: City Hospital Book 1: New Blood
Chapter One
At six o’clock on this ordinary April morning, a day that was to be of great significance to me, the sun was just rising over the line of willows, copper beeches, and may trees that marked the boundary of Fawley Grange Hospital grounds. Looking from the glassed-in corridor, a junior night nurse, pushing the trolley of basins and hot water, saw a hare run across the acre-wide lawn to the far end, then with a relic of its March madness, double and run back again.
‘Wait now ‒ ’tis the same old hare,’ she said to herself.
When she had first come across from Ireland in the depths of the cold winter, that hare had come quite close to the windows in search of snow-free grass, and she had seen it occasionally as she came across from the Nurses’ Home at eight o’clock to go on duty. She had never seen a hare so close in Ireland, though there were enough about; but this hospital was surrounded by tame wild-life. Now the fat, gentlemanly rooks were flying down from their nests in the wood behind the hospital, to walk solemnly along the rose beds, picking up leatherjackets and grubs, and the smaller birds were hanging around the glassed-in corridor, hoping for biscuit crumbs from sentimental patients. In the far distance, as Sheila Brunton turned into Ward B2, she caught a glimpse of a cock pheasant, strutting with two hens.
‘Nurse Brunton, have you done the basins?’ called Staff, busy with temperatures.
‘No, Staff ‒ I just ‒’
‘Get cracking. Then come and help the Grannies.’
Sheila stopped outside the end section of Ward B2, and began dealing out basins. This end section was connected with the main ward by a swing door. Stretchers, trolleys, and visitors, however, often found it easier to approach it by the corridor, through glass doors that stood folded back during the warmer half of the year.
There were four beds in this partitioned-off end of the Women’s Orthopaedic Ward, and three of them were full. In one comer was a weeping girl of nineteen, with her arm in plaster and her leg in traction. She was the victim of a car accident and had already been in hospital for six weeks.
‘And what’s the matter with ye today, Gloria?’ asked Sheila Brunton, plonking down the basins.
‘Nothing. I’m just sick of everything, that’s all.’
‘Well, you must try and eat a good breakfast today.’
‘I can’t. I feel sick.’
‘It’s no good crying. Crying never did any good. You ought to be laughing, today you’ll get rid of that traction and have your leg to yourself again.’
Sheila hurried off to get through her duties. She had positively no more sympathy to spare for Gloria just now. Ah, it was the same tale every morning, anyways.
The second patient was a simple soul with bunions; she was afraid of everyone; nurses, patients, doctors, and did not dare to ask for anything she wanted. She was no trouble, but no satisfaction either.
As for the third, she was one of the ‘old Grannies’. She had come in two days before with a broken tibia, and had decided to opt out of the whole business. In her opinion, she was still in her own home and they had taken up all the mats for spring cleaning. She wished the neighbours would go, and though she dimly recognized the nurses had some authority, she felt it was illegal and tried to outwit it on every occasion.
‘Ah, Grannie, you’ve been a bad girl again! Tryin’ to get out of your cot!’
Sheila pushed the cot bed away from the wall, and climbing a chair behind it, clasped old Grannie Weedon under the arms and yanked her to a sitting position against the pillows.
‘Grannie, Grannie! You’re a wicked woman, ye are. You’ll be getting me into trouble, you will!’
The fourth bed, in the corner at the back, looking out at the wood and the rough grass, awaited an occupant. Sheila thanked God for that, and hurried out, for Staff was calling again. Holy Mary, how would they get through by eight, just tell me how, the two of them?
Fawley Grange Hospital, near the village of Lower Bendon, and within ten miles of two large industrial towns, had originally been a workhouse infirmary known as St Luke’s. The old building had served the adjoining villages, taking their old folk, their bastard children, and their idiots, and giving them treatment which varied from rough justice to bullying, according to the dispositions of the Master and his wife. This old building, cramped and inconvenient, but not without its early Victorian charm, had been converted to offices and Casualty.
The new part of the hospital dated from the thirties. More land had been bought, and an extension built containing several wards, and a new theatre and X-ray department. During the war, huts were run up in the grounds, and since then these huts had been prettied up, the huge barn-like interiors divided by glass screens into smaller units, and glassed external corridors added to connect one ward to another. The neighbouring Manor House, Fawley Grange, had been bought and converted into a Nurses’ Home, while its gardener’s cottage was reconditioned and became Matron’s house. Much of the old garden remained to be seen and enjoyed, with a wealth of flowering shrubs, and a plantation behind of fir, lime and chestnut trees, soaring up to a height of mature beauty.
The hospital, now known by the name of the former estate, had been taken over by St Bernard’s, and contained Orthopaedic, Chest, and Medical Wards.
Before breakfast had been served that morning on Ward B2, Mary and I were waking up in our beds in St Bernard’s Nurses’ Home in London, knowing that the day was one of destiny, because we were not only to take over new jobs a
t Fawley Grange, but we were to do so not as Staff Nurses, but as Sisters.
When I had first heard from Matron that I was to go to Fawley Grange as Theatre Sister, I could hardly believe my good luck. Not only was the hospital situated in beautiful surroundings, and not only had it a brand new theatre, but it was ten miles from my home, and little more than that from the farm where Don McKie lived with his people.
I had known Don for nearly a year and had been trying to make up my mind about him. This would give us a chance to get to know each other better. I had not met his people, and I visualized being taken there to tea and shown round the farm. But the chance happenings that were to bring about a meeting between me, the McKie family, and Ward B2 of Fawley Grange Hospital were unrevealed to me; they lay in the future, the cause of many crises and changes, happy and sad, that were to alter all our lives.
Chapter Two
At eight o’clock, on the day of my arrival at the hospital, the future occupant of the empty bed in the end section of Ward B2, as unthinking of her doom as any of the little victims at play, was washing up the breakfast dishes in her farm kitchen and wondering whether to turn out the bedrooms today or tomorrow. Her two men were down in the fields, struggling with the tractor which refused to start, and her daughter Rhona was sorting the clothes to put in the washing machine.
‘Ouf! Don’s overalls!’ she exclaimed from the back kitchen. ‘And, Mummy, do you think the Old Man will get any more joy out of this blue shirt, or can I sling it?’
The radio started on the latest pop tune, and Rhona, not content with that degree of noise, rushed in to put it on at full blast.
‘Turn it down slightly for an Old Square,’ besought Mrs McKie. ‘I can hear someone at the door.’
‘It’s only Piggy Summers,’ said Rhona looking out of the window. ‘Shall I go and tell the men?’
‘I’ll go, darling. You get on with the washing.’
She went with a light step across the fields; the day was a beautiful one, the hedges were greening, the foliage beneath was lush and wet. The sun shone on the meadows, sending the young heifers skipping and making their winter coats gleam. She gave Angus the message that the vet had called, and held the heavy iron gate open for him to pass through in the tractor.
Daisy, the spoilt old favourite cow, was cropping the grass near the gate, and once the tractor was clear, she took it into her head to lurch through, with her eye on a succulent piece of herbage in the next field.
‘Oh, bother you!’ Mrs McKie let go of the gate and shooed the cow, till she unwillingly turned and skittered off ill-temperedly.
With a smile at the cow’s antics, Mrs McKie turned to go and shut the gate, but as she ran towards it a gust of wind blew it off its stop and it rushed towards her with immense force. The collision knocked all the breath out of her body, and she found herself lying on her side on the stony ground, panting with pain and shock.
After a moment she tried to struggle up, but before she had raised herself to one knee she found to her amazement and terror that she had no power of balance, and the next instant turning a sideways somersault, she was in the ditch amongst brambles.
She heard Angus’s steps running towards her. ‘What’s the matter, Betty?’
She replied carefully, ‘I think something’s broken. I can’t get up.’
He put his arms under her, but could not lift her from the ditch.
‘I’ll have to get help.’ He set off at a run, and in a moment or two she heard the revving up of the car, as Don drove recklessly down the chase in a wide arc to avoid the tractor.
The stretcher, placed carefully on the trolley, went up the slope into the hospital doorway, crossed the threshold with a slight jolt, and bowled smoothly down a narrow corridor, turning into Casualty.
An elderly Sister appeared, with large teeth and glasses.
‘What have you been doing to yourself?’
Mrs McKie, doped with the doctor’s injection of pethidine, felt even a mild interest as she described the strange behaviour of the gate, while Sister and a young nurse removed her skirt, stockings and pants, and covered her with a blanket.
A young man now appeared in her line of vision. Rather a nice squarish face leaned over her, firm hands felt her hip bone. ‘Looks like a fractured hip,’ he said, and asked casually, ‘How did you do that?’
She repeated the story of the gate, thinking it sounded even more improbable than at the first recounting.
The young man disappeared. A porter came and pushed the trolley along to X-ray. The passages in the old building were so narrow that she thought of asking what would happen if a trolley came the other way. The Casualty X-ray room was so small that it seemed as if half the trolley would have to be left in the passage. A girl in a white coat came and positioned the leg that was undamaged, so as to photograph the other one. It took her a long time. She took photo after photo, from one angle after another, and remained dissatisfied. In the meantime, flat on her back, Mrs McKie contemplated the narrow beige walls and beige ceiling, and felt as if she were shut up in a box.
‘Just one more, see if I can get it.’
Then she was hanging about in the passage again, lying flat on the stretcher. Ages passed. What had happened to Angus and Rhona? Ages more passed. A porter came and wheeled her back to Casualty.
‘It’s a fracture all right,’ said the square-faced doctor. He did not smile. He looked at the same time severe and kind, like a good headmaster. ‘Three months’ job, I’m afraid. We’ll pin it tomorrow.’
He wandered off. Two young men in white coats appeared at the side of the trolley. One was gangly and had a flap of hair hanging over his forehead. He beamed kindly at her and asked in a nice voice how she had done it. His face seemed to her vaguely familiar, but she could not place it.
Again she described the gate; she tried very hard with each repetition to make the story sound more probable. But her voice tailed off as she realized the question was only a gambit anyway, introduced to make relations between strangers easier. The other young man was saying to his friend, ‘But how? How can you tell?’
The gangly houseman with the hair and the beam laid knuckles on her hip.
‘Show me?’ said the eager student.
The demonstration was made, first on one hip then on the other. Her slip had been pulled up, but she was covered with the ubiquitous hospital blanket. She felt no annoyance or embarrassment; no great pain either, merely a vague interest overlaying discomfort.
The young men disappeared. The elderly sister was again around, and a nurse passed through from right to left and back again. Ages passed. Then suddenly there were Angus and Rhona.
‘We went out for a smoke. We knew they’d be ages.’
‘How are you?’
‘We saw the X-ray. A hair-breadth fracture in the neck of the femur.’
Presently the porter wheeled her off to the vacant bed in the end section of Ward B2. She had a drink and an injection. Angus and Rhona came, and then Don; there were tender words and a general pretence at stiff upper lips and optimism. They all smiled round at each other, love binding them together and taking the edge off disaster. At such times elemental love takes charge.
Chapter Three
That afternoon Mary and I stood uncomfortably outside the closed door of the Sisters’ sitting-room, each trying to look as if we didn’t expect the other to make the first move, but secretly hoping she would do so.
At length, when we had run out of excuses for delay, such as straightening our stockings, pushing back our caps, and doing up our shoe-laces, Mary drew a long breath and said bravely; ‘It’s no good hanging around, it’ll only get worse.’
We looked at each other, and there was a dreadful pause. I fingered my stiff collar uneasily, wondering for the fiftieth time in the last hour whether I would ever get used to it. But, as Mary had pointed out, we had felt exactly the same way about our caps when we had first started nursing ‒ centuries ago.
Our uniforms h
ad been sitting on our beds when we had arrived from St Bernard’s that morning; laced caps, stiff choirboys’ collars, and blue dresses. It seemed incredible that we had reached the pinnacle of our careers and actually become Sisters.
That curious race of beings had up till now been a race apart; someone to take the final responsibility, someone to fall back on when your own initiative was exhausted. Well, now we had to carry the can ourselves. With Matron’s congratulations, warnings and pep talks still ringing in our ears, we had come to Fawley Grange to take up our new posts, Mary in the Women’s Medical Ward, and me in theatres, to work under Sister Maitland.
Sister Maitland had a sinister record; we knew of at least three sisters who had been driven out of theatres after a short period of working under her. I expected her to be difficult, but I did not take too pessimistic a view. I had worked in theatres for a year, and I knew the tensions and difficulties of the life. All theatre sisters are difficult at times, and I felt I would learn to deal with Maitland as I had learnt to cope with the vagaries of surgeons, and the terrified flapping of juniors. Still, as I stood at the door of the Sisters’ room, about to take the first step into the new environment, I thought with a certain yearning of the comfortable position as staff nurse in the small gynaecological theatre I had come from, where the Sister had been competent and comparatively easy-going, and had built up my self-confidence by making working conditions easy and relaxed. Thinking of her and remembering what a human being she was, I felt a pang of regret.
‘Go on, Jane,’ said Mary, giving me a nudge.
My hand was on the door knob, I moved it and before I could stop myself I was stepping across the threshold of that closely-guarded sanctuary, the Sisters’ sitting-room.
There were three occupants when we entered; two of them looked up casually, and the third with a quick bird-like glance and then down again. The plump Sister in the middle got up, smiling, out of a chintz-covered easy chair to greet us. Her face had the sweetness and the touch of sadness that is seen in the faces of the more sensitive of older nurses. She introduced herself as Lucy Sadd, Sister of the Women’s Orthopaedic Ward, B2. She said it was nice to have some new faces around, and introduced Tyson, the nervous older woman, who looked up quickly from her knitting, then down again with the bird-like movement, as Sister of D2, Chest and Heart.
