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

by Jane Grant

  She leant over the bed, and Mrs McKie, looking into her deep eyes, thought ‘You know suffering.’ The blessed prick of the injection began to ease the pain, and soon she slept.

  Sister was round early, examining the plaster and the exposed part of the foot, and it was not long before Teddy arrived. Nurse put up screens, the cage was removed, and Teddy, giving the patient a brief polite smile, looked intently at the leg and plaster.

  ‘Have to take it off, Sister.’

  Sister assented. There was a brief colloquy about keeping the cut plaster in position with a crepe bandage, and Teddy departed, going on to the Men’s Ward.

  ‘Always the way,’ said Sister, snapping the huge clippers. ‘These men ‒ they just vanish when it comes to hard work.’ She began to cut, using all her strength and at one point even kneeling on the bed and pressing down with all the power of her twelve stone.

  There was a large blister on the side of the instep which Sister dressed. ‘It’s not before time that we took this off, love,’ she said, ‘Some people react to plaster more than others.’

  Mrs McKie always looked out for Teddy, because, though he did not usually visit the Women’s Orthopaedic Ward between rounds, he often seemed to be passing down the corridor towards the Men’s Orthopaedic. She imagined that there must be someone very ill in that ward, who needed constant watching by the House Surgeon. One morning, when it was pouring with rain, she saw him stroll along the corridor in his white coat, stethoscope stuck in the pocket, using an umbrella like a walking stick. His long thin figure loped along with an uncertain stride; he seemed ill at ease, and as he passed, he gave a quick glance towards Mrs McKie’s bed, raised his umbrella vaguely, averted his glance and hurried on.

  Funny boy, she thought. But there is something attractive about him too.

  Later, she saw him walk back with Sister Cramphorne, the smart, slim Sister of Men’s Orthopaedic. He and she were walking a little apart from each other, and Sister was looking ahead with a vague smile, while he kept looking towards her with short anxious glances.

  Hope he isn’t in trouble, thought Mrs McKie. Perhaps he has made a mistake in the treatment of the dangerously ill patient.

  She heard him say, ‘But that isn’t what you told me yesterday.’

  ‘It’s what I tell you today.’

  Mrs McKie caught a glimpse of Sister’s beautiful profile, broken up by a wrinkled nose and a grimace.

  ‘All right,’ Teddy said abruptly. He sounded so upset that Mrs McKie was quite alarmed for him. However, Sister’s voice as they drew out of earshot seemed rallying, and half-laughing.

  ‘You always take things so ‒’ The words trailed off. She might have been going to add ‘seriously’.

  Mrs McKie’s interest in Teddy made her alert next day when she saw him pass again as Nurse Mooney and Nurse Kerrigan were making the beds.

  ‘Phew ‒ he’s like a little whipped puppy dog,’ said Nurse Mooney.

  ‘I taut he was handsome, so I did. He used to smile so, a beautiful smile, down in Casualty.’

  ‘There’s no smiles now from that one.’

  ‘And why couldn’t he have more sinse, will you tell me?’

  Glancing round, the senior nurse saw Mrs McKie listening, and hurriedly changed the subject.

  ‘Will ye get that flannelette blanket for Mrs McKie now?’

  ‘I have ‒ I’ve geeven her wan.’

  ‘Nurse,’ said Mrs McKie. ‘Is there someone very ill in the Men’s Ward? There seems to be such a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.’

  ‘The Men’s Ward? No, my dear, not that I would know if there was. Are ye wanting your blanket tucked around your toes?’

  At visiting time Don came first, and Angus and Rhona were to follow later. Don, questioned, admitted he had a date for that evening.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs McKie, keenly interested. ‘Is it anyone I know?’

  ‘The same one,’ said Don tersely.

  ‘What ‒ the girl you were going to bring to see us? The nurse? The one in London?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. You’d think I was running fifty girls at once by the way you go on.’

  ‘You mean you’re going up to London tonight? But Don ‒’

  ‘It’s all right Don’t get in a flap. She’s here now.’

  ‘Here? In this hospital?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a Theatre Sister. Apparently, by some accident she was in the theatre when you were there ‒ they aren’t supposed to assist if it’s anyone they know, it’s a sort of etiquette. Blimey ‒ the amount of red tape and codswallop that goes on in hospitals, you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘But Don ‒ why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her yet ‒ there was some mix-up about her ringing me up, she didn’t get the message. That’s another thing about these ruddy hospitals, no one is allowed a private life.’

  ‘I’d love to see her, Don. Do ask her to come and see me.’

  Don considered this. ‘I expect she’ll look in some time,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Good Lord ‒’

  ‘I mean, what does she look like? Is she tall or short, fair or dark?’

  ‘She’s sort of medium, got hazel eyes.’

  ‘And where does she come from? I mean her home?’

  ‘Blimey Ma, you never showed this interest in any other girl. She’s just a girl, we get on quite well. Her people live at Little Melting.’

  ‘Oh, that one. The one you and Rhona went Scottish dancing with?’

  ‘Yes, I thought you knew she was the one I went to see in town.’

  ‘Oh, now I’ve got it clear. I got mixed up with the other one you went Scottish dancing with, Ruth somebody ‒’

  ‘Ma ‒ for goodness sake! That was years ago.’

  Only last year, thought Mrs McKie. But she restrained herself. Owing to her condition, Don was being unusually forbearing, she did not want to try him too far. ‘Well, I hope you have a nice time,’ she said. ‘Are you going dancing tonight?’

  Don said did he look as if he was going dancing, in his old tweed coat? No, he added, smiling to show he was not being cross, they would probably have a meal somewhere and just talk.

  When Rhona and Angus appeared and Don went, Mrs McKie tried to get a little more information about Don’s nurse girl friend, but neither of them were particularly interested. Angus wanted to tell her about two new heifers he had bought, and Rhona was full of the fate of the farm cats.

  ‘I thought we’d lost Ginger Boy! He didn’t turn up for over a day, and I went round calling and calling, and I thought he’d been shot or eaten by a fox or something. Today he turned up as thin as a rake. Someone must have been putting down poison, because today Tabs has gone off her food and just drinks and drinks.’

  ‘I think it’s this stuff they put down for pigeons,’ said Angus. ‘Borley uses it. It dopes them, and then the cats eat the pigeons.’

  ‘I saw Clive Borley today,’ said Rhona. ‘I was furious. I asked him if he’d put down any poison, and he said why and I told him, and he said that was a pity because he had just been going to ask me to go to the Point to Point with him. That was all he thought about it. But, Mummy ‒ you should see poor Ginger Boy, I could have cried.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you like to go out with Clive? I thought you liked going to point-to-points?’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, honestly ‒ he’s a drip. Anyway, what time have I got? And it was him who poisoned Ginger Boy, he practically admitted it.’

  As they were leaving, Mrs McKie made one more attempt to return to Don’s affairs.

  ‘She sounds quite a nice girl, this Jane Somebody. Funny she should be here, isn’t it?’

  ‘She’s better than most of Don’s,’ said Rhona.

  ‘Why worry yourself,’ said Angus. ‘I don’t suppose it will come to anything.’

  But of course she did worry herself; she thought of nothing else all evening and while she lay awake that night. Somehow, she did not take
to the idea of Jane Somebody. An inner sense warned her that Jane Somebody would not melt away into nothing like all the others, but remain to be reckoned with.

  Chapter Six

  ‘You’ve done nothing but moan,’ said Don, finishing his coffee.

  ‘Sorry, Don.’

  ‘If it isn’t Maitford ‒’

  ‘Maitland,’ I corrected.

  ‘Well, Maitland. If it isn’t her it’s the food. If it isn’t the food it’s the hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I am really. Especially when you’re worried,’ I said contritely.

  ‘Oh, I’m not really worried. Mother’s all right. Not in much pain, at least she doesn’t seem as if she is. And they’re very good to her, apparently.’

  ‘Sadd’s an angel. And she’ll be all right, Don, really. The operation went off without a hitch, thank God.’

  ‘Well, look ‒ why can’t you come to the ball next weekend?’

  ‘Don, I can’t. I’ve told you already. It isn’t my weekend off.’

  ‘Surely you can change weekends. You always used to.’

  ‘When I wasn’t a Sister. And when there wasn’t Maitland.’

  ‘Well, if you can’t have the whole weekend, surely you can have Friday evening. I can come up here for you after you’re off and bring you back. No one need know.’

  ‘Don, it’s no good. Forget it. I’m on call. Oh, what’s the use,’ I said crossly. ‘You simply don’t understand. I can’t come out when I’m on duty. It’s not like it was at Bernard’s ‒ it’s either Maitland or me, one of us has got to be on duty. No-one else knows anything about theatres. Suppose there’s a Caesar in the dead of night? It would look good changing out of an evening dress in ten seconds, always provided I’m here, and not in the middle of “The Gay Gordons” ten miles off.’

  My exposition was lost on him. He was already, with his usual Scottish tenacity, working on another plan.

  ‘Look ‒ how about my asking Mainford ‒’

  ‘Maitland ‒’

  ‘She may not have anything fixed for her time off, and if the request didn’t come from you, but from someone else ‒’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ I interrupted sardonically. ‘You just don’t know my dear fellow Sister. It would give her the keenest of pleasures, just make her weekend in fact, to spit straight back in your eye.’

  ‘You must be exaggerating. She can’t be as bad as that.’

  ‘Oh no? She’s worse. Anyway, she has this thing about boyfriends: I haven’t got any, so why should anyone else have one?’

  There was a silence. We looked gloomily at each other. The little restaurant seemed to have got cold all of a sudden.

  Don looked up and produced another inspiration. ‘I know, he said brightly, ‘how about asking the Assistant Matron. What’s her name?’

  I shuddered. I could just see Wood’s face, first incredulous, then horrified, and finally agonizingly embarrassed.

  I could tell from Don’s face that he was frustrated and hurt, and I tried for the tenth time to explain. It was just one of the things that people outside a hospital never understood. If you weren’t off duty you couldn’t go out, and the more senior you got the more difficult it was to change your off duty. It meant, if you were a Sister, that if you changed a weekend, the person you were working with would have to work nearly a month before she got her leave. To do this, you had to be on very good terms not only with your partner, but with the office, to overcome all the red tape attached to such a switch. After this long and reasoned explanation, which I had tried to give as calmly as possible, Don was silent for a while. Then he said: ‘Look, Jane. Why don’t you give up nursing? You could get a decent nine to five job anywhere. You wouldn’t have this ghastly matriarchal state, these fearful rows with Mainland ‒ oh, Maitland ‒ and we could have a decent uncomplicated courtship. Oh, what’s the use?’ he added angrily. ‘I’ll go alone.’

  ‘Why don’t you give up farming?’ I retorted, then added pleadingly, ‘Oh, Don, don’t be cross. I get enough of that. After all you did rather spring this on me at four days’ notice.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I thought it would be a nice surprise. There have been few enough of them lately.’

  We dropped the subject, and he took me back to the hospital. I wished after I had said good night to him that we hadn’t wasted all the evening arguing. We were both strung up, and each wanted consolation from the other.

  Maitland’s attitude puzzled me. Perhaps she was someone whom power corrupted, and she resented the fact that I had almost as much power as she had. She made everyone’s life as unpleasant as possible, but at the same time she seemed to know what she was doing, and it was as though she tried not to but couldn’t help herself. In spite of my constant irritation with her, I felt there was some missing factor that would complete my picture of her. Every so often I would catch a glimpse of another side; a flash of humanity when she looked at an unconscious patient, or sent a tired nurse off duty early. Then I would look again, hopefully, and see only a repressed, irritable, bossy little woman.

  That weekend when I should have been out dancing, I was gloomily sorting out the needles in theatre. They were cleaned and replenished every weekend, only one dish at a time, so that there was always one theatre ready for an emergency. I carefully removed the piece of lint on which they were laid in the glass dish covered with sterilizing fluid, and washed and dried the dish.

  Dudley, the shy staff nurse, was talking to Fred Watkins, the cheerful porter, who was standing on a ladder washing the tops of the walls in the next door theatre.

  ‘There’s no need to carry on at some of the kids the way she does,’ he was saying.

  Dudley gave a non-committal grunt; it did not really behove staff nurses to discuss their superiors with anyone but intimates.

  ‘There’s one thing,’ Fred went on unperturbed. ‘She’s a sight better now than what she was when she lived with her mother. Then we used to have some paddy whacks.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not too bad,’ said Dudley, as if ending the subject.

  ‘Of course,’ went on Fred, swishing the cloth into the comer, ‘since we’ve had Mr Heart-throb on the scene, she’s starting to get crusty again.’

  I could almost hear Dudley pricking up her ears, and I felt sure they could hear mine, but it was impossible for either of us to ask who Mr Heart-throb was. One of the surgeons, of course. I went over them in my mind. Most of the Honoraries were old men, whom I considered were long past such nonsense. But there was the handsome Hunt, a visiting surgeon from Bernard, a specialist in cases of arthrodesis and prosthesis. There was also the shy, youthful looking Tredegar, the rather dreary Morley, and the stern-looking but kindly Camden. Unfortunately, at this point Fred took the hint from Dudley and changed the subject.

  ‘You know, I reckon it’s a waste of time washing these walls up here,’ he remarked. ‘Nobody breathes up here ‒ except me when I does them.’

  ‘Weekends are a pain in the neck,’ Dudley said vehemently. ‘I get fed up with this flaming cupboard, that I do know.’

  Dudley had summed it up, I thought. Weekends were just cleaning stuff that didn’t look dirty, tidying cupboards still orderly and spotless from last week-end’s chores; and the inevitable checking and re-checking of instruments.

  I went on with my needles. Dudley went to tea. Fred went off home. Dudley came back from tea so I went and had mine. Later on, Mary and I went to the Sisters’ sitting-room.

  Angela sat in an armchair looking as nonchalant and as lovely as the first day we saw her, and appropriately she was looking through Vogue. We were the only three there, which was unusual for a Saturday evening, when the wards were slack, and most of the Sisters took time off for a prolonged tea break and chatter.

  ‘Well, how’s the world treating you two?’ asked Angela, delicately lighting a cigarette fitted into a long holder.

  ‘Oh, all right, I suppose,’ said Mary.

  I did not answer, and she turned to me. ‘Maitland driven
you round the bend yet?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Gee ‒ what a woman!’ Angela slowly shook her head from side to side. ‘She’s all the whatsits you can think of rolled into one.’

  ‘Oh, not quite that bad,’ I moderated.

  ‘Give or take an inch,’ Angela conceded.

  ‘I can’t help wondering if she hasn’t got some human qualities,’ I said. ‘Hasn’t she any friends? Any love life?’

  ‘Darling, you’ve got to be joking!’ exploded Angela.

  ‘I’ve heard vague rumours.’

  ‘Vague is the operative word. She did have a thing for Peter Camden at one point ‒ I doubt if he knows she’s alive. Then she’s always having things about people.’

  ‘Didn’t she used to live out?’

  ‘Oh Lord, yes. She used to live with her mother, but Wood made such a hoo-ha of her being on call that she moved back in. Darling Mummy is another of her problems, I believe. That woman is so packed with neuroses that she’ll never get out from under.’

  She stood up, obviously bored with all this talk of someone in whom she wasn’t interested. ‘I’d better be poddling back. I’ve got some old boy about to pass on, and there’s an old duck in Ward D I’m supposed to look at.’ The ward sisters were on call for other wards at weekends.

  She reached the door and looked back. ‘By the way, girls, should you happen to take a call for me tonight, you might be angels and say I had a bad headache and retired early. Bye-bye.’ She had gone without waiting for a reply.

  ‘Gosh, she’s a callous so-and-so!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘Talk about leading anybody a dance! She’s got Camden’s H.S. on a string, and now she’s going out with an ex-patient from the private block.’

  ‘How did you learn all this?’

  ‘My staff nurse, Susie Peterson. She’s a mine of gossip.’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me, really. She is rather dazzling. I’m sorry for poor little Teddy Banyard. I wonder if he’ll be ringing tonight?’

  ‘He’s just not in her class, poor lamb.’

  Chapter Seven

  After a few weeks the faces and voices in the end section of Ward B2 resolved themselves into personalities. There was kind Sister Sadd, a true nurse, for whom nothing was too much trouble, who would hurry off personally to get an extra pillow or a couple of tablets if she even suspected suffering. Her slow caressing voice and her constant sweet temper, made her a source of strength and comfort. There was Staff Nurse Copley, excellent and efficient, a little blonde with a line between the blue eyes that just marred her pretty face with its small features. The worry line was caused by her responsibilities; she hardly ever had time to stop and talk, because she worked what was called ‘half-time’ (which really meant as far as one could see a pretty full day) and had another half to do when she got home. She was newly married, and often referred to her home and her husband in short snatches in between tearing off to see to some essential matter on the ward.