by Jane Grant
‘Was that – er – Sister?’ I enquired.
I recognised with gratitude the familiar face of Whitely amongst the throng of nurses. She had been transferred to ENT from Minor Ops when one of the ENT nurses had gone down with ’flu.
‘What do you want?’ she asked in a stage whisper.
‘I’ve come to report,’ I whispered back. ‘I’m coming here next week.’
‘Leave it tonight, Staff. I should if I were you. Tomorrow will be all right, Mr Burt is here then, and she’s always in a good mood when he’s here.’
The office door flew open, and we all stared guiltily. I stepped forward.
‘Good evening, Sister,’ I said swallowing. ‘I’m Nurse Grant. I’m coming here on –’
‘Can’t stop now, Nurse. Come and see me at the proper time.’
So saying, she brusquely swept past me and hurried out. I had a fleeting impression of a tall gaunt figure with what seemed to be incongruously red hair.
I hastened back to tell Trevelyan of my first encounter. I asked her if she thought I had made an auspicious beginning. But to my anxious enquiry she returned a rather unconsoling reply.
‘I don’t know,’ she said with a giggle. ‘They say first impressions are the ones that count. She may think later on it was you made her cross.’ She added airily, ‘You know, the workings of the sub-conscious and all that.’
That night, instead of being able to regale Mary with my tale of woe, I had to listen to her account of how much Mike had enjoyed his outing with Phyllis the previous evening.
‘He keeps saying what a nice girl she is. I have to keep agreeing. I can’t think why he bothers to come and talk to me just to tell me how much he likes her.’
Neither could I. How dumb could a man be, I thought.
The next day was Dr Ferguson’s arthritis session, and I was able to pour out the story of my bad beginning with Sister Brooke to him. He completely understood my feelings, and said at the conclusion of my wails: ‘Yes, yes, of course, my dear. Quite frightful. Can’t start off like that. Know her quite well, she’s a very nice woman really, you know. I’ll tell you what,’ he added, seeing my doubtful face, ‘I’ll take you over and introduce you myself – see if that bears any fruit.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I said, touched at his thoughtfulness. ‘But please don’t bother. She might think I’m blackmailing her by working on her through you. I don’t want her to get that sort of impression.’
He nodded understandingly.
At the end of his session I said goodbye sorrowfully to him, and went off to beard the lioness again, having first rung up to find out the best time for my introduction.
My timid knock on the office door was answered with a loud: ‘Come in!’
The moment I opened the door I realised that in spite of all my care I had made a second mistake. I had interposed into that holy of holies, the Sister’s tea for the surgeon.
Mr Burt sat nonchalantly in the easy chair and looked at me incuriously.
‘I’m Nurse Grant,’ I stuttered unhappily.
Sister Brooke stared at me in an indignant way.
‘What do you want, Nurse?’
‘I’m coming here on Monday, Sister.’
‘Oh, all right, Nurse,’ she said turning away.
I stumbled out red-faced. O’Connor stood outside with a regretful face.
‘I’m sorry, Jane. I tried to stop you.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said bitterly. ‘I can’t have started off any worse than I have, can I?’
‘Not really,’ she said frankly. ‘Still,’ she added hopefully, ‘she may have forgotten by Monday.’
‘Not from what I hear about her.’
O’Connor walked to the door with me. ‘There’s a big flap going on, apparently. Fish-eyes is bringing a pile of Americans in on Monday to see his new type tympanoplasty.’
‘Who’s Fish-eyes?’ I asked wonderingly.
‘Oh, Mr Calhoun. Haven’t you heard of him? She hates him like poison’ – she nodded towards the closed office door. ‘But of course Burlington Bertie can’t do a thing wrong. He is rather a poppet I must say,’ she added justly.
‘Are you sorry you’re leaving?’ I asked as we got to the shabby doors.
‘In a way, yes. Brooke’s a honey if you catch her right, you know. But I’ll be glad to get to Main Theatres. Here, what d’you think of Straker catching Wally Gunn? I never thought she’d make it.’
I laughed and said reprovingly that she was an old scandalmonger.
Saturday was the usual dreary round of cleaning in the theatre. The catguts were turned upside down, the needles replaced, the drums repacked and cupboards turned out. At supper my head felt dizzy with the spirit fumes I had inhaled, and my hands were sore from the formalin and disinfectants.
The more I thought about my transfer, the gloomier I got. When I reached my room I saw the mark I had made on my calendar again. How many years ago was that? Could I decently give in my notice now? What excuse could I give? That I’d started off on the wrong foot with a temperamental Sister?
Mary came in quietly, and we sat in a depressed way, looking at each other.
‘Why I ever took this job I'll never know!’ I said unhappily.
‘Men,’ said Mary bitterly. ‘Men. Men. Men.’
‘Well, this is getting us no place fast,’ I said practically.
‘Let’s do something exotic.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like going to Taffy’s.’
Taffy’s was an extremely scruffy little coffee bar down the road from the hospital. The only reason it got any custom at all was because it was the sole café in the district.
‘All right,’ assented Mary heavily.
Without any very great expectation of pleasure, we changed and went out. The old hospital looked dreary in the late summer evening. Could it be duller or more uninviting, I wondered? We crossed the courtyard, and I was just about to say to Mary, ‘Blow St Bernard’s. Let’s leave and go somewhere else’ – when I was paralysed by one of the most awful noises I had ever heard in my life. It was a blood-curdling mixture of a yodel and a scream, and was followed by the yell of ‘Jane!’ bellowed at the top of someone’s lungs.
We turned round. Hurtling round the forecourt was an extremely old car with two occupants inside, a pile of luggage at the back and an old saucepan tied to the back. I recognised the car at once. There was only one person to whom such a car could belong – Charles Betterton, one of the craziest students of all time, now one of the craziest doctors. He had, I understood, sobered down slightly when he left Bernard’s and went into the great world, but he was still quite cuckoo.
‘Jane! Jane!’ he yelled. ‘The light of me life! The apple of me eye! The darling of me heart! Have you missed me?’
He leapt out of the car, rushed up to me and embraced me. Then he swung me round bodily, dropped me and kissed Mary. He then peered at her in the lamplight.
‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
Mary nodded, deprived of speech.
‘Oh good!’ he exclaimed, and kissed her again.
‘Well, Jane, me darling, how are you? Heard the good news? I’m Burt’s new houseman. Three loud cheers for Charlie – hip hip –’
‘Charles,’ I interrupted practically, ‘if you carry on like this you’ll be nobody’s houseman.’
‘Oh, Jane,’ he declared playfully. ‘You’re just as right as ever. Ma’am, may I have the honour of introducing you to a friend of mine. One Sir Francis Drake.’ He bowed solemnly.
Out of the car scrambled a tall young man with rimless glasses.
‘He’s a Transatlantic cousin,’ hissed Charles, ‘from the jolly old US. Come little one, don’t be shy. You were introduced.’
‘What’s your real name?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid that is correct,’ drawled the American deprecatingly. ‘My Maw was historically minded.’
‘What are you about to do now, my love?’ enquired Char
les.
‘We were just going to have some coffee at Taffy’s,’ I said feebly, feeling rather overcome by our tumultuous reception.
‘Goody Goody!’ whooped Charles. ‘Into Matilda with you, my hearties. Sir Francis can sit on the bonnet and look out for the Armada,’ he added, as he saw our doubtful glance at the scant accommodation.
Poor Francis meekly did as he was told, first carefully taking off his glasses and putting them in his pocket. With various splutters and bursts, the little car started, and we spurted out into the main road, Mary sitting on my knee and Charles with his head out of the window so that he could see past the squatting Francis.
‘Yo ho ho, this is the life!’ he shouted.
‘Is he tight?’ murmured Mary in my ear.
I shook my head. ‘He’s always like this.’
‘He’s larger than life,’ said Mary wonderingly.
‘Now, now, stop whispering, you girls,’ reproved Charles.
When we got to Taffy’s my heart sank, for there, sitting at the table by the door, was Sister Brooke.
I summoned my face muscles into a semblance of what I firmly hoped was a smile, and tried hard to look as if I was no part of the Circus marshalled by Charles. Sister Brooke sat with another Sister from the Main Theatre. Our eyes met, and she turned away slightly, not having seen Charles, as he had returned to Matilda and was trying to stop her engine, she having a peculiarity of the ignition switch. In the meantime a grave and polite Francis was pulling out chairs for us and ordering coffee.
In a moment Charles returned, still larger than life. I sat trying not to hear his loud comments on the charm of the place, his effusive greeting of the proprietor – an old friend of his – and his mock Italian for the benefit of a swarthy waitress.
‘Please, please, bring this to an end soon,’ I prayed. ‘Why can’t I hide somewhere, why haven’t I got dark glasses on? Why above all things did Brooke have to come here for coffee tonight of all nights? Why was I born?’
Mary looked sympathetically across the table at my agony, and tried desperately to catch Charles’s eye. For what seemed a whole era he got our coffee, and balancing one cup on the other, swayed round the tables in an imitation of a suave waiter.
‘Coffee, Madam,’ he said unctuously, and slid two cups in front of me. ‘Madam looked extra thirsty,’ he explained. ‘Coffee for Sir?’ He leaned over Francis – ‘and what about this Madam here?’ Suddenly changing his tone to one of brisk demand he shouted, ‘Hey, Taff, you old thief – where’s the sugar? Give some over pretty smartish, mate.’ He whisked away a saucer. ‘Dans cette ici,’ he said as the waitress looked for a bowl to put some lumps in. ‘Merci beaucoup. Jolly old merci, Mamselle.’ He charged down on us and presented us with the sugar, and while I looked huntedly around for an escape route, the lumps suddenly arrived in my lap. The saucer which had contained them had dropped from Charles’s hand as another bellow of his shook the place to its foundations.
‘’Pon my soul, it’s Brookers! Brookers, the light of my soul, where have you been all my life?’
Before my horrified eyes, he walked up to Sister Brooke’s table, picked her up bodily out of the chair, and kissed her loudly.
Chapter Sixteen
We eventually got back to the hospital, but how five of us got into the car remains one of the mysteries shrouded at the back of my mind. I vaguely remember clambering into a nearly non-existent portion of the car, between the front seats and the back window, with Mary – but the whole evening seemed too incredible to be really happening, like one of those nightmares that, just as one is about to wake up screaming, turn quite pleasant and so permit one to go on sleeping.
Charles was overcome with delight when he learnt that ‘Brookers’ and I were to work in the ENT Theatre with him, and even Sister Brooke showed some degree of pleasure at the thought, but I was still too overcome to think of anything concerning my future without a certain degree of trepidation.
It appeared that Betterton and Brooke had formed a partnership, uniting against a particularly unpleasant Theatre Sister who had since left, and the two of them held very tender memories of how they had outwitted her at various times. This had formed, according to Charles, an undying bond of affection between them.
On Monday I walked quite jauntily into the scruffy old theatre, and began to look forward to my stay there. My plans for my future grandeur were speedily squashed when Kind, the senior Staff Nurse, came rushing in.
‘Oh, Grant – can you sort those gowns out? The green ones.’
I stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘Look – those gowns,’ she said impatiently. ‘We have some visitors this morning, and Sister wants these gowns sorted so they don’t get the darned ones.’
I nodded, and went off to the Surgeons’ room, where I was confronted by the entire stock of theatre gowns, from what appeared to be every theatre in the hospital.
‘Make sure they’ve got all their tapes and no darns,’ said Kind quickly, ‘and put about twenty out, and for goodness’ sake make sure they’re all complete or Brooke will have you for lunch.’
I started crossly to sort out gowns. It did not seem to me to be quite the sort of job for someone so grand as the third in command of theatre to do, but still … Half an hour later I felt still further deflated. Out of fifty or so gowns, I had picked five as worthy of wear.
Laundry men ought to be made to sew on all the tapes they tear off for their pleasure, I thought viciously. Surgeons who spill skin preps down their gowns ought to be made to wash them, and sewing-room people ought to have a course in invisible darning.
But my empty threats did not make the gowns any more wearable, and I went on gloomily looking through them again and again, accepting ones I had formerly rejected.
Kind came in. ‘Haven’t you finished that yet?’ she snapped.
‘Just about,’ I said wearily. ‘I think about one in fifty is worthy of being donned.’
‘Never mind about that. Come and help me with the theatre. He wants to start at ten. Whitely – come in here!’ she called, ‘and finish this job off, will you?’
So saying she rushed off.
‘These are the good ones,’ I told Whitely, indicating the small pile, and these are –’
‘Grant! For goodness’ sake! What are you doing now?’
I fled after Kind. The theatre looked spotless, but there was a lot of rearranging to do.
‘Put that trolley there. No – not there, silly! Now bring those stools over here. Here,’ exclaimed the exasperated Kind. ‘They want to see the operation, don’t they?’
Half an hour before zero hour the whole place was organised. Brooke seemed pleased, Kind anxious, but I was very, very fed up.
We waited about in case an unexpected bombshell should fall amongst us. Then Brooke said, ‘I should get scrubbed up, Nurse Kind, they’ll probably have coffee first, but it will give us a bit of time. Nurse Grant, I should like you to stay in the theatre and watch. Nurse Whitely and I will run.’
I nodded, relieved. This would be fine, no responsibility, I thought. However, I soon found this to be another of my delusions. I had scarcely settled myself in an inconspicuous position behind one of the trolleys, hoping that I did not look too much as if I was leaning against the wall, before I was called out by Kind to do her sterile gown up. I did so, then scuttled back to my hiding place.
The next moment Kind called me out again. ‘Grant – pour out my skin preps. No – I don’t want the Bonney’s Blue there! In this one. Oh – that’s no good! Take out this gallipot and get me another one.’
I felt myself becoming a fumble-fingered junior again. All my attempts to help had gone wrong, and I was obviously now regarded as a complete liability. Although Kind was a very pleasant girl, her nerves were taut and overstrung this morning, and I could well understand her impatience of me and my blundering.
Time wore on. Kind completed her trolley. The anaesthetist was wisely waiting before the arrival of th
e surgeon before anaesthetising the patient, but of the surgeon there was no sign.
At first Kind fiddled with her trolley, checking and rechecking her instruments. Then, satisfied that she had everything, she began to look anxiously at the clock. Finally she gave up, covered her trolley and settled down to wait.
But it was quite impossible to wait tranquilly. ‘Oh, how I wish these men would come on time,’ she complained after a while. ‘I get so fed up with them. They’d moan like anything if we were late.’
I sympathised cordially, knowing how trying it must be for her nerves, but Whitely made a wiser move.
‘What exactly is a tympanoplasty, Staff Nurse?’ she enquired. ‘I’ve never really got it clear – the difference between them and mastoids and fenestrations.’
I thought, not for the first time, that Whitely would go far. Kind was an excellent teacher, and enjoyed teaching.
‘Well,’ she started, ‘a mastoidectomy is removal of infected air cells in the mastoid cavity. How do they usually get infected? Do you know?’
‘The Eustachian tube,’ Whitely answered promptly.
‘Yes,’ said Kind, pleased. ‘And what lies at the base of the Eustachian tube?’
‘The adenoids.’
‘Good. Now a fenestration is when the ossicles in the ear are for some reason or other not working and they gum up the oval window that carries the sound waves to the brain, so the surgeon by-passes the ossicles and makes another window in the semi-circular canal. Now a tympanoplasty is different again. That is a plastic repair to the middle ear with a skin graft, to help the sound waves.
The lesson was interrupted suddenly by Sister Brooke popping her head round the theatre door.
‘They’re here,’ she announced, and disappeared again.
‘Good,’ said Kind sarcastically. ‘Very good. Only half an hour late. Calhoun’s looking up.’
The whole place now started swarming with nurses rushing round with set jobs to do. Brooke appeared again.
