One Night in London: a hospital in wartime (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Oh ‒ she ‒ she just got a bit lit up in our shelter this evening. She’s always been highly-strung. Just lost her nerve a bit.’

  ‘She hasn’t lost it, she’s had it fractured for her.’

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t know her as well as I do. My set, remember.’ She spoke with more authority than she intended. ‘She’s always liked playing up, but she always pulls herself together when she knows she’s not going to get away with it. I’m afraid I had to give her a bit of a rocket for trying it on with you, but it did the trick. She’s coped very well since.’

  He looked at her very thoughtfully. ‘Would you give a patient with a fractured leg a rocket and accuse him of playing up, because he couldn’t get up and walk?’

  She coloured, ‘That’s different ‒ anyway, she’s not a patient ‒’

  ‘She will be shortly if she’s not got out of London fast. I’ll see Night Sister ‒ and Matron ‒ about this before I leave in the morning. She must go straight back to the country and with a bit of psychiatric help, providing she’s kept out of range long enough, she may get away without a complete crack-up.’

  She was on her feet. ‘Your reporting her won’t help her Martha’s career.’

  ‘How much will that be helped by her admission to a mental hospital? That’s what’ll happen if she’s left to try and sweat it out, and may still happen even with treatment. I hope to God it won’t, but if you’ve seen her in an attack, you should know it’s on the cards. What’s her family background?’

  Nurse Dean was embarrassed and distressed, so she looked defiant. ‘Spoilt little rich girl.’

  ‘I see. Right,’ he added grimly. ‘I’ll deal with this one shortly. Briggs first. He’s got to have something ‒’

  ‘Surely, not another repeat so soon?’

  He shook his head over Briggs’s prescription sheet. ‘No, we can’t repeat it yet. He must have a variation.’ He thought for a few seconds, then wrote and signed a new prescription, put down the notes and removed his white coat. ‘He must have this now.’ He began rolling up his shirt sleeves. ‘I’ll give it. You’ll witness for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied automatically and then read the new prescription. She breathed in, sharply. ‘You can’t mean to give him this?’

  He said evenly, ‘I know what I’ve ordered.’ He took off his watch and pushed it in one trouser pocket. ‘Hypodermic tray out here ‒ yes ‒ right. Get the stuff, will you.’

  She didn’t move. ‘Mack, please, just wait a minute,’ she coaxed. ‘Think ‒’ she tapped the script, ‘think what this could do to him.’

  His face turned rigid. ‘If you’re trying to tell me my job, save your breath. Of course, I know what it’ll do to him. It’ll give a few more hours pain-free sleep.’

  She hesitated for personal, not professional reasons, but inevitably, for her, her job won. ‘No. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say this ‒ you don’t seem to realize this is a lethal dose.’

  ‘Not for Briggs or I wouldn’t order it. You should know that. You should know by now ‒ and brushing aside Martha’s rules and the law ‒ that I neither approve of nor practise murder as a therapy. Nor do I approve of pain! And don’t ‒’ he added under his breath, ‘give me any of that balls about pain refining the soul. It does not! All it does is turn a human being into an animal in agony. I will not allow Briggs ‒ or any other of my patients ‒ to reach that state and by Christ, you should know that by now.’

  ‘Of course I know it ‒ but what you don’t seem to know is that you’re obviously still in shock and don’t know what you’re doing ‒’

  ‘I do,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Momentarily, her composure crumpled. ‘Mack, darling, please believe I’m doing this for your sake and you need me to stop you ‒’

  ‘Och, no.’ His voice and manner were dangerously quiet. ‘A want is not synonymous with a need in my book.’ He jerked a thumb at the ward. ‘Those chaps need you. If you have to be needed, you don’t want a man, you want a son ‒ or patients. You’d better get back to yours and send out Smith. If she won’t do it, as I want a trained witness for this, I’ll get Night Sister up. She’ll do it. Don’t worry. Your stand won’t harm your career. A nurse of your abilities and inflexible attitudes can’t fail to rise to the top. Just lend me your DD keys, please.’ She made no response. ‘My dear, I’m sorry ‒’ he was genuinely apologetic, ‘but do remember I’m still the SSO.’

  She could never recall being so distressed, but she wasn’t defeated. ‘I’m sorry too. I’ll have to ring Night Sister and tell her what I’ve told you.’

  ‘Go ahead, but quickly. Just tell her why you consider yourself better qualified to assess my professional judgement than herself, the SMO, or Prof. Surgery, since all three have professionally approved my decision to stay on. Well? Right. Keys, please. And send out Smith, stat. Briggs has waited long enough.’

  It was a moment of crisis, and as always in such moments, she obeyed her training. She had been trained to obey her seniors. She did so, in silence, and as she glided into the ward thought, this can’t be happening to us ‒ to me ‒ but before she paused momentarily by Jarvis, the mental blinker had slammed shut.

  ‘Nurse Dean says you want me, Mr MacDonald.’

  ‘Yes, Nurse Smith.’ He handed her the ampule he had just collected from the DD cupboard and Briggs’s notes open at the prescription sheet. ‘I’m about to give this and need a witness.’

  She checked both carefully. ‘She’s refused?’

  ‘She’s within her rights and so will you be if you share her views.’ He went on to quote the hospital rule, ‘ “In no circumstances can any member of this hospital’s staff be compelled to give or witness the administration of any drug that conflicts with his or her principles.” Time’s short. Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. I’ll wash in the ward then come out here to set it up. I want us both in a good light for this one.’

  When he had gone, she had another look at the ampule in her hand, nodded to herself, put it down carefully. She made the entry in the DD book, laid that open on Briggs’s prescription sheet, then hitched up her mask before removing the pillowslip covering the hypodermic tray. Without touching any insides, she removed the glass lids from the jar containing the syringe barrels and plungers and the needle jar. With the small metal dissecting-forceps kept in disinfectant in a sterilized former glass fishpaste jar, she fished up one plunger and barrel from the surgical spirit, laid them in the waiting sterile kidney dish, and added two needles. (Two, in case one had developed a hooked point.) She covered the dish with another of the same size until MacDonald reappeared.

  His face was masked. He gave his hands another shake free of drops before fitting together the syringe. ‘Presumably, you’re satisfied this is a safe shot.’

  ‘For Briggs.’ She removed the cotton-wool plug from the small, funnel-shaped glass bottle of sterile rinsing water. ‘Kill you or me stone dead but obviously not him.’

  He glanced at her before he started rinsing. ‘Why, obviously?’

  She met his glance. ‘I may have my off moments, Mr MacDonald, but I have nursed the hell of a lot of your patients in the last four years. I’ve long observed you’ve got to a fine art the shot that stops pain but never bumps off.’

  ‘No bloody art, nurse,’ he grunted, ‘just bloody experience. Right. Let’s have another look at that ampule label. And my script. Agree as ordered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. File off the ampule top.’ He heard Sullivan rushing up the stairs but didn’t look round until he had drawn the ampule’s contents into the syringe. ‘Your coronary seems pro tem to be weathering this one, Sullivan. What remains to function in his heart doesn’t sound as unhealthy as it should. I’ll give you the details after I’ve given this to one of my chaps.’

  Sullivan had pulled on a white coat and brown corduroy trousers over blue pyjamas and soft-soled sandals onto his b
are feet. His bushy hair was tousled and his overnight beard roughened his harassed young face. ‘I’m obliged to you for doing my job for me, sir. Sorry about the hold-up ‒’

  ‘No trouble. I had to stay. The other nurses are in Wally’s.’

  Sullivan panted on. MacDonald concentrated on extruding the final particles of air from the upheld syringe. ‘Clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right.’ He helped himself to two spirit-soaked swabs from the jar she now opened, and pinched both swabs round the point of the needle. ‘I’m not putting this down. Bring the dish with the bumf. Let’s go.’

  Nurse Smith glanced at Jarvis as they went by. Sullivan was listening to his heart; Nurse Carter, across the bed, was taking his pulse. Jarvis slept on, untroubled by their ministrations, by life, pain, war, and the agonizingly patient and weak, ‘Oh, dear … oh, dear dear dear … oh, dear …’

  ‘Just a wee prick in your arm, laddie ‒ coming now. There.’ MacDonald very gently massaged the drug under the paper-thin skin. ‘This’ll stop it very soon.’

  The glazed eyes tried to smile. ‘Ta, doctor. Ta ‒ ever so.’

  Nurse Dean caught Nurse Smith’s eye and mouthed, ‘I’ll stay whilst you cope with the syringe.’ She turned back and stroked the skull forehead. ‘You’ll soon be back to sleep, Briggs, dear.’

  MacDonald and Nurse Smith signed the DD book at the foot of the bed, then MacDonald moved forward and dropped one hand lightly over Briggs’s. ‘I’ll just get my coat on again, laddie. I’ll be back, directly.’ He backed away, watching Briggs. Nurse Dean didn’t see him go as she was checking Briggs’s temporal pulse on her watch.

  MacDonald pulled down his mask and was flicking down his shirt sleeves when he joined Nurse Smith in the flat. ‘Thank you, nurse.’

  Her mask was down. She smiled rather shyly, ‘To be honest, I did it for him, not you or me. But thanks for trusting me enough to prove to me you think my signature still has some value. And ‒ er ‒’ her smile vanished and she began nervously dismantling the used syringe instead of waiting until she was in the sterilizing room, ‘and ‒ er ‒ I hope you’ll forgive this but I’ve only just heard about your wife and I feel I must tell you how sorry I am and ‒ and grateful to you for not telling me earlier. I’m just so sorry ‒’

  ‘No need for that, nurse.’ His voice was toneless but his eyes were kind. ‘You’ve nothing to apologize for, but thank you for your sympathy.’

  She looked at him thankfully and was about to say more, but she had no time. At that precise moment the undetected, unheard, unseen V2 rocket landed in the row of terraced houses on the far side of the road littered with the debris of the row that had contained Jarvis’s house. The point of impact was rather less than one thousand yards from the hospital.

  A blinding sheet of light split across flat and ward and within the next few seconds, the almighty roar of the main explosion and the first massive blast waves ripped through Martha’s. Wally’s block was in the direct path of those waves and as the flat was at the road end, it received the greater violence. MacDonald was flung back and spread-eagled against the closed kitchen door. Nurse Smith was flung face down on the table over the hypodermic tray. The pressure of her body kept the tray on the table but every other object on the top shot to the floor.

  Nurse Dean held Briggs and Sullivan, Jarvis, down in their beds. Nurse Carter, staggering like a drunk, managed to grasp the Major’s transfusion stand before it went over. Even the solid stone outer walls of the hospital seemed to shiver; every bed in Wally’s shook on its castors; every light swayed; every locker jerked either forwards or backwards; every bone whether fractured or healthy was jarred; and the clatter of drinking glasses, enamel mugs holding false teeth, tin ashtrays, enamel and glass urinals dropping onto the ward floor went unheard in the murderous cacophony. A few seconds after the first, the second, that followed inevitably, started. It was a slower, thunderous roar, the sound made by buildings collapsing as dust into the great deep new crater.

  The invisible giant hand pressing MacDonald against the kitchen door suddenly let go. He felt the air rushing back into his lungs and breathed painfully, but very quietly. Nurse Smith remained limp and inert face down on the table. And when all the noise finally subsided, from the silence, it seemed Wally’s was filled with the dead and the soft bubbling of the three oxygen flow-meters was an ugly mockery.

  In reality the number of the dead was one.

  Chapter Ten

  Mrs Browne paused on the top step of the unscreened stairs and wondered if the Nightingale night junior who had escorted her to the foot had sent her up the wrong flight. The flat had reverted to its daytime use and was only occupied by the fire and sand buckets, the telephone on the wall, and two large aged open tea-chests labelled EAB (Enemy Action Breakages) which, filled with broken glass and crockery, were drawn up to one side of the liftwell. Place not only looked different, observed Mrs Browne, smelt different. She took another approving sniff at the strong scent of carbolic issuing through the open door from the newly-carbolized examination couch in the duty-room. Smelt more as one had expected a hospital to smell, this morning. Then she saw the inscription WALTER WALTERS WARD in faded gilded capitals on the dark mahogany board above the screened entrance. She hadn’t noticed it in the night as tucking in her chins restricted her upward angle of vision.

  ‘Nurse Dean said to tell you to potter up and in just as soon as you’re ready, but no hurry. He’s slept well, is quite comfortable, and general condition as satisfactory as could be expected. Isn’t that good news!’ The Nightingale night senior smiled overbrightly. ‘And you’ve had some really decent sleep since that rocket. I was sorry it woke you and my entire ward, but the wretched things always do if they land near as they make such a ghastly noise even down here. Luckily, it doesn’t appear to have disturbed the Major too much … Oh, not at all, Mrs Browne. We’re always happy to entertain lodgers in Nightingale and always getting them, as being right at the end of the beaten basement we’re generally the last women’s ward to fill up with emergencies and usually have a spare bed. In fact, I often think we ought to stick up a bed-but-no-breakfast board. Remember my explaining last night that Sister Wally’s will arrange for all your meals whilst you’re with us? Good … Oh, no, Mrs Browne!’ For a moment the girl’s smile was natural. ‘Just all part of the service. Like all our notices outside the hospital say, ST MARTHA’S IS DOWN BUT NOT OUT. We haven’t yet started taking the hat round to our patients’ relatives ‒ though, of course, if you’d like to help us rebuild after the war, you’ll see a collecting box looming discreetly by every one of those notices … I do hope the Major, and you, have good days and that we see you again tonight. Goodbye for now.’ Her smile vanished immediately Mrs Browne followed the junior into the basement corridor, and was replaced by an expression that mingled distress, fatigue, exasperation and guilt. I’m sorry, she thought, I’m honestly fearfully sorry and shattered ‒ but, oh, my God, isn’t it just the kind of thing she would go and do, especially in Dean’s ward. She detested Dean since we were in PTS though she’d never admit it. Jealous, I suppose, poor kid. But tough on Dean and tougher still on Mack. And then fifty-three in, Night Sister said. And between eighty and a hundred still missing. I’m afraid they’ve had it, poor souls … and Mrs Mack. God, what a night for poor old Mack. Just as well they’re shoving him back to the country. If ever a man needed a break … but I wonder what’ll happen to those two now? I wonder if Dean’ll ever realize how this has saved her professional neck? I wonder ‒ no, I mustn’t! Gone six. If I don’t get on we’ll never be done on time!

  Mrs Browne tucked in her chins, straightened her ample, sagging shoulders, took a firmer grasp on her old pigskin handbag and advanced on the open screen as if facing a firing squad. She was thinking of the gun in that clever gel’s hands. She peered round one end of the screen and had difficulty in recognizing the ward.

  The night lights were off, the main lights on, and clouds of tobacco smoke and
dust hovered under the high ceiling. The unfaced bricks in the long, wide windows reminded her disturbingly of a prison, as she was too unaccustomed to air-raids to value the security they afforded the patients and staff. The prison was amazingly untidy. With the exception of the three screened beds, every other was pulled away from the walls; the lockers and bedtables, instead of being geometrically aligned, were pushed forward or set at irregular angles to suit the individual convenience of the men propped up drinking tea, or sitting up shaving and washing themselves. Up at the balcony end, the two white empty beds on either side of the doors were drawn forward to form the apex of an uneven open triangle formed by eight others that seemed to contain only heaps of grey blankets. With a sensation of relief Mrs Browne recognized the back of the nurse standing in the middle of the triangle briskly shaking down a thermometer, as belonging to that child Carter.

  The men had seen her and chorused softly, ‘Nurse Dean. Mrs Browne’s waiting outside to see the Major.’

  None of the staff had told them the Major’s name, rank, or that his nocturnal visitor had been his wife. Their immediate identification surprised Mrs Browne, but not the nurses. Whilst the names of newly admitted air-raid casualties often remained unknown to staff and patients for a few hours, or days, or sometimes were never known, with other admissions, in any ward, it seldom took more than an hour or so for their fellow-patients to know their names, ages, occupations, family backgrounds, diagnoses, and more often than not, correct prognoses.

  ‘I know the patients always somehow get to know everything, Carter, but they mustn’t know this.’ Nurse Dean was white-faced and white-lipped, but adamant. ‘It’ll upset them dreadfully even though they didn’t actually see much of her. Perhaps the DILs won’t notice much as their injections have got them so far under, but the others will. They’ll start asking soon. Some of them are bound to have seen Mr MacDonald carrying her ‒ her into the duty-room. Being with Briggs I couldn’t screen the ward off in time. And, of course, he ‒ er ‒ had to. So, when they ask, we must say she fainted ‒ isn’t too well ‒ has had to be taken off. Understand?’