Children's Ward

by Claire Rayner

  Some other titles by Claire Rayner available in e-book from M P Publishing

  CHILDREN’S WARD

  COTTAGE HOSPITAL

  THE DOCTORS OF DOWNLANDS

  THE FINAL YEAR

  THE LONELY ONE

  NURSE IN THE SUN

  THE PRIVATE WING

  CHILDREN’S

  WARD

  Claire Rayner

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-053-0

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: info@mpassociates.co.uk

  Copyright © 1966, 1995, 2010 by Claire Rayner

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  e-ISBN 978-1-84982-053-0

  All situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  INTRODUCTION

  By Claire Rayner

  Twenty-five or more years ago, I was a young would-be writer, trying to learn how to make my way in the world of books. I was writing for magazines and newspapers and I’d produced a couple of non-fiction books, but story-telling … that was a mystery to me. I knew I liked stories, of course; I’ve been an avid reader since before I was four years old and to this day I’m a pushover for a well-told tale. But how to tell a tale – that was the mystery.

  So much so that it simply did not occur to me that I might be able to write fiction. But I was persuaded to try my hand. And because I knew that it is a basic rule of the learner writer always to write what you know, I opted to write about hospital life. After twelve years of sweat, starch, tears and bedpans as a nurse and then a sister in a series of London hospitals, I had an intimate knowledge of how such establishments work. I also knew that a great many people love peering behind closed doors into worlds they don’t usually get the chance to experience.

  So, I had a go. I started to tell myself stories of hospital life – rather romantic, but none the worse for that – only instead of keeping them in my own head as I had when I’d been a day-dreaming youngster, I struggled to put them on paper. And to my surprise and delight I found that publishers were willing to have a go, and gamble on me. They put my words into books – and I was delighted.

  But also a bit embarrassed. I know it isn’t an attractive trait to admit to, but there it is – I was a bit of a snob in those days. Not a social snob, you understand, but an intellectual snob. I had the notion that stories like these were a bit ‘ordinary’, that what really mattered was Literature with a capital ‘L’ and I knew perfectly well I wasn’t writing that! So instead of using my own name on my first published attempts at story-telling, I borrowed my sister’s first name and a surname from elsewhere in my family. And Sheila Brandon was born.

  Now I am no longer a literary snob. I know that any storytelling that gives pleasure and interest to readers is nothing to be ashamed of and has a right to exist. It may not be Literature, but then what is? Dickens was just a story-teller in his own time, the equivalent of the writers of ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’. Today he is revered as a Classic. Well, these stories of mine are never going to be classics, but I don’t think, now I re-read them, that I need blush too much for them. So, here they are, the first efforts of my young writing years, under my own name at last. I hope you enjoy them. Let me know, either way!

  Chapter One

  From her desk in the glass-walled office, Harriet could see the long ward stretching dimly into the shadows, each small bed and cot humped with the figure of a sleeping child. The little boy in the third cot had both his blue pyjamaed legs stuck out through the bars, and for a moment Harriet wondered whether it would be better to leave him in the hope he would wriggle back under the covers later in the night, or whether to risk waking him by moving him now. And then she remembered wryly just how loudly he could shriek when he was disturbed, and decided to leave him in peace.

  The senior night nurse moved silently through the ward, checking on each child, comforting the odd ones who were still awake and restless. There was a subdued rattle of dishes from the kitchen where one of the juniors was laying the trolleys ready for breakfast the next morning, and there was a distant heavy thumping of traffic from the main road five floors below. With a soft sigh, Harriet looked down at her desk, at the neat piles of charts, the completed day reports and lists for the next morning, and slowly reached for her white cuffs to slip them over the dark blue sleeves of her dress.

  It was half past eight, and clearly there was no further excuse she could find for staying on duty any longer. Another day, she thought, another full day of activity, but without a sight of him.

  I’m worse than the silliest schoolgirl, she told herself bitterly, hanging around in the hope he’ll come to the ward for some reason or other – and even if he did, it probably wouldn’t make any difference.

  The big double doors of the ward swung open with a soft swish, and with a moment’s wild hope, she peered through the glass partition to see if perhaps it had been worth hanging about after all, but the dim gleam of a white cap sent the hope stillborn back to the pit of her stomach.

  Sally, soft footed, came into the office, dropping her blue cape onto the only armchair with a grunt of fatigue before sprawling long-leggedly on top of it.

  ‘You busy too? We’ve been like Paddy’s market today – three lists and a blasted ectopic at half past seven. At this rate I’ll die of exhaustion before I’m thirty. Why I ever opted to be a theatre sister I’ll never know –’ She rubbed her snub nose wearily, and peered up at Harriet. ‘Aren’t you finished yet? We’re supposed to be meeting them at nine, remember –’

  Harriet made a face. ‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ she said, a little shamefacedly. ‘I was just finishing off a few odds and ends. I’ll be ready –’

  ‘You’ve been hanging around waiting to see if Weston would come,’ Sally said accusingly. ‘Honestly, Harriet, you are a nit! Quite apart from the fact that he was in theatre till seven o’clock and probably won’t do any ward rounds tonight, what’s the point? It’s not as though he ever paid any attention to you – and there’s Paul –’

  Harriet looked at her, an almost comically guilty expression on her face. ‘I know, Sal. I’m an ass, I’m an idiot, I’m everything you ever care to call me, but I can’t help it – he just has that effect on me.’

  Sally got to her feet and came to stand beside Harriet at her desk looking down at the bent head with a sort of annoyed sympathy on her round face.

  ‘Harriet love. Listen to me. You’ve got yourself into a stupid state over this man. You say yourself he never seems to notice you as a person – just treats you with a sort of remote courtesy. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just Sister Brett, Children’s Ward. And for a whole year, you’ve been mooning around after him as though he were – were Adonis and the Boy David and James Bond all rolled up into one! What’s the use? Forget it, lovey. Here you are with Paul ready to lie down and die for you, and all you do is take him for granted! And he’s much better looking, and more fun than ten Gregory Westons! Grow up, Harriet, for God’s sake –’

  And Harriet couldn’t argue with her. Everything Sally said was perfectly true, but no matter how often Sally said it – which was very often indeed – Harriet couldn’t, or wouldn’t listen to her. From the first time Gregory Weston had come to the Royal, as surgical registrar, a year before, he had seemed to Harriet all she ever wanted in a man. Certainly he wasn’t as good looking as Paul Martin, the medical registrar, with whom she had, until Gregory Weston turned up, thought herself mildly in love. Paul had fair classi
c good looks, a cleft chin, the physique of an athlete, a personality that made every girl on the nursing staff shiver delightedly whenever he spoke to them. And Gregory? What was it about him that made Harriet’s. knees turn to water at the sight of him, made her pulse beat thickly in her throat till she thought she would choke? Lean, not particularly tall – a bare three inches more than Harriet’s own compact five foot five – a saturnine face under crisp dark hair grizzled with white. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a good deal older than most of his contemporaries, obviously nearer forty than thirty, perhaps it was the closed face that rarely relaxed into a smile, perhaps the low deep voice with its precise accent – but whatever it was, Harriet loved him.

  And in all the year she had been cherishing this ever growing feeling for him he had never made the least sign of regarding her as any more than anefficient ward sister. Harriet’s only comfort – and it was a cold one – was that he never paid any attention to anyone else at the Royal either. Most of the other men on the staff had their special friends among the nurses; over the years many of them had married girls they had met around the wards of the big London hospital, but Gregory Weston went his own self-contained way, aloof, solitary, seeming to have no need of any human contact outside his work.

  Once, when Harriet had managed to ask Paul a few casual questions about him, when she was at the hospital’s annual Christmas dance with him, Paul had said disgustedly, ‘Old Weston? That man’s got ice water in his veins instead of blood. He never joins in any of the mess affairs – pays up like a lamb whenever we whip round for a party, mind you, but goes off and spends the evening in his own room. Look, there’re the others – they’re making for the bar. Come and get a bit sloshed, and then we’ll go and neck somewhere like civilised people –’

  And Harriet had gone to have just one drink, and then pleading a fictitious headache, had slipped away, much to Paul’s disgust.

  Quite what she was to do about Paul, Harriet didn’t know. At the beginning, before she had first seen Gregory, she had enjoyed his company, liked his casual love-making after their frequent evenings out together, had even thought seriously about accepting the proposal that her woman’s intuition told her would one day come. But all that had gone, melting like snow in the sunshine, and for the past months, she had avoided Paul whenever she could, staving off the inevitable proposal as best she could. Not that her coolness had made any difference to Paul. Indeed, in a way it had made him more ardent. Paul Martin wasn’t used to girls who cooled off before he did, and Harriet’s arm’s length attitude intrigued and piqued him. So he persisted, nagging her till she was forced to accept his invitations. Her only defence had been Sally, Sally and Stephen, the senior pathologist who regarded Sally as his personal property. They were an easy going pair, and didn’t seem to mind when Harriet insisted that they made up a foursome with Paul and herself, didn’t seem to notice how often Paul was irritated by their presence, sublimely ignoring his attempts to get Harriet away on her own.

  Harriet pulled herself out of her reverie, and looked up into Sally’s troubled face. ‘I’m sorry, Sal’ she said wearily. ‘We’d better get changed, I suppose – or Stephen’ll think you’re not coming –’

  ‘He knows me better than that,’ Sally said, her face melting into a smile as she thought of her Stephen’s rangy body and unruly brown hair. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m more bothered about old Paul. He’s awfully miserable about you, Harriet – and he’s a nice chap, really, you know. You could do worse. And to be completely practical, if not romantic, you’d be more than an idiot to let him go for the sake of a starry eyed dream about a man who doesn’t know whether you’re alive or dead.’

  Harriet grimaced. ‘Come off it, Sal. I mayn’t be a pocket Venus, but I hardly have to hang on to a man I don’t care about just as a – a sort of insurance. There’s more to life than just getting married for the sake of it –’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ For all her soft round face and pretty ways, there was a strongly practical streak in Sally. ‘Do you want to spend all your life looking after other people’s sick kids? I can’t see you settling down into a career for ever and a day. You ought to be married, with kids of your own – and Paul would make a very good husband. And as for not caring for him – piffle. You cared about him before you went all moony and schoolgirlish over Weston. You’re just peeved because he takes no notice of you. I’ll bet my all that if he once took you out, and you could really get to know him, you’d come running back to Paul with your tail between your legs –’

  ‘Drop it, Sally,’ Harriet said sharply. ‘Just drop it. I may be stupid, but that doesn’t give you the right to be damned rude –’

  ‘Sorry.’ Sally said penitently. ‘It’s just that you make me so mad. And I like Paul. He’s too nice to be a doormat –’

  ‘Come on,’ Harriet said shortly, reaching for her own blue cape. ‘Enough of talking – we’d better change.’

  And Sally, who had known Harriet long enough and well enough to know when to give up, picked up her own cape, and followed her friend out of the office.

  Harriet stopped by the kitchen door, and put her head round it to say ‘Goodnight’ to the night nurse, and the two Sisters padded softly along the dimly lit corridor towards the lift gate. Sally pressed the button, and then leaned against the iron gates, rubbing her face again with a tired gesture.

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll be going anywhere at all special – Stephen’s broke again, and Paul usually is – do you suppose it’ll be all right if I just put on slacks and a sweater? That’ll do, won’t it? And if you wear slacks too, it won’t matter.’

  Harriet nodded, peering down the lift shaft to where the cage was grinding its noisy way upwards. ‘Slacks it is then –’ she said, and stood back as the lift arrived and the gates rattled open.

  There was a trolley in the lift, with a small shape bundled under the red blankets, and in the corner, a young woman with her face drawn and frightened huddled against the wall, clutching miserably at a little parcel of child’s clothes. And next to the trolley, one hand under the blankets to hold onto the invisible wrist of the small patient on it, stood Gregory Weston, his narrow mouth in a grim line.

  ‘Sister!’ He seemed a little surprised to see her. ‘I thought you’d have gone off duty by now – is the cubicle ready?’

  ‘Cubicle?’ Harriet stared at him. ‘What cubicle? I’m sorry – is this patient for my ward?’

  He looked angry for a moment. ‘Didn’t Casualty ’phone up?’ Harriet shook her head, and stood back as the porter manoeuvred the trolley out of the lift.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said crisply. ‘But not to worry. I’ll have a cubicle ready immediately.’ She looked across at Sally, who had gone into the lift and stood ready with her hand over the button. ‘Sorry, Sally. I’ll have to stay. The senior night nurse is new on tonight – it wouldn’t be fair to lumber her – explain for me, will you?’ and putting a friendly hand on the arm of the young mother who was standing looking unhappily down at the trolley, Harriet crisply shut the lift gates on Sally’s exasperated face, and followed the trolley into the darkened ward.

  She dropped her cape at the kitchen door, and sent the junior nurse scurrying off to prepare an isolation cubicle at the end of the ward, sent the other junior nurse to settle the young mother in the office with a cup of tea, and hurried down the ward after the trolley and Gregory Weston’s lean shape.

  ‘Boy of three,’ Gregory said succinctly. ‘Pulled a kettle of boiling water over himself. They’re busy in Cas. so I said I’d examine him in the ward – it’s cleaner here, anyway. Cas. is full of drunks. Have you a dressing trolley I can use?’

  Harriet nodded, and led the way into the far cubicle, where the nurse had just pulled the cot coverings back, and put the heater on to warm the small glass-walled room.

  ‘Bring the emergency dressing trolley from the sterilising room please, Nurse Hughes,’ she said, ‘and set up a barrier nursing table outside this
cubicle. There’s a mask by the washbasin, Mr Weston.’

  Rapidly, she and Gregory masked and scrubbed their hands, ready to put on the gowns the junior brought with the trolley, and then they stood back as the nurse, at a sign from Gregory, carefully lifted the covers from the child on the trolley, before coming close enough to look down on the small figure that lay there.

  He was sleeping the shallow restless sleep of shock, his small arms thrust out to each side of him, red and shiny skin swelling painfully against the sopping wet sleeves of a grubby sweater. By some miracle, his face had escaped any injury, and Harriet crouched beside the trolley, laying her face against one tear blotched cheek to murmur reassurance, as, with the delicacy of a prowling cat, Gregory began to clip the clothing away from the injured area.

  The boy whimpered, and stirred, trying to pull his arm away from Gregory’s gentle but firm hold, and Harriet crooned softly into the child’s ear, watching Gregory’s fingers as they manipulated scissors and forceps, easing the fabric away from the swollen flesh and angry red skin.

  It took twenty minutes of careful work before the sweater and small vest, cut beyond any hope of repair, were lying on the floor beside the trolley. Gregory straightened his back, and looked down at the child who had drifted off to sleep again as soon as Gregory had finished cleaning the angry reddened scalds. ‘Mmm.’ He looked consideringly at the small chest and arms. ‘Not too bad at all. Lucky little devil. I’ll leave the blisters, Sister, for tonight. Just nurse him in the open, and tomorrow we’ll have another look and see what’s what. I’ll put up a drip now – glucose saline, please – and he can have some nepenthe if he needs it. I’ll write it up when I’ve got the drip going –’

  By half past nine, the child was settled in bed, a special nurse sitting gowned and masked beside him to watch the slow drip of fluid into the vein in his ankle. The young mother, reassured as much as possible, had been sent home with the promise that a message would be sent if the child’s condition seemed bad enough to warrant it.