The Children of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Pammy half giggled and her tears began again. ‘You want to go out with me because you love my mam?’

  Anthony grimaced. ‘Agghh, I didn’t mean it to come out like that...’

  ‘I know you didn’t. Don’t worry, I know what you mean. She works miracles, my mam. She sent me into Matron’s office today. Wanted to work one of her miracles through me. You won’t believe what I had to talk to Matron about. I’d love to go out with you. But first, we have to get through all of this. When will we hear from theatre?’

  ‘Oh, it will be ages yet.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Teddy will take a great deal of repairing and putting back together, and then there’s the shock. He has to survive that and that’s his biggest obstacle. Mr Mabbutt and the anaesthetist will be having a very difficult time up there.’

  Within minutes Nurse Tanner and Dr Mackintosh were out on the unit again.

  ‘Has she gone?’ Sister Antrobus asked.

  Pammy removed her handkerchief from her apron and wiped her eyes. ‘It was almost as if she was holding on, waiting for the baby to be safe before she went,’ she said. ‘And the shock of the delivery of course,’ she added as Sister Antrobus frowned.

  ‘Far more likely,’ replied Sister Antrobus. ‘No room for sentimentality on a good casualty unit, Nurse Tanner, although there’s a lot of it about today. However, well done. You coped well. Are you taking the baby up to ward three?’ she said, addressing Doreen. She looked down at the bundle in her arms. ‘What a tiny scrap of a thing. They will weigh it upstairs.’

  Doreen stopped outside clean utility and peered in. The houseman was writing out the death certificate and had pulled a sheet up over the mother’s face. ‘Has she gone?’ she asked. ‘The police have arrived. It’s mad out there,’ she said.

  The bundle began to whimper, as though it could sense its mother was nearby. Doreen’s gaze lingered on the young woman’s hands as they lay uncovered by her side. They were delicate, elegantly manicured. Almost familiar. The room felt different to Doreen, although she could not say why. A shiver ran through her.

  ‘I’m not an expert in this stuff, but it might be best to take the baby away,’ said Dr Mackintosh as he came in behind her. ‘Some think a baby can smell its mother.’

  ‘You all right, Doreen?’ asked Pammy as she wiped down the dressings trolley.

  ‘I am. I feel as though someone just walked over my grave. What a shame she never got to hold her baby,’ said Doreen, indicating the young woman on the trolley. ‘She is such a beautiful little thing.’

  ‘Did you not hear me say? There’s no room for sentimentality on a good casualty unit. Off with you. Take her to ward three, where I sincerely hope they have a cot ready.’

  ‘Yes, Sister, right away.’ Doreen slipped past with the baby nestled in her arms.

  But Sister Antrobus hadn’t finished. ‘Nurse Tanner, are you wearing make-up?’ Casualty may have felt like a battlefield, but nothing slipped past the beady eye of Sister Antrobus.

  As Doreen walked up the stairs, she couldn’t help feeling that she knew this little girl already. She never took her eyes off her. Big, blue, staring eyes. ‘Don’t worry, there will be a bottle coming in a minute,’ she said as the baby sucked furiously on her fist.

  She turned into the ward and the staff nurse indicated a cot. ‘Just put her in there for now. I swear I will get a feed down her as soon as I have a moment.’

  Doreen took in the vast, lonely cot and the bottle that stood waiting in a jug on the locker. The ward was busy to the point of mayhem. Looking around her to ensure that no one was watching, she picked up the bottle and, settling into the nursing chair, she fed the tiny girl. The baby guzzled greedily, her eyes never leaving Doreen’s. Doreen had no idea why, but for the first time in a long while, as she stroked the tiny, perfectly formed fingers topped with papery thin fingernails, she thought of her old friend Amy. She missed Amy. Time had passed and the hurt had subsided. It wasn’t Amy’s fault she’d been attacked, but Doreen lived at home and her father’s order that she must never speak to Amy again had been unequivocal.

  She lowered her head and breathed in the smell of the newborn. ‘Oh, you have just stolen my heart,’ she whispered to the feeding baby. ‘I’m going to have to keep my eye on you.’ Something told her that the little girl would become a part of her life.

  Half an hour later, the staff nurse returned, ready to take over from Doreen. ‘I wonder what we should name her,’ she said absent-mindedly. ‘I have to put something in the notes. Any ideas? How about Doreen?’ The nurse smiled down at Doreen as she lifted the baby on to her chest to wind her after the feed.

  ‘Oh, God, no, don’t inflict that on her,’ said Doreen and then she surprised herself when she added, ‘Why don’t you call her Amy? That’s a lovely name.’

  The nurse had no time to argue as the child in the next cot began to whimper. ‘Smashing. Amy it is then. You are right, it is a lovely name.’

  *

  Dr Mackintosh headed off to see to a patient he had left in the last cubicle and Pammy made her way to join Dana and the others.

  ‘Over here, everyone,’ said Sister Antrobus. ‘Into my sitting room. Nurse Brogan, Nurse Tanner. Mrs Duffy. It’s all yours until we know what’s happening. Nurse Baker, bring your fiancé in too, of course.’

  Doreen was now back behind her desk, having reluctantly left little Amy on ward three. She was typing out the patient notes for the gardener who’d been discharged by Dr Mackintosh. She’d nearly finished when the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello. Casualty,’ she said when she picked up. Thank God it’s not the red phone, she thought. That was the one that linked directly through to the emergency ambulance service. Her relief did not last long.

  ‘Hello, it’s Sister here from the operating theatre. Mr Mabbutt would like to speak to Dr Mackintosh urgently please. Now.’

  Stunned, Doreen laid the receiver on the desk.

  Dr Mackintosh was tending to an elderly lady who had been admitted with a broken hip right in the middle of the RTA. There was also a child who had been hit in the face with a stone. His family were distraught, sobbing in the waiting area, convinced he had lost his eye. They had all that to deal with, the busiest time she had ever known on casualty.

  To her relief, right then Dr Mackintosh appeared on the outside of the curtained cubicle he’d been working in. ‘Dr Mackintosh!’ she said. ‘Quick, it’s the phone for you. Sister from the operating theatre. She says it’s urgent.’

  She held up the receiver to him and watched, her heart pounding, as the blood drained from his face.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ Anthony said almost to himself as he glanced at the huge clock on the wall above Doreen’s head and took the phone.

  Just at that moment, Matron walked in, much to Doreen’s surprise. Doreen walked over to meet her, thankful to leave Dr Mackintosh to his call.

  ‘Hello, Doreen, I have come to help,’ Matron said.

  Doreen couldn’t concentrate. She had worked in casualty for long enough to sense when something not good was about to happen. It was as if the air left the room and time stood still. Without a word of explanation, Dr Mackintosh threw down the phone and ran towards the stairs leading to theatre. Through the open door to the sitting room, Doreen saw Nurse Brogan, white as a sheet, staring after him in a daze, her hand gripped tightly in Nurse Tanner’s. Nurse Baker was in there too, with her fiancé, and Mrs Duffy as well. Doreen heard a desperate, anguished sob from the room as Mrs Duffy rose from her seat and, giving Doreen the faintest smile, closed the door.

  *

  Hours later, Doreen’s desk stood empty and tidy. Everyone was now long gone. Dispatched to the safety of a ward, to Lovely Lane, or home.

  Matron allowed herself a small smile as she saw Dr Mackintosh slip his arm around Pammy’s waist when she passed through the door he was holding open for her. It was almost morning and they were the last to leave. It was a gesture of familiarity she guessed could only lead to greater intimacy
. The thought occurred to her that the abolition of the no married nurses rule meant that Nurse Tanner could be working at St Angelus for a very long time to come.

  Betty Hutch hummed to herself as she mopped the floor. ‘Oh, sorry, Matron,’ she said as she wiped right over the toe-caps of Matron’s shoes.

  ‘That’s all right, Betty,’ said Matron, ‘they needed a good clean.’ Matron knew the name of every single domestic at the hospital and always made a point of speaking to them when she passed them in the corridor on her way back to her rooms.

  The two night nurses were washing down the walls of the clean utility room. Satisfied that all was in order, Matron walked over to Sister Antrobus’s sitting room.

  Sister Antrobus was clearing up the discarded tear-soaked handkerchiefs and empty teacups. ‘What a night,’ she said as she straightened her back. ‘You really don’t ever know on casualty what is going to happen next, do you?’

  ‘No, you certainly don’t. And that is more true now than ever before. If you think what casualty was like only this time last year, it’s almost frightening how fast things are changing. One road accident can dominate the casualty unit for many hours. And who’d have thought it would be one of our own.’ Matron sighed heavily.

  ‘Yes indeed. Well, Matron, there has been a lot of tea drunk tonight, but now seems the time for something stronger. I keep some whisky in the medicine cupboard for those patients who need it. Would you like some?’

  ‘I think that’s a jolly good idea, Sister Antrobus.’

  Matron raised her glass and took a warming sip. She felt overcome with gratitude towards the woman who, on her day off and in her own clothes, not even in uniform, had held casualty together on the busiest night they had ever known.

  ‘Sister Antrobus, I think you should know that Mrs Twigg telephoned me to see if you and Nurse Brogan were all right. She also enquired after Dr Davenport. She told me that you were both having afternoon tea at the time of the accident.’

  Sister Antrobus blushed and took a much larger sip from her own glass.

  ‘So, you see, I can only guess at the connection between yourself and Mrs Twigg. I have worked here long enough and I am sufficiently familiar with this old building to know that, indeed, I should not ask.’

  She waited for Sister Antrobus to fill the gap. She did not hold her breath.

  As she’d expected, Sister Antrobus made no reply. Instead, she looked down into what was left of the amber liquid in her glass and swirled it around.

  ‘Well, I had better be getting back. Blackie will think it most odd that I have left him in the middle of the night.’ She placed her glass on the table with painstaking care, giving Sister Antrobus an extra few seconds, should she change her mind. She knew that this conversation would never be referred to again.

  As she opened the door, she turned and said, ‘Sister Antrobus, I want to thank you. Not just for tonight, but because of whatever it was you did. I am sure I will never know exactly who did what, but I am sure of this, that because of Sister Haycock and yourself, St Angelus lives to fight another day.’

  *

  Teddy lay on the trolley in the anaesthetic room in theatre. His heart had stopped beating twice and both times Dr Mackintosh had successfully used his new technique to bring him back. ‘Amazing work,’ said Mr Mabbutt. ‘I think you are going to have to teach that method to everyone in the hospital, Dr Mackintosh.’

  It was just before dawn when Dana, Victoria and Roland were allowed into the theatre block. ‘I have done what I can for now,’ Mr Mabbutt told them. Victoria stood in the middle, holding both Dana’s and Roland’s hands. ‘I can’t do any more yet. He needs to stabilize before I dare touch him again. The good news is, if he makes it through the next twenty-four hours, we will be in with a fighting chance. His legs were broken and his spleen was ripped. All we can do now is pray.’

  Dana tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat.

  Roland made a better job of it. ‘How do you feel about it all, Mr Mabbutt? Do you think he will pull through?’ Roland looked as though he was terrified of hearing the answer. His face almost flinched in anticipation of the verdict.

  ‘I have to say, Mr Davenport, I do. He is a young man, strong and fit. We have stopped the internal bleeding, got four units of blood straight into him and his blood pressure is climbing. His pulse is stronger. We have a good chance here.’

  Dana’s sob caught on her breath. ‘Oh, God, thank you, Mr Mabbutt!’ she cried.

  ‘Now, now, Nurse Brogan, there is no need to thank me. You have a long road ahead of you. Dr Davenport is looking at six months of healing, at the very least. And, as I said, we aren’t out of the woods yet. However, he is going to need a great deal of looking after. I’m not entirely sure how those legs are going to heal, never mind anything else.’

  ‘They will heal,’ said Dana with determination in her voice. ‘They will heal because I will look after him every day. I will give up nursing and take him back to Mammy’s if I have to. He will heal, Mr Mabbutt.’

  Roland and Victoria left Dana with Teddy while they went to fetch the car. ‘You are coming back to Lovely Lane to sleep, Dana,’ Victoria had said sternly. ‘There is no argument about it. We can all come back later, but without sleep we will be no use to anyone.’

  Dana stroked Teddy’s hair back from his face and kissed the back of his hand. She watched the drip and took his pulse, did all the things she would have done if she was specialling her own patient. She noticed the eerie quiet of the hospital, as she often did when she sat with a patient at night. The dark corridors, night-lit wards and silence gave St Angelus a very special feel in the early hours. Soon, the bustle would begin again. The bright overhead lights would flick on and the sound of water running into bowls and bedpans clanging on to metal trolleys would fill the air.

  ‘I have to go, my love,’ she whispered into Teddy’s hair.

  The smell of anaesthetic was strong on his breath and the houseman who had been told not to leave his side hovered nearby. But she didn’t care. She had nearly lost her Teddy and that alone made everything else seem so trivial. She felt the slightest squeeze on her hand and his eyes half fluttered.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ whispered the houseman.

  ‘It is. It’s a very good sign,’ Dana said as her eyes filled with tears. ‘You sleep, my love,’ she whispered, ‘because from tomorrow we start work to get you better and I will be with you all the way. I won’t leave your side.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Teddy spoke. He tried to twist his head and yanked at the giving set in his hand. The words came out as a whisper, through dry and cracked lips, but they were unmistakeable the second time. ‘Dana, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Teddy, I don’t want you to say those words again, you eejit.’

  Teddy tried to lift his head.

  ‘No, Teddy. Please, just stay still, will you. I don’t know what it is you are trying to say sorry for and I don’t care. We have months of healing ahead of us and you can talk all you like then. Only the future matters from now on. Do you understand? It’s all that matters. Only the future. I’m sorry too, Teddy. I’m sorry too. I should never have left you to be alone.’

  Five minutes later, Victoria crept into the room to collect Dana. She smiled at the sight before her: Dana, asleep, her head resting on Teddy’s hand. Teddy, already looking more rested.

  ‘I’d say he has improved in the last half hour alone,’ said the houseman as he finished taking Teddy’s blood pressure.

  ‘Good,’ said Victoria, ‘because Dana won’t be happy with anything less than that rate of recovery.’

  *

  Betty Hutch wheeled her bucket into the mop cupboard. She had stopped humming some minutes back. Her coat was on and fastened and her headscarf tied under her chin. She held her hand on the door to let the catch slip down without the usual clatter. She would call in at the dairy at the end of Arthur Street on her way home for a pint of warm milk, but first she had news to pass on. Matron
and Sister Antrobus had made up. And they had Sister Antrobus to thank for saving the hospital as well as Emily Haycock. Betty had heard every word. They hadn’t even noticed her as she mopped right outside the sitting-room door. If she was quick enough, she might just catch her neighbour, Biddy, before she left for work and pass on the news. She might catch Elsie too, on her way to the bus stop. There was nothing Betty Hutch liked more than passing on a bit of news.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  Nadine Dorries’ next book, The Mothers of Lovely Lane, is coming in summer 2017

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  For more information, click the following links

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  About Nadine Dorries

  NADINE DORRIES grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool. She trained as a nurse herself, then followed with a successful career in the health industry in which she established and then sold her own business. She has been the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire since 2005 and has three daughters.

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  About The Lovely Lane Series

  It is 1953 and five very different girls are arriving at the nurses’ home in Lovely Lane, Liverpool, to start their training at St Angelus Hospital.

  Dana has escaped from her family farm on the west coast of Ireland. Victoria is running away from a debt-ridden aristocratic background. Beth is an army brat and throws in her lot with bitchy Celia Forsyth. And Pammy has come from quite the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool.