“As for you, young Oxford – I’m afraid you’re goin’ to be havin’ a rather dull time of it. I’ve firm instructions here from Sister that you are not to have your own case load, in the usual fashion, but to assist generally as and where you’re wanted.” She looked down at the slip of paper pinned to the cover of the report book. ‘“Until I can be sure she is capable of being trusted fully’ she’s written here. You daft ijjut, Oxford, to go and upset her like that, your first afternoon on the Floor! Ah, well, can’t be helped. We’ll do our best for you, will we not, me dears?” She looked up at the others. “As long as you don’t go doin’ anything too silly, we’ll make a point of telling Sister what a grand nurse you are, yes?”
“As long as she is,” Jensen said sourly. “We all know you, Bridie. Softer and sweeter than a doughnut. Well, I for one am not about to go upsetting the Cleland by pleading the cause of anyone other than myself. Call me a selfish old bag if you like, but I’ve learned to keep out of her way. Anyway, I’ll make first claim on your services, Oxford. Mrs Keston is by no means a light patient to nurse, and she’s in a good deal of pain, so I need a strong pair of arms to help turn her and make her bed. And you look tough enough.”
“Ah, take no notice of old Ingrid,” Cavanaugh said easily. “She’s just snapping because she missed her breakfast. Look, when Mrs Kester is finished, I’ll want you to help with my two up-patients, Oxford. There’s young Sandra in 309 and Miss Galt in 317. If I’m not about, just go on in and make their beds, will you? And check that Sandra used the bidet this morning, and if not see to it that she does, will you?” She saw Tricia’s puzzled look, and said, “She’s the T.P., remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Tricia said stiffly, hating to have to admit ignorance. “I don’t know what the letters stand for,” and couldn’t help adding, “We’re not allowed to use abbreviations on the general side, not in the report, anyway.”
“Ah, the perfection of the student!” Pru Gallon murmured. “Are we going to have to spend the next three months listening to the ‘right way to do things, according to the laws of the Medes and the Persians and the Royal’?”
“She’s quite right, of course,” Cavanaugh said equably. “But we’ve a good reason for it here, Oxford. We can’t always be in the office, where the notes and the report book are, and any visitor might take it into their head to go pryin’. So now and again, we use a code, for the patients” own good, d’you see. T.P. – termination of pregnancy.”
“Oh. An abortion. I see,” Tricia said.
“And do please spare us your comments on the rights and wrongs of that, if you don’t mind, young Oxford.” Jensen said irritably. “I’m in no mood for it. As far as I’m concerned, the reasons a consultant has for terminating a pregnancy are between himself, his conscience and the patient – and the law. Now, can we please go and start Mrs Kester? If you don’t mind!”
Furiously, Tricia opened her mouth to retort, but Jensen swept out of the office and, sulkily, Tricia followed, to collect fresh linen from the cupboard as Jensen told her to over her shoulder, before going into room 301. It was shaded against the bright morning sunshine, and Tricia had to stop momentarily to adjust her eyes to the dimness when she went in. Jenson was there ahead of her and just about to give an injection to the frail woman in the bed.
Almost against her will, Tricia warmed to the little blonde nurse as they worked together, gently washing Mrs Kester, and making her bed while moving her pain-racked body as little as they possibly could. Jensen moved so easily and deftly, with no apparent sign of the skill that went into the way she handled the sick woman with the thin face and the deeply set violet-shadowed eyes. And when an unguarded movement on Tricia’s part made her accidentally kick the leg of the bed, and Mrs Kester winced and closed her eyes in agony, Jensen said softly, “I’m sorry, Mrs Kester. That was my fault. I guess I didn’t have enough sleep last night, hmm? I had a date – ” and went on to chatter cheerfully about her evening’s entertainment until the sick woman smiled and seemed, for a while at any rate, to be able to step outside her own illness and remember the reality of the living busy world outside her hospital room.
When they finished, and had left the room tidy, with the flowers that had been out in the corridor overnight put back in their places, Tricia said awkwardly, “I’m sorry I was so clumsy, Nurse Jensen. It – er – it was nice of you to take the blame for me.”
“I wasn’t taking the blame for you, Oxford, and don’t you think it. But I know Mrs Kester, and she’s very easily irritated – is it any wonder? – and she can take a mistake from me and forgive it because she knows me, but a bit of clumsiness from a strange nurse would be something she’d brood over for hours. And she needs all the help she can to be cheerful this morning, because her son comes to see her at lunchtime today – they bring him from his boarding school twice a week – and she needs to put on a good show for him. He’s only twelve, and she wants him to remember her as reasonably like her old self as she can make herself seem.”
“Is that why you told her all about your date last night?”
“What date?” Jensen said. “That was a pure invention, all of it. But it helps her, so I make it up as I go along. Now, you’d better go and see to Sandra for Bridie. If Mrs Kester’s bell goes – watch for the red lights to see which room is ringing – find me to go to her. I’ll be in 303, or 304. And put this linen in the sluice as you go past, please – ” and she whisked away, leaving Tricia surprised and not a little ashamed of herself.
To know one was dying, and yet to be concerned to put on a “good show” for other people; that was something remarkable, she thought sombrely as she collected yet another load of fresh linen and went towards room 309. And suddenly remembered Mr Suckling on Men’s Surg. Three. How was he? And was he still thinking of the infinite, she wondered?
In 309, she found a small girl with a great deal of untidy fair hair trailing over her face and shoulders sitting hunched on the window sill with her arms hugging her knees and her chin resting on their boniness. The window was open, and the girl was staring out at the busy street below, for this side of the Wing faced out to the traffic-heavy main road, over the Casualty entrance.
“I’ve come to make your bed,” Tricia said to the girl’s unresponsive back, but the girl took no notice, so, still thinking about Mr Suckling and Mrs Kester, Tricia set to work, stripping off the bed sheets, and shaking up mattress and pillows before putting on the fresh linen.
“Those sheets were clean yesterday.”
Tricia almost jumped at the sound of the husky little voice, so sunk had she been in her own thoughts.
“What did you say?”
“I said those sheets were clean yesterday. So why are you changing them? I haven’t had to have clean sheets every day so far.” The girl had not changed her curled up position, only turning her head to stare at Tricia from behind the tangled fringe that almost hid her blue eyes.
Tricia had assumed that all the patients had daily clean linen, and made a mental note to check with Nurse Cavanaugh. But now, her mind still on Mr Suckling, she just shrugged and said abstractly, “Well, no harm. You can’t be too clean – ” and then, as she tucked in the last corner of the counterpane, added, “By the way – have you used the bidet this morning?”
“What’s that to do with you?” the girl said challengingly.
“I beg your pardon?” Tricia said, a little startled at the hostility in the young voice.
“I know what you’re thinking!” The girl moved swiftly, then, and turned so that she was sitting tensely on the edge of the windowseat, her knuckles white as her hands held on to the edge. “You’re standing there thinking I’m a filthy rotten thing, aren’t you? That’s why you had to change all my sheets again, isn’t it? That’s why you’re like all the rest, always going on at me about using that stinking bidet and washing, washing, washing all the time – I know!” Her voice rose shrilly. “I knew that was how it would be! I told them it would be like tha
t when they made me come here! You can’t just get rid of things just like that, can you? I kept telling them, but it made no difference! Well, if that’s what you all think, that’s that, isn’t it? I’m bad and filthy and nothing you do is ever going to make any difference, is it? Well, don’t you waste any more of your time on me, you clean scrubbed bitch! If I’m that dirty, I’ll make myself even dirtier, that’s what I’ll do – I’ll give you something really horrible to clean up – you’ll see – ”
And to Tricia’s horror she turned abruptly, and scrambling awkwardly because of the long dressing gown that wrapped itself around her ankles, thrust her head, and then her body out through the window, swung her legs over till she was sitting precariously on the outer sill, staring malevolently back over her shoulder at Tricia, who was standing frozen with disbelief beside the smooth, freshly made bed.
“For God’s sake – come in – what do you think you’re doing?” she cried after an agonised moment in which it seemed her voice was as frozen as the rest of her. “You’ll fall– “ she added stupidly. “Come in, you idiot – what’s your name – Sandra, come in at once – ”
“I’ll give you something really horrible to clean up,” the girl said again, and her voice rose even more shrilly. “I’ll splatter myself to – to a jelly down there – ” she turned her head and looked downwards, and for one sick moment swayed slightly forwards, and that galvanised Tricia into a jerky movement that brought her to the foot of the bed.
The girl looked back at her over her shoulder and cried, “No! You keep still – you stand there or I’ll jump now – right this minute, you hear me? I’ll be as horrible and dirty as you think I am anyway – ”
“But I don’t think you’re dirty!” Tricia said helplessly, standing obediently still, terrified to move a muscle. “I hardly know you, for God’s sake! This is my first morning here, how can I think anything about you?”
“You were here yesterday, with the doctor. I saw you. Looked at me like – as though I were too revolting even to look at, I saw you – ”
“But that was nothing to do with you!” Tricia tried to keep her voice calm and level, tried to remember everything she’d ever been taught in her psychology lectures in her second year block. “Truly, I know nothing about you! But last night – well, I’d just come on duty, and that doctor – he – I did something that annoyed him and he made me go round with him and it was awful. And if I looked a bit miserable or sulky, that was why – ”
Keep talking, a little voice whispered inside her. Anything, say anything, but keep talking, so that I keep her busy and she doesn’t jump, and someone must come soon, mustn’t they, soon – “I mean, what do you do for a job? Hasn’t it ever happened to you that someone in charge takes a dislike to you and has a go at you all the time? Well, that was what happened to me, as soon as I came on duty it started, you see – ”
It seemed to go on for hours, the two of them alone in the world, as she stood at the foot of the bed, chattering on and on, and the little girl in the bundled dressing gown sitting poised so precariously on the edge and listening and sometimes speaking herself.
“I’m still at school,” she said abruptly at one point. “I’m fifteen, I’ll be sixteen soon, and then I’m leaving. I’ll show them.”
“Show who?” Tricia said, and tried a relaxed smile, and very tentatively bent her knees until she was perched on the edge of the bed, and I prayed she looked more at ease than she felt. Reassure her, whispered the little voice. Let her think you aren’t going to move. Someone must see, soon, from down there, mustn’t they? Send a message up here! Someone must come in soon, surely? And please let them come in quietly so that she isn’t startled and falls. Please, please, please –
“Everybody – ” the girl seemed to brood for a moment, and then looked forwards and downwards again, and from the foot of the bed Tricia stiffened, feeling her eyes widen with fear as the girl again swayed sickeningly. But then she looked back over her shoulder and Tricia hooded her eyes as she looked away from the girl’s face, and went on with her ceaseless silent internal praying. Wouldn’t someone come, soon?
“The staff. My father. And him. Him especially.”
“Tell me about him. Why are you so – why do you want to show him?”
“Because of what he did.” She moved then, awkwardly, and again a great wash of fear came up in Tricia. “This window sill is bloody hard,” the girl said petulantly.
“Then why not come in? It’d be easier to talk in here anyway.” Do I sound as relaxed as I’m trying to? the little voice inside Tricia whispered. “And anyway, I can’t hear you properly with all that noise from the street. It would be much quieter with the window closed.”
Behind her, she caught a faint sound, and stiffened. Someone was very gently opening the door, and she took a deep breath and went on talking, rather more loudly. “Mind, if you don’t want to you don’t have to. But can I come a bit closer so that I can hear you properly? Standing here, it’s a bit of an effort to catch everything you say – ”
“No you don’t!” the girl cried out. “You come a step nearer, and I will, I – tell you – I will – ”
“Good morning, Sandra!” The voice from behind her made Tricia stiffen and then relax so much that she felt her legs shake, and she knew that if she hadn’t already been half sitting she would have fallen as her knees gave way. “How are you this morning? You’re looking pretty fit.”
Adam Kidd walked past Tricia as though she wasn’t there, his head bent as he ostensibly looked at the open case notes in his hands. Sandra turned her head further to stare at him, and Tricia watched, cold with fear, as he walked calmly to the window and put his hand firmly on Sandra’s elbow.
“Come over to the bed, will you, Sandra, please? I want to check your blood pressure and your chest. That was a nasty cough you had after your anaesthetic, and I want to be sure you’re quite clear of it before I’ll let you go to your convalescence. Come along, now – ”
And obediently, Sandra swung her legs back over the window sill and let Adam Kidd lead her towards the bed, as docile as a baby being led towards her dinner.
“Close that window, will you, Nurse Oxford? Bit cold in here. And then fetch me a sphygmo – and ask Nurse Cavanaugh to come and help me with Sandra’s examination.”
He looked up at her across Sandra’s back as he helped her out of her dressing gown, revealing the pitiful thinness of her bony shoulders poking out the thin fabric of her nightdress. “Hurry along, now! Sandra’s car will be here shortly, and we’ve a lot to do before she can go – ”
Almost mesmerised by his direct gaze, Tricia moved, and shakily went to the door, and managed to open it and get through without showing how she felt. And outside she closed the door behind her and leaned against it, breathing deeply, and shaking in every muscle.
“Ye Gods, what happened in there?” Tricia opened her eyes and stared round her, at the several nurses clustered by the door, at Cavanaugh’s anxious face very near her own.
“He wants you and a sphygmo,” Tricia said faintly. “Quickly, he said. Oh, my God – I’m going to be sick – ”
And she pushed past Cavanaugh to run down the corridor towards the sluice, to hang weakly over the basin being as sick as any patient she had ever cared for.
It seemed to go on for a long time, the nausea and the waves of faintness, and then she was standing leaning against the tiled wall, wet with a cold sweat and feeling weak but in some control of herself.
Nurse Jensen was standing there, and reached up to wipe Tricia’s damp face with a wadded paper towel.
“Now that’s over, you’d better come and sit down in the office,” she said calmly. “Come on. And for Gawd’s sake don’t go flaking out on me half way up the corridor because plump as I am, you’d flatten me, you’re that much taller – ”
Tricia managed a grateful smile, and nodded and let the other girl grasp her elbow competently and lead her along the corridor to the office. And almost
fell into the small armchair in the corner.
One of the other nurses came in with a cup of tea, then, and Tricia took it and drank it thirstily, as the other two watched her.
“Well, what happened?” Jensen demanded. “First thing we knew, one of the Casualty people phoned up here to say there was one of our patients sitting outside on a window sill, and half North London down there staring up at her, and what was going on? And Dr Kidd was here, and swore like a trooper when we realised who it was from the description of the patient Casualty gave us, and told us to keep out of the way while he went in. And then you come out looking as green as pea soup, and bring up your heart in the sluice – what happened in there?”
“I don’t know,” Tricia said, and put the cup and saucer down, and wiped her lips shakily. “I was making her bed, and she said something about having clean sheets, and then I said about the bidet – and the next thing I knew, there she was, on the window sill, and it was wide open, and – oh my God!” Her eyes widened. “He told me to shut it – Dr Kidd, I mean – and I didn’t. It was all I could do to get to the door. Oh, no! I forgot – or I was just too – ”
“All right, nurses. The panic’s over, and there are bells ringing all over the floor.” Dr Kidd’s voice cut across, and he came in followed by Nurse Cavanaugh, and immediately the other two went out.
He came and sat at the desk, and reached for the phone, and Tricia stood up to go out, too, but without looking at her he said brusquely, “Stay where you are, Nurse. You’re clearly in no state to do anything useful anywhere at the moment, and anyway I want to talk to you. Bridie, get that child’s gear packed, will you, while she’s out of the room with Nurse Gallon. By the time she’s back from X-ray the car should be here – ”
The Private Wing Page 5
