by Jane Grant
The doors flew open to break in on my reverie. ‘’Morning, Staff’ came from four assorted voices, accompanied by curious looks at my thoughtful face. I returned their greetings and got up, closing my locker door I went out amid a heavy silence.
The moment the door closed behind me, a confusion of voices broke out. ‘Poor thing,’ was one comment I distinguished, and mentally pulling a face, I went to get the list from the office so that I could start collecting the instruments.
When I got to the office door, I saw Harris sitting at the desk looking at the list as though she wasn’t seeing a thing. Her plain face looked blotchy and heavy, and her hair hung lankly beneath her cap.
‘Good morning,’ I said in what I hoped was a normal voice. ‘Could I have the list, please.’
She looked up at me, her eyes wounded and distrustful. ‘I’d like a word with you,’ she said slowly. ‘Close the door.’
I did so silently, and stood regarding her, wondering how her mind worked. Was she going to try and enlist my sympathy or try using her blistering tongue?
She did neither, but said in a flat lifeless tone: ‘Sister Blythe would like to see you at half past eight this morning, as soon as she has taken report. I believe you are transferring to Main Theatres.’
My heart leapt. Here was the Mecca of my career, my goal; my nine months’ training coming to its natural conclusion. Who knew – after that a Staff job on one of the minor theatres, if my contract was renewed? And for now the big stuff – a vista of big general surgery with all the modern advances opened out before me. This would be the real thing!
Harris sat watching me. ‘You want to go?’ she asked.
For the first time I felt genuinely sorry for her. Probably no one had ever been pleased to see her or sorry to leave her. She seemed to me as she had never before seemed – a person starved of love. Probably she had an unhappy home with no one to cherish her and take an interest in her life.
I thought irrelevantly that not loving was the worst sin of all, and that I had been guilty of it.
‘I think it’s best I should go,’ I replied at last to her question. ‘We haven’t got on very well together, have we?’
She started playing with a pencil on the desk and seemed to think this over for some time. At last she said: ‘I wonder why people don’t get on with people.’
‘I know why that is,’ I replied promptly. ‘It’s because they’re thinking of themselves and not of the other person.’
She gave a wintry smile. ‘Of course that’s the real answer. But what does one do about it?’
‘I suppose you just do the difficult thing of thinking of the other person first,’ I said uncomfortably.
I left her, thinking it was all very well for me to talk. If I, who had everything, could not follow my own prescription, what was the use of expecting Harris, who neither I nor anyone else loved, and whom I had just triumphed over, to follow it?
I went to see the Superintendent, feeling quite ashamed that I should be so happy, and prepared to receive her apologies and pats on the back with a becoming humility. But I was to receive a rude shock. It is always wisest in nursing to expect kicks rather than ha’pence.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sister Blythe looked very disagreeable behind her large desk, and my old feeling of trepidation came over me when I said good morning to her.
‘You’re late, Nurse,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘Did Nurse Harris tell you to come at eight-thirty?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ I said hastily, eager not to pile any more coals on the wretched girl’s head. The picture of her forlorn figure sitting at her desk toying idly with a pencil was still vivid in my mind, and the scarcely perceptible nod she had given when I said goodbye to her.
‘Well, Nurse,’ said Sister Blythe sternly, ‘I have no very good report of you from your last theatre, and I have decided to bring you up to the Main Theatres so as to keep your work under my surveillance.’
I looked as her silently; this was certainly one way of taking away the idea that the move was promotion.
‘I want you to start at the bottom again and work up to taking cases. I want to keep an eye on your basic training. I have never before had an upset in my theatres like the one you have caused, and I don’t want it to happen again.’
Her tone was cold and cutting, lashing out at me, but I could feel that besides her annoyance with me, she was annoyed and worried at having made a mistake.
‘If your work is satisfactory,’ she continued, ‘there will be no further trouble, but if not I shall have no alternative but to ask Matron for your dismissal. Have I made myself clear?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ I replied with equal coldness.
‘Good. Will you please report to me on Monday morning. It’s your weekend off, is it not?’
I nodded.
‘Very well. You can continue on Gynaecological Theatres this morning then, and transfer here immediately on Monday.’
She returned to her paperwork, not even deigning to reply to my muttered, ‘Thank you and good morning, Sister.’
I closed the door, and walked back to Gynie Theatre. So Grant had had another slap in the eye! No trumpets and handshakes all round, just kicked and pushed a bit further under. Beat the child till she sees it my way, I thought furiously! Working myself up into a proper temper I stormed back to the theatre.
The morning, however, passed uneventfully, with everyone being polite and distant to everyone else. Then it was time to change and go home, to see Donald, and to have my morale boosted by my parents. I would tell them the whole thing – how disaster faced me, until my true sterling worth came to the fore; how I braved the hospital authorities, and how I was proved right. Only it hadn’t quite happened that way. Still I could always do a bit of trimming to the story. I was going to get some sympathy if it killed me.
I got on duty early on Monday morning. No one was going to start pulling me up for anything!
Sister Blythe kept me waiting uncomfortably outside her office while she took the night nurses’ report; then she gave her report to the three other sisters. Only then did she call for the new nurses. These were represented by me and two juniors. She lined us up in front of her desk, and looked through me as if she had never seen me before in her life.
‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘Sister Robeson will take you round the theatres and show you where everything is kept. For the first week you will all’ – she said this with emphasis – ‘work in the outhouses, until you become used to the theatre atmosphere. Nurse Black, I would like you to work in Anaesthetic Room One; Nurse Grant in Number Two, and Nurse Joyce, will you work in the sluice today, please. I expect a high standard of work. Now go and collect Sister Robeson.’
Sister Robeson was waiting outside the door for us. She was a sweet-faced woman in her middle thirties, quiet of voice and efficient in her ways.
‘Now go and change yourselves,’ she said kindly, as we shambled out of the office.
The presence of a Staff Nurse rather silenced the other two, especially since I had no doubt they had heard all about the fracas, and were treating me warily as a result. We changed swiftly, and duly presented ourselves to the waiting sister. She took us round the theatres, showing us the Anaesthetic Rooms with the shelves of drugs, with everything there, from stimulants to antidotes, from antidotes to antibiotics, the machines looking like something the Martians had brought down, with the coloured cylinders neatly packed round their sides, and the jars of anaesthetics perched on the back. The mouth-gags, the airways, the vomit bowls, the loose swabs, and the lubricants, were all placed neatly in a row.
We moved through the Anaesthetic Room, where the nurse was preparing for the morning’s session, into the corridor that led into the theatre. The door on the left led to the Scrub-ups and the door on the right to the Sterilising Room. In this room Sister Robeson showed us the enormous drum racks with the labels of what was in them screwed on to the back; the steaming sterilisers on either side of
the room, the left side for Theatre I, the right for Theatre II. In between the space was filled with glistening trolleys ready to be set with the instruments for the morning’s cases. From the Sterilising Room were two openings leading into the two theatres.
After the operation, the unconscious patient would be wheeled from the theatre through swing doors into the corridor which led to the Recovery Room at the far end, where he would be collected by the ward nurse. Used trolleys would be pushed up at the same time into the sluices which were next to the Recovery Room.
I had of course worked in Main Theatres on night duty, but then, even when there was any action, only a small part of it was in use. Now the whole place was full of bustling, silent nurses, covered in gowns, masks, caps and boots, so that all that was visible of them was their eyes and eyebrows, looking menacing, alarmed, bored or worried, depending on the rank of the owner.
When we had been shown round we were deposited in the various hiding places where Sister Blythe had decreed we should be secluded. I hurried into the first Anaesthetic Room, to be met by a bored pair of eyes.
‘You new?’ said the muffled figure.
I nodded gloomily.
‘This place will bore you to tears at the end of the week.’
‘You do a week here?’ I asked.
‘Yes, a week and one day, so you can show the next sucker what to do.’
‘Then what happens?’
‘You move on to the sluice. The poor devil there spends a week and two days, so she can show the next one what to do.’
‘Then what?’
‘Oh, running, Sterilising Room, general dogsbody, till you’ve stewed around enough to scrub.’
‘You don’t sound as though you like it much,’ I said.
‘Oh, it’s not too bad really, I suppose, but give me ward work any day.’
An abrupt buzzing halted our conversation.
‘What’s that?’ I said with a guilty start.
‘The first patient,’ replied my instructor. ‘The ward nurses bring them to the front door, then ring, and you go and collect them.’
‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘I never can understand why there’s all this protocol.’
‘My dear,’ said the girl in a shocked voice, moving towards the door. ‘You don’t think those dirty creatures from the wards would be allowed in the Sanctuary, do you?’
She slid through the doors, and reappeared a moment later with a trolley and a patient on it. She closed the doors behind her by the simple expedient of kicking them, and with a minimum of effort, with one simple movement, looked at the tag round the patient’s wrist, which had on it his name and premedication and the time it was given, then glanced at his notes and said brightly: ‘Good morning, Mr Scott.’
The patient looked at her drearily. ‘’Morning, Nurse. Sorry my mouth is so dry can’t speak properly.’ He probed his mouth experimentally with his tongue and found it was as he had thought, then relaxed into a doze again.
The nurse moved his notes to the side table, where she copied down his name, number, ward, date and surgeon, in a book prepared for the purpose.
‘We copy the operation after they’ve had it,’ she whispered, ‘and the anaesthetist signs it. Make sure he does,’ she added sinisterly, ‘these ruddy anaesthetists try to keep a strict code not to sign anything if they can help it. Blythe does her nut if they’re not signed up at the end of the day.’
We stood waiting for the anaesthetist to arrive. ‘It’s old Stowe-Anthony this morning,’ she said disrespectfully. ‘He won’t be here till after the stock market opens.’
We whiled away the time looking at the patient’s notes, making sure he was comfortable, checking the syringes and ampoules of drugs that had been prepared for the anaesthetist’s use.
‘Monday’s always deadly,’ said my mentor. ‘Mr Spindells is always late. Don’t know why they don’t start later, except that he takes hours to do anything. This gastrectomy will be two hours at least, and you have to stand like a stuffed prune looking for jobs. There’s nothing much to do till the next patient.’
‘Can’t you go and watch the operation?’ I suggested.
‘Oh, can do. But you have to check back here every five minutes to see nobody wants you. Be careful though, they’re liable to dump some small cases in here from Theatre Two, because Bodley, Spindell’s Registrar, whips through his lot a bit smartish – Ah, good morning, sir.’
This last comment was addressed to the anaesthetist, who now entered casually.
‘’Morning, all,’ he said abstractedly, picking up the notes. ‘Ah, yes, gastrectomy. ’Morning’ – he nodded to the patient. ‘Ever had an anaesthetic before, old boy?’
‘No,’ said the patient in a hoarse voice.
‘Well, it won’t take long. Just a little prick, and you’ll wake up in the ward. Nothing to it, really.’
The patient looked apprehensive. ‘You won’t take me in till I’m out, sir, will you?’ he asked pathetically.
‘Good gracious, no! You’ll be in good hands, Mr Scott. Look – two lovely nurses to take care of you, to say nothing of me!’
The patient smiled doubtfully.
‘Now – just hold out your arm. That’s it. And clench your fist for me a bit, will you? That’s just right. Now something cold just to clean your arm, and a little prick.’
He plunged in the syringe containing the pentothal, and released the tourniquet on the patient’s arm.
‘Now – just count up to ten for me, Mr Scott – that’s right, jolly good show!’
The patient began to count slowly, until gradually his voice became blurred and indistinct, and his head lolled to one side.
The anaesthetist looked at him expertly; withdrew the syringe, and put a smaller one with the relaxant drug on to the needle still in the patient’s arm. Then he moved quickly to the man’s head, and holding his chin up, put the face mask on and gave the nitrous oxide and oxygen gases to keep him anaesthetised. After this he lubricated a rubber tube and slid it down the patient’s throat to maintain an airway; then fixed a supply of gas and oxygen on to the end of it, pumping the gas in with one hand while he adjusted the flow of it with the other.
Relaxing, he said: ‘Every time I give pentothal I praise the maker of it down to my socks! When I think of the times I’ve poured ether over a wretched face mask clapped down on a wriggling body, I thank my lucky stars we don’t have to do that now.’
We smiled and nodded sympathetically.
‘You know,’ he went on, ‘the bod who taught me anaesthetics was as blind as a bat, and he couldn’t see the ether bottle so well, and by the time he’d sloshed it all over the trolley, we were all damn near under ourselves!’
We giggled, and he was just about to elaborate on this theme, when the theatre runner opened the doors and said quietly: ‘Mr Spindells has arrived, sir.’
‘Whacko!’ said Mr Stowe-Anthony heartily. We started to push the trolley through the doors. I guided the feet, while the anaesthetist leant on the patient’s pillow, pushing the trolley with one elbow while his hand held the face masks, and pulling his trolley with his other hand.
We entered the theatre and lifted the patient on to the table. The runner and I adjusted his position, making sure that no part of him was touching metal, because of the mysteries of electricity which made it possible for him to be burnt if the diathermy was used. We also verified that no limb was in an awkward position that might cause pressure on a nerve, or make the patient stiff afterwards, and at the same time we had to assure ourselves that the area of operation was free of obstruction and left a clear field to the surgeon.
This accomplished, I was packed out of the way with the blankets and poles that had been used to lift the patient, and immediately I left the table, a circle of protective nurses, Sister and anaesthetist, huddled round like guards closing the ranks when one fell out, to make sure nothing had been left undone.
I went back to the Anaesthetic Room, anxious to learn what I could,
so as not to be caught out by any lack of knowledge. The whole atmosphere was so high-powered and the procedure so carefully detailed that I felt my whole theatre experience in Minor Ops, ENT, and even in the Gynie Theatre, counted for nothing. I was indeed starting, as Sister Blythe had decreed, at the bottom.
The other nurse was idly washing the sink down for lack of something better to do. I began rummaging through the drawers, trying to find out where everything lived. Suddenly she called out: ‘O-oh! Look! There’s Fergie and Sister Wright crossing the courtyard. My dear, they’re practically holding hands!’
I rushed to the window, just in time to catch a view of their backs as they hurried into the Out-Patients’ Department.
While we were still gaping at the interesting sight, the door opened. We started and looked round guiltily to see Sister Blythe.
Her eyes looked dangerously narrow, and her voice when she spoke was biting and sarcastic.
‘If one of you could spare the time – could you possibly go to Theatre One, where I think Mr Stowe-Anthony would like some more Flaxedil.’
She swept out, leaving us standing looking extremely foolish and feeling it too. Surely, I felt, my good angel had deserted me! Not even I could go on having this bad luck for ever.
Chapter Twenty-eight
At lunch I regaled the patient Mary with my woes. Throughout the meal she listened and made the right responses, but by the time we were drinking our coffee she had become distrait, and as I was about to recount the climax of the morning, Sister Blythe’s discovery of us at the window, Mary suddenly got up and walked off to the counter.
‘What’s happened to you?’ I asked as she returned.
‘Why don’t they ever have any teaspoons in this place?’ she said, holding up a fork and then proceeding to stir her coffee with it.
‘What’s wrong with a fork, same as usual?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Mary with the air of one about to impart a great secret. ‘Last night Mike and I went to some super duper joint in Piccadilly, and after scrumptious scoff – scampi’ – she sighed wistfully – ‘filets de mignon –’
