by Jane Grant
‘It’s no good my telling you not to worry,’ I said. ‘But there’s lots that can be done, you know. And even if it should be cancer, it isn’t the end. Surgeons too can do a lot.’
As always, I found the difficulty of giving hope, without raising the hope too high. I felt it would be wrong to say anything definite that might not be justified, either to the patient or to her husband. But I knew the danger of despondency. Mrs Linden settled well into the ward routine and did not complain or express her fears, but I knew she, like her husband, had always that fear at the back of her mind.
On visiting days Mr Linden came early, and waited at the door. He was always the first visitor to enter the ward, and the last to leave it. I commented once to Mrs Linden on his devotion.
‘We’ve only got each other,’ she said quietly. ‘We never had any children, you see.’
When I got back from my days off, I heard from Sister that as Mrs Linden had not responded to the treatment of Lugol’s Iodine, the visiting consultant, Sir Nigel Hardy, had ordered her removal to a surgical ward.
My heart sank at the news. For a week or two I did nothing. The ward was busy, and one had to try to forget the patients who had left it. Other patients engrossed my attention.
But I found that my thoughts were constantly returning to the Lindens; that quiet devoted couple who only asked of life that they should go on being together.
One afternoon, being off duty, I went up to the Women’s Surgical Ward to which Mrs Linden had been transferred. I had known the Sister before she was promoted; she was a young rather hearty type, whom I had worked with soon after I had passed my State Exam.
I tapped at her office door and walked in.
‘Good afternoon, Sister,’ I began.
‘Oh, hullo, Grant. How are you these days?’
I told her I was interested in Mrs Linden. ‘How is she?’
‘Oh, she seems to be doing quite well. Went to theatre a week ago.’
‘Was the tumour benign?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Don’t know yet. The Path Lab never hurry themselves.’
Sister went on to talk about her holiday in Austria. ‘Best holiday I ever had in my life! You would have laughed, Grant, to see Peter Moore in leather breeches. His knees, my dear – they really were repulsive.’ She went on talking about mountains in the Tyrol and lakes in Carinthia.
At that moment the door opened and Sammy, the porter, came in with a bundle of forms which he plonked down on the desk. I suggested Mrs Linden’s might be among them.
‘Yes – probably is.’
I hurriedly turned over the forms, sorting out the various colours, till I saw a histology one.
‘Squamous cell carcinoma,’ I read, and felt sick with horror.
‘What’s that you’ve got?’ asked Sister. ‘That’s not Linden – it’s old Mrs Lever, my dear.’
Disregarding this form with relief – for old Mrs Lever was nothing but a name to me – I went on looking amongst the forms till I found another histology one – Mrs Linden’s. ‘Nodular benign tumour,’ I read. ‘She’s all right!’ I cried.
‘Oh? Is she? Good. I’ll ask Jimmy Garrett to tell her. He’s on the ward now.’
I asked if I might see Mrs Linden, and followed Sister on to the ward. This was in its usual somnolent afternoon state. Some of the patients were reading, some were asleep. But Mrs Linden was sitting up; she smiled as the house surgeon approached her, but by her rigid position and the look in her eyes, I could see she was stiff with apprehension.
I saw Jimmy bend over her and pat her hand; we waited a moment, then as we drew near I saw she was sobbing silently.
‘Well!’ Sister cried briskly as we came up. ‘You feel better now, don’t you, my dear?’
‘Oh Sister!’ She turned to us, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Can you find him? Can you find him quick?’
‘Find him? What do you mean, my dear!’ Sister’s mind was evidently running on doctors and consultants.
‘She means her husband,’ said Jimmy.
‘Oh please, Sister! He’s only shopping in the market, before coming here. He always does. Could someone go and tell him?’
Sister gave a little laugh, and said, as if humouring a lunatic, ‘We can’t send our nurses out into the streets to find people, you know. Our nurses are very busy people.’
‘He’ll be here in a few minutes now,’ said Jimmy.
‘You know he’s always early,’ I said.
I sat by her bed for a few minutes till her husband came in, laden with flowers and fruit, a great beaming smile on his face. He hurried to the bed to kiss her, and in a moment I knew they had forgotten I was there.
After a few words with both of them, I turned to go, but before I reached the entrance to the ward, Mr Linden had caught me up, and pressed a great bunch of roses into my arms.
‘Oh – don’t take all her flowers,’ I protested.
‘She doesn’t need them now,’ he said, glowing with happiness. ‘She doesn’t need anything now.’
Chapter Three
A few days later a new patient came to us from the surgical ward – that name on the form I had rejoiced to see because it was not Mrs Linden’s.
Mrs Lever was a South African Jewess who had flown over to see if any English specialist could help her. Her advanced carcinoma was inoperable, and when she came into our ward she knew as well as everyone else did that she would not go out alive.
At first she was a difficult patient, finding fault with everything and everybody, criticising the hospital, and constantly telling us how much better things were done in South Africa. But gradually she ceased to be aggressive; instead her mind seemed to dwell with gentleness on her past in her own country. She was alone in the world; her husband was dead; her two boys had been killed in the Air Force. She did not often refer to them, but she would talk endlessly of the beauty of South Africa.
‘You know, Staff,’ she said in her nasal voice, ‘if you’d been there it would get you too. The flowers! The great expanses of lovely country! Oh, I know England is pretty – but South Africa is beautiful, awe-inspiring! It is most magnificent. You should go there, Staff. It would turn your heart over with its beauty.’
‘I like England,’ I said.
‘Ah – but don’t close your mind so young. Sure you like England – but there are other countries. If I could see South Africa once more! The flowers – the colours – the sun! Such light as you have never seen.’
One day I went on the ward and saw that the screens were round Mrs Lever’s bed. The pang I felt was unreasonable, for she was homesick and suffering, and we had all wanted her to go quickly before she suffered too much. But I could not bring myself to look behind the screens; instead I went round and said ‘Good morning’ to the other patients. Before I could summon up enough courage to go into the little chamber, I saw the screens move, and looking through the aperture I saw her lying there, her eyes open.
‘Good morning, dear,’ I said, moving to the bedside.
‘Ah – good morning, Staff!’ She smiled. ‘I’ve just had a wonderful experience. The rabbi came to see me.’
I murmured that I was so glad.
She went on, her eyes luminous in her yellowish face, ‘You know I have neglected my religion for years. But all must have something to believe in. It is the first need, after all.’ She gestured to me vaguely. ‘You believe in Christ, and I – I believe in God again. So we are both happy.’
‘That’s good,’ I answered.
‘Yes, Staff,’ she assented. ‘Very good.’
She was very quiet all that day, and when I said goodnight to her she smiled and said, ‘Goodnight and thank you, Staff.’ It was no surprise to me next morning that the bed was empty and stripped. I felt I had known she was ready to die.
The ward had the usual collection of what were known as old lags – the types who had been in and out of hospital all their lives with some chronic type of illness. The chief old lag at the moment was
Mrs Bartlett, and though I continually contrived to avoid her I seemed fated to make her bed in the morning. Her moans and fussings were enough to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
She was a little wiry woman, suffering from a congenital defective heart, and had been in six times in the last year with heart failure or bronchitis. I tried to feel sorry for her, but somehow she always managed to put my back up.
On this particular morning, slowly as I and the Junior with me approached Mrs Bartlett’s bed, I saw that the other two bed-makers were managing to be slower still. It was my fate to be plagued with her again, but this morning I vowed I wouldn’t get cross, but would suffer her small talk with patience.
‘Morning, Staff,’ she greeted me, as I walked round to her bed and started to pull the bottom sheet out straight underneath her feet.
I smiled unctuously. ‘Good morning, Mrs Bartlett. How are you this morning?’
‘Oh, very well, dear, thank you,’ she said recklessly, then hurriedly amended this statement with a slight cough. ‘You know, dear, as well as can be expected.’
I nodded in what I hoped was a sympathetic way.
‘I didn’t sleep very well, though, dear. Oh – that’s right, love – do pull out the under blanket, it was wrinkled all night. You know, those night nurses are naughty, dear, they wouldn’t let me have my injection, and I was that breathless! Oh – Sister said I needn’t have my rubber sheet, love – Those night nurses, they said I wasn’t due to have it – well I wasn’t, but it was only half an hour, and they wouldn’t give it me, not though I begged.’
‘Well, Mrs Bartlett, it isn’t very good for you to have them more than four hourly. I believe Doctor did explain that to you.’
I had already heard the other side of the argument from the night nurses.
‘Well, yes, I know, dear, but it seems to me when I suffer like I do – Oh, Staff, I was meaning to ask, could I have another pillow – for my arm, you know, love. It gives me support.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bartlett, but we are rather short of pillows now.’
‘Well, dear, I did seem to notice Mrs Green didn’t seem to need five last night –’
‘Mrs Green has double pneumonia and must sit up –’
‘Yes, I know, dear, but –’
‘But you already have seven pillows! Perhaps we could take one from your back for your arm.’
‘Oh no, love, I must sit up you know. Doctor says. No, Nurse, not so tight over my feet. Dear Nurse Williams always put a tuck in the blanket for me – she always knew I hated anything tight over my poor feet.’ She looked at me reproachfully, as though censuring me for not having Nurse Williams’s insight.
‘You have got a tuck in the blanket, Mrs Bartlett.’
‘But it’s not quite big enough, love. Oh, Nurse – just before you go could you bring my locker a bit nearer? Oh, and just get my bed-jacket out of it, there’s a dear.’
‘Here’s your bed-jacket,’ said the other nurse.
‘Oh, I know, dear. I wanted my quilted one. It strikes a bit cold this morning.’
Rooting round in her locker to find the quilted bed-jacket, I came on a packet of table salt. I took this out and held it out to Mrs Bartlett.
‘What’s this?’ I asked sternly.
She had the grace to appear a bit confused. ‘Oh well, dear, my no-salt diet is so tasteless, and I do love a –’
‘Mrs Bartlett, we are doing our best to help you get better –’
She started to interrupt, but I hurried on: ‘If you eat this salt, which the doctor has particularly asked you not to eat, how can you expect us to trust you? We must have your co-operation.’
For once she was completely silenced, so putting the salt on the table in the middle of the ward, we hurried away to the next patient.
Mrs Green was a young woman who had collected pneumonia on her honeymoon. She had been quite ill but was now recuperating. She sat up in her bed looking miserable and to my polite enquiry as to how she felt, promptly burst into floods of tears.
I drew the curtains round her bed and asked her gently what was the matter.
‘My Eddie’s lost the certificate,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know what Sister will think!’
‘What?’ I asked bemusedly.
‘Me marriage certificate. Sister wants it for the insurance, and Eddie’s gone and lorst it!’
‘But surely –’ I began.
‘I know, Staff,’ she said with a sudden burst of anger. ‘That’s what I said. I mean it’s not as if we bin married ten years, is it? Surely he could a-put it somewhere.’
‘It will turn up, don’t worry,’ I said briefly. ‘These things always seem more important when you’re a bit down.’
‘But I don’t fink, I don’t fink he cares, Staff! I just fink he couldn’t care less, that’s bin his whole attitude since I asked him what he done wiv it. He just couldn’t care less!’
‘Now, Mrs Green –’ I expostulated, but it was no good. Nothing I could say comforted her.
I left the curtains round the bed and went to get her a hot drink, hoping this would stem the tide a bit.
In the kitchen I found the new cleaner, an Indian girl who had only recently come to England. She was looking anxious and worried.
‘Good morning,’ I said. I could never remember her name and couldn’t pronounce it anyway.
‘Staff, please, can you do somsing?’ she asked pleadingly.
I put some milk on the stove and asked casually, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘These food’ – she gestured to the overflowing pig bin. ‘It is such a waste. The men they take it away. Could we not give it to the beggar?’
‘Huh?’ I exclaimed startled.
‘We do not need it, Staff. It would be a kindness for the beggar.’
I started to laugh, and then seeing she looked offended, stopped hastily.
‘We don’t have any beggars,’ I said. ‘And the food isn’t wasted, don’t worry. Pigs are fed on it.’
‘No beggars?’ she exclaimed in amazement.
‘No beggars,’ I agreed.
‘Ooh!’ she exclaimed in an awed tone.
In the evening I repeated this story to Mary.
‘Gosh, how awful to think there’s a lot of the world like that!’
‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ I told her firmly. ‘Now eat up that mouldy old cake I knocked off at tea time.’
Over our second cup of tea, she asked me if I remembered Jimmy Adams. ‘He was a student on Martha when you were there.’
I thought vaguely. ‘The one with the heavy glasses?’
‘That’s right. Well, he came into the ward today. Apparently he’s just come back from the annexe.’
St Bernard’s annexe was situated in lovely country, and contained orthopaedic and ENT wards.
‘Jimmy was working on the ENT ward, and they had one patient who was a bit off his bean. Well, this nut liked to commune with nature and insisted that clothes were unhygienic, and liked to get in the raw whenever he could. You know the big field – well he stripped and nipped outside and was communing with nature and making daisy chains, when Jimmy saw him and rushed off with another bod, taking a blanket to wrap him in. Unfortunately the blanket was a red one – you know those old theatre ones – and it so happened this field was full of cows, and Jimmy swears they took an aversion to him because of the blanket and they had positively to belt across the field carrying the nut in the blanket pursued by cows.’
‘We never had any excitement like that when we were there,’ I said enviously.
‘Except that incendiary cleaner who kept setting fire to the place.’
‘Oh yes! Do you remember Sister Knead coming out in the fire drill without her teeth in?’
‘And the way the woman came back and asked for a job after she had been put away for six months?’
‘What a nerve! And do you remember that frightful night when everything went wrong?’
We began to recall memo
ries, giggling happily.
‘And to think,’ said Mary wistfully, ‘I wasn’t twenty-one then.’
‘Ah, the happy days of carefree youth,’ I assented.
‘Well, Granny, help me into my wheelchair and I’ll go off to my room,’ said Mary.
Chapter Four
Every so often there were given to St Bernard’s what were known as Study Days. Staff Nurses or Sisters were given two days off the wards to be lectured to by doctors and Sister Tutors on some of the latest treatments and methods.
When Mary and I were told that, although merely Assistant Staff Nurses, we were to have the privilege of a couple of Study Days before taking up our regular appointments, we were delighted to learn that the first lecture was to be given by Sir Nigel Hardy, the Consultant Physician.
Sir Nigel was much admired by all the nursing staff. He was a tall distinguished-looking man, immaculately dressed in pin stripes and a blue striped shirt with a hard collar, and he always had a mirror-like polish on his black shoes. His features were classic and his expression austere; he had, however, very bright blue eyes.
As a lecturer his manner was curt and his voice detached; but he occasionally surprised his listeners by an ironic phrase and a dry bit of wit. The subject of his lecture was Coronary Thrombosis, which was, he told us, a disease about which nobody knows anything.
‘I will, however,’ he went on, ‘tell you something about the latest treatment for this disease – the use by injection of female sex hormones. A short while ago I read a paper to a collection of physicians telling of my theories and investigations into this field. When I had finished, the chairman got up and made a somewhat unfortunate criticism.
‘His words, as far as I remember then, were these: “Gentlemen, this is the most tragic paper I have ever heard. Three years ago we were told the incidence of thrombosis was very low in bus drivers, so we refrained from taking any exercise. The year after, we learnt that there was a high percentage of this disease among heavy drinkers, so we cut down our intake of alcohol. Last year we were told that heavy smokers were killed off like flies, so we gave up smoking. And now, gentlemen, we are being de-sexed”.’
