A Sister's Life: The ups and downs of life as a 1950s Theatre Sister (Nurse Jane Grant Book 3)

by Jane Grant

  Mrs McKie spelt out ‘hospital’ in some surprise. It was her first encounter with the fact well known to everyone associated with hospitals, that the simple and half-witted drift there not only because they are weaker in constitution, but also because they are crying out ‘help!’ ‒ the world being inexplicable to them.

  Sister Sadd now entered, not through the swing door from the main ward, but from the corridor. Her comfortable face with kind eyes and over large false teeth hung over the bed.

  ‘How are you, love?’

  She gave directions for the patients’ comfort to Staff Nurse Copley. The morning round went on, bed-making, back rubbing, coffee, the paper-man’s trolley. Then Sister Sadd came back with the Registrar and the gangly houseman. The Registrar, with his handsome stern face, asked Mrs McKie if she was comfortable, and she replied ‘Quite, thank you,’ having made up her mind to make no fuss. When he asked ‘Any troubles?’ she shook her head and smiled, thinking this a rhetorical question. She could have told him that her wound ached, that the plaster was uncomfortably tight, that her knee throbbed, and that she felt sick, but with Scottish stoicism she considered that these ills were no more than one would normally expect after the operation.

  It was then that she remembered who the gangly houseman was. She had last seen him six or seven years ago, when he was a still more gangly adolescent. He was the son of her old friend, Theodora Banyard, and his name was Teddy.

  She made herself known to him. ‘Oh, of course,’ he said, smiling broadly and showing excellent teeth. ‘I remember. We met last at the Fun Fair at Olympia. Don and I went on the dodgem cars. I was furious because he hogged all the driving.’

  ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘Oh, in rude health and as bossy as ever. She’s often talked about you all, and of course she’ll be down to see you as soon as she knows you’re here. More than she ever does for me.’

  He hurried out after the Registrar, leaving Mrs McKie thinking about that girlish friendship ‒ so long ago it seemed. Staying with each other when they were first married. Teddy knocking Rhona off her unsteady feet, and Don snatching Teddy’s favourite motor-car and pulling it to bits to see how it worked. It would be nice to see Theo again; they communicated at Christmas and she knew Theo to be full of activities and to be on the Board of a London hospital.

  The day passed with even beat; punctuated by meals, medicines and washbowls. Mrs McKie did not feel like food, and when the lunch trolley came round, kind, fat Sister did not press her to eat.

  Gloria, however, was cajoled. ‘Come along, love. You must eat.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘Just a little, love. It’s a lovely dinner today.’

  ‘The smell puts me off. I hate carrots too.’

  ‘Have some salad then.’ From the lower tray of her trolley Sister produced, with a little rearrangement, a tempting plate containing half a hard-boiled egg, some crisp inner leaves of lettuce, with a surround of thinly sliced radishes tomatoes and cucumber.

  ‘Come along, love. Eat this now. A little mayonnaise?’ Gloria showed becoming reluctance, but when Sister turned to deal with Grannie Weedon, she fell on the food and cleared the plate.

  In the meantime Sister was turning her charm and her motherly care on Grannie. ‘Eat it up, love. Now, Gran, that’s naughty to spit it out. What’ll we have to do to you, eh?’ A pause and then Sister spoke coaxingly; ‘What would you like, love? Would you like an egg beaten in milk? Would you like a Guinness, love?’

  Sister herself went for the Guinness, and tenderly helped Gran to swallow a few mouthfuls.

  ‘That’s better, love. Now you drink it all up.’

  She left Grannie sitting up, neat and clean, a spotless sheet in front of her and spotless pillows behind, with the glass of Guinness half drunk on her locker beside her. And for a while afterwards Grannie was lucid and sensible, seeming to have accepted her lot and admitted her surroundings into her consciousness.

  Gloria, too, cheered up after lunch enough to call out chirpily to a boy from the ward next door, who was strolling past on his way to the day room: ‘Hiya, Ron. How are you this jolly afternoon?’

  ‘Fine. How’s yourself?’

  ‘See you’ve washed your dirty neck.’

  ‘Had a bath, more than you did.’

  ‘What d’you do this morning?’

  ‘Oh, physio.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Gruesome.’

  ‘Oh, poor Ron ‒’ but Ron, tiring of this scintillating conversation, was already almost at the end of the corridor, whistling as he went.

  Gloria began to sigh and toss as the day wore on. Mrs McKie lay with her eyes shut, fighting the pain in her constricted leg. Grannie began to mutter. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Who’s what, Grannie?’

  ‘That fellow, walking over the lawn.’

  Mrs McKie raised herself and looked through the corridor windows. All she saw was a couple of rooks; one landed and snatched a piece of bread from the other, then took off flappingly.

  ‘I don’t see anybody, Grannie. Only those funny old rooks.’

  There was silence for a while, then Grannie’s anxious gaze turned in the other direction, through the window by Mrs McKie’s bed. ‘There’s a man there, on a chair on the roof.’

  The flat roof of the nurses’ dining-hall was empty. ‘It’s all right, Grannie, shouldn’t worry yourself.’

  ‘She gives me the creeps, seeing things,’ said Gloria.

  Mrs McKie shifted her leg in its heavy plaster and rubbed her knee. Grannie’s anxieties turned into another channel. “What ’ave they bin and done with the rugs?’ she asked anxiously. No one answered this, and after a further pause she abandoned the struggle to believe herself at home in Buncombe Road, and fell back on her next line of defence.

  ‘My son, my George,’ she explained to the ward. ‘He’ll be coming along soon to take me ’ome.’

  Some faint doubt about the truth of this assertion arising in her mind, she continued to reassure herself; ‘That’s ’im. He’s there ‒ out on the lawn.’ But as no one, not even herself, was convinced, she called to an ambulance man, passing with an empty chair along the corridor.

  ‘D’you know George Weedon?’

  ‘Yes, dear, yes,’ called back the ambulance man, not even, glancing in her direction, as he rapidly wheeled his chair with one hand.

  ‘Tell ’im to come and fetch me ’ome.’

  ‘Yes, dear, yes,’ came the reply from halfway down the corridor.

  Grannie abandoned any hope of help, and depending on her own exertions, struggled up in bed and threw back the bedclothes. Gloria called ‘Nurse!’ and the cry was taken up in the main ward. In rushed Staff Nurse Copley.

  ‘Oh, you naughty girl, Gran! What am I going to do with you? I’ll throw you out of the window one of these fine days. Honestly, Grannie, if you go on with this lark of trying to get out of bed, I’ll kill you!’

  ‘That’s right, dear. Kill me quick.’

  ‘You want to get that leg better, don’t you? You’ll put yourself right back to the beginning if you break it again.’

  ‘I don’t want to live, dear. I wish the good Lord would take me,’

  ‘The good Lord isn’t going to take you so you needn’t think it. He hasn’t finished with you on earth yet.’

  When Staff had left her in peace, Grannie, bearing no ill will for her stern handling, merely murmured; ‘Partickler little bird, ain’t she?’

  Birds were much on her mind. There were birds enough on the lawn and in the trees, but Grannie saw special birds of her own. ‘That bird sitting on the sill, he’s lookin’ at me. Black, he is.’

  Mrs McKie sighed and said kindly, ‘Perhaps it’s a blackbird.’

  ‘No ‒ it ain’t a blackbird,’ said Grannie scornfully. ‘A blackbird’s got more sense.’ After a while her quavering voice continued, ‘That’s the third bird flown over the river.’

  Night came at last for them all. For M
rs McKie the night was a bad one, and she was forced to ask for help. Night Nurse, coming round with a medicine trolley, was a stranger; she was a West Indian, with a dark polished skin, merry eyes, and an aura surrounding her of life and high spirits.

  ‘My leg is rather painful ‒ could I …’

  ‘Where does it hurt?’ Nurse whipped back the bedclothes. ‘Ah ‒ yes. The plaster is tight. The knee? I will get you something.’

  Two small white pills were handed to her, the water poured out and the glass given with a brilliant smile. ‘All right now? Sleep well.’ Nurse tripped off with the trolley, and though she was not singing, audibly, it was clear that she was singing inside.

  The pain dulled after a while, but Mrs McKie did not sleep during the first part of the night, while the hospital breathed deeply around her. When she dropped off, the sky was already growing light. She was awakened abruptly by a voice from the next bed.

  ‘Are you awake, Mrs Magee? I’ve had a lovely slape.’

  Restraining a desire to reply that her name was McKie and that of course she was awake, since Miss Caulfield had just wakened her, Mrs McKie replied in a whisper, glancing at her watch; ‘Sh ‒ it’s only three o’clock.’

  ‘Oh? Is that all it is? I thought it was morning.’

  Mrs McKie shut her eyes and tried to doze again. It seemed no time before she heard the tearful complaint from Miss Caulfield; ‘Oh dear, I do want a bedpan.’

  Gloria turned over and banged her pillow. ‘Can’t you shut up? You’ve been nattering and waking me up all night.’

  ‘It’s nearly six,’ said the more peaceable Mrs McKie. ‘They’ll be round in a minute.’ She raised herself and stared out at the dull, wet morning. Even the birds had not thought it worthwhile to get up yet.

  The welcome rattle of a trolley was heard, but it was only the West Indian Staff Nurse with medicines.

  ‘Could I ’ave a bedpan, please?’

  ‘Yes, yes, you could have a bedpan.’ Staff was now actually humming; she could be seen straining at the leash of song, longing to burst out in full harmony. ‘Nurse is coming, coming, coming,’ she continued, passing on.

  Another trolley could be heard, and Nurse Brunton appeared in the corridor. She rushed in and dealt out wash basins like a pack of cards. Miss Caulfield began to cry.

  ‘What’s wrong with ye now?’ asked Nurse Brunton, poised on one heel, ready to fly about her duties.

  There was no reply. Miss Caulfield was incapable, as a child would be incapable, of explaining that she was crying because the basin was not a bedpan.

  When Sister came round Mrs McKie told her, in answer to her inquiry, that she had a good deal of pain from the leg. She did not go into any particulars, and Sister, feeling the knee, said consolingly that it was probably the change in the weather and she should have some tablets.

  Sister had brought the post, and Mrs McKie had a letter from Theo.

  ‘Dearest Betty; I was horrified to hear from Teddy when I rang him up yesterday about your accident. These femurs are devilish and long jobs. I am glad though this has put us in touch again, and it is nice to think Teddy sees you and is looking after you. Teddy has done well, you know, his chief seems to think highly of him. Do you remember how we used to plan a marriage between Teddy and Rhona? Is she married yet? I suppose she is twenty at least. It might come off yet, Teddy is heart free as far as I know, and suitable daughters-in-law are scarce!

  ‘I shall try and come and see you in a few weeks, when I can get away, shall stay the night locally if Teddy can find me a bed, then I shall see you twice and something of him I hope.’

  The letter went on to describe Theo’s activities on the Board of the East London, where she had trained as a doctor years ago, and on half a dozen committees of organizations to help the sick at home and abroad. Really, thought Mrs McKie, Theo hardly knew what ordinary married life was like. Her husband had been killed in 1940, and she had promptly returned to practice in hospital clinics and packed Teddy off to school as soon as possible. Mrs McKie meditated on the effect on Teddy; there was certainly something lost-looking about him, that look in the eyes that orphans have. Perhaps she and Theo wouldn’t get on so well together now; their lives had been so different and there was something alarming about Theo; that air of the do-gooder which seems to assume that everyone should live in the way she thought they should. Her plans for Rhona now ‒ but all the same Mrs McKie began to consider Teddy for Rhona. Rhona had never had a boyfriend worthy of her.

  Fat Maria, the Spanish cleaner, came round with her deck scrub, pail and floor cloth, and smiled all over her face when Mrs McKie tried out the only Spanish she knew, ‘Buon dias.’

  Grannie Weedon beckoned the cleaner to come to her side.

  ‘When you goin’ to send me home, dear?’

  ‘Ah!’ Maria smiled placatingly, half-understanding. ‘Home, yes? Home for you when you are well, yes?’

  ‘I wants to go ’ome, dear. I wants to go today.’

  ‘You want to go home? You not laike it in bed, no?’ Maria smiled again and passed on gracefully swaying, with her implements about her.

  The Registrar did another round a few days later with his retinue, and Mrs McKie thought of telling him about the tight plaster. It was getting very painful indeed. She was deterred by the thought that she ought to have approached Sister first; she could not bear to seem to slight Sister.

  Teddy remarked that he had heard his mother was coming down in a week or two.

  ‘Yes. I am looking forward to it.’

  ‘I’m sure she is too,’ said the polite Teddy.

  ‘I hear you’re a friend of Teddy’s,’ said Mr Camden.

  ‘I know his mother very well.’

  ‘Mother’s horribly keen,’ said Teddy. ‘When she comes down she’ll want to be shown everything. She always asks me a lot of questions I can’t answer. “What’s the Intake and Out-take of the Hospital?” “Is the Food Allowance more or less than one and tenpence halfpenny and one eighth?” …’

  ‘Nonsense, Teddy,’ said the Registrar. ‘You’re making it up.’

  ‘Honestly, I know one eighth came into it.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to get everything shined up,’ said the Registrar. Teddy bowed and smiled and followed him as he passed on, with Sister reminiscing about the dreadful food during her training.

  Mrs McKie felt rather hurt by Teddy’s indifference. I can remember you in your bath she thought critically. He no doubt considered it to be rather tiresome that a friend of his mother’s should be in one of the beds. After all, thought Mrs McKie, kind as they are, we are chiefly cases to them, only incidentally people.

  But though he was not interested in her, she was intensely interested in him and talked about him that night to Angus and Don and Rhona. Don said ‘that twerp’, and Angus said. ‘How’s he treating you?’ Theo’s letter, when shown to Rhona, had already received a very poor welcome.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mummy, don’t try and arrange meetings. It would be grisly.’

  When Rhona went off with Don to have a cup of tea in the canteen, her mother asked Angus anxiously; ‘Is she all right, darling? She looks rather ground down.’

  ‘She’s all right. She’s coping very well.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t get over-tired. And do you think Don is all right?’

  ‘Of course he is, what do you think?’

  ‘It worries me to think how you’re managing.’

  ‘I suppose you think you’re indispensable. Well, you jolly well aren’t, so forget it.’

  ‘It’s not that, of course. I’m afraid of you all doing too much, especially poor Rhona.’

  ‘… “Poor Rhona” ‒ she’s all right. Don’t worry so much. At times like these we all have to take a bit of the weight. It’s what a family is for.’

  Everyone had ceased to believe in George Weedon, but surprisingly he turned up towards the end of that visiting hour. He was a stocky, phlegmatic young man.

  ‘Well, Mum, h
ow are you?’

  Strangely enough, Grannie Weedon seemed to have forgotten that George was to call and take her home. She merely demanded sharply: ‘Have you brought me the cardigan I asked for?’

  ‘Doris went along to Marks and bought you a new one.’

  He produced out of a paper bag a fine new pale blue cardigan, but Grannie turned away fretfully.

  ‘Doris couldn’t come and see me then?’

  ‘She’s busy with the kids. Sent you this instead.’

  But Grannie would not look at it, much less put it on. ‘I wanted me old cardigan,’ she said.

  After the visitors had left, Mrs McKie’s pain began to increase. Even Gloria noticed it and said sympathetically; ‘Leg playing you up, is it?’ Miss Caulfield, however, was engrossed in the story of her bunions.

  ‘I never thought it’ud ’urt like this. One of them is bigger’n the other, and doctor said to me, he said, “if you leave that one you’ll ’ave to ’ave it done in five years.” Well, it wasn’t no good going ’ome if I got to come back in five years. So ’e done it when ’e done the other. Well, I reckon it’s a good thing done. That one never ’urt, no, not like the other did. Oh, it did ’urt. It was sore.’

  Mrs McKie shifted her leg up and down, unable to toss and turn, tied by the heavy plaster, the cruel constricting plaster. The pain in the instep was getting acute. Gloria read her magazine, and Grannie stared at the soft blue and pink of the sky in the fading light. Nobody listened when Miss Caulfield turned to another matter of extreme interest the question of her bowels.

  ‘If I could get a good work-out. Suffer with me bowels. Even if I take something it don’t work me, not properly. Funny thing, back ’ome I went regular after me cup of tea.’

  ‘Can’t you wrap up!’ shouted an angry Gloria. ‘I was just going to have a whipped cream walnut.’

  When the bright dark Staff Nurse came round with her tray, Mrs McKie was in such pain that a slight alleviation seemed useless. Nurse went away and returned with the haggard, hollow-cheeked Night Sister.

  ‘It’s just here ‒ the plaster presses ‒’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t take it off before doctor sees it. I’ll give you something, though.’