by Jane Grant
‘Oh, that stupid Burney girl has got a boil.’
‘Can’t the night staff cover it?’
‘The night staff can never cover anything. Well, that’s the Ball gone for a burton – honestly, these people have no consideration!’
‘When do you go on nights?’
‘Tomorrow. And tomorrow night Brian was taking me to the cinema. But “we’re so sorry, Nurse, you know how it is” etc. etc.’
I made tea and did my best to console her, but I fully sympathised.
‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I ought to know better after four years. It’s no good making arrangements to do anything in this place!’
‘Never mind, I’ll come and see you,’ I consoled her, but even this did not have a palliative effect.
The annual St Bernard’s Ball came along, and Mary, who had had an invitation from a student, was still stuck on Casualty. I had no invitation, and offered to take over from her for the night, but she decided it would be too much red tape to cut through, so she stayed on being a martyr.
Phyllis never suffered from qualms of this kind, and turned the entire Maternity Home upside down to obtain the night off for the Ball. She got off at six o’clock, and had to go back at ten o’clock the following morning. As the Ball did not end till three, and her first train was eight o’clock for a two-hour run to the hospital, we all considered she was running it a bit fine.
‘Oh, I shall be a bit late, but I’ve got the Sister taped. She’s a honey.’
‘What about the Matron?’
Phyllis pulled a face. This, I knew from past experience, meant that someone was using a firm hand with her and not succumbing to her wheedling.
As she dressed, Phyllis gave us a highly coloured account of the first labour she had witnessed.
‘I must say, girls, it’s a bit ruddy undignified. I’m going to look into the theory of gooseberry bushes before I go through all that.’
After further highly coloured accounts, this time of nights out at the American base, Phyllis returned to the subject of midwifery, and described how Matron – ‘a terrifying old Besom’ – had taken the class round the ward doing Palpations.
‘What’s Palpations?’
‘You iggerant SRNs. You palpate the mums’ abdomens to find out which way up the baby is lying.’
‘Is that easy?’
‘Easy? It’s ruddy impossible. “First,” she says, “you inspect the abdomen.” So we all stare at the colossal mound and it stares at us and the mum who owns it reads her magazine. Then she shows us where to put our hands to find out the position of the baby’s head. She tells us that ninety-five per cent of babies lie with their heads downwards, the remaining five per cent are in abnormal positions. So then we all start palpating the mum, who only wants to be left alone to read True Stories. Then Matron asks us one by one what our conclusions are. I came right at the end, and nearly everybody in front of me guessed Heads; having been told the odds were ninety-five to one against Tails. I suppose they thought it was the best thing to do, because mark you, no one had really the slightest clue as to which it was. Then it comes to Little Brighteyes. I put my hands in the approved places and prod tentatively. I felt nothing but a few pointless knobs, but I’m not to be outdone. When Matron asks me what I think I say boldly ‘Breech’. I didn’t really have an opinion about it, but I thought it was time we had a little variety.’
‘Knowing your luck,’ said Mary, ‘I guess it was a Breech.’
‘Well, the funny thing is there’s a girl who palpates after me called Mavis – she’s known by us as Mavie the Midwife, because she’s dead keen, and a ruddy menace, because Matron is going to expect us all to be up to her standard. Well, Mavis has a go, and she says she thinks it’s a Posterior Position. None of us even know what this means, but when she’s asked why she thinks this, she comes out with a stream of technical stuff about the Multiplicity of Limbs, Narrow Type Pelvis, etc. We saw Matron was impressed, and she gave Mavis a pat on the back and said she’d really studied her subject. You could have knocked me down with a feather when she adds, casual-like, “Like Nurse Carter though, I think it’s a breech”.’
‘Phyllis, you are too lucky for anything.’
‘The only thing is, she then asks me to explain why I thought it was a Breech, and of course I haven’t an idea. I flounder about a bit talking of foetal hearts and the umbilicus, and in the end she says well, possibly my opinion was more by luck than by judgement.’
‘And she couldn’t be more right,’ said Mary.
‘Then there comes another sticky moment, because having done Palpations, we then had to listen for the Foetal Heart. Matron stuck a small trumpet on to the abdomen, put her ear to it for a second and then said, “There it is.” So we all had a go, and when it came to me I couldn’t hear a thing. Matron got quite annoyed, she kept shifting the stethoscope and saying, “Can’t you hear it now?” and I kept saying I couldn’t. All the others said they could – whether they were lying or not I wouldn’t know, but I certainly couldn’t hear a thing. At last everyone was so sick of waiting about for me that I said I could hear it, and that would have been all right, only the old devil then asked me at what rate the heart was beating? I took out my watch and counted imaginary tickings, and I might have made some wild guess that would have put me down to the bottom of the class, only a friend of mine, called April, a very nice girl I’ve got very friendly with – she slipped round the end of the bed and squinted at the chart. Then she signalled with her fingers, One Two Three.’
‘There’ll come a day when you won’t get away with it,’ said Mary as she got up to go on duty.
I stayed talking to Phyllis. ‘Mary looks a bit worn out,’ she remarked, as she put on her ear-rings.
‘Don’t we all on night duty?’ I was sorting out the essentials from a pile of junk in Phyllis’s bag, to put in her evening bag.
‘But she seems a bit on edge about something,’ said Phyllis.
‘I think she’s just disappointed about not going to the Ball.’
‘Oh? Is that all?’ Phyllis dismissed the subject, and stood back to admire herself in the mirror. ‘There! Aren’t I lufly?’ And indeed she was. ‘Do you think Mike will approve?’
‘If he’s not blind he will. You’ll be the belle of the ball.’
‘Oh, Jane –’ she began, and I was startled by the anxious look on her face for a moment. ‘Oh Jane – I – I must be off.’ And so saying, she left me.
I sat down on the bed wondering what on earth was wrong with her, she was usually so self-confident and happy. Perhaps Mike was not as keen as she thought, or would like him to be.
Perhaps she was really in love.
Then I began to puzzle over Mary’s attitude. They had always got on so well, but tonight Mary seemed definitely hostile. I put it down to the fact that Mary was cross about the Ball and about night duty and decided I would go down to Casualty and have coffee with her.
I arrived on an unlucky night. A big building project in the neighbourhood employed some hundreds of Irishmen, and these had got into a fight with certain other nationalities. A stream of casualties began to pour in as soon as the pubs closed. Aggressive Irishmen with cut hands from breaking plate glass windows, broken noses and abrasions from fights, and sprains and fractures from being thrown down flights of stairs, were brought in in droves by the police. They were all drunk as well as wounded, and a good many of them were sick as well.
The rush had slackened by midnight, and Mary was just straightening the place up, when another group consisting of six Irishmen, accompanied by several burly policemen, came bursting in. Mary stormed up to the sergeant in charge.
‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I’m about fed up with this. Any more you collect you can keep down at the station.’
‘I’m sorry, nurse,’ said the sergeant grinning. ‘But you should see what we’ve got down there already. Like to come along?’
Mary said she was sorry too, and she was afraid she could
not accept his kind invitation, as apart from the fact that she couldn’t leave Casualty, she had enough homework to keep her busy for two nights at least.
‘I’ve got nothing on,’ I said recklessly. ‘I’d love to come.’
Outside the gates we were joined by John Baker, who happened to have nothing on either. We got into the patrol car and were driven round to the station. As we were getting out of the car, a group of St Bernard’s students out for a breath of air after a pub crawl, saw us, as they thought, being arrested, and hurried to the rescue.
‘Hey – what’s poor old John done we haven’t? We demand to be arrested.’
‘You come along too, sir,’ said the sergeant pleasantly.
We all went into the recreation room of the station, where we were heartily welcomed. Our sergeant, who was a tall young man with an air of responsibility behind his casual manner, invited us to see round the cells. Every cell appeared to contain a drunken Irishman, and most of them were singing. A little red-haired man with sticking-out ears rushed to the peep-hole and announced solemnly: ‘Anywon that foights Donegal, foights me!’
The Sergeant in charge of the cells said in a tired voice: ‘Oh shut up, you bog-bred bleeding leprechaun!’
Instead of showing any annoyance at the insult, the little Irishman said with perfect courtesy, ‘Very good, Officer. I was not aware, then, that ladies was present.’
He returned, staggering a little, to his couch, and stood by it in a dignified manner, bowing. He then patted it, lay down on the floor beside it, and instantly went off to sleep.
John escorted me back to the hospital, where we called in on Mary and told her we had had a much more entertaining evening than if we had been to the Ball. She, however, was sick of Irishmen, and did not want to hear any of our funny stories about them.
As I went to bed, I passed the rack for internal notes, and was surprised to see one addressed to me in writing that wasn’t familiar.
I opened it curiously.
‘Will you have coffee with me tomorrow Weds. 9pm. Front Gates. Phil.’
Brief and to the point, and not leaving out any essentials. I thought it looked as if it was the kind of note he had often written before. But though I told myself this coldly, I felt an excitement and a slight turning over of my stomach. Obviously it would be stupid to go, so many warnings in myself told me not to. But despite them, I wrote ‘Thank you, yes, Jane’ on a piece of paper and walked over to the Medical School to leave it.
Chapter Nine
The next morning was deadly to me in my state of nerves, for apart from two septic fingers and the opening of a carbuncle, I had nothing to do.
Just as I was trying to concentrate on taking some stock after I had returned from lunch, the telephone rang.
‘Nurse Grant?’ said a brisk voice.
My heart failed. It was Sister Walters on Second Floor, the one O’Connor said would pinch my staff if I wasn’t careful.
I wasn’t careful, for in reply to her enquiry as to whether we were busy, I said simply and rashly, ‘No.’
‘Good,’ she said quickly. ‘I’d like you to lock up theatres and come and take Mr Beatty’s Endocrine Clinic. I need your nurse too.’
‘I’ve never taken his clinic, Sister,’ I said in an abortive attempt to wriggle out of my predicament.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything.’ Bang went the receiver.
‘Blast,’ said the Junior, when I told her the news. ‘She doesn’t give you a minute’s peace up there. Honestly, she chases you round the whole time!’
‘Well, I’m not exactly overjoyed at the prospect either,’ I said bitterly. ‘But it can’t be helped, so let’s go.’
The gloomy prediction of the girl had been right. For an hour or so before the great man’s arrival I was harried from pillar to post. ‘He likes this – he doesn’t like that’ and so on, until my head spun, and I would have welcomed the news that Mr Beatty had been knocked down in the traffic crossing the road to the hospital.
However, he eventually arrived, and the clinic started.
Mr Maurice Beatty was a big awkward man, who had not overcome the agony of blushing when embarrassed, and whose intense shyness caused him to be unnecessarily curt with both nurses and patients. I ran round all the afternoon for him, getting patients dressed and undressed, making sure they had their notes, making sure they were coming to the right clinic, chaperoning the women and staying discreetly out of sight with the men.
While I was preparing the next patient, the man ahead went in to the doctor. Instantly there was a bellow from Dr Beatty.
‘Come here and chaperone, Nurse! Why must you always slip off when I want you?’
‘I’m sorry, sir – I thought –’
‘It doesn’t matter what you thought,’ he said testily, and went on to examine the patient I had taken for a man. I understood his wrath then, for there was one of nature’s appalling mistakes, a creature neither one thing nor the other, with the attendant disturbance of mind.
Dr Beatty was sweet to this patient, and dealt with her privately without students, and sent me away for a while when he talked to her, but when I returned, and she got up to leave, I saw her suddenly burst into tears.
‘Doctor – is there nothing you can do to help me? I can’t go on like this! I can’t! I can’t!’
He soothed her gently, patting her shoulder till she stopped crying and calmed down. ‘Whatever you do, my dear,’ he murmured, ‘Don’t ever give up hope!’
After this distressing case, he became very upset, and dealt with a thyroid case so curtly that she burst into tears as well.
As the clinic progressed, I began to long for a respite. My feet hurt, I was dizzy with compiling notes, and my head ached from the constant shouting of instructions in my ears.
The doctor was dealing with a case by himself without students, as he often did with the more embarrassing types of endocrine disorder, and I was thinking of my approaching date with Phil as I boiled up some instruments he had used for the previous case, when I heard an angry voice shouting: ‘Where are the notes, Nurse? I said, where are the notes?’
A wrathful Beatty was glowering down at me. It was the last straw. I gulped and tried to think of something sad enough to make me cry. I thought of my first withering interview with Sourpuss and that did the trick. Great crocodile tears welled up into my eyes and fell plop plop on to the steriliser.
Dr Beatty was instantly transformed from a man in a towering rage to a stuttering blushing schoolboy.
‘Well – h’m – if you can’t find them – h’m – I’ll send one of the students down.’
‘It’s all right, sir,’ I said sweetly, with a sniff. ‘I’ll go.’ With a bowed head I walked past him.
‘Don’t bother, my dear – h’m, h’m – I’ll see to it.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ I assured him in a slightly martyred tone. ‘Only you see I’ve never done this clinic before, and I’m not quite sure of what you want.’ I put in a gentler sniff at the end of this speech.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Dr Beatty, and fled.
After this I was able to pass the rest of the session in gentle day-dreaming, undisturbed by the shouts and foibles of the physician.
As I left the Out-Patients Department to go to tea, late as usual, Sister Walters met me.
‘How did you get on?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Did he behave himself all right? He can be dreadful, you know.’ She went on, not giving me a chance to reply, ‘But I’m sure you coped with him all right, didn’t you? These men just need a firm hand.’
‘He was very kind,’ I assured her.
‘Oh, I’m very glad. By the way, have you seen Sister Wright. She wants a word with you.’
So saying she bustled off, leaving me opening and shutting my mouth to thin air.
I had my tea and went up to see if Mary was awake. ‘If I’m not now,’ she said bitterly, ‘it’s not your fault.’ She heaved herself up to talk to me. She had only one
more night to do, and then she was back to the land of the living as she put it.
‘I’ll have to wear blinkers for a bit to get used to the daylight,’ she said, squinting as a ray of sunlight came through her curtains.
‘How did you get on after we left you last night?’ I asked. ‘Have any more Irishmen, or monkeys, or anything exciting?’
‘Just one great ape who wanted to kiss the nurses because he thought they were all marvellous and so kind to a lonely old man who had had one over the eight. These drunks are so degrading, honestly. He was a very well-dressed, nicely-spoken man, who was just so tight it didn’t matter. I heard his entire life history from his wife, including the exact amount he had had to drink last night in about ten minutes.’
‘I suppose you deal with them more at night.’
‘I’ll say we deal with them more at night,’ affirmed Mary with bitterness. ‘Deal with them! I should jolly well say we do! Old Harry Penny was working out last night what they cost us.’
‘Who’s Harry Penny for crying out loud?’
‘You know, the new OPO with bat’s ears. He reckons that drunks cost the hospital £100 a week, and that isn’t counting their nuisance value.’
Drunks are always the bugbear of Casualty; not only do they injure themselves but often other people as well, and they are always difficult to deal with, so I fully sympathised with Mary’s embittered comments on them.
‘By the way,’ she said suddenly. ‘You know Lover Boy has been taking that luscious bit of goods from the Lab out, do you?’
‘Which one?’
‘You know, the ginger-headed charmer who does blood counts.’
‘No, stupid. Which Lover Boy?’
‘Phil,’ she said impatiently. ‘They bowled into Casualty about 3 am this morning and he had the sauce to ask for coffee.’
A sudden pang shot through me. I could only think, Why did he ask me out again? He must have known he was going out with her when he wrote.
I said goodbye to Mary and wandered back to Out Patients.
‘Why did he do it?’ I kept asking. ‘If he’s got someone else, why keep me on a string? Why ask me out again?’
