The Private Wing

by Claire Rayner

  And he turned and went, leaving them both staring after him. And then Ngaire said in a heavily weary voice that was totally unlike her usual one, “Well, be grateful for small mercies. I’m sorry you had to put up with that, Trish. You didn’t deserve it – I should have copped all of it – but – but – ” she swallowed with a noisy gulp. “Oh, God, I don’t think I can take much more tonight – I really don’t – ” and again she put her hands up to her face and began to cry with a bitter lost helplessness that twisted her face into a caricature of its usual pert prettiness.

  Tricia had been standing very still, staring after Adam Kidd, feeling numb with fatigue and the sort of breathless shock that comes with having a quantity of ice cold water thrown over one. She turned her head slowly, now, and looked at Ngaire, and as the awareness of her misery penetrated, said quickly, “Oh, don’t cry like that, please! It’s over now, and even though he – well, whatever he said, he isn’t going to shop us, and the girl from the first floor seemed to accept his word happily enough, so she won’t shop us either. There’s nothing to be so desperate about – ”

  But Ngaire just shook her head and wept on, and moving stiffly, for now her tiredness was filling her muscles with pain, Tricia went over to her, and put an arm about her shoulders, and led her, shaking as she was, to the sterilising room, to bathe the small face with swabs dipped in cold running water.

  “Come on, now, it isn’t that bad,” she murmured. “You don’t usually make such a fuss when you get out of a scrape, you daft thing! Now calm down, and give me a chance to flip my lid, eh?”

  Ngaire turned her head, and buried her damp face in Tricia’s shoulder, and slowly the storm of tears subsided until she was breathing more evenly again, only hiccupping slightly from time to time.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed at last. “Truly sorry. I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world, Trish, you know that – ” and she looked up with her drowned violet-blue eyes looking red-rimmed and anxious. “It – it wasn’t on purpose, you know that, don’t you, Trish? I – truly, I couldn’t help it, and I – I don’t – I can’t – ” again her eyes filled with tears, but this time, she scrubbed at them with her fists, and shook her head violently. “No, it’s no good. Look, Trish – do as he said. Go to bed and I’ll clear up, and God bless you for what you did for me tonight. I only wish that – no, I – tomorrow – ” and she put her arms round Tricia and hugged her, and then pushed her away. “Go on now. I’ll – there’s things to tell you. In the morning, maybe. But right now, you get going – ”

  Tricia was too exhausted to argue, and moved away to the changing room, and wearily took off the theatre gear into which she had changed so hurriedly so many aeons ago – was it only an hour that had passed? It didn’t seem possible; and holding her cap and apron in one hand, bundled herself into her cape, ready to go away out into the darkness of the garden, and across to the long since shuttered and sleeping nurses’ home.

  At the theatre door she looked back, and saw Ngaire moving about with a sort of desperate effortfulness that made Tricia’s own eyes start with tears suddenly. Clearly, there was something very wrong with Ngaire, clearly something more than the way she had let Tricia down was upsetting her. She could never remember seeing the ebullient Ngaire behave so strangely; it was as though she had aged ten years since they had last seen each other.

  But she was too tired, now, to think about it, to think about Ngaire, or Kidd, or what had happened this evening. Every fibre in her was crying out for rest, and she went out of the door and down the dim staircase, leaving Ngaire in the vividly lit theatres, cleaning up and scrubbing instruments. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about it, and I’ll find out what’s the matter with her, tomorrow. Not now.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning should have been a rather pleasanter one than Tricia had ever spent on the third floor since, for the first time, she was allotted her own patients, though clearly somewhat against Sister Cleland’s will.

  “I have no choice, since the pressure of work on the floor is so high,” she said sourly. “But I am warning you, Nurse, you will be under my eye very closely indeed. There are two new admissions you are to take – Mr Philip Bartlett, coming in this afternoon for investigations – he’ll have room 306 – and in 305, a Mrs Joan Slattery, coming in for cosmetic surgery to the face. Now, get the rooms ready in good time, and make sure all the charts are correctly prepared.”

  But despite the mild satisfaction of at last being treated as one of the floor’s nursing staff rather than a barely tolerated errand runner, her anxiety about Ngaire kept coming between her and her work. She hadn’t been in her room early in the morning when Tricia went to call for her at breakfast time, and she had been surprised not to find her in the dining room when she got there. And the same thing happened at lunchtime; the junior theatre nurse told Tricia, when she put her head round the door to ask if Ngaire were on duty, “She’s off for the rest of the day – had a case last night”; but she wasn’t at lunch – nor at tea or supper.

  It really was very odd, considering how rarely a day passed without the two meeting somewhere in the big hospital, and particularly so after the events of the night before.

  And remembering those events, Tricia had found her face had suddenly flamed when, while she was in the office with Sister Cleland having the notes of her two new patients checked, Adam Kidd had come in. She realised immediately that Sister Cleland had noticed her embarrassment, felt the resentment in the other woman, but couldn’t control the response.

  But clearly he was going to be as good as his word, and made no mention of the operation of the night before, presenting Tricia with his usual chilly attitude. Which should have pleased her, but somehow made her feel obscurely hurt. During that hour last night, there had been a sort of rapport between them, and her gratitude for his statement that he would make no report of what had happened had made her feel a definite warmth towards him. But he had quenched that very effectively, now.

  She had to accompany him when he went to examine the two new patients in her care, and she couldn’t resist feeling a moment of malicious pleasure because he did not arrive to make this round until after Sister Cleland had gone off duty. “If she wants to think I like Kidd, let her,” she thought. “I know how much I dislike him, and that’s good enough for me – ”

  And yet, dislike him or not, there was still that infuriating fascination to be found in him. She watched him as he greeted Mrs Slattery, stood by quietly as he examined her heart and lungs and made a general assessment of her condition, and told herself “it’s because he’s a good doctor. You can dislike someone, and still admit they’re good at their job – and he is. He’s got this silly creature eating out of his hand – ”

  She had taken one of her immediate dislikes to Mrs Slattery. She was a little woman with a superb figure which she knew how to show to its best advantage; she had arrived wearing a very well fitted trouser and sweater outfit that revealed every curve, and was now sitting up in bed in a demure white cotton pyjama suit that made her look very young and appealing until one looked at her face.

  A small pointed face, with a heavily made up complexion that couldn’t disguise the lined forehead, the sagging flesh under the eyes, the crépiness of the neck. She was forty-five and looked it – but wouldn’t look it much longer, as she told Adam Kidd with a brittle gaiety that made Tricia’s lip curl.

  “Do show me, Doctor,” she said in her high girlish voice. “I’m dying to see – can’t you give me some idea of the effect?”

  “Well, I’ll try,” he said good naturedly. “Nurse, bring a mirror from the dressing table, will you – that’s it, hold it so – ”

  He sat down on the bed, behind Mrs Slattery, so that she had to lean against him – and she did so with a kittenish wriggle that hardened Tricia’s dislike of her – and then put his finger tips to each side of her face.

  “Now, there’ll be two incisions here, just in front of the ears – ” he slid his f
ingers over her cheeks from the turned-up nose towards the ears, and the lines disappeared, giving the little face a taut young look. “Then, a gentle lifting here, to the hairline – ” His fingers moved up her brow, smoothing out the lines again, “and finally a tightening here – ” he stroked her neck, and again the skin tautened, “with the incisions just here at the hairline behind the ears. You’ll have to be shaved at these points, of course, but it will grow again very quickly, and there’ll be no scars to be seen.”

  He grinned at her as he stood up, and she settled back against her pillows. “So you should appear to shed a good ten years or more. Will that have the effect you want?”

  Her eyes shadowed for a moment, and then the girlish smile came back and she said, “My dear, it’s got to! But you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know,” he said. “Now, tonight, I’ll order a sedative for you – you need plenty of sleep to prepare you – and tomorrow nothing to eat or drink after six a.m. You’ll be going to theatre about three in the afternoon. Any problems, let me know. Your surgeon will be here to see you tonight, and maybe the anaesthetist, though as I’ve examined you now he’ll only have to order your premedication drugs. Enjoy it all, now! You’ll be getting a good rest thrown in with the operation, after all!”

  Tricia looked back for a moment at Mrs Slattery – who was again peering in the mirror – and as she followed Adam Kidd from the room, and could have snorted her disgust. Trust Sister Cleland to give her a stupid woman having a face lift as one of her first special patients, she thought. She did it on purpose, because of what I said about private patients in general. Anyway, I was certainly justified in my opinion as far as this one’s concerned.

  But the patient in room 306 was a very different sort. He was sitting up in bed, very erect and still against the pillows piled up behind him, his face thin and white above the scarlet of his silk pyjamas. He was a man of about forty, and quite remarkably handsome, with a strong square chin with a small cleft in it, and very dark eyes with incredibly long sooty black lashes, and curly dark hair. But his cheeks were hollow and his hands pathetically bony, lying idly on the counterpane.

  “Well, hello there,” he said with a sudden brilliant smile that was aimed at both of them as they came to stand beside his bed. “Nice to see you! I was getting tired of the view from the window. Half a tatty roof and an expanse of dingy London sky isn’t exactly exciting, is it? Not like you, now, Nurse. You’d brighten any patient’s day! Am I going to see more of you in here? I hope so, I must say I liked the look of you as soon as I saw you this afternoon – ”

  He looked up at Adam Kidd then and and said wickedly, “Lucky fellows, you doctors! Now if we had such decorative creatures around working with us, I swear we’d never get a building up – but architects don’t enjoy your sort of privileges. Well, Doc, what are we going to do here? Are you going to find out at last what it is that’s wasting so much of my time? I’m getting very bored with all this you know – ” he grimaced. “Weak as a cat most of the time, and no one can tell me why! It’s really too ridiculous – ”

  “We’ll do our best, Mr Bartlett. I know it’s very tedious for you but we’ll hurry as much as we can. And since you approve of your nurse, you must let her spoil you – don’t do a thing for yourself she can’t do for you.”

  “A pleasure to follow such eminently sensible medical advice,” Mr Bartlett said promptly, and put out one hand to pinch Tricia’s arm playfully.

  Pink faced, Tricia extricated her arm gently, very aware of Adam’s sardonic gaze, and then there was a tap on the door, and gratefully she hurried across the room to open it.

  Outside, a woman muffled in a very expensive-looking fur coat and clutching a huge bunch of flowers in one hand, and a big gold-topped green bottle in the other, peered at her; a very pretty woman, Tricia realised at first glance, as well as a very elegantly dressed one.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But I’m afraid Mr Bartlett can’t have any visitors at the moment – the doctor is with him – ” but already the woman had moved forwards, and slipped past her into the room.

  “Maxine, my dear girl! You made it very quickly!” the man in the bed said.

  “I know – aren’t I a marvel?” she cried gaily. “I thought I’d never be able to park, but there was this absolute poppet of a man – a real dish, I promise you, who helped me – too darling for words – how are you, Philip, my angel?” She leaned over the bed and kissed him. “Comfortable and all that? I say, this is a luscious room!”

  “As comfortable as can be expected,” Philip Bartlett said with mock solemnity. “Doctor, this is my wife, Maxine.”

  “How do you do, Mrs Bartlett,” Adam Kidd said. “I want to talk to you later, but right now, if you don’t mind …”

  “I know, I know – I’m in the way!” she dimpled at him, holding her head to one side. “But you have a delightful way of saying so. Really, Philip, if I’d known they had such charming doctors here, I’d have insisted on your coming in weeks ago!”

  “If I’d known about the nurses, I’d have needed no insistence,” he said, but his voice sounded less cheerful than it had. He’s tiring very quickly, Tricia thought. All this social chitchat – it’s out of place in a hospital room. “ – so we’re both happy,” he finished. “Anyway, away with you, and leave me to my medico. There’s some sort of waiting room I imagine – ”

  “We’ll really have to get to know each other better, all of us,” Maxine Bartlett went on, her eyes still on Adam. “Little parties, Philip, darling, yes? I’ll bring more champagne and lots of delicious goodies, and we’ll have ourselves a ball.”

  Tricia opened the door. “I’ll show you the waiting room, Mrs Bartlett,” she said a little frostily. “If you’ll follow me, please – ”

  “I know when I’m beaten!” Maxine said, and laughed a high tinkling laugh. “I’ll be waiting for you Doctor. With eager pleasure, I assure you. See you later, Philip, angel,” and putting the flowers and the champagne bottle on his locker, she blew him a kiss and went out.

  Tricia took her to the small visitors’ waiting room, and turned to return to room 306, but Mrs Bartlett put her hand out to stop her.

  “He looks awful lying there, doesn’t he?” she said abruptly. “Worse than at home, somehow. Do you know – ” she stopped and bit her lip, staring at Tricia. “No, I don’t suppose you know anything yet, do you?”

  Tricia shook her head. “I’m sorry. Dr Kidd will tell you all he can when he has examined the patient. If you’ll just wait here – ”

  “Kidd – is that his name? He looks rather nice. Is he?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” Tricia said, and now there was more frost in her voice. “If you’ll wait here he’ll be along very soon. Excuse me, please,” and she left the woman standing there and hurried back to room 306, irritated and uncomfortable. Ye gods, but what a collection of people you meet in a Private Wing, she thought. Either playing at being patients or treating an illness like – like a fashionable cocktail party.

  When she got there, Adam was writing a list of test requests. “Nurse Oxford, will you call the laboratory about this lot?” he said, and gave her a sheaf of them. “And I’ll want a blood tray now to take some specimens. As soon as possible, please – ”

  She helped him as he collected specimens of blood from Mr Bartlett and then made the bed and washed and settled the weary man to have a short rest before dinner, while Adam went along the corridor to talk to Maxine Bartlett. And remembering the interest the woman had shown in her husband’s doctor, she felt a stab of angry pity as she looked down at the man in the bed, now lying with his eyes closed in exhaustion. Whatever was wrong with him – and it would be a while before the test results came back with that information – he was clearly a very sick man, yet his wife could twitter and giggle at another man like some – some silly chorus girl.

  I wish I was back on nights she thought bleakly. Or in theatres. Anything rather than this horrible place –
and that thought reminded her of Ngaire and her odd behaviour, and resurrected her worry about the way she was keeping out of sight. Altogether, being Tricia Oxford wasn’t very comfortable at that moment.

  It was perhaps her distress about Mr Bartlett that made her speak as she did to Adam Kidd, when she found him sitting at the desk in the office, scribbling a last note into one of the charts.

  “Perhaps you’ll see what I meant, now, when I said what I did about private patients on my first day here,” she said tartly, putting the chart she had brought from Mr Bartlett’s room in front of him.

  “What?” he looked up, abstracted. “What was that?”

  “I said – oh, never mind. It isn’t important,” she wished now she hadn’t started.

  But he put his pen down. “What was it you said about private patients that day? You must forgive me if I don’t remember every word that falls from you. You say quite a few of them.”