The First Year

by Lucilla Andrews

  I was too upset even to marvel at the wonder of his speaking to me. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll do that.’

  He smiled; he really smiled at me and no one else. ‘Don’t look so distressed, Nurse. I realize you have been lamentably careless, but ‒ this has happened before.’

  ‘It has?’

  His mouth twitched slightly. ‘Last time I believe it was the ether and gentian violet; it might have been the vermilion red. I’m a little hazy. But I do distinctly recollect a row of students with stained hands scrubbing themselves and complaining bitterly at the sinks.’ Then he seemed to remember he was the S.S.O., because he suddenly looked over the top of my head and told the wall that young nurses would try to work too quickly.

  I said meekly, ‘Yes, Mr Waring,’ and when he walked out of the room I nearly hugged the row of bottles I had been hating passionately a couple of minutes before. I had expected him to be scathing, superior. His unmistakably kind words acted as a barrier between me and the world. I heard all Sister Casualty had to say to me ‒ and she said a good deal ‒ but it did not register at all. And when she had finished with me and sent me to wash all the bottles and return them to the dispensary I sailed across the Hall to my task, feeling that life had little more to offer.

  It took me an hour to deal with the bottles and then a long time to remove the flavine stains from the stock-room sink. The yellow liquid had stained everything, including my clean apron. Astor came in to find me. ‘Standing, Sister wants you.’ She noticed my apron. ‘You can’t go like that. Here.’ She pulled a clean one from her case. ‘Put that on, quick. It’ll swamp you, but better be swamped and clean than look as if someone’s been throwing eggs at you.’

  I changed aprons, tidied my hair, straightened my cap, and went into the Hall. Sister was standing by the closed door of one of the smaller dressing-rooms. ‘You’ve been a very long time washing those bottles, Nurse Standing.’ She glanced at my apron and frowned. ‘Why have you not altered the hem of that apron? It’s three inches longer than your dress skirt.’

  I explained that it was not my apron.

  ‘And why did you not bring a spare apron on duty, Nurse?’

  I explained that also.

  ‘I see. Well, Nurse Standing, I am very displeased with you. I want you to go’ ‒ and I thought wildly, she’s going to send me to Matron, and closed my eyes.

  ‘Nurse Standing!’ she snapped. ‘Have you fallen asleep?’

  I opened my eyes instantly. ‘Oh, no, Sister.’

  She said drily, she was glad to hear I was awake. ‘That was not the impression I received. In future will you please pay attention when I am speaking to you? Thank you. Now, I want you to go into Room Four and apply a dry dressing to the neck of the small boy you will find in there with a policeman. Just a straightforward dry dressing and a bit of strapping; he has only grazed his neck, but do not minimize the importance of his wound to him. His name is Trevor Brown and he takes his health seriously.’ She smiled slightly. ‘So be tactful with him, and when you have dressed his neck the policeman is going to take him home.’

  Trevor Brown was six. He had black hair, a very dirty face, and he was in a very bad temper. ‘I told ’im,’ he jerked an irate thumb at the paternal young policeman, ‘as I didn’t need ’im to ’ang around. But you know what them coppers are, Nurse ‒ they will fuss a bloke.’

  The policeman said mildly, ‘I only want to take you back to your mum, Trevor. She may be worrying over you.’

  Trevor snorted. ‘Me mum won’t worry. She knows I can take care of meself.’

  The policeman looked at me. ‘You weren’t exactly taking care of yourself, son, when you got your head stuck in those railings on the bridge.’

  Trevor fingered his neck. ‘I’d ’ave got meself out if you’d let me be! I was just ’aving a look at them barges. I likes to see ’em lay their funnels down. Nurse, see ‒ and then along ’e comes’ ‒ another thumb jerk ‒ ‘an’ wants to know what I’m a-doing of. What’s ’e think I was a-doing of? ’Aving a look at them barges, see!’

  I said I saw, and dressed his neck.

  He was delighted with the strapping. ‘Expect I nearly broke me neck, eh, Nurse?’ he asked with simple pride.

  ‘You might have done, Trevor.’

  He said he reckoned as I mended broken necks daily. ‘You ever ’ad a bloke come in what’s pulled ’is ’ead right off, Nurse?’

  The policeman coughed faintly as I apologized for my lack of experience. ‘I haven’t been nursing long, Trevor.’

  He assured me kindly that there was plenty of time. ‘I could tell you was new by your belt.’ He tapped it with a grubby forefinger. ‘They gives you a black belt when you’ve done a year, doesn’t they?’

  ‘They does ‒ do.’ I smiled at him. ‘You seem to know a lot about this hospital.’

  ‘Cor, I do an’ all. I been coming up to old Martin’s since I were a nipper, see.’

  I said, ‘I see. That explains it.’

  The policeman looked meaningly at the door, then walked out of the room. I offered Trevor one of the children’s papers from the small pile on the couch. ‘I’ve just got to go outside a moment, Trevor. Shan’t be long.’

  He climbed on to the couch with an experienced air. ‘I know you got to see about me cards, Nurse. The Lady Almoner ‒ she ’as ’em. You don’t need to ’urry for me. I likes looking at these ’ere space pictures. Smashing pictures they ’as in this ’orspital.’

  Outside the door the policeman said he was sorry to bother me, but he wondered if the Sister had got the lad’s home address from the Lady Almoner yet. ‘We ought to be getting on now he’s done. I wouldn’t have troubled you with the lad at all if I could have got his home address out of him, but he flatly refused to give it. He said he always came up to St Martin’s by himself when he cut himself, and he wasn’t having no cop messing with his cut neck. He wanted a real hospital, he said. So I had to bring him here to find out his address. The Sister said she knew the lad and would get it for me.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘I don’t like worrying you here when you are so busy; but I did not want to take him in as lost when he wasn’t doing any harm and isn’t lost, as he says he knows his way home. I’d say he was capable of getting there, too; but you can’t leave a little lad of six to wander round London with a cut neck. If you can find out if the Sister has that address yet, Nurse, I’ll see him safely home. And I reckon his mum will have something to say to him, for all that he says she’s not the worrying sort.’

  Sister had just received Trevor’s address from the Out Patient Almoner, and I met her on her way to give it to the policeman. When Trevor and escort had gone Sister sent me on a row of errands, then told me to help Nurse Davis in one of the female surgical rooms. I had been in there about an hour, when Sister beckoned to me from the door. She looked very grave. ‘Nurse, will you go quickly to the canteen and buy tea for two.’ She gave me some money. ‘Take the tray to Room Two. You will find a young couple waiting there ‒ relatives. They are very distressed and shocked, and I expect may refuse the tea; but try to get them to drink it. Then stay with them until I return to them. I must go back to their child first, but I will be with them as soon as I am able. If they ask you about the child, simply say that you are very sorry but unable to answer, as you have only just been called to fetch them tea.’

  The canteen was crowded. I ignored the black looks I received from the queue at the counter and pushed my way to the head. ‘Please’ ‒ I flapped my money at the voluntary worker behind the tea-urn ‒ ‘I’m from Casualty.’

  ‘From Sister Casualty ‒?’ She leaned forward and listened to my message. ‘I’ll get you a tray, Nurse. Wait there.’ She made a small pot of tea and set a tray, then handed it across to me. She refused to take any money. ‘Tell Sister we wouldn’t think of charging for this, Nurse.’

  When I returned to Casualty Nurse Blake was directing traffic in the Hall. Sister was nowhere to be seen. I took the tray to Room Two, hoping to find her in t
here. But the young man and woman standing by the window in that room were alone. I explained that Sister had sent me. ‘Sister thought you might care for a cup of tea.’

  The woman turned to me. She was crying. ‘Nurse ‒ how is she?’

  Her husband put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t take on so, love,’ he said unhappily; ‘they’ll tell us as soon as they know. The Sister promised.’

  I longed to be able to say something comforting and kind; but I did not know what to say, not only because I knew so little about the cause of their anxiety, but because I had never seen real grief before. Then I remembered that Sister had told me to do something for them, so I poured out some tea. ‘Do have a little. It’s such a cold day. It will do you good. It really will.’

  The woman dried her eyes. ‘Ta, duck. Ta, ever so. But I don’t think I can swallow anything. I couldn’t touch it.’ Then as I held out a cup to her dumbly she took it from me. ‘All right ‒ if you think it best ‒ I’ll try.’ Her hand shook and the cup rattled against the saucer, so I took the saucer and she cradled the cup in both hands, sipping the scalding hot tea between her words. ‘You see ‒ I thought she was playing with the other kids … I couldn’t see them ‒ mind ‒ but I could hear them calling to each other outside my kitchen window all morning. She’s always been so good ‒ she’s not a one to go off by herself, like. So I didn’t think to see where she was when I went round the corner to the shops. I told me neighbour I was going and she said she’d keep an eye, like. I went off quite happy, never thinking she’d ‒’ the poor girl shuddered uncontrollably ‒ ‘she’d gone near the river. But when I got back the police were there and they were asking for me ‒’ Her face crumpled and she began to cry again. The tears poured down her cheeks, and she made no effort to dry them.

  I took the cup from her hands and suddenly her head was on my shoulder. I said, ‘There, there,’ because it seemed the only thing to say, and because that was what my mother had said when she comforted the boys and me as children. I wanted to weep with her, but I could not, as her husband was looking to me for support too.

  He said heavily, ‘I’m glad as you’ve come, Nurse. It helps the wife ‒ having another woman here. The Sister said as she would send someone.’ He drank his tea absently. Then, ‘You see, Nurse ‒ she can’t swim. She’s a clever little thing, but she’s only little ‒ and she can’t swim. But ‒ they got her out in time? They did,’ he insisted, ‘get her out in time? She is going to be all right’ ‒ his voice cracked ‒ ‘isn’t she?’

  Sister had come in as he was speaking, but I noticed that she did not answer his question. She looked concerned and compassionate. ‘You’ve had some tea. I am so glad.’

  ‘Sister?’ The mother raised her head and moved from me. ‘How is she?’

  Sister put her arm round the mother’s waist. ‘Sit down, my dear. Please sit down, both of you. I want to talk to you.’ But before she said more she told me to go to Room 12. ‘Nurse Davis may need you. I shall be in here for a while.’

  The door of Room 12 was open, but the interior of the room was hidden by the red screen placed across the door. It was the first occasion upon which I had seen one of those screens in Casualty. A red screen in our hospital stood for danger. I walked quietly round the screen, then stood quite still. None of the occupants of Room 12 heard me come in. I was glad of that. I needed that brief, private moment.

  On the floor in the middle of the room was a stretcher. Grouped round the stretcher stood two ambulance men in shirt-sleeves, a policeman with his jacket slung over his shoulder, Dr Spence, and one of his housemen, both unrecognizable without their white coats, both with their shirt-sleeves rolled above their elbows, and with their stethoscopes dangling loosely round their necks. The houseman was breathing hard, as if he had been running. Nurse Davis stood beside him. They were all watching the man kneeling on the floor at their feet. The kneeling man swayed rhythmically forward and backward, as if he was rowing; as he moved he spread and closed the arms of what looked like a tiny white limp doll. A doll with a mop of wet flaxen hair.

  Dr Spence bent down and raised one of the child’s eyelids.

  ‘No good, Joe. Go back to the thoracic method. And you had best change over. You’ve done long enough.’ He pulled off his stethoscope and gave it to the houseman. ‘Hold that for me, Bryan. I’ll take the next shift, then I had better go and see her parents.’ As he went down on his knees he glanced at Davis. ‘Where did Sister put them, Nurse? Room Two? Right you are.’

  I recognized the man he had called Joe as Dr Ross, the senior medical registrar. The S.M.O. said, ‘Ready, Joe?’ And Dr Ross grunted to save breath. He was red with effort, and his forehead was damp. Dr Spence slipped his hands over the registrar’s and for a few seconds they swayed together, then Dr Ross moved his hands away and sagged sideways and forward to get out of the way and recover his breath.

  Nurse Davis noticed me and beckoned. ‘Is Sister staying with her parents?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse.’ I could not take my eyes off that pathetic little figure. ‘Is she going to come round, Nurse?’

  Dr Ross overheard me as he stood up. ‘I wish we could answer that, Nurse.’ He was looking at Davis. ‘How are her parents taking this?’

  Davis turned to me. ‘You’ve just seen them, Standing. I haven’t. How are they?’ And all but Dr Spence looked my way.

  I said, ‘They seem ‒ very upset.’

  No one made any comment. They merely looked back at the child on the floor.

  A few minutes later Dr Spence asked breathlessly, ‘What time is it, Nurse Davis?’

  ‘Ten minutes to one, Doctor.’

  He sighed. ‘I promised the S.S.O. I’d look at a case of his in his room at a quarter to one. Could you send someone to explain I’m held up? I must see these parents first.’

  Davis told me to go across. ‘Then go back to the canteen and get tea and sandwiches for these men,’ she added quietly. ‘They’ve been at this for a long time and it’s exhausting work.’

  ‘Yes, Nurse.’

  The S.S.O.’s room was across the hall. When I reached it I thought it was empty. Then Jake’s voice called me from the small office at the far end of the room. ‘Did you want me, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I went into his office and explained my message. He did not seem surprised to get it.

  ‘I asked the chap to come back this afternoon when I heard about that child. How is she? Round yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Then I had to get an answer from someone, so I asked, ‘Mr Waring, did Sister tell you about her? Is there any hope?’

  He stood up, moved round the desk, and leant against it. ‘Yes, Sister did tell me. She also told me the infant is five. So she’s got a five-year-old heart.’ He put his hands in his pockets, looked down at his feet, then up at my face again. ‘Sister said she was in the river for some time before anyone noticed she was missing. It’s a ‒ cold day. But I expect you’ve heard the history?’

  ‘Not all. Her mother told me a little. She was too upset to say much.’

  He said, ‘I can believe that. Well, they think her teddy fell in to the water and she jumped in to pick it out. It wasn’t an intelligent thing to do; but who expects a kid of five to act with intelligence?’ He was silent for a couple of seconds, then he went on, ‘And who with any intelligence would allow a kid of five to stroll alone along the Embankment?’ He jiggled something in one of his pockets. ‘You haven’t been in Casualty long, Nurse, so you may not yet be aware of the number of children we get in every week with the same tale. You’ve seen her parents; I haven’t. But didn’t her mother say, “I thought she was all right, Nurse; I thought she was with Mary, or Tommy, or Jane?” Right?’

  I said, ‘Yes, she did.’

  He moved to the door with me. ‘When you are looking after infants you oughtn’t to think they are all right. You ought to know. And if we could only get the very kind and loving mamas, in this area alone, to realize that we should probably save the lives of fi
ve kids every week.’ We crossed the larger room slowly. ‘I’ll go over and see the S.M.O. I’ve finished early for once. You going back there?’

  I explained that I had to go to the canteen.

  He gave me a shrewd glance. ‘You don’t appear to approve of your errand, Nurse?’

  He was obviously so concerned about these children and the river, and somehow so much more approachable in his concern, that, momentarily, I forgot he was the S.S.O., and felt only that he was an older and more experienced human being than myself. I said impulsively, ‘It’s not that I don’t approve, but it seems too dreadful to think of things like tea and sandwiches when they still don’t know if that child is going to live or die ‒ if there’s any hope.’

  He stood still. ‘Now, just you listen to me, Nurse,’ he said very seriously. ‘I’ve told you this poor brat is no isolated case. Another may have come in already ‒ or be on the way. And if not a similar case, one thing is certain ‒ and that is that something equally acute is on its way in. You can lose your heart over a patient; but don’t ever lose your sense of proportion. We may all feel like standing about and wringing our hands at times; but can you tell me what good that’s going to do?’

  I shook my head dumbly.

  He gave a brisk little nod and continued, ‘Life, meals, routine, have to go on like clockwork. It may seem all very cold-blooded to you at your present stage, so I’ll put it to you another way. How would you feel’ ‒ he looked hard at me ‒ ‘if you were the mother of a very sick child to-night, and you brought her in here to be seen by Dr Spence and then heard that Dr Spence had collapsed from exhaustion because he had been on his feet for eighteen hours and had had no time to get to a meal all day? And, I assure you, Dr Spence frequently works those hours, and if Sister Casualty ‒ or the ward sisters ‒ did not produce sandwiches and hot drinks for the medical staff at odd times that kind of thing would very likely occur. Regular meals at regular hours are not the general rule for residents in a large hospital.’