The Healing Time

by Lucilla Andrews

  I was professionally interested, even if I would have preferred a less reluctant escort. I thanked them both. Joel said it was no trouble but as he hadn’t all that much time …

  In the small fast lift reserved for trained staff, he asked, ‘How much has Sister told you about Cooper?’

  ‘That’s it’s neurosurgical, male and female, all ex-heads in coma.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I can’t remember. Did you get to Stanley Mayhew in training?’

  Stanley Mayhew had been a cranial ward. ‘I’d a month at the end of my second or start of my third year. Forget exactly. When you were on the midder circuit.’

  ‘That when?’ The lift stopped. ‘I’d better warn you, Cooper’s quite an innovation. You may find this a traumatic experience.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the warning.’ I glanced at his expression and changed my mind about reminding him of my three months in the Accident Unit. I had now been back long enough to recognise the underlying cause for that peculiar detachment in any experienced resident’s face. ‘The breathalyser made much difference?’

  ‘Very much, though most of those you’re about to see are pre. If ever a ward justified its use ‒’ He broke off, his hand on the outer door. ‘We now nurse ’em all naked and with only one sheet to keep them cool as they shoot such high temps. You’ll find the air-conditioning chilly after the warmth out here.’

  It was not the cold, sweet current of air blowing through Cooper that turned my blood to ice. It was nothing like the Accident Unit, Stanley Mayhew, or any ward I had ever seen before.

  The night staff nurse took us first to the male side. There were three adult cots on one side, four on the other. In the empty space, a baby boy hung in a suspension cot inside an oxygen tent. He was unconscious, his eyes were closed, and he looked like a toy doll hanging in a plastic bag in some nightmare toy-shop.

  ‘He was in his mother’s arms in the front passenger seat. The car had safety belts but neither she, nor her husband, had bothered to do them up. She went through the windscreen and was killed outright. Her husband got as far as Intensive Accident Care, but died before he got to a ward.’ Joel’s tone was as emotionless as his face. The baby missed the flying glass and landed on the grass verge, head first.’

  My mouth had dried-up. ‘How long?’

  ‘Seven weeks ago.’

  The cots were black iron and all the sides were up and locked. The sheets and the pillows were spotless. The men’s faces were neatly shaven, and where their hair had grown over their old injuries, it was properly trimmed and combed. Two were boys in their teens and the rest young men under thirty. Some had their eyes open, but they did not turn their heads to watch us walk by and when we stood at the foot of their beds, they looked through us.

  Joel murmured, ‘The sight is there. The brain’s switched off.’

  It was not a long ward. We seemed to walk slow miles through a silent, sweet-smelling, aseptic stretch of Hell.

  In the far doorway, the night nurse asked. ‘Now the girls, Dr Kirby?’

  He hesitated, then turned to me. ‘I haven’t forgotten you’re the mother of a small child.’ He turned back to the staff nurse. ‘Mrs Holtsmoor’s daughter is five, Staff. Yes, please.’

  More cots. More locked sides. Everywhere, more shining proof of constant, devoted, and heavy nursing. And four little girls between four and nine lying unconscious and limp as rag dolls. The fifth child was two and tottering round her cot, chattering incoherently but happily to herself. She saw us when we stopped at her cot and smiled. Joe tickled her under the chin, ‘How’s my favourite girl-friend, Penny?’ And she giggled.

  I wanted to ask more about her, but couldn’t trust my voice. I waved at her as we moved on and she tried to wave back. She did not quite succeed, but she tried.

  The only adult there was a girl of twenty-three. She was dark-haired and pretty. She whimpered like a toddler until Joel said, ‘It’s all right, dearie, it’s all right.’ She stared at us with wide brown eyes. She did not see us and she started whimpering again directly we moved on. The Cooper nurse remarked on the way that hearing was the last sense to go and first to come back. ‘I’m getting really hopeful for Maureen,’ she said.

  Joel said, ‘Every one you’ve just seen a road accident victim and in eighty per cent of their cases, the drivers involved had had too much to drink.’

  I only managed, ‘Thank you, Staff Nurse.’ Waiting for the lift, I added, ‘How does she stand it? I’m a nurse ‒ I’m ashamed to say, I don’t think I could.’

  ‘Matron has to pick the Cooper nurses very carefully. She says those that can stay long enough love it; those that can’t, do not. All at first, feel like you now.’ He opened the lift gates. ‘We have some successes. Take Penny. She’s been unconscious months, and even weeks back her prognosis looked hopeless. She should make it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ I had to ask now, ‘The others?’

  ‘Human vegetables.’ He shrugged heavily. ‘No use avoiding the issue as that’s what the poor devils are and as far as one can say right now, will remain. We saved ’em, because we have to save ’em. That’s our job.’

  ‘Are we right?’

  ‘God knows. I don’t. I just do my job the way I’ve been taught and feel it should be done. I don’t know if I do it right. I do know there’re times when I don’t enjoy shaving in the morning. Times like now.’

  The lift stopped at the ninth floor and he opened the gates again. I got out, he went on up to Luke. We didn’t say any more as we didn’t know the right words. If there were any.

  Chapter Seven

  A KISS FROM A STRANGER

  I had seen the Cooper night staff nurse around, and occasionally we had sat next to each other at meals. Our conversation had not much risen above requests to pass the salt. Her name was Nurse Rose, she was from the West Indies and a couple of years my junior in age and hospital time, if not experience.

  The junior night meal was from twelve to one; senior, from one to two. We were allowed any forty-five minutes in our specific hour, and when I reached the dining-room that night, Nurse Rose was on her second course.

  I helped myself from the counter and took the empty chair by hers. ‘How long’ve you had Cooper, Staff?’

  ‘On nights, eight months. I was senior staff there on days all last year. That was in the old blocks. Ever since it opened, it’s had a night staff nurse.’

  ‘And needs it. When I got back to Willie-Mary this evening, I felt like handing in my badge and belt. Compared to you, I’m not nursing.’

  ‘It’s different for you.’ She had a low, musical voice and she spoke as if stating facts too obvious to be considered rude. ‘You don’t have to take nursing seriously. Not that I’m complaining. I love my work.’

  ‘One visit to Cooper showed me that.’ I drank some tea. ‘It stunned me.’

  ‘That showed too. I didn’t know before you’d a little girl. What happens to her when you’re here?’

  ‘We live with some very helpful cousins.’ I produced the snap of Marcy from my dress pocket. ‘That’s her. She’s started day school now and sleeps like a log, so she doesn’t really miss me much.’

  ‘She’s cute, Holtsmoor! My sister’s boy has her curls. He’s only a year and my sister has a terrible problem as her husband’s still a law student. Mind you, she has to work as they need the money.’

  I admired her enormously, so I let that one go too. She had finished and pushed back her chair. ‘I’ve a picture of my nephew in my room. I’ve nights off tomorrow. I’ll bring it for you Sunday night.’

  ‘I’d like that, but Monday. Sunday I’m off.’

  ‘So you are! You’ve every week-end. Aren’t you the lucky one!’

  Four little girls and limp as rag dolls.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Enjoy your nights off.’

  ‘Surely.’

  Sister William and Mary should have been on until nine that Thursday night. When I got on, the day senior staff nurse was writing the report. ‘On your own, M
rs H?’

  Parsons charged in at that moment and flung her spare clean apron on to the changing-room table from the doorway. ‘Sorry, all! Missed roll call and had to see the Office. I had permission to get up early, but my steady’s flaming scooter died on us outside the Albert Hall and I couldn’t grab a taxi for ages! Cost me a bomb, too!’

  The day staff nurse was pained. ‘When you’ve finished the story of your life, Nurse Parsons, I am ready.’

  ‘Sorry, Nurse Grey.’ Parsons sat down, smoothed back her apron corners, and folded her hands in her lap.

  Grey was not normally the pained type. I asked if Sister was unwell. ‘Shouldn’t you be off tonight?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t mind when Sister asked me to switch as I hadn’t anything special on and she had to hare off to cope with some family crisis. Didn’t know she’d any family in London till today. Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Seems she’s got hordes of brothers at L.S.E. or somewhere. Is there another sit-in on, anywhere?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Parsons put in, helpfully, ‘No-one was demonstrating in Trafalgar Square just now.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting Sister’s vanished to bail out brothers, Nurse Parsons!’

  Parsons looked meek to show she knew her place.

  ‘At tea-time, a couple of Sister’s brothers asked for her in the hall below. Sister went down, then came back and asked me to switch. As we were so quiet then and it’s Late Visiting, I expected a deadly dull evening. Huh! Guess who did a round twenty minutes ago? Dr Lawson.’

  ‘The chest pundit?’

  ‘To quote Dr Cousins, himself, no less! I must say I told Dr Cousins what I thought of his bringing in a pundit just as the late visitors were starting to arrive. It was all very well for him to say sure to God the decent man was only concerned with our pneumonias! Sure, he’s concerned! The S.M.R., W’s concerned! I’m concerned! And so will you two be concerned! Who wouldn’t be with three geriatric pneumonias in semi-coma arriving en masse. We’ve plugged the old girls with massive doses of antibiotics and one of them has already started to perk up. They should all do, but when they were wheeled in, they looked more fit for slabs in the morgue than beds. Coping with them and even Dr Lawson wouldn’t have been too bad if Sister hadn’t been off on a night Sister Brecklehurst is on for the Night Super. Can you believe this? That woman Brecklehurst has just rung me twice in the last ten minutes! How she imagines I can get my report written and chat her up, I do not know! But this isn’t telling you anything. Let’s get stuck into it. William main ward, Bed 1, Mr Hurst …’

  The pneumonia ladies were in oxygen tents in Mary main ward. I started my first round with them. Two were sleeping heavily but their respirations were already showing some improvement since admission. The third, a Mrs Clive, was awake, coherent, and she wanted to talk.

  ‘I took this flu what’s going round our buildings, see. I tried to keep going ‒ not so easy on your own, is it dear? So, this morning’ ‒ she stopped for breath ‒ ‘the District Nurse said as it would have to be the hospital. I didn’t want to come, dear ‒ it’s not the hospital ‒ but I didn’t want to leave my flat. It’s not just that I fancy my own things ‒ it’s my Alec! It frets me to leave my Alec.’

  The Admission Book had described her as a childless widow, and aged sixty-eight. Whilst allowing for her pneumonia, she still looked more like seventy-eight to me. If one mistake, why not another? ‘Who’s Alec, Mrs Clive?’

  ‘My Tom, dear! ’Course I’d to have him doctored, but he’s ever so lonely! I had him the ten ‒ no, I tell a lie ‒ it’ll be the nine years and I don’t know what he’ll do without me. He’ll pine, I’m sure ‒ I know all his little ways’ ‒ she began to weep, weakly ‒ ‘he’ll fret same as me. The Nurse said as she’d get the neighbours to see to him, but they’re young ‒ the young forget ‒ oh, dear. I want to go home to my Alec.’

  Her distress was very real and very bad for her. ‘Mrs Clive, are your neighbours on the phone? They are? Splendid. I can ring and find out how Alec is for you.’

  I was using the tent armlets and she clutched my hands. ‘Oh, Nurse, could you? I’d be ever so obliged. I’ll never get a wink of sleep till I hear.’

  ‘I’ll ring them. Just let me get you up a little. Dig your heels in, love. That’s it.’ I did her pillows, gave her a drink, explained the nurse-call system. ‘This button in your bedrail.’ I put her finger on it. ‘You just push it if you want anything, anytime. You won’t hear any bell ringing, but when this is pushed it flashes a light by the desk along that corridor outside. The light won’t go off until a nurse comes along and switches it off here. Like this. All right?’

  At the end of our corridor, Liz was talking to Joel by the glass door. It was very early for the Night Super’s first round, but assuming Liz to be starting her night round with us and since she was on for Night Super, I behaved as I would have done with the Night Superintendent.

  I joined the pair. ‘Good evening, Sister. Dr Kirby.’

  Joel stopped talking.

  ‘’Evening, Staff.’

  Liz said, ‘I’m not ready for you yet, Nurse Holtsmoor. I’m starting here as you’re bound to be out of your depths with thoracic cases, but I haven’t finished my conversation with Dr Kirby.’

  I knew my place and wanted to make that call. ‘I beg your pardon, Sister. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll put through a call for one of my patients.’

  Liz was the acting Night Superintendent. No patient in Martha’s tonight was turning over without her knowing the reason why. She begged Joel’s pardon and demanded a full explanation from me. She got it. She didn’t like it. ‘One can scarcely expect the hospital to pay for enquiries about pets.’

  Joel handed me a shilling. ‘That take care of the taxpayer?’

  A woman’s voice answered my call. ‘Mrs Clive’s Alec? Oh, he’s settled lovely! Had a whole tin and his milk and the kiddies is real made up with him. Always been on to me and their Dad to get ’em a pet, they have, but well, I says, that’s all very well, I says, but who’s going to look after – what’s that? Ever so kind of me to see to Alec? Well, dear, what else could I do seeing we’re neighbours and all and she’s not a bad sort ‒ how’s she doing, then? She is? Never! She looked ever so poorly when the ambulance took her this morning.’

  Mrs Clive nearly wept again in relief. ‘Whole tin? Fancy! Ta, dear, ta.’ She coughed, painfully. ‘I got to get well, I have. I got to get back to my Alec. Can’t have him getting too fond of the neighbours, can I?’

  Liz didn’t refer to Alec on her very long, and to be fair, very thorough round. ‘Sharp as needle, that young Sister,’ remarked Mr Worstley later, ‘and a right go she had at trying to trip you up, lass.’

  I shook out a pillow. ‘That’s her job.’

  ‘Aye. As well you know yours.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t have to thank me for truth.’ He pushed up his pyjama sleeve for me to wind round his arm the blood-pressure bandage. ‘If you’d not got yourself wed, wouldn’t you be in sister’s blue dress now?’

  ‘Possibly, if not probably.’ I inflated the bandage.

  He waited till I had let out the air and removed my stethoscope. ‘Will they be making you sister when you’ve finished this job?’

  ‘No.’ I replaced the bandage in the box.

  ‘Why’s that? The little lass?’

  ‘Yes. A ward sister can take the odd few hours off for domestic affairs, but she can’t leave her ward without warning for days or weeks. If Marcy gets ill, which God forbid, though she’s bound to get the childish infections, the job’ll have to do without me. Staff nurses come in handy, but are not indispensable. Sisters very often are.’

  ‘I’ll not say you’re wrong in that, lass.’ He let me remove his glasses and put them away in their case on his locker-top. ‘I’ll not say I fancy you’ll need job long, neither. You’ll be wed again.’ He relaxed. ‘Is that lad George still here? He was of
f saying he’d be back when we saw you going by with that sharp young sister, but he’s not looked in to say he was off. If he’s still hanging round, be a good lass and pack him home to his Aunt Clara. He’s looking right tired tonight and he’ll heed you.’

  Parsons was in the corridor charting the drinks of the small ward patients on fluid-intakes. ‘Our George? He’s gone. They’ve all gone. I’ve turned off the waiting-room light.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I went back to Mr Worstley.

  ‘Staff!’ Parsons put her head round the door. ‘Dr Cousins.’

  When Dr Cousins was writing notes after his round I told him I thought Mrs Clive looked much older than sixty-eight. ‘Another thing I don’t get,’ I added, ‘is why her neighbour said on the phone the ambulance called for Mrs Clive this morning.’

  ‘Twelve-thirty, to be accurate.’

  ‘But she was only admitted to us at six?’

  ‘So she was. And had Joel Kirby not decided to knock ten years off her age with one stroke of his pen, the poor old body might well be still shuttling from hospital to hospital. Have you any idea at all of the trouble G.P.s have to get patients over seventy accepted by general hospitals? The other two are in the clear since the Maltese lady’s but sixty and her friend fifty-nine, so Kirby could admit them without first querying with our respected Senior Medical Officer.’

  ‘He’d have had to do that for Mrs Clive?’

  ‘Both he and Brown for any patient who doesn’t fit into the fine categories approved by the backroom boys. Those that do, they can admit on their own. All query cases have first to be approved by the S.M.O. or S.S.O. and whatever our revered Dr Bush’s personal feelings ‒ and I’ve a notion he shares Kirby’s ‒ he has to consider what the pundits will say to him for filling beds in a teaching hospital with geriatrics. Yet this is not all that new. It must’ve been the same in your day.’