‘Oh, don’t worry about me, Nurse Tanner,’ said Emily. ‘No one else seems to be.’
There was more laughter at Emily’s mock indignation.
‘OK, Mr Horton, I think we are all ready. Shall we get this over and done with? How about a countdown, everyone?’ said Maisie.
The children nodded enthusiastically.
‘Right, everyone with me. I’ll count backwards from number five – can you do that?’
Twenty little heads bobbed up and down, some more confidently than others.
‘Let’s start then. Close your eyes, Sister Haycock. Five, four, three, two, one! Eyes open, Sister.’
Jonny flicked the switch and the Christmas tree lights illuminated the bay. It stood ten feet tall and shimmered as the golden tinsel reflected the lights. The fire in the hearth in the middle of the ward was roaring, thanks to Branna and Biddy, and tears sprang to Emily’s eyes. Feelings of happiness, sadness and delight mingled within her. This was the first Christmas in her life that she had someone to call her own and he was standing next to the Christmas tree, smiling at her. His eyes said: this is the first and the forever. And she knew that, after years of lonely Christmases when she had jumped at the chance to work and cover a ward, any ward, this one would be different.
18
Dr Mackintosh was waiting for Aileen at the desk in casualty. Aileen could hear her mother before she saw her and the shame froze her to the spot.
‘Take it away, you stupid woman. No, I do not want another of your cups of thick, bitter, Catholic tea. Has anyone called for my daughter? She can take me home now.’
‘Now then, Mrs Paige…’ The soothing voice of Doreen O’Prey, the casualty clerk, drifted out from behind a screen. ‘Sister Paige knows. I have already telephoned ward three and I am sure that as soon as Sister Paige is free, she will be straight down here.’
‘As soon as she is free?’ Mrs Paige’s voice rose in temper. ‘Her own mother has been brought into hospital in an ambulance and she keeps her waiting until she is free?’ She reached a climax on the word ‘free’, which came out almost as a screech.
All Aileen could do was stand and stare at Dr Mackintosh in horror.
‘Come here,’ he mouthed and motioned for her to step into the doctors’ office.
Doreen continued to try and pacify Mrs Paige. ‘It might be some time before Sister Paige can get away. There has been an emergency on ward three and she has patients to look after. She will be needed up there for a while.’
‘This is an emergency,’ she heard her mother almost shout. ‘Me being stuck here in this place – that’s the only emergency my daughter should be concerning herself with.’
Dr Mackintosh placed his fingers on his lips, urging Aileen to be quiet as she tiptoed across the space that separated them.
‘Is she all right?’ asked Aileen as she untied her cape, the office door now closed. ‘What happened? What’s wrong? How did she get here?’
‘The young girl who works for you, she called an ambulance. Apparently your mother told her she was having another stroke.’
Aileen hung her cape up on the coat stand. ‘I take it from the sound of her that she wasn’t?’
‘Well, the signs and symptoms she described to me certainly sounded as though she might be. The first thing I did was a neurological examination, which was just fine. In fact, considering her previous stroke, I was very impressed by some of her reflexes. Tell me, how has she been managing at home?’
‘Well, she doesn’t really,’ said Aileen, looking and sounding thoughtful. ‘She can’t really do very much for herself, which is why we have Gina, the girl who called the ambulance. She’s Branna’s daughter, from up on ward four. It was becoming difficult for me to get to work on some days and I desperately wanted to be made a ward sister…’ Her voice trailed off. She thought she must sound very selfish, putting her career before her own mother.
‘Well, let me tell you, her heart is as strong as an ox’s, and beating twice as well. The grip in her affected hand is amazingly good, and you may be surprised to hear this, but it is much better than you have probably been led to believe. I say this because I had a slight suspicion and then I caught her out.’
Aileen’s eyes opened wide.
‘Please don’t be cross with me,’ said Dr Mackintosh, ‘but I sensed she might have been playing for sympathy rather too much. When the ambulance men brought her in, she nearly hit one of them with her handbag, and when they transferred her to the bed, I saw through the curtains that she got herself off the gurney without assistance. I thought nothing of it, but when I examined her, she said she couldn’t put the foot down at all on her bad side and yet I had seen her get down and take three steps towards the bed only moments before.’
The colour drained from Aileen’s face. ‘How did you catch her out?’ she asked, too shocked to say anything more.
‘Well, I pretended to be moving her stick out of the way. She took a few steps towards it and she grabbed it tight. Your mother, Sister Paige, is not as infirm as she makes out.’
Aileen lowered herself on to the chair. Anger began to bubble up from somewhere deep inside. The effort she put into nursing her mother at home, the effort Gina put in… The worry she had caused over the years, to the point where she’d nearly jeopardized Aileen’s promotion. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so all she said was, ‘Thank you, Dr Mackintosh.’
‘Gina’s out there in the waiting room,’ he said gently, all too aware of the hurt in her eyes.
Aileen looked up. ‘Do you mind if I speak to her myself, in here? Can I see her now, before I see my mother?’
‘Of course, Sister. As I’ve said, from my perspective I can’t see any reason to admit your mother to the ward. However, we have plenty of beds – would it help you if I did admit her?’
‘But it’s Christmas in a few days.’
‘Yes, and Matron tells me that you’re working. Tell you what, I’ll leave you with your Gina while I attend to the little boy with the profuse nosebleed in the next bay – which I think has something to do with the twig sticking out of his right nostril – and I’ll come back in about ten minutes. You have a think and I’ll send Gina in now.’
He didn’t hear Aileen’s thank you as he rushed out. Her mind was whirling as the realization dawned that there was nothing she would love more than for her mother to be in hospital for Christmas. Almost immediately she was filled with shame. How can you think that, she berated herself, then looked up to see Gina walking towards the office.
‘I’m sorry, Sister Paige,’ said Gina. ‘She made me call the ambulance. She said she was having another stroke. I don’t know what one of them looks like, but she had just eaten all her lunch and seemed as fit as a fiddle to me.’
Aileen shook her head in bemusement and could only ask, ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know Sister, but she’s been acting all funny since just before you came home the other night after choir.’ Gina didn’t want to say, ‘Since she saw you kissing the handsome man on the corner of Green Lane.’
‘Did she faint? Did she lose consciousness at all?’
‘No, Sister. She waited for me to come back to her room after I took the lunch tray back downstairs. Told me to come straight back up, she did, when I was on my way down to the kitchen, and when I did get back up the stairs, she was flopped back in the chair with her hand to her brow and she was making this kind of gasping noise. She was complaining that she felt just like she did when she had her stroke a few years ago, and she told me not to waste time and to go straight down to the phone box to call the ambulance. So I did.’ Gina looked fearful, as though she might be told off.
Aileen was quick to reassure her. ‘You did absolutely the right thing, Gina. I will go in and see her now.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Did she turn pale? Did her mouth look funny to you, or did her eye droop? Was she mumbling, unable to speak?’
‘Oh no, Sister Paige. Doctor asked me all of those questions too. She had just had a
big bowl of oxtail soup and the bread I made this morning with lots of butter and salt on it. She was a good old colour. She was out of sorts, that’s why I did what she said, but she was none of those things.’
Aileen nodded, perplexed. ‘You go to the WVS post and get yourself a cup of tea, Gina. I will join you there.’
As Gina left the unit, she passed Dr Mackintosh coming out of one of the cubicles. He had blood splattered down his long white coat and what looked like a bloody stick in his hand.
‘He’ll live,’ he said as a look of horror crossed Gina’s face. ‘He didn’t quite get it up far enough to pierce his brain.’
Gina grimaced and pulled a face, and then she leant in and whispered, ‘Sister Paige doesn’t know what I told you, does she doctor?’
He looked behind him to see the retreating back of Aileen as she passed through the curtains and into her mother’s cubicle. ‘Not a thing, and she never will,’ he said and he tapped the side of his nose, leaving a smear of blood on it. ‘You did the right thing to tell me, Gina. That young woman deserves a bit of a life of her own and you were absolutely spot on. I took a peep behind the curtain when Mrs Paige didn’t know I was looking and I saw her with my own eyes, so don’t worry. I told Sister Paige what I saw, not what you told me, and you did the right thing because if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known what to look for.’
Gina was the one who now felt faint. Relief flooded her face and she almost laughed out loud. ‘Oh, thank goodness, I was worried there. I like working for Sister Paige, I didn’t want her to think I was being a sneak. But like you say, her mother gives her the runaround something rotten. I feel sorry for her, I do.’
‘Indeed.’ Dr Mackintosh looked down into the blood-stained enamel kidney dish he was carrying. ‘The mystery though is why? Why has she done this and brought herself here? For what purpose? But don’t you worry, it’s our little secret,’ he repeated, and he turned into the office.
*
‘Oh, darling, at last.’ Mrs Paige switched from abusive to smarmy with zero effort. ‘I thought you were never coming – I kept asking them where you were. I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance and to worry you.’
‘You aren’t a nuisance, Mother,’ came Aileen’s automatic reply. ‘I was worried when I heard you had been admitted. I thought it might have been—’
‘I know, darling. Another stroke. Me too.’ Aileen’s mother pulled a disconsolate face and for the first time that day Aileen doubted her mother’s sincerity. That expression of hers, when she dragged her mouth down at the sides and looked forlorn, always made Aileen feel guilty. ‘Anyway, if you can tell that nice lady who sits behind the hatch and makes the tea to let the ambulance know we are ready to go home now.’
‘Doreen?’ Aileen almost spluttered. ‘Mother, I am going to have to see Doreen and apologize for the way I just heard you talking to her – for the way everyone heard you talking to her, in fact.’
Mrs Paige sat up sharply. ‘Oh no, dear, not me. Either you are mistaken or she is telling tales. I have offended no one and I would never do such a thing. I just heard the doctor telling her to be the one to organize the transport – I’ve not said anything out of turn. It’s her job, what she is paid to do.’
It had not been lost on Mrs Paige that Aileen appeared remarkably unruffled by her dramatic admission to St Angelus, but she put it down to her daughter’s professionalism.
Aileen’s eyes were fixed on her mother’s face, as though watching her every move. ‘Tell me, Mother, exactly what happened. How you felt when you became poorly and how you ended up here, at my place of work, because you are obviously fine now and the doctor can’t find anything wrong.’
Mrs Paige glanced sideways at her daughter and began to wheedle. ‘Well, darling, it may be your place of work, but it is a hospital and I was very sick. That doctor, have you seen how young he is – what can he possibly know? He’s not the best, is he? Otherwise why would he be working here in this dockside hospital?’
Aileen felt a spike of fury course through her. It rendered her speechless. Dr Mackintosh was possibly the most popular doctor in the hospital, with patients and staff alike. He had introduced a new resuscitation method to St Angelus that was only being used in a few other hospitals across the country and it was saving lives already. He helped with things he had no responsibility for – teaching the nurses, standing in for the other doctors – which was quite some sacrifice, both for him and for his girlfriend, Nurse Tanner. For the first time in her life Aileen felt like she wanted to scream at her mother not because of anything she had done to Aileen but for what she had said about someone else.
Mrs Paige reached out her bad hand and grabbed hold of Aileen’s – a significant and revealing mistake. Aileen looked down and saw the realization flash through her mother’s eyes. She was in unfamiliar surroundings and Aileen was standing on the opposite side to where she would have been if they’d been at home.
Aileen gasped, but her mother acted with impressive speed. She let her arm drop to her side and banged it forcibly against the side of the trolley. ‘Oh, my stupid arm,’ she said as she heaved it up with her good hand, and, glancing quickly up at Aileen from under hooded lids, laid it on her lap.
It was a convincing performance and Aileen, her emotions all over the place, immediately reached out and gently rubbed the back of her mother’s hand. ‘Oh dear, that might bruise,’ she said as she examined the delicate flesh on the hands that had never met a scrubbing brush to see if there were any broken veins or capillaries. ‘Wait there. We have ice in casualty, I’ll go and fetch some before it comes up in a nasty swelling.’
Her mother reached out again, this time with her good hand. ‘No, Aileen, really, it will be fine. Please, just get that girl to order the ambulance.’
The overhead lights suddenly flicked on throughout the casualty unit, dispersing the gloom. Aileen hadn’t realized how dark it had become and now she remembered that she hadn’t eaten a thing all day. She felt more than a little light-headed herself. She checked the clock – there was no way on earth she would make the rehearsal and the party. She had so been looking forward to it, not just because she would be with Freddie but because it was a rare chance to do something for herself.
For a brief while her life had looked as though it might be on an upward trajectory, with a lovely man, new friends in the choir and somewhere to spend her evenings. For the first time in as long as she could remember she had felt Christmas coming and she’d been looking forward to it, for reasons she simply could not explain, not even to herself. She had put it down to a combination of having become a ward sister, being with the children, helping to organize the Christmas decorating competition and even to spending time with the exuberant Nurse Tanner, who never stopped talking about Christmas and all the goodies her mam was bringing home from the grocer’s and the butcher’s, using the Christmas club money.
But all that had now come crashing back down to earth with a bang. She had a sick mother and responsibilities that could not be escaped. Nothing had altered in Aileen’s life. She had allowed herself to dream and now she would pay the penalty for that indulgence. She would not even be able to make the Christmas choir.
‘Do you need to have a word with Matron?’ said her mother. ‘To tell her I shall be leaving the hospital and returning home with you.’
‘Matron? Why?’
‘Well, I would have thought it was quite obvious, Aileen. Wake up, child. And you call yourself a qualified nurse? It seems you really do know very little about things medical. “Why?” What a stupid question. To tell her your mother is ill, of course, and that you will need to take time off work from now on to look after me properly. This was a warning, I believe. I may not be so lucky next time, and I’m afraid, darling, you won’t be able to go out this evening to your rehearsal. I would be very nervous being left with that young girl, after all that has happened today.’
‘All that has happened?’ Aileen repeated her mother’s words as though
in a daze. Her mother didn’t know the half of it. Here Aileen was, standing in casualty, a place to which life-or-death emergencies were brought, trying to work out why her seemingly healthy, rather rude and apparently duplicitous mother was there with her, wondering what she was going to say to Dr Walker when she saw him and exactly where Louis was. The fact that she had left her ward in disarray was the least of it right now – there was far more to worry about than the decorating competition and the antics of the porters, and anyway, she could rely on Sister Haycock to restore order. Much more pressing was the missing baby. Where was Louis?
‘Did you hear me, darling?’ Her mother was speaking to her again. ‘Run along now and fetch that ambulance. They must listen to you. Go and take that one outside the door.’
Aileen turned her head and through the curtains saw an ambulance driver together with Doreen, the casualty clerk, wheeling an elderly man up the rear ramp and into a waiting ambulance. ‘We can’t have that one, Mother. They’re busy taking someone back home.’
‘Yes, yes, but can’t you pull rank? Your father used to do that for me all the time.’
Aileen remembered how her mother used to bully her father. He always appeared to be doing something he didn’t want to do, and his face would be red with embarrassment. ‘I could ask if they are going our way – we could share,’ she said.
‘Share? I don’t share. And another thing, you had better call Josie and tell her what’s happened.’
‘What has happened, Mother, if you are so eager go home? What has happened?’
Before Mrs Paige had time to answer, casualty filled with a voice Sister Paige instantly recognized. It was Sister Antrobus.
‘Sister Paige, you are needed back on ward three as soon as possible, please.’ She strode over towards the curtains and, grabbing them by the top, flung them back.
‘I’m afraid I can’t, Sister Antrobus,’ said Aileen. ‘This is my mother, she was brought in with a suspected stroke and I am going to have to get her back home.’ The words were painful and for the first time Aileen knew how her father must have felt. The shame was inside of her; it shrank her from within, making her feel belittled and sick. She worried that her professionalism had been compromised and it hurt her deeply.
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