The Healing Time

by Lucilla Andrews

  At forty minutes past two that morning, Mr Worstley had another coronary. We had to get Dr Cousins out of bed. Joel was still up. Both men were in the ward until after four. Parsons made them hard-egg sandwiches to absorb the tea she had been providing throughout.

  When the day staff came on, George Duggan was sleeping on the waiting-room sofa and Mr Worstley surfaced briefly from a coma-like sleep and winked at me.

  Something else I had forgotten was the overwhelming pleasure and satisfaction of a dangerous night safely ended. That moment was so wonderful I nearly forgot to wink back.

  Chapter Six

  A WARD CALLED COOPER

  Jolly was kept in Nightingale thirty-six hours and then given two extra nights off. Her set, the most senior at present on nights, had started talking to, rather than at, me before she was back on-duty. In consequence, the senior night meal provided me with a much higher level of inside information than Parsons could give me.

  One of Jolly’s chums was temporarily acting-Junior Night Ass and had been there when Liz persuaded the Night Super to send us Jolly without the formality of first consulting with Sister William and Mary. Night Super lined us all up the next night. Seems Maggie MacDonald raised hell to Matron and said if the Night Office were going to run her ward for her, Matron knew what she could do with her job! That took care of the brightest little lamp in the business! A lover-boy in high places may come in handy, but even he can’t help out when every ward sister in the hospital is ganging up against you.’

  I was almost sorry for Liz. ‘Maybe she meant well.’

  ‘Maybe,’ replied the girl drily, ‘but she knows, and Night Super knows, and Matron knows, and MacDonald knows, that the Office would never have tried it on with a Martha’s-trained sister. They won’t try it on Benedict’s girls after this.’

  Which could explain why Liz’s nocturnal telephone calls to William and Mary had been reduced to a reasonable number.

  These particular revelations made me uncomfortably conscious of my egoism and then wonder how much of MacDonald’s reserve was professionalism and how much the protective defensive covering of an outsider in a cliquey-plus hospital. So I tried talking to her as a human being. She didn’t respond with her life history, nor did she freeze me out.

  Mr Worstley was the ice-breaker, since she and I shared the common nurse’s preference for nursing the really ill. We swapped views on electric pace-makers, anti-clotting drugs, the new, improved E.C.G.s, automatic hearts, kidney machines, and then heart transplants. She thought she was for the last. I wasn’t sure I was. She asked, ‘Have you been round Cooper Ward since your return, Staff?’

  ‘No. Why, Sister? Isn’t Cooper still Observation?’

  ‘Not since they reopened it in the Wing. Male and female neurosurgical. All ex-head injuries who’ve been unconscious for varying periods. Day, weeks, months, and some, years. Go and see Cooper sometime. I think you should. I think everyone should, and when you see it you’ll understand why.’

  Mr Worstley was on the D.I.L. nine nights. He was a good patient, but his age, obesity, years of sedentary living, and heavy feeding were stacked against him. On two more occasions in the small hours and one at midday, he should have died. That he didn’t was more due to his will than anything else. Often I’d hear him mumbling to himself as he lay like an exhausted shaven and blue-veined walrus inside the transparent walls of his tent. ‘I’ll beat the bugger yet.’

  Once Joel overheard. He caught my eye over the tent roof and smiled. Later he said, ‘The old boy’s going to be bloody mad if Death takes this round.’

  ‘Will it?’

  It was very late and he was very tired. Far too tired for affectations. ‘Depends what guts Worstley’s got left in reserve. Keep drawing on anything and eventually the supply has to run out. When he’s scraped the bottom of the barrel clean, he’ll die.’ He yawned wearily. ‘I just hope he hasn’t, Mrs H. I like the tough old bastard and I love his guts.’

  Mr Worstley had also eased things between Joel and myself. He had transformed Dr Cousins and the house-physician into my chums. I was interested to see them all in real action and developed a new respect for what I saw. When any man has worked a sixteen-hour day and is then called out of bed for the second or third time, his professional and human qualities ‒ or the lack of them ‒ show up. The houseman’s only weakness was a revolting heartiness. The little Irishman remained a fast-talking, obliging, and remarkably competent physician. The later the hour, the better Joel’s temper and the more natural his manner. He managed to look elegant even after pulling trousers and white coat over his pyjamas. These, to Parsons’ great joy, proved as snazzy as his many waistcoats. I had my joy from his medicine. I had known he must know his stuff, but it was rather impressive to observe at first-hand how very well.

  Mrs Worstley arrived from Leeds and was now spending her days in the ward and nights in her nephew’s flat. She had been offered a bed in the hospital but preferred the flat. ‘It’s handy, love,’ she told me, ‘and I keep myself busy tidying round for our George. The mess! But you know what men are when it comes to fending for themselves and our George is used to having me to see to things for him.’

  George had taken over the night watch, arriving after his school day every evening. He too had been offered a hospital bed but refused in favour of our waiting-room sofa.

  It was a few nights before his uncle was sufficiently coherent to appreciate this. ‘I’m not dead yet, lad, so you can take funeral look off your face and as I don’t fancy vultures cluttering up road, you can take yourself back to your Aunt Clara and have a proper night’s sleep.’

  ‘And miss out on the tasty snacks and being tucked down with blankets by all these pretty nurses? Not bloody likely!’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ Mr Worstley gave me one of his winks. ‘Happen I’ve noticed nurses myself.’

  ‘Happen you have, you dirty old man!’

  Mr Worstley was deeply pleased and moved. ‘Been like my son,’ he said when we were alone, ‘and no man could ask for better. A right good lad, lass.’

  In the strange way wards have, William and Mary in those few nights altered from tediously slack to, if not hectic, more than busy enough, particularly in the first half of the night. A batch of convalescents had been discharged and replaced by as many sub-acute patients, four of whom were as near acutely ill as made no matter, but had had to be moved to us to make room for the even iller. These were on the medical side. Inevitably, to anyone acquainted with hospitals; the surgical side promptly sent us a bevy of post-op patients requiring nocturnal dressings and treatments. Most of these were too complicated for Parsons’ present stage, so she added sole responsibility for George’s welfare to her routine chores.

  As regularly occurred on these occasions, within two nights George had been accepted as a ward fixture by patients and staff alike and became ‘George’ to all but Sister, Joel and Dr Vint, our pundit cardiologist.

  After report one evening, Sister told me privately she found our lodger a problem. ‘He seems a nice laddie, but I cannot communicate with him. How do you manage so well?’

  ‘We see more of him at night. That helps.’

  She turned this over in her mind. ‘Certainly, the night staff always get the closest to patients and relatives. Yes. That would give you an advantage. Your being an extrovert is another. I wish I were one. Tell me, what’s he like talking about? His work?’ She braced herself. ‘I must do my duty by him. He’s in the waiting-room, just now?’

  ‘Yes. Correcting books.’

  ‘Should I ask about his work? Or has he any hobbies in which I could show some interest?’

  I had a good look at her. She was dead serious. ‘He’s keen on music. He was an Organ Scholar, but he read History and got a Second. He’s told me but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his period.’

  She brightened. ‘I can ask him.’

  Parsons had been going by with her first tray of hot drinks. She stopped at the desk on her return. I was sort
ing the notes and forms the men would have to deal with on their rounds. ‘When Henry and I part for ever, can I sign on in your Lonely Hearts Club, Staff?’

  I had forgotten she had now acquired the night nurse’s accomplishment of lip-reading. ‘You’ll need that like I’ll need a hole in the head. And when I was a junior, Nurse Parsons, and my seniors were discussing matters above my lowly head, I looked the other way.’

  Her stifled laugh came out as a snort. ‘I’ll bet you did! Your hearing’s much better than mine. You were born to be a gun-dog. Have you had a look at Mrs Trotter’s fluid-intake yet?’

  ‘No.’ I rootled amongst the stack of bed-tickets for the chart. ‘Why?’

  ‘The duplicate in the pantry’s added wrong.’ She looked over my shoulder. ‘So’s this. See. She’s a pint down on her day.’

  ‘So she is.’ I altered the figure. ‘Smart girl.’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face, Staff.’ She sailed off swaying her hips.

  Another thing she was not was tactless. I was hearing far far less about Henry Kirby than I had previously of Nigel and his predecessors.

  That morning, George gave me a lift home. Marcy was appalled. ‘The Sir With Pale Hair drove you in his car?’ The depth of her displeasure was beyond description. She gave me plainly to understand that mothers who chatted up form-mistresses were embarrassing enough; mothers who fraternised with Sirs were social disasters. She had labelled George as the two other schoolmasters she had so far registered. The Sir With Red Hair. The Sir With No Hair.

  The following morning again George was waiting in his car by the Wing side entrance. I only hesitated briefly. A lift saved time as well as my feet, and as we were busier, my report was longer and, in consequence, early-morning time between eight and nine, shorter.

  George asked why the reluctance? ‘Authority a’gin it?’

  ‘Authority won’t give a damn. But Marcy will.’

  He laughed. ‘Kids can be hellish possessive. And conservative. I nearly died of shame all one summer term because my mother was very slim and would wear a pink straw hat. Everyone else’s mam wore a headscarf and was shaped like a bottle. God, my suffering!’ He drove down Anchor Lane. ‘What do you think of the old man this morning? And I mean you. Your honest version, not the official “well as can be expected” corn.’

  I looked at his face before answering. In the clear light of a temporarily bright March morning he looked in need of a month’s sleep, a holiday, and a good cook. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the strength of my relief that I could be honest. Yet I was. ‘I think he’s better. He seemed to me to start picking up in sleep around three this morning. I think if he keeps this up, he’ll be off the D.I. in about forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ He stopped at No. 111. ‘You don’t have to believe this, my dear Mrs H, but without you I don’t think I could’ve got through this. See you tonight.’

  I watched the back of his head through his rear window as he drove on, then let myself in, feeling very thoughtful. Marcy was out in the back yard with Dusty and hadn’t heard the car. Ann was in the hall with the post and a hopeful expression. ‘That schoolmaster give you another lift? How nice!’

  I went in search of Marcy and the splendid morning reunion that was now part of our personal routine. Ann reappeared when I was throwing off uniform and in normal clothes. ‘Do you want this letter now?’

  It was from Helen. I left it unopened on my dressing-table. ‘I’ll face that problem, later.’

  Marcy had her own problems. On the way to school I asked if one Lyn Evans had stopped pinching her.

  ‘U’mmm.’ Marcy beamed. ‘I did what you said, Mummy, and when Lyn did pinch me yesterday, I did pinch her back, ever so hard. She squeaked! But she didn’t pinch me again.’

  ‘Jolly good. Did you squeak?’

  ‘No,’ said Marcy. ‘I’m ever so much fatter than Lyn Evans, so it didn’t hurt me so much.’

  I was still wondering whether I should have told Marcy to turn the other cheek and not hit back, when Ann came in later to enquire the contents of Helen’s letter.

  ‘Victor’s taking her to Majorca for a few weeks. They’re flying on Saturday. She wants Marcy and me to take a holiday at Holtsmoor when they get back.’

  ‘If you go, she’ll try and pressure you into staying again.’

  ‘I know. But she was Marcus’s mother, so well have to go. I’m glad we’re on speaking terms again. I loathe atmospheres.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ Ann drifted round. ‘Pippa, that George Duggan. He married?’

  I knew what was coming and it came. Then I promised to give serious thought to her advice on the subject of my remarrying, as that was the only means of stopping her and I was very sleepy.

  I was a day out in my forecast. Three evenings later Parsons and I arrived on-duty to find the monitor switched off, the screen down from outside Mr Worstley’s door, and inside his room Mrs Worstley sitting knitting.

  At midnight, Parsons wailed, ‘I’m missing my dolly gent!’

  So was I.

  ‘Sister packed him off to an early night. Poor man, he’ll have forgotten what a bed looks like.’

  She looked at me through her eyelashes. ‘I’ll bet he wouldn’t mind your giving him a refresher course, Mrs H. He’s gone on you. Or haven’t you caught on?’

  Dr Cousin’s belated arrival for his round prevented my answering. ‘Now that’s what I call a smile to welcome a weary man! Tell me now, Mrs H, did your mother come from Ireland?’

  ‘Sorry, Doctor, Sussex. And do you know Luke wants you for a lumbar-puncture?’

  ‘Is that a fact? God save us, there’s no peace for the good. What have you here for me before I’ve to love you and leave you?’

  I was now ‘Mrs H’ to nearly everyone in the ward. I didn’t realise it until that night, and then I couldn’t remember when, or by whom, it had been started. I decided I liked it. For obvious reasons I was attached to my married name but that it was a disadvantage to me on-duty was equally obvious.

  I never thought to see George waiting in his car next morning. He was there. ‘How’s the old man?’

  I told him. Then, ‘George, this is very kind, but quite unnecessary.’

  ‘To you, maybe. Not to me.’

  Ann was taking in the milk. She clinked the bottles to prepare herself for the wedding bells and spent most of the week-end lecturing me on the joys of wedlock and my duty to Marcy.

  ‘Every child needs a father, dear. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but it must be said.’

  ‘There’s quite a gap between a father and a step-father, Annie.’

  ‘Not with the right man!’

  ‘And you think George is?’

  ‘Pippa, dear, don’t try and catch me up! How can I answer that as I don’t know him? I just know you, and you are looking happier than you have in years. If this George is responsible, at least give credit where credit’s due.’

  Again I promised to do that and again shelved the matter. I was not sleepy that time, but I had a good reason. One marriage in haste seemed to me quite enough for any woman, and particularly when a child’s whole future happiness or otherwise was involved. And I knew what love entailed. Heaven with the man one loved and was loved by; but in my personal book, unthinkable under any other terms. That seemed to me another good reason, though I didn’t explain it to Ann since it would only evoke another lecture along the lines that poor Marcus was dead and I must learn to leave the past in the past.

  There once more she was right. What would be beyond her was the simple fact that the past had made me what I was in the present. For the present, I was content with my present.

  My present was no more stagnant than anyone else’s. The following Thursday was Parsons’ last in William and Mary as she was going off nights. On Wednesday night, Sister asked me for my confidential report on Parsons.

  ‘I couldn’t ask for a better junior. Kind, helpful, hard-working.’

  ‘I agree, tho
ugh between ourselves, at first I wasn’t at all happy to have her. She’s so attractive I was afraid we’d have the place swarming with students. You’ve had no trouble like that?’

  ‘No trace, Sister. Parsons may be a sex-pot off, but she’s dead sensible about it, on. She wouldn’t risk being chucked out, or let any of her boy-friends get themselves chucked out.’

  Sister was curious. ‘Could that happen here?’

  ‘Oh, yes, as according to Parsons, Sister P.T.S. still rubs in hard in her final lecture to each set leaving the P.T.S. One bad report on unseemly behaviour with our men automatically costs a nurse her Martha’s badge. Two, and she’s out. The Dean doesn’t always provide a second chance.’

  ‘It’s tougher for the men?’ she queried, as if this appeased her intelligence and appalled her instincts.

  ‘Certainly under the present Dean.’

  She said, ‘Of course, you’ve so many more medical students here than we’d in Benedict’s. Authority there was strict, but our problem was less acute as our nurses easily outnumbered the men. What’s the ratio here?’

  ‘Roughly three medicals to each student nurse. Some of the medics are girls, but add to that ‒ what ‒ ninety odd residents? Plus post-grads. Could be four to one.’

  ‘Small wonder you’ve such a high inter-hospital marriage rate here.’

  I found all that rather revealing and very understandable. At her age, most unmarried young women began to brood on the subject. Though not pretty, she was reasonably attractive, and her reddish-brown hair was lovely. She was very slim and her uniform suited her by giving her curves. Not having seen her out of it, I was as ignorant of her fashion sense as her private life. We had never discussed men as men, but I didn’t need to do that to be aware she’d a normal feminine interest in the matter.

  She was working one of her rare 3-to-10 p.m. shifts that evening and we were still at the desk when Joel walked in looking annoyed.

  ‘Mercy me! I’d forgotten he offered to slip back! This’ll teach me to blether!’ She went to meet him as if this were a social occasion. I was entranced. Should Liz look to her laurels? Then MacDonald’s left eyebrow beckoned me. ‘Staff, you’ll recall my saying I thought you should see Cooper Ward? As I’m here till ten and we’re quieter again, Dr Kirby has kindly offered to take you down.’