A Nurse's Life: Heart-warming and humorous tales from a 1950s student nurse (Nurse Jane Grant)

by Jane Grant

  The Anaesthetist was well known to be a lady-killer. He turned and smiled sweetly at me.

  ‘Yes, Nurse?’ he said, as if there was nothing unusual in a panting, frightened nurse breaking into theatres in the middle of an operation.

  ‘Mr. Thomas is choking, Sister!’ I said imploringly. ‘Could you come, please?’

  She answered rather sharply that she could not come at that moment.

  I was in agony. ‘But he’s choking, Sister! He’s choking!’

  ‘You’ll have to fetch the Staff Nurse,’ said Sister.

  The Anaesthetist said soothingly, ‘Yes, Nurse. It’s all right. You go back to your patient, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.’

  I hurried back to the ward, and rang through to the surgical ward where the Staff Nurse was. ‘Can you come immediately,’ I said agitatedly, ‘Mr. Thomas is choking!’

  Staff Nurse arrived promptly, having run all the way. Mr. Thomas was panting and had turned very blue; Mary was giving him oxygen.

  ‘What is the matter with this patient?’ inquired Staff Nurse.

  ‘He has a laryngectomy.’

  Staff Nurse walked up calmly to the side of the bed and removed the blocked tube. Mr. Thomas took several deep breaths and smiled. ‘You realize,’ she said acidly, ‘that as the trachea is sewn round the aperture, the tube is removable?’

  At this point Ginger arrived. ‘What the hell is going on in this place?’ he inquired.

  He had hardly set foot in the ward before Sister and the Anaesthetist appeared, plus the Registrar who wanted to see any fun that was going. Mary and I stood before the circle of accusing eyes; Mary calling up her courage, said in a voice that tried to be aggressive, ‘Well, we were never told we could take the tube out.’

  Ginger said nothing, but turned round and walked out.

  The Staff Nurse asked, ‘May I go back to the ward now, please, Sister?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse,’ said Sister. Turning to us, she inquired, ‘Now are you two all right?’

  We said humbly, ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Pitying our downcast faces, she went on, ‘I should have explained it is a totally different procedure from a tracheotomy. You realize, of course, that a tracheotomy tube must not come out under any circumstances?’

  The Anaesthetist came behind us and placed a friendly hand on each of our shoulders.

  ‘These things are rather worrying, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘But it’s always best to ask.’

  We thanked him gratefully, and he went off with his arm round Sister’s waist; the Registrar, who had realized there was no crisis as soon as he had entered the ward, had already left, having become bored with the incident.

  ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ I said to Mary, watching the retreating back of the Anaesthetist.

  Mary said despairingly, ‘What am I going to do? Ginger will never speak to me again.’

  We walked down to the end of the ward, and sinking exhausted into the chairs by the table, tried to catch up with our work. For a time there was peace. After we had both had our meal, we even had time to start packing the dressing-drums.

  ‘I thought it was going to be a real stinker tonight,’

  I said rashly. ‘Ginger’s had at least an hour’s undisturbed slumber.’

  The telephone rang. Mary looked at me: ‘Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?’

  She came back from the telephone looking downcast. ‘They’ve had a gastrectomy in the theatre,’ she said. ‘He’s too ill to go over to the other block, so he’s got to stay here for a bit. You’ll have to special him,’ she added.

  Five minutes later two porters wheeled in a trolley, with Theatre Nurse walking beside it, carrying a vacoliter of blood. She said briefly, ‘He’s got a drip up; he’s to have another two pints when this has gone through. He can probably go over in about an hour.’

  I stood by the grey-faced little man. It is not easy to nurse a patient on a trolley, and when he began to come round he started throwing his arms around and trying to sit up. I had a difficult and anxious time till at last, to my relief, they came to collect him.

  It was then three o’clock. ‘Let’s have our tea early,’ said Mary to the Junior. ‘You never know what’s going to crop up.’

  Freda went into the kitchen; the telephone rang.

  ‘Nurse,’ said Night Sister’s voice, ‘you have one empty bed.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘I’m afraid Twelve are full up, so you’ll have to have a surgical take-in. He’s a perforated duodenal ulcer, and as Mr. Jones is having trouble with that gastrectomy, I’m afraid you’ll have to get Mr. Barnes up.’

  She added that Mr. Victor, the Surgical Registrar, would be over as soon as possible, and that Mr. Fisher, the glamorous Anaesthetist, would probably come up, as the patient would most likely be operated on that night.

  ‘Jane,’ said Mary, ‘can you ask the porter to get Ginger up? I haven’t got the heart.’

  I telephoned for Ginger, and we got a bed ready. The patient arrived; he proved to be a very excitable Irishman.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what the divel all this fuss is about. It’s perfectly all right I am. Would you please to let me go home?’

  ‘Now, lie quiet, Mr. Mulligan,’ said Sister soothingly.

  This time Ginger arrived with his pyjama jacket still on under his coat. He was in no mood to be messed about by obstreperous Irishmen.

  ‘We’re going to put a tube down, old man,’ he said firmly. He snapped his fingers, ‘Ryle’s tube!’

  Mary gave him the tube. ‘What the hell’s the good of this, Nurse,’ he said, ‘without an aspirating syringe?’

  Mary got him one, but it did not fit the end of the tube. Ginger’s voice would have frozen the Thames: ‘Adaptor.’

  Mary fled for the adaptor. ‘Drip trolley,’ said Ginger shortly when she came back.

  Mr. Fisher now arrived, looking absolutely immaculate; Mary swore he had shaved. Next came Mr. Victor; he took one look at the patient and said easily: ‘Oh yes, we’ll take him down to theatre now. Barnes, old man, could you possibly assist?’

  Ginger said, ‘Why not? I was going to give up the idea of bed anyway.’

  It was now four o’clock. ‘Were you going to put a drip up on him?’ asked the Registrar. ‘Oh, let’s do it in theatres. Get him down there.’ To Sister he said, ‘We’ll do this as quickly as possible, please, Sister. In, say, half an hour?’

  Sister rang the Theatre Nurse, and Ginger wrote up a pre-medication drug, then went back to Mr. Mulligan. Lying on the bed was a wet Ryle’s tube.

  The culprit smiled disarmingly. ‘Ah, it’s quite all right, Doctor,’ he said, ‘I didn’t need it any more.’

  Ginger said sweetly, ‘I’m afraid you do, old man. Just leave it in till I tell you. We’ll get it up as soon as possible.’ He put the tube down and aspirated.

  Mary came hurrying up, wheeling a rattling trolley as quietly as possible. Ginger said calmly, ‘Oh, we don’t need that now. We’re doing it in theatres.’

  Mary looked at him. ‘You mean you don’t want this trolley?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘How long ago did you know you didn’t want it?’

  ‘Can’t remember. About a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘And you didn’t have the common decency to come into the treatment room and tell me?’

  Ginger was a bit taken aback. ‘This patient’s nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been running up and down all night. You’ll probably need that trolley for someone else anyway, at the rate we’re going.’

  ‘I too,’ said Mary slowly, ‘have been running up and down all night, Mr. Barnes.’

  Tense with anger and exhaustion, she wheeled the trolley into the treatment room. Ginger called to me: ‘Nurse, will you stay with this patient, and see he does not take out his Ryle’s tube again, please?’ He then went after Mary, with the intention of asking her to give Mulligan the pre-medication drug, and found her in the treatment r
oom weeping bitterly. At this he was very disconcerted.

  ‘Nurse, I wonder,’ he began meekly, pretending not to notice her tears. ‘I wonder if you’d mind giving Mr. Mulligan a pre-med. I have written it up.’

  Mary sniffed, and said with dignity: ‘Would you be so good as to check it?’

  ‘Why, certainly, certainly.’

  Mary went to the drug cupboard and got out a phial of Omnopon and Scopolamine. She opened the ampule with a file and cut her finger on the glass. Licking the finger hastily, she drew up the drug in a syringe, put the syringe on Mr. Mulligan’s Medicine Sheet, then picking up the Dangerous Drugs Book, filled it in and handed it to Ginger.

  ‘Would you sign here, please?’

  Ginger signed, and then asked, rather embarrassed: ‘Have you cut your finger badly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well ‒ let me put something on it.’

  ‘No. It’s all right.’

  ‘It’s bleeding rather a lot. I’ll put a bit of plaster on it. Where d’you keep it?’

  ‘It’s quite all right really, Mr. Barnes.’

  Confronted with the small stiff figure of Mary, Ginger suddenly laughed. ‘Now look ‒ Mr. Mulligan is enough damned silliness in one ward. Where’s the plaster?’

  ‘In that drawer,’ she said meekly.

  He held her finger under the tap, mopped it with cotton wool and stuck on some plaster. Then he smiled charmingly: ‘Now go and give the old devil his pre-med,’ he said.

  Mr. Mulligan went down to the theatres. Mary and I started to clear up the terrific mess. By the time everything was under control, it was time to give out breakfasts. We were behind with all the preliminary tasks, so I rushed into the kitchen.

  There had been a heavy thunderstorm in the night, and the Junior had left both windows wide open. There was a good quarter of an inch of water on the floor. As I looked at it in horror, Mary came in from the ward with frosted eyebrows and white hair; a syringe of procaine penicillin having blocked, she had tried to free it, had disconnected the needle and the contents had shot up in her face.

  While Mary got de-frosted, the Junior and I mopped up the kitchen. Then I gave out teas, while the Junior was giving out bread-and-butter. In the meantime Mary went to the oven to get out the bacon; this was placed in the oven to cook on one of the metal meal-trays. This night, however, Freda, instead of using one of the silver-coloured trays, had put the bacon on a green painted tray; the paint was not heat-resistant, and the underside of the bacon was bright green.

  At the moment when this new catastrophe was upon us, Mr. Miller sat up in bed and shouted ‘Alice!’ The old man’s nose started bleeding, and Mr. Mulligan arrived back from theatres.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A period of night duty usually runs for three months, but as we had booked our summer holiday for the middle of June, and this would be less than six weeks after our night duty had started, we should have the second period to run when we came back.

  A fortnight before we were due to go on holiday, Mary sat one night giving Report to Ginger. As she finished she yawned and said something about being glad to get off night duty.

  Ginger reflected for a moment, and then said with a careless air, ‘When are you going?’

  ‘On holiday? Oh, in another fortnight.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was another pause. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Mary said she and I were going walking in Scotland, and he asked what was happening when she came back.

  ‘We’re going back to Bernard’s.’

  ‘So you’ll only be here another fortnight?’ asked Ginger, dismayed.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ginger again. ‘Well, I must be going.’ He got up and walked the length of the ward. At the door he hesitated then turned and walked back again.

  ‘When are your nights off?’ he asked.

  ‘Tuesday and Wednesday,’ said Mary, awestruck.

  He said, ‘H’m,’ waited some time and added, ‘I want to see South Pacific. Care to come?’

  Mary gulped, and said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘Love to.’

  ‘Meet you on Tuesday, Charing Cross, the bookstall, at six,’ he said, and walked off.

  He did not mention the matter again, and on the Monday night did not come into the ward. Poor Mary was in a complete panic, and all during Monday night, till I could have hit her on the head, she went on saying: ‘Perhaps he didn’t mean it. Perhaps he was only joking. Why hasn’t he said any more?’

  In the end I agreed he was joking. I agreed that he wasn’t going to meet her, and that he hadn’t meant anything. This shut her up for a bit.

  Next morning we could hardly persuade her to go to bed.

  ‘Supposing I don’t wake up?’ she said anxiously.

  At three o’clock I was in the middle of a deep slumber when she burst in.

  ‘Do I look all right?’ She paraded before my unopened eyes. ‘No crooked seams? No skirt below the coat? No nothing?’

  I said still half asleep, ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake shut up! You look wonderful. Ginger will fall flat on his face and I’ll be bridesmaid.’

  I turned over and dozed off again. Not for long, however.

  ‘Do I really look all right? What d’you think he’ll say? Will he be there? How long should I wait if he isn’t?’ she added, turning quite white at the thought.

  She was starting a good hour too early, and before she went I made her promise that she would not get to the bookstall before five past six.

  Arriving at Charing Cross at five, she told herself firmly that the only thing to do was to go to a News Theatre. She forced herself to see the programme right round, and coming out to see it was three minutes after six, she got in a panic and began to run. Outside the station she made herself pause, to regain her breath and try to appear poised and immaculate. Then she walked on, and became caught in the rush-hour crowd, pushing and jostling to get into the station. Carried forward in the wave, her sophistication shattered, she began to think she would never reach the bookstall. When she did get there, amongst the crowd around it she could not see Ginger, and she immediately assumed he had not come. Through her mind flashed the awful humiliation of going back to the hospital without having seen him, and she told herself that she would go to South Pacific anyway, by herself, just to show him.

  Then she almost collided with a man reading a newspaper. He put the paper down and said, ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Mary, the last remnants of her poise deserting her.

  ‘Can’t be helped I suppose,’ said Ginger. ‘Are you hungry?’

  The thought of food made Mary sick, but she said, ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Come on, we’ll go and get some food. Let’s have a snack now and dinner after. What time’s the last train?’

  ‘Eleven thirty.’

  He grinned. ‘How do you know?’

  Mary gulped, ‘Well ‒ I ‒’

  ‘All right, we won’t go into that.’

  He steered her through the crowd. They went to a low snack bar and had tea and hot dogs. Mary became aware that she was violently hungry, for she had practically missed the last two meals. When he suggested another hot dog she accepted eagerly. She took an enormous bite, and he said, ‘Suppose we leave some for the other rush-hour customers? Don’t they give you anything to eat at the hospital?’

  Mary blushed, and felt like choking. There was a lull in the conversation. She was trying desperately to think of something to say when Ginger remarked: ‘Had a smashing game of rugger last week-end.’

  ‘Oh? Who did you play?’

  He described the whole game at length, including his own try, demonstrating with salt cellars and teaspoons. When he had reached the referee’s last whistle, he realized they had ten minutes to get to the theatre. They walked out, he hailed a taxi.

  ‘Tell me about the rules of rugger,’ said Mary. ‘I never really understood them.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, �
�there isn’t time to go into it thoroughly.’ But he proceeded to do so. He was still doing so in the train on the way home. When he was convinced that she thoroughly understood the matter, he leant back and looked at her. It occurred to him that she was a very intelligent girl.

  ‘I suppose you’ve taken Prelim,’ he said by an association of ideas.

  Mary did not tell him she had had her belt ever since she had been at Lyeford. She simply said, ‘Yes, I have, actually.’

  ‘I think it’s cushy. I don’t know what you girls get in such a flap about. Now first M.B., that’s quite something.’ After a bit he added, ‘You’ve got tomorrow night off, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you usually do on your nights off?’

  ‘Well, I go home.’

  ‘Are you going home tomorrow?’

  This had been Mary’s intention, but she said quickly, ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s worth it, just for one night.’ However, Ginger, quite failing to follow up, merely remarked that it must be a bit tough getting home when she was on day duty, with only one night off. Mary said she sometimes went home and sometimes did not. It depended.

  There was then a silence, broken by Ginger’s sudden inquiry: ‘What’s your name, by the way?’

  Mary smiled, half offended and half amused. ‘Really you are the end,’ she said. ‘D’you mean to say you asked me out and you didn’t even know my name?’

  ‘What’s your name got to do with it? What is it, anyway?’

  Mary told him. ‘That’s a nice name,’ he said.

  ‘What’s yours?’ she asked.

  ‘Most people call me Ginger.’

  ‘Oh, I know that! I mean your real name.’

  He said rather shame-facedly, ‘Norman.’

  ‘It’s a nice name. I like it better than Ginger.’ Mary was surprised by her growing confidence.

  They went through the hospital gates, and stopped at the pathway leading to the Nurses’ Home.