Nurse Carter’s mask hid her grimace. She jerked an irate thumb at the two sterilizers and the motionless sand in the two large wood and glass egg-timers on the lids. ‘I can’t start the timers yet. Jerry must’ve got some gasworks somewhere. The pressure’s gone right down again. Both these swine are off-boil. My kitchen urn’ll be off-boil,’ she added hopefully.
‘Don’t flap. Pour some from the large tin pot you keep brewing all night into a small pot. Warm and wet.’
‘Okay.’
‘Carter! Sorry to keep binding but do stop saying that. So unprofessional ‒’ the telephone was ringing. ‘I’ll cope.’
The operator on the hospital’s night switchboard wanted MacDonald’s house-surgeon. ‘You’ve not got Mr Jason, nurse? Thought you’d have him ‒ tried Rachel and William Harvey and the Surgeons’ Room …’
‘You’ve got some tenderness and tension, laddie.’ Gently MacDonald palpated the student’s abdomen. ‘How long has this appendix been giving you trouble?’
The belated acne stood out angrily on the youthful face. ‘Never bothered me at all, sir. I’m sure it’s the beer. Always has me heaving for days.’
MacDonald nodded noncommittally. ‘How’s the chest feeling?’
Nigel Gill smiled with his lips. ‘Just itchy as hell, sir.’
‘Try not to scratch that strapping. Only make it worse.’ MacDonald replaced the top bedclothes. ‘When did you last take a sip of that water?’
‘Just now after I threw up.’
‘You’ll probably throw that lot up. Don’t drink any more until I say you can.’ MacDonald removed the water carafe and glass from the locker-top, deposited both on the top of the long narrow stock cupboard that backed the row of middle sinks. He went over to the Major’s bedside and told Nurse Smith to watch the student’s pulse. ‘Up a bit now. Could just be because he’s scared as hell,’ he said watching the Major, ‘but for my money it’s his appendix. Let Nurse Dean know at once if his pulse does anything odd.’ He glanced at her casually, then clinically. ‘No change here?’
‘Pulse is down to 130.’
‘That’s something. Colour a wee bit better. Right. Let’s see Briggs.’
When they passed the foot of Nigel Gill’s bed, MacDonald raised an encouraging hand. The student didn’t respond. Both his eyes were squeezed shut … please God, please, please, God, don’t let my appendix blow … don’t let me have to stick in here more than tonight … please let it be the beer ‒ please, please!
Nurse Carter put the small tea-tray at Nurse Dean’s elbow. ‘Filthy black.’
‘He likes it strong. Get that setting done soon as poss. When we’re quiet as this anything can happen.’
Nurse Carter glanced over her shoulder. ‘From Mr MacDonald’s expression it already has.’
‘He’s a bit browned off by that amputation. Get weaving, Carter.’ Nurse Dean watched MacDonald come out of the ward as now that was part of her job. ‘Mr Gill cooking something?’ she suggested placidly, as he sat by her.
‘Probably an appendix. Nothing by mouth, pro tem. I’ve told Smith to watch him. There’s just the possibility it could be a combination of the anaesthetic, finding himself between two potential stiffs and scared as hell at spending the night one floor up. I couldn’t get him into a basement bed as I hadn’t a spare. Who put him in 30?’
‘Sister.’
He rubbed his blood-shot eyes. ‘No imagination, that woman.’
She poured, sugared and stirred his tea. ‘You’ve always said she’s a marvellous surgical nurse.’
‘She is and that’s one reason for it. She hasn’t the imagination to understand death is the ultimate therapy and what she doesn’t understand she doesn’t approve. Most of her patients are too bloody scared of her to risk her disapproval so most don’t bloody dare die.’ He yawned. ‘What’s wrong with that girl Smith? Why does she look as if she’s stepped out of a morgue fridge?’
‘First night back.’ She gazed into the ward. ‘Never sleeps well on nights. Bit highly-strung.’
‘You mean neurotic.’
‘Some people just get insomnia.’
‘Insomnia’s a symptom not a disease. Wasn’t Smith on days in Rachel all summer?’ He watched her smooth, calm, strong young face and the graceful sway of her neck when she nodded. Every movement she made had the natural grace ballet dancers trained for years to achieve. ‘If that didn’t crack her she can’t be as neurotic as she looks.’ His manner hardened. ‘She told me just now Briggs was in real pain before his last shot. Why the devil did he have to wait for it?’
She faced him calmly. ‘The four-hour gap wasn’t up. You know we’re not allowed to repeat DD (Dangerous Drug) injections within the four hours unless we have it in writing from you, the SMO, or one of the pundits.’
‘You’ll have it.’ He uncapped his pen and looked around. ‘Briggs’s notes out here?’
‘Of course.’ She reached for the file of notes dog-clipped to the wooden bed-ticket that normally hung from the footrail of the bed, opened the notes at the prescription sheet, put this in front of him and looked as if she would have put his pen in his hand had it not been there already. She watched him write the amendment in Latin and English and sign it in full. ‘Why all your names and degrees?’
He reached for blotting paper. ‘I like full credit when turning a patient into a morph. addict.’
Her quick colour rose in his defence. ‘You’re not turning him into an addict. You’re just saving him from dying in agony.’
‘He’ll still die a morph. addict.’ He sipped the tea and grimaced. ‘You’ve sugared this. You know I loathe sugar.’
‘We’ve masses to spare tonight as they’ve sent us all the transfers’ rations. Your blood-sugar needs it. Go on, drink it up,’ she coaxed maternally. ‘Think of your blood-sugar.’
‘When are you going to remember I’m not one of your patients?’
She suddenly felt happy. He was feeling better or he wouldn’t have reminded her of that old joke between them. He always said just being with her soothed him. She looked back into the ward, and from bed to bed, with an affection for her patients that went deeper than she realized. Her gaze rested a while on 15. Murphy’s snores were less penetrating now they had propped him on his left. He’d made an awful row whilst he was on his right side. It wasn’t his fault. He had told her his nose had been broken so often he couldn’t be telling how often but sure to God they’d been grand fights. Luckily his face hadn’t been injured last night as he had flung himself flat in time and he hadn’t had one fracture, though all the clothes and half the skin had been stripped off his back by the blast and the flying glass. He was a good patient. He hadn’t moved or murmured when she had re-done his soaked dressings before she settled him for the night. She had used up a whole new tin of tulle gras (vaseline gauze) and there were only three left in the stock cupboard. She reached for the memo pad and made a note to tell Sister in the morning that even if Murphy was transferred to the country on tomorrow evening’s convoy, they would need at least another half-dozen in stock.
MacDonald gulped down the tea as he was thirsty and began writing in Major Browne’s notes. He was still writing when he said quietly, ‘My wife was here today.’
Her head jerked towards him. ‘Here? Why? Term’s on.’
‘It is.’ He didn’t lift his head and his pen sped on. ‘I wrote asking her for a divorce.’
She breathed in carefully. ‘You never told me.’ He said nothing. ‘What ‒ what did she say?’
He heard the sterilizing-room door open. He waited until Nurse Carter was in the ward. ‘You two have a lot in common. You both enjoy saying no.’ He returned to his notes.
Nurse Dean returned her gaze to her patients but, for a few moments, not her mind. Her armour had cracked open. She felt indecent, immoral. She had always known MacDonald was married, but as he never seemed to go home or his wife to come to London, and she had never seen Mrs MacDonald, she had managed to ignore the fact that
she existed. After all, she thought unhappily, like he’s always said ‒ we never meant ‒ and it’s not as if we’ve done ‒ anything like ‒ like that. Suddenly, she was more angry than ashamed. She didn’t understand why. She had never understood that one of MacDonald’s main attractions for her had been what he termed his matrimonial-cum-professional straitjacket. She had never felt about any other man as she did for MacDonald; she was as sure she loved him as she was sure love was beautiful and pure and somehow even more beautiful when safely forbidden. She had enjoyed the unaccustomed and inexplicable excitement of finding herself desired, because she equated desire with love. She had enjoyed the lovely unreality of her dreamworld, and the reality of Mrs MacDonald’s arrival had abruptly shattered the dream. Divorce was an ugly reality. She knew that because she knew how throughout her childhood her parents’ voices had altered when someone mentioned some new acquaintance was ‘a divorced man’. No one ever mentioned ‘a divorced woman’ in her parents’ home. As her mother said, once a woman had made her bed she had to lie on it and it was nonsense to pretend conventions didn’t matter as of course they did, as one couldn’t possibly know any woman who so ignored her duty to society and really one could only feel exceedingly distressed for poor Queen Mary and now please let us talk about something else.
The hospital would talk. And Matron. She clamped her armour together. She couldn’t think about it now. Not on duty. But she was still angry. She said, ‘Sister said that leg was a nasty mess.’
‘Very.’ He didn’t look up. ‘Hope to God his flap doesn’t leak.’
‘Your amputation flaps never leak.’ She felt his wince and added apologetically, ‘You had to put his life first.’
‘Think he’ll thank me when he finds I’ve crippled him?’
‘You were just doing your job.’
He went on writing. ‘I’m a Master of Surgery not a Master Butcher.’
She turned to him. ‘Mack, I do know how you feel.’
He looked up wearily, ‘Do you? And how many legs have you hacked off, my love?’
‘I’m only trying to help you get this in proportion ‒’
‘That’s precisely what my wife said this afternoon.’ He sat back wearily and immediately she sat forward and scanned the ward. ‘I didn’t know she was coming. I’d just gone in to lunch when I’d a message from Sister Cas. saying she’d just turned up. Over a year since she last came to London.’ He glanced at her profile. She was prettier in profile than full face, as the strength of the jaw beneath the roundness was less apparent. ‘Long before you came into my life.’
She watched the patients. ‘I’d seen you around for years.’
‘I expect I saw you. I didn’t know it till this summer.’ He paused to collect his thoughts. ‘No doodles in our leafy village. She’d no idea what they’re like and had the luck to arrive in a lull. Ended just after I joined her in Cas. Did you hear the one that nearly got us at about twenty to two?’
She shook her head. ‘I never hear anything once I’m asleep. Many in?’
‘Not as many as we’d have had from the same when they first started. London’s learnt to fall flat and not look up.’ His eyes narrowed with pain. ‘One poor kid of a WREN in Rachel looked up. In transit. Probably the first she’d seen. She couldn’t wait, nor could the others. My wife had to. Gone five when I got back to her, then Browne came in. She’s coming back in the morning.’
‘She’s staying in London tonight?’
‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘No. She said as I said I’d be working late, once she was south she might as well go on down to Kent to see her brother. He’s got a farm near Tonbridge. Not ideal, but probably better than London. His house is just out of a village ‒ good strong old farmhouse and they’ve a Morrison in their dining-room. They’ve two wee kids, but there’ll be enough room in the Morrison for the five to squeeze in for just one night. Morrisons seem to be able to take anything but rockets and they’ve had none round there that I’ve heard of.’
‘Good,’ she said and they fell silent.
The sound of Wally’s floated into the flat: the snores, the snorts, the grunts, the clicks of false teeth, the mutters in sleep, the varied rhythms of breathing, the faint jangling of bedsprings, the soft bubbling swish of the oxygen passing through the flow-meters. Only three now on continuous oxygen, they registered separately. Only MacDonald wondered how many more before the night ended. Nurse Dean knew the urine-testing room was lined with spare oxygen cylinders and one of the cupboards in the day duty-room was stacked with spare oxygen masks. Her training had taught her to prepare for medical problems and how to deal with them efficiently as they arose, but in her professional as her personal life, she never wasted time, energy, or sleep, on matters her limited imagination allowed her to ignore.
She said, ‘I haven’t heard Wally’s this quiet in weeks.’
‘Whole hospital’s quiet tonight. Every patient doped to the eyeballs to compensate for last night. God bless Jerry. Can’t remember when I last sat down.’ He stifled another yawn. ‘Bloody odd war this has become. Paris still celebrating liberation with kisses and flowers ‒ London still battered to hell, bleeding, burning ‒ and a few miles out of range the rest of the country regarding the buzz-bombs ‒ as my wife calls ’em ‒ as a bit of a joke, she said. I’m not sure she found them so funny when she left for Kent. She blames them for my emotional problems ‒ her words. She says I’m too tired to know my own mind, but she’ll be back early tomorrow to hear me out, though she’s no intention of allowing me a divorce.’
Nurse Dean felt sad without knowing why. ‘She must still love you.’
‘No,’ he said flatly and like a Wimbledon crowd of two, their heads turned to follow Nurse Carter’s flit from Jarvis to 26 across the ward. ‘Didn’t I put that chap in a double hip spica today?’
‘Yes. First on your list after breakfast. Cracked pelvis and both femurs.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Panetti. Joe Panetti.’
‘I remember. Curly-haired laddie bought it somewhere in Kennington in the small hours. Grandfather an Italian immigrant ‒ nice kid.’
‘Very. Jolly bad luck, actually. He’s a Bevin Boy and only came home on leave or whatever it is they get from the mines yesterday and was just going home from his date. Home wasn’t hit. Sister said tonight you’d probably send him down to the country tomorrow.’
‘Yes. I thought we’d better keep him in for tonight to make sure his plaster’s quite dry. Miner, eh? Bloody tough. How about the girlfriend?’
‘All right. He’d just seen her home.’ Nurse Carter had finished giving Joe Panetti a drink, turned his two flat pillows and returned to Jarvis. ‘She ‒ she must love you.’
‘No,’ he sighed. ‘That isn’t wishful thinking. She hasn’t for years.’ For a few seconds he seemed to be trying to remember the time when his wife had loved him and he had loved her and for those seconds his face was that of a different man. He shook his head. ‘She looked happier this afternoon than I’ve seen her in years. She’s very English. The prospect of self-sacrifice and unpleasantness has put new life into her.’
‘I’m English,’ she reminded him crisply.
‘I know.’ His slight smile was self-derisive. ‘You English don’t like to be deprived of your allotted ration of blood, tears and the rest. She’s felt badly deprived, with reason. I’m out of uniform ‒ she’s got a reserved job in a girls’ school in a safe area ‒ even her only brother’s reserved. He lost four fingers in a shooting accident before the war ‒ he’s a bloody good farmer ‒ but she’s ashamed of him too. Now she can do her bit for God, King and Country. She’s decided it’s her duty to save our marriage from becoming another war casualty. Her words.’
Nurse Dean thought of her mother. ‘Actually ‒ isn’t she right?’
‘To insist on doing her duty? That’s always right?’
‘Of course. Everyone knows that.’
‘Do they?’ He jerked his head at the ward. ‘Je
rry’s doing his duty and tonight we’ve got mangled bodies in every other bed in this hospital to prove just how well he’s doing it. Going to tell me that makes it right?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why? Jerry has his duty ‒ so’ve I. I have a duty to save lives.’ He looked deliberately at her face. ‘So right now in Rachel there’s a girl your age with your exquisite figure, one eye, and half a face.’ She shuddered but he kept on dreadfully quietly. ‘From some snaps we found on her respirator case, this morning that poor kid was a very bonny lassie. If she were you I’d still not wish her one more hour of life. She may live.’ His face darkened. ‘I’ve done my duty by her. Christ. A four-letter word that has the sleepwalkers reacting like Pavlov’s dogs.’
‘Please,’ she was urgent, ‘not here. We can’t talk like this here.’
He ignored her. ‘I’ll have another go at waking my wife tomorrow. This afternoon I’d only time to tell her that, whilst she can stop me re-marrying, nothing she nor the law can do will force me to spend another day much less night with her.’
She stood up sedately. ‘You know we mustn’t talk about this here. Please.’ She kept the appeal out of her voice but not her eyes. ‘If you’ve finished your notes would you like to do your full round now?’
For perhaps a minute he just looked up at her without comment or expression. Then his quick, rare grin transformed his exhausted face. ‘Dead right, Nurse Dean. This flat is no place for a wake.’ He got to his feet. ‘Right. Let’s look at the chaps.’
‘Thanks.’ She beckoned Nurse Carter to return to the flat and went in with him.
Nurse Carter shot back into the kitchen leaving the door open to hear the telephone more clearly. She went straight to the sink to wash her hands before continuing cutting bread and heard the Alert in the distance. She turned off the taps to listen. Oh dammit! She scowled upwards. It’s miles off and for goodness sake keep it miles off! I haven’t made nearly enough swabs ‒ I’ve eleven dressing tins to fill tonight and if I don’t finish my bread whilst Dean’s going round with Mack I’ll never get it done ‒ don’t dare ‒ oh ‒ sorry ‒ I mean please ‒ please ‒ keep it miles off ‒ drop it miles off!
One Night in London: a hospital in wartime (The Jason Trilogy Book 1) Page 4
