by Jane Grant
When Mary returned I was still boiling with rage, and I at once delivered a pithy and to the point homily to her on the advantages of giving up nursing and going to work as a char. Mary interrupted this as usual by remarking practically: ‘Here, talking of chars – do you know Elsie earns more than I do?’
‘And she’s worth every penny of it,’ I retorted acidly, and returned to folding my clothes.
Eventually we were ready for the great trek to the eighth floor from the second. As we reached the lift, tottering under the weight of my worldly possessions, it gave a loud hiss and a sigh, and after that refused point blank to function.
‘Onwards, ever onwards,’ yodelled Mary, as we reached the fifth floor. Exhausted by the effort, however, she fell silent after that, and no sound except gasps was heard from either of us, till we reached my new room.
This looked even more cheerless than my last one, though there was one bright ray of sunlight peering hopefully through the dirty window, which showed up all the dust on the furniture.
‘Well, anyway, you do catch the sun here,’ said Mary, after looking round for something good to say about the room.
‘It’ll only keep me awake,’ I retorted coldly.
‘Yes, there is that,’ she admitted, sunlight being one of the biggest bugbears of night nurses.
However, after a quick dust round with one of my dirty aprons, and the disgorging and placing of my ornaments about the room, it began to look a bit more like home. We unearthed the teapot and dined royally out of tooth-mugs containing tea with sour milk, and what were popularly known in the hospital as Rover’s biscuits; they were the singularly tasteless type of arrowroot biscuit that seems to form a basic part of the diet at all institutions.
When Mary had gone, I prepared myself for bed and much to my surprise slept for an hour or so. Then I got up, and with a horrible sinking in the base of my stomach, I prepared to go on duty.
Sister Blythe greeted me warmly, as if she was relieved that I had made no fuss about my precipitate spell of night duty. She took me into the theatre and introduced me to the other Staff Nurse, who was called Jo Redding, and was an extremely pretty girl with red hair. I noticed she had a slight accent when she replied to Sister Blythe’s instructions, and she also had what I considered was the extreme temerity to grimace at me when Sister told her off about the number of swabs prepared.
After our dismissal by Sister, Jo took me to the nurses’ room, where we changed into theatre dresses and caps.
‘We can tike these off as soon as her Lidyship’s gone,’ said Jo in her Australian accent. ‘Talk about ruinous to your hair style!’
Jo’s accent was the first thing that struck me about her, apart from her prettiness. But after that first encounter I hardly noticed it, and it somehow became part of her and sounded right. I had, before I met her, heard rumours of her affair with a married registrar, that same Don Carter who had been mentioned by Mr Lawson. But she did not speak of him, and he did not appear, and I set the whole thing down to the usual hospital gossip.
Soon we were sitting round packing drums and telling each other our life histories. I told Jo I was expecting Charles for coffee, and she laughed and said a beau of hers was coming up too.
‘D’you know him? Bill Leslie. He’s a honey.’
I told her I had met him on Minor Ops and liked him. He came apparently from her home town in New South Wales, and when Charles and he rolled up together, it was clear to me that he was very keen on Jo. She, on the other hand, treated him in an offhand way, teasing him and pulling his leg. We all laughed a lot that night, as Charles was very amusing, giving a preview of his act at the Christmas show, and trying to teach Bill to do a step dance with him in which they exited into the imaginary wings removing imaginary top hats.
‘Could anything be cornier?’ said Jo. ‘Reminds me of the school show I saw you in, Bill, back home.’
Though he was still smiling, he gave her a serious look then, and I knew somehow that he was in love with her, and that she did not care about him.
Later that night, when Jo was at her meal, with the clarity of thought that comes to one sometimes from lack of sleep, I had a fellow feeling with Bill, and I began to wonder if he and I were of the same type, liable to go all serious and deep about people who only wanted to stay on the surface. It was a depressing thought, and it stayed with me during that time of night when one feels at one’s lowest. There were no cases to occupy us, and the night passed slowly.
The second night there were no cases either, and this night there were no boyfriends. We packed drums and made a stock of dressings and swabs, nobly blinked away our tiredness and drank innumerable cups of tea. We also gossiped a good deal and told each other about the latest hospital scandals, but we did not talk about our own affairs. Perhaps we felt that neither of them were in a very satisfactory state.
The third night we decided that it was silly to stay awake for nothing. One of us could go to sleep, and the other could stay awake for the telephone. This was an excellent idea, but unfortunately we hadn’t realised how much the stimulus of talking kept us awake. The result was that though I was supposed to be on watch sitting in my armchair in the Surgeons’ Room, I fell as soundly asleep as Jo did, and we both slept till wakened by the cleaner.
The following night was very cold, one of the first autumn frosts. We pinched the fire out of the Consultants’ Room, but the wind still whistled through the doors and froze our feet.
‘I know!’ said Jo with a sudden inspiration. She rushed out to the trolleys standing immobile outside theatre. ‘This is just the job!’ she cried.
So saying, she stripped four trolleys of their blankets and pillows. On two of the surgeons’ easy chairs she arranged two pillows for her head, and one blanket underneath, explaining as she did so that true campers always had as much underneath as on top. Then she wrapped herself cocoon-like in her blanket. I soon followed her example, arranging my bed on the other easy chair, and climbing inside it.
‘Do you mean to say?’ I exclaimed, ‘that we’ve suffered for three nights, and there was this delicious comfort waiting for us? It’s simply heaven.’
Jo began to describe how she intended to patent the bed, and to get questions on how to make it inserted into all nurses’ exam papers.
‘Josephine Redding’s Night Duty Bed. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful invention, Jane? Just the job for night duty.’
‘Absolutely essential,’ I agreed.
We nestled down and sighed with happiness.
‘Comfortable?’ asked Jo.
‘It’s almost too comfortable,’ I said. ‘Only I want to scratch my back. Lean over and do it for me, Jo.’
Jo, grumbling, put out an arm. ‘How intimate can you get?’ she enquired.
We both began to giggle. It is a characteristic of night duty that when one isn’t struggling with sleep or depression, one spends a lot of time giggling pointlessly. We went on giggling, and got to the stage of hysteria when our eyes were streaming and our sides aching, when we genuinely longed to stop laughing, but were quite unable to do so. Suddenly the telephone rang. I got up and staggered outside to answer it.
‘Theatre,’ I said, my voice still quavering.
‘Oh, Staff, there’s an appendix for you, dear,’ said Brian Brennan’s voice. ‘Mr Carter’s doing it.’
‘Hell,’ I said. ‘Are you sure? We’d just got comfortable.’
‘Come, come,’ said Brian. ‘Wake,’ he began to quote, ‘for the Sun beyond yon Eastern height has chased the session of the Stars from Night.’
‘Oh, spare these poetic effusions,’ I protested. ‘It hasn’t anyway. It isn’t twelve o’clock.’
‘The name is Forsyth, or Matthew,’ went on Brian relentlessly. ‘We’ll be bringing him up about two-ish. He had a meal at ten so I can’t bring him up before.’
I went back to Jo. ‘Carter’s doing an appendix,’ I said.
‘Carter? Don Carter?’ She changed colour, and I saw
that there was something in the rumours after all.
‘D’you know him?’ I asked falsely. According to the hospital rumours, she knew him very well indeed.
‘Yes, I know him,’ she said a little sadly.
Sober now, in fact both of us feeling rather solemn, we went and prepared the theatre and trolley, and then went to the Nurses’ Room for the inevitable cup of tea. We sat there in silence for some time, till Jo broke the silence by saying suddenly, ‘Don and I are in love, you know.’
‘I had heard something –’ I began.
She gave a short laugh. ‘Oh yes, everyone’s heard,’ she said. ‘I’ve been going out with him for over a year.’
There was another silence, as I wondered what to say. Suddenly it all came out in a spate.
‘He’s the nicest fellow I’ve ever known, Jane. He’s the only man I could ever marry.’
‘But,’ I said awkwardly, ‘isn’t he married?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t even love him, Jane. She treats him like dirt. But she won’t let him go, and he’s got some sort of terrible feeling of responsibility for her.’
‘I am sorry, Jo,’ I said. ‘How awful for you.’
‘Then there’s Bill,’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t ever marry Bill now. I used to think I could. I never wanted to marry an Englishman, anyway. I wanted to go back home and settle down with Bill. But it’s just happened. He’s the one. I’d give anything – anything at all, Jane, to marry him! I think of him day and night. I fool around here, but I go to bed every day crying and I wake up crying.’
She was leaning forward, flushed and tense. I saw the pain in her eyes, and I thought of how I had set her down as all surface and no depth.
‘But, Jo, is there any hope? I mean, what does he think?’
‘He loves me too,’ she said. ‘We really love each other. But he can’t break away, he’s got too much conscience.’
There was a long pause. I wanted to think of something reassuring to say, but all I could think of was how ghastly and how contrary life was.
‘Isn’t there any chance?’ I asked at last.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I tell myself there is, but there isn’t.’ She turned away, and I heard her release a sob. At that moment the telephone went again.
I got up and went out. ‘Theatre,’ I said shortly.
‘Oh, Staff,’ said Brian’s airy voice, ‘we think this might be a perforated gut now. Could you put out a few more instruments?’
We were kept busy till it was time to ring up a porter and send him for the patient. The trolley soon arrived, pushed by the porter, with a nurse from the ward walking beside, and Jo met them at the theatre doors, and took the patient into the anaesthetic room, where the anaesthetist was waiting.
Jo had decided that I was to take the case, and I thought her wise, for it would have been bad for everyone to have her working with Don. I went to get scrubbed up. When I got to the theatre, Don Carter was there, helping to put the patient on the table, and Jo was also there, busy positioning the lights. Under the glare of the spotlight her face looked very white. Don seemed to be studiously avoiding her eye.
Brian came in casually, and prepared to assist. As Don painted and towelled the patient, Brian was chattering about how he suffered from his corns. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s how I met my best girlfriend. Betty Jocelyn – you know her, Jo. She used to work in Casualty with me.’
Jo did not answer; her face was strained and white. Brian went on, evidently unaware that anything was wrong: ‘Betty used to go hopping around, and one day I asked her what was the matter. Of course, I always had my eye on her rather. Well, she said it was her corns. I sympathised heartily and offered to shave them off for her – having, I might tell you, very ulterior motives. Well, I arranged to do it in the X-ray cupboard as soon as I finished the case I was on. I got there, and the little beggar got scared and never showed up. So after that I told her she owed me a drink for standing like a Charley in that damned cupboard –’
‘Serves you right,’ said Don. ‘What goes on in that cupboard –’ He spoke with an attempt at lightness, but in rather a thick voice, and the effort he was evidently making showed only more clearly how miserable he was feeling.
‘So now I’m engaged,’ said Brian. ‘Just shows what corns will lead to. Next I’ll be married and then what’s the next step? Divorced, I suppose.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake shut up!’ shouted Don suddenly.
Brian looked astonished and hurt. ‘Sorry. I was just nattering on.’
‘I’ll say you were,’ said Don in the same furious tone. ‘Why the hell you can’t keep quiet while I’m operating –’
There was an awkward silence full of feeling. It was broken by the anaesthetist.
‘Don, his blood pressure’s dropped!’
‘What? Staff, let the table down, will you?’
‘Get me some methedrine,’ said the anaesthetist to Jo. ‘And some coramine while you’re there.’
Jo went out.
There was a low murmur from Brian of ‘Blimey,’ as Don uncovered the swollen black appendix. ‘It’s gangrenous,’ he said shortly. ‘Is he all right, Fred? Can I take this out?’
‘Well, take it out, only buck up.’
Don quickly tied the stump and cut off the appendix, Brian coming round the table to assist.
‘I thought this old devil would be awkward,’ he observed.
No one else said anything. Sewing up was rapidly completed, a drain being left in. ‘How’s he now?’ Don asked the anaesthetist.
‘Oh, still a bit low. I think he’ll be all right.’
Jo had now completed the swab count, and was writing out a form to be sent to the lab with the appendix.
‘Can someone mop my brow?’ said Don irritably. ‘It’s as hot as blazes in here.’
Jo moved forward with a piece of gauze, with which she wiped his streaming forehead. He said, ‘Oh thank you, Staff,’ in an awkward, distant voice and avoided looking at her.
‘I think he’ll be all right now,’ said the anaesthetist. ‘You can ring the ward, Nurse.’
Jo went out without a word. Soon she returned pushing the trolley, and Don and Brian lifted the patient on to it.
By this time the abnormal emotional atmosphere seemed to have affected even Brian. His fund of anecdotes had failed him, and he had become significantly quiet. None of the men stayed for the usual cup of tea; they all fled quickly from this unbearable situation.
When Jo and I were left alone we cleared up in silence. Afterwards we went back to the Nurses’ Room and leaving Jo there, I went to the kitchen and made some tea. Coming back, I found Jo sitting at the table in exactly the same position in which I had left her. She sat very still, only now and again she gave a slight shudder.
I put a cigarette in her mouth.
‘Have a cup of tea, old girl,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow it won’t seem so bad.’
‘It’ll take a lot of tomorrows,’ she said. ‘I wish I was about forty, with years and years between me and him.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Try and forget him. It won’t always hurt like this. Try and forget him quickly.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be forgotten. It’s gone now – gone for ever.’
Laying her head down on the table, she burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-one
If I had not seen Jo in her moment of despair, I should not have been able to tell during the next few weeks that she was broken-hearted. She seemed as gay and as full of life as ever; only now and again, when she was alone and I came on her suddenly, did I see that look of blank misery.
I could not at that time understand how she worked. All was over between her and Don, and she had apparently resigned herself to never marrying anyone else. She was one of those people who cannot accept second best. Yet, though she went on with her life almost as if nothing had happened, I knew somehow that beside her love affair, all our little heart troubles paled into insignificance.
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nbsp; The nights passed; drum-packing, swab-making, snatches of sleep, cigarettes and cups of tea. It was a week or more before we had another case; then one night the telephone rang and Jo went to answer it. She came back to the Surgeons’ Room where our beds were neatly prepared with an expression of annoyance on her face.
‘I wish to goodness,’ she announced exasperatedly, ‘that Mark theatres would do something constructive about those flipping staphylococci that seem to be crawling up the walls.’
‘Why?’ I asked, snuggling hopefully into my cocoon.
‘You can start getting up now, kiddo,’ she replied. ‘Sister Potter and Dr Foot are coming up to do an exchange transfusion on a baby because Mark theatres are still unusable.’
‘Well, wouldn’t they rather be alone together?’ I suggested.
‘Look, pinhead,’ said Jo, sitting down on my feet, ‘do you know Sister Potter?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, let me give you a few facts. She’s about eighty –’
‘Eighty?’
‘Well, forty then. Anyway, she’s one of those females who knows that there must be something more to a doctor than a stethoscope but can’t quite figure out what it is. What’s more’ – she added as she hurried to the door to answer the telephone again – ‘What’s more – she flaps.’
I considered this information while I resignedly folded up my bed and wiped the sleepy dust out of my eyes.
Jo came back. ‘What did I tell you?’ she complained. She mimicked a fussy character speaking in an exaggeratedly English accent: ‘Well, Nurse, I do not know whether it would be better to bring little Tommy out in the night air or whether I should risk using the theatre. What do you think, Nurse?’
‘So what did Nurse think?’ I enquired.
Jo continued with her imitation, sinking her voice to a low solemn tone: ‘You see, Nurse, little Tommy might catch double pneumonia in which case we won’t do much good giving him a transfusion. How feeble can you get? I nearly said’ – she returned to a very broad version of her own Australian accent – ‘I’ll sy we won’t do much fliming good!’
