‘Hallo! Sorry.’ He was wearing a stiff shirt and white tie under his white coat. ‘You look very smart, Doctor.’
He smiled. ‘A chap in Robert has just asked if I’m going to do a turn on the telly.’ He looked round. ‘How are they all? Seem quiet enough.’
‘Settling nicely. But you don’t know how glad I am to see you. I’m having a worry over Sanders.’
He was a good houseman. He asked me a host of questions to which I had to give satisfactory answers, checked Sanders’ chart carefully, and when we went round felt his pulse, then stood watching him sleep. Eventually he shook his head at me, jerked a thumb upward. We moved on round the ward.
‘I’m fussing about nothing?’ I asked when we were back at the desk.
‘Your words, not mine, Nurse. Seriously, I think he looks as one would expect. He’s had a tough time and he’s not young.’ He smiled understandingly. ‘Did you get any sleep to-day?’
‘Which means you think I’m being over-imaginative?’
‘Hard not to be at night. And you’ve been on nights a long time. I’ll tell Bill Yates you’re worried. Will that do?’
‘Thanks.’
We walked to the ward door. On the way someone near the desk coughed. I spun round, made for Bed 6. The man in 7 had coughed in his sleep.
Richard waited for me to join him. ‘You are keyed up about that chap.’
‘I just can’t get rid of my ‒ well ‒ hunch.’
He groaned. ‘Oh, no, no, Nurse dear! Keep the feminine intuition out of the wards, I beg you. Look at the facts. That man’s sleeping well, his pulse, temp, dressings, and plaster are all satisfactory. What more do you want?’
‘That’s true. Maybe I have been too long on nights. Thanks for your round, Mr Bartney. And for the sound common-sense.’
‘All part of the service, Nurse. Well, if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I’ll see Yates and get off to this party, I suppose. Those two chaps last night have got up a crowd and asked me to tag along as their numbers are wrong, or something.’
That cheered me momentarily. ‘I am glad. It’ll be fun for you, after all.’
The night bell on the duty-room telephone buzzed discreetly as Richard left. Bernard glanced at him as she hurried by to answer it. Half a minute later she came back to the ward.
‘That was Night Sister, Nurse. She asked if we were quiet. I said we were. Was that all right?’
I nodded absently. ‘She only ring for that?’
‘No. She asked me to tell you she’ll be late for her round as there’s a crisis on in the Children’s Block. Some infant with otitis media has developed measles, instead of the other way round. The S.M.O. is along there having a great sort out of contacts.’
‘He’ll have a job. Measles spreads like nobody’s business.’ I removed my eyes from the direction of Sanders with a conscious effort. ‘I’m sorry about the otitis media child. Bad?’
‘Not too bad, according to Night Sister.’ She hesitated. ‘I say, Nurse, did Mr Bartney soothe you about Sanders?’
I was honest. ‘He tried to. He agrees with you.’ I tapped my head. ‘Too much night duty. But he is going to pass it on to his standin.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Then he’s going to the Ball?’
I smiled faintly. ‘My dear girl, why else would he be doing a round in a white tie and boiled shirt? He was off at ten-thirty.’ I looked at the clock over the ward door. ‘He’s going to be late for the party.’
‘Yes. Don’t you ‒’ The telephone bell interrupted her. She vanished to the duty-room, reappeared at once. ‘Mr Druro would like to speak to you, Nurse.’
‘Oh!’ My heart sank. In my anxiety for Sanders I had forgotten I was going to have to deal professionally with Johnny for the next two nights. ‘Thanks, Bernard. Will you stay in here?’
I hurried out to the duty-room, lifted the receiver. ‘Nurse Francis, Mr Druro.’
‘Nurse, what’s all this about that man Sanders?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve just seen Bartney. I didn’t intend doing my Lister round until later, as I understood you were quiet. Bartney says you’ve some notion in your head that contradicts the apparent facts.’
Why, I wondered, couldn’t Richard just have told dear old Bill Yates?
I said stiffly, ‘It’s just that I don’t like the look of Sanders, Mr Druro.’
‘You don’t? Huh. Well, I saw him this evening for the first time. I had his history then. Let’s have it again.’
I did as he asked, had to add, ‘He’s sleeping well.’
He ignored that. ‘I presume you’re watching his pulse. How often?’
‘Quarter-hourly.’
‘That so? What else have you done? Set a plaster cut-down? Oxygen? Blocks? Tourniquet at the ready?’
I only wished he was near enough for me to throw the receiver at him. ‘All available, Mr Druro.’
‘That means you’ve the lot ready. Merry little optimist, aren’t you, Nurse? What are you expecting the poor devil to do? Bleed? Produce a pulmonary? Coronary? Or all three?’
‘Being a nurse, making any form of a prognosis is not my province, Mr Druro.’ I spoke between my teeth.
‘But you just don’t like the look of him,’ he mimicked.
‘No.’ Had Richard been around I could almost have thrown something at him too.
‘Do you go in for hunches, Nurse Francis?’
‘I have had them occasionally.’ I braced myself for another crack about feminine intuition.
None came. ‘So have I. Bloody disturbing things to have. I’d better come up and have a look at the man. I’ll do my round at the same time.’ There was a click. He had rung off.
He had always infuriated me ‒ he still did ‒ yet I was so relieved I sailed back to Bernard. ‘All serene?’
‘Snoring their heads off. All right if I vanish to the kitchen now, Nurse? I’ve given up all hope of Night Sister waving that wand and whisking me off to dance with Prince Charming.’
‘Oh, poor Bernard! Never mind ‒ vanish if you like, but don’t do so too well. Our Mr Druro is coming up to see Sanders and do his round and you’ll have to watch the ward.’ I smiled. ‘And I am so very pleased.’
‘About our Mr D?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘I thought you couldn’t stick him.’
‘I can’t. But right now I’d rather see him than any Prince Charming, dear ‒ and incidentally a more ghastly name than Charming for a man I can’t imagine.’
‘This because of Sanders?’
I nodded. ‘There are times, as you’ll discover for yourself when you’re a night senior, when the only man you really want to see is a good, experienced physician or surgeon. This’ ‒ I looked round the quiet ward ‒ ‘is one of those times.’
She clearly thought I was nuts, but was again too tactful to say so. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen, Nurse.’
Johnny swept like a silent tornado, if tornadoes can be silent, up the small ward corridor we called ‘the flat’ and into the ward a few minutes later. He put his hands on his hips and scowled. ‘The place seems quiet as a morgue. Quieter. No fridges ticking over. Well? Let’s see him.’
I took him straight to Bed 6. Sanders woke briefly, went back to sleep again while we were looking at his leg plaster.
Johnny went back to him after his round, looked hard at the sleeping man, then at me. He shook his head slightly, then turned and walked towards the door.
I cantered after him. Only etiquette forced me to say, ‘I’m sorry I seem to be fussing over nothing, Mr Druro.’
‘I should save your apologies for the moment, Nurse. Ring me if you want me.’ He walked off.
The dawn was scarlet that morning. Through the ward windows the whole sky looked on fire. The queer, red light crept into the ward and made the red night-lights seem colourless.
Bernard went quietly by the desk with two cups of hot milk for the men in 18 and 19. Her face was still pale with the shock of seeing her first arterial haemorrhage. It had not been my first,
but the cold fear that had held me momentarily petrified when, while I was actually taking Sanders’ pulse, I had felt the heat suddenly increase violently and then run beyond counting, had not yet quite let go. I had known what to do and done it, moving faster than I ever remembered moving before. Even so, the few seconds it took to get the tourniquet from my pocket and round Sanders’ soaking thigh had been enough to turn his entire plaster the colour of the dawn sky.
That had happened at just after 2 a.m. and Night Sister’s second round. Johnny had arrived in under five minutes from Bernard’s telephone-call. He was breathing hard when he came behind the drawn curtains. ‘You’ve given him that quarter, Nurse? Right.’ He patted Sanders’ shoulder. ‘Sorry about this, old chap. Don’t let it worry you. We’ll take you along to the theatre now and straighten things up.’
I handed him the bed-ticket. ‘In his bed, Mr Druro?’ I asked quietly.
He nodded, scribbled the premedication injection, handed me back the ticket. ‘Stat.’
‘Stat’ means at once. I turned to go for the drug and hypodermic tray. He caught my arm. ‘Hold on.’ He took off his white coat, held it out for me. ‘Some of the other chaps may be awake.’
I glanced down at my apron. It was soaked in blood. ‘Thanks.’
That scarlet dawn arrived hours later. Johnny was still with us. He rested an elbow on the desk, his head on his hand. ‘God, I’m tired.’ His fingers reminded him he was still wearing a theatre cap. He flicked it off; it fell on the blotter. The light from the pulled-down night lamp over our heads edged the green linen cap with violet. ‘I wish to God he would come round,’ he murmured, and stared at the sky.
I looked again at the curtains drawn round 6. Night Sister had sent Ann Farwood, the night senior relief and one of my set, to special Sanders when he came back from the theatre. Her shadow on the ceiling showed she was sitting by him, one hand on his pulse.
‘He seems to have been out ages.’ I looked from those curtains towards the duty-room door. ‘Must seem an eternity to his wife. I’ve promised I’ll tell her directly he is round. She wants to sit with him again then. May she?’
‘I can’t object. She’s his wife. He’s an ill man. The special must stay. Will Mrs Sanders be quiet? That he must have.’
‘She will be.’ I told him of her previous behaviour.
He yawned. ‘She acted very sensibly when I talked to her when I got up from the theatre, and was quite pathetically grateful to Night Sister for sending a car for her, and to you for the tea, toast, and blankets. I don’t know what else the poor woman expected us to do after hauling her out of bed in the small hours.
‘Oh, well ‒’ he reached for Sanders’ bed-ticket ‒ ‘I must bring these up to date.’
As he was acting S.S.O., it was my job to sit with him while he wrote. I had a great deal to do. I was quite glad to have to sit. ‘Where was the splinter?’
‘Under that old plate in his knee. That’s why it didn’t show up in any of the pictures. It went through ‒ here.’ He drew an arrow on the anatomical drawing he had made.
‘It was the femoral artery?’
‘Had you any doubts?’ he asked grimly.
‘Not really.’ Memory made me wince. ‘Poor Sanders.’
‘A good man.’
I never expected to find myself confiding in Johnny Druro as an old friend, and not just handing on professional information, but that was what I did. At that time, if only for that time, we were friends, because we shared the same anxiety, the same hope, and the same sense of being detached from the world that you have at dawn after a long night.
We talked in the quiet, flat tones we all used at night, since they carried less than whispers. ‘He’s had to draw so heavily on his reserves of physical and moral courage. There must be a limit to both.’ I hesitated. ‘Do you think he can take any more?’
He frowned. ‘He must have a constitution as well as a will of iron to have stood all he has already. He’s the right thin build of a real tough. Real toughs take the hell of a lot of killing.’
‘True.’ Yet I was not reassured. Not after what had happened in the small dark hours.
‘Scared?’ He looked round at me. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’ That was something else I would never have imagined myself saying to him. ‘On his first night we all thought we were hoping for the impossible. Now it’ll need a miracle.’
‘Don’t forget our splendid Simeon’s maxim: We can achieve the impossible; miracles take a little longer; so all we need is patience.’
‘All?’
He smiled faintly. ‘Not easy, I grant you. Certainly not for me. I’m not a patient man. But one has to develop a capacity for sitting on one’s backside and waiting in this job. He’ll be round soon. You’ll see.’
‘And you think he’ll do, Mr Druro?’
He took his time. ‘Making a prognosis at this stage is sticking one’s neck out. I’ll take a chance. Yes. I think he’ll get back to his wife, the kids, and the shop. He’s down for the count, but for my money not yet counted out.’ He fiddled with the cap. ‘I don’t know him like you do, but he’s obviously highly resilient on past showing. And though he looks like death now he doesn’t look to me as if he’s booked.’
I was reassured then. I did not have to like him to know he was one of the brightest of our bright young men. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘But only my opinion. I could be wrong.’
I did not think he was. He had believed my hunch. I believed his opinion.
Sanders came round fifteen minutes later, slid from brief but complete consciousness into a deep sleep. When Johnny eventually left the ward the third pint of blood was running in smoothly through the transfusion apparatus and Mrs Sanders was sitting by the bed holding her husband’s hand.
Sister Lister was a cheerful, efficient woman who allowed nothing to ruffle her outward composure. When she was upset the only sign was her sudden passion for minor details.
‘There is one thing you have not explained, Nurse Francis,’ she remarked after listening to my whole night report without comment or change of expression. ‘What have you done about Mr Druro’s white coat?’
‘I have rinsed it clean, Sister, added it to our damp-linen bin, and made a special note in our laundry-book.’
Bernard waited for me at the top of the stairs. ‘What did Sister say?’
I told her word for word.
She sighed. ‘Nothing about us doing well to have everything done on time?’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t take that to heart. Getting done is taken for granted.’
‘Suppose so.’ We went slowly down the stairs. ‘Doesn’t it seem years since we came up last night?’
‘Another lifetime.’ I yawned hugely. ‘We were very lucky to have Nurse Farwood, even if she had to leave us at six.’
She nodded absently. ‘Rivers in 18 wanted to know about his wife’s baby. The mobile phone was up in Robert, so I let him ring from the duty-room. Was that all right, Nurse?’
‘So long as Night Sister’s not around.’
We had reached the last flight of stairs and were in the middle of another slightly disjointed conversation when the two night girls from Robert, the male accident ward, caught us up. ‘Have you girls heard about the Ball?’ they demanded. ‘The day girls say it was the best ever!’
Bernard and I exchanged glances. It was hours since we had remembered the Ball. The shadow of death that had hung over Lister since two this morning still touched us. Sanders’ condition was ‘as well as could be expected’. No more. I had handed on Johnny’s opinion to Bernard. She had seemed to trust him too. But neither she nor I was yet ready for a long girlish gossip about the party. We let the Robert girls natter on without hearing one word they were saying.
Chapter Three
JOHNNY IS STILL JOHNNY
The Ball was the only topic of conversation at the senior table at breakfast.
‘So Sister Orthopod Theatre looked a dream in grey ch
iffon? And danced non-stop with Jock Cameron? Another theatre wedding coming, girls!’
‘Wonder what Polly Paynter’ll say about that. Hasn’t she been running round with our Mr C. for years?’
‘Apparently not one thing. She was there with Dave Lawson-Jones from Skins.’ The speaker pressed two fingers together. ‘Just like that, my dears!’
‘Is it really true,’ demanded someone else, ‘that the great gynae king was absolutely loaded?’
That sensation of belonging to another world was still with me, and though normally I enjoyed hearing who had done what with whom, and slanderously suggesting why, as much as my pals, that morning it had lost its appeal. I left the girls having a glorious time tearing respectable reputations to shreds, and went back to the Night Home.
My next-door neighbour burst into my room before I had my shoes off. ‘Come in next door and hear all, Kirsty! It’s too bad you missed the party. It really was the most.’
Four other members of my set who had been free last night were sharing her breakfast party. They made room for me, gave me more tea. I did not want to be a wet blanket, so tried to look interested and make the right noises in the right places, but, as at my own breakfast, most of their talk floated over my head. I surfaced when someone mentioned Sonia Dinsford. ‘That white-satin number must have come from Paris.’
‘What’s her latest fiancé like?’ I asked. ‘And, incidentally, was Richard with a good party? Any of you notice him?’
No one seemed to have noticed him. ‘There was such a crush, Kirsty. At times it was hard to see one’s own partner. How did the night go with you? Did you have fun fighting it out with Johnny Druro?’
‘No fun. Or fighting.’ I told them about Sanders.
They were all night seniors and understood now why I was so vague. ‘Poor old girl! You need a good sleep. The goss can keep. Better get to bed early, as it feels as if its going to get hotter than ever.’
I stood up. ‘Probably be a storm. You should have seen the dawn.’
They laughed. ‘We did, dear! We were at a party, remember? Poor old Kirsty! You’re asleep on your two feet!’
Flowers from the Doctor Page 3
