The First Year

by Lucilla Andrews

‘Fair’s fair. We’d our turn last night.’

  ‘Too true. Oh well. Best get me head down again.’

  A row of small red night lights cast crimson patches on the ward ceiling and the lights from the shaded bedhead lamps filtered through the open red screens round beds 11, 29 and 31, and dappled in soft crimson the beds on either side. Bert Harper, propped into a sitting position in 27, saw the raised head of his neighbour in 28 outlined against the dividing screen. Bert Harper clutched his large, bandaged abdomen with both hands before leaning to his left. ‘Give you a bit of a start, mate? You don’t need to worry. Just one of the students, clumsy-like.’

  George Mercer in 28 was a tall, red-faced man in his late thirties, with the bone structure, colouring, and, until he was wounded in North Africa, the physique of his distant Viking ancestors. Yesterday, the farmer for whom he had worked since he left school at thirteen, up to his call-up in the Territorials in 1939, and who had given him back his old job earlier this year, had given him the day off to come to London to meet one of the mates he had made in the prison camp. It had been a good day even if it hadn’t ended rightly. All he could now remember of last night was waiting on the platform for the last train back to Kent. It had been midday when he discovered he was back in a hospital bed with his chest, shoulders and extended left arm and hand covered with bandages, and a bedcradle over his body from the waist down. The black-haired doctor with the Scotch voice had said he’d been in luck. ‘Flattened your artificial foot, laddie, but your stump and good leg are fine.’

  George Mercer turned his head towards the big, grey-haired man on his right. ‘Reckon he was having hisself a smashing time,’ he announced in his slow Weald voice.

  Bert Harper nodded approvingly. Bert was a Londoner and 28’s silence had worried him all day. ‘Feeling more like it tonight? That’s nice. Mind you, nasty do, last night. Watched them fetch your lot in, I did. Coming in all night you was. Nasty do. Where’d he get you then?’

  ‘Station ‒ can’t rightly remember the name ‒’

  ‘Don’t you worry, mate, it’ll come. It’s the shock that’s what. Not from London then?’

  ‘Down Kent. Appleden. Tenterden way.’

  ‘Doodle-Bug Alley, eh? Home from home. Still, here you are ‒ er ‒ not with your missus like, was you?’

  ‘On me own.’

  ‘Ah. Best. Nasty,’ mused Bert Harper in a stage whisper, ‘when you got the missus and kids along.’

  George Mercer braced himself, ‘Where’d he get you?’

  Bert’s solid, squashed, ex-heavyweight’s face creased in a delighted grin. ‘He never! Strangulated hernia, I am. Harper’s the name. Bert Harper. Newsagent, three streets down ‒ nice little business though I says it meself ‒ had it the fifteen years since I packed in me gloves ‒ well, I mean, past it wasn’t I ‒ and then this pain in me guts has me out for the count. Well, I says, never, I says. When that Mr MacDonald tells me ‒ he’s the Scotch bloke ‒ surgeon like ‒ never, I says. If you’ve not got enough custom, what with Jerry bunging over them doodles and them rockets, without me twisting me guts. Not to worry, he says, we’re still open for business for guts. War’s never stopped no one twisting a wee bit of gut nor never will, he says. Bit of a card, times, that Mr MacDonald, but he knows his job, he does.’ He took a new grip on his stomach and his springs squeaked painfully. ‘You got a real poorly neighbour in 29.’

  George Mercer glanced at the dividing screen. ‘Seemly.’

  ‘DIL,’ intoned Bert. ‘Dangerously Ill List. Tom Briggs. Poorly. Always spot the DILs by the red screens, see. Over there in 11 ‒’ he nodded his bullet-shaped head directly across the ward, ‘poor old Sam Jarvis. Ticker. Shocking ticker has poor old Sam. Mind you, as well he was in here last night seeing as his home’s in that row Jerry fetched down opposite. Come down like a pack of cards, the paper boy says this morning. Upset poor old Sam shocking, but lucky his missus and his old mum gone down the Piccadilly Line for the night and didn’t know nothing till them come up this morning. Whole row flat as cards. The blast. Cruel blast them doodles got. Mind you ‒’

  ‘Gentlemen, please.’ Nurse Dean swept up on soundless feet crackling starch. ‘Terribly sorry, but do you mind not chatting now as you should try and get back to sleep. I’ll just do your pillows and give you drinks …’ After she had gone George Mercer glanced back at the dividing screen and through a narrow slit between curtain and frame glimpsed a face hidden by a green rubber oxygen mask and a small, thin girl in a staff nurse’s uniform. He hadn’t seen her before. He watched her pick up, then quickly put down again, the white china spouted feeding cup on the locker-top and dry her hands on the back of her apron skirts. He lay back, looking up at the ceiling and found he was thinking of anchovies.

  There were strange shadows on the ceiling above Briggs’s screened bed. The slumped, emaciated figure was lost in the mound of pillows and the grotesque hump of the large bedcradle supporting the top sheet and blankets. The bottle of glucose hanging from the infusion stand drawn up to the bedhead was transformed into a spindle; the rubber tubing of the drip-apparatus into a long, thin strand of wool; and the new staff nurse into an elongated, curveless, pantomime fairy floating over mound and hump with wings growing out of her head instead of her shoulders. The wings were the tails of the starched bow on the back of the clean, small, starched, lace cap the staff nurse had made-up in her bunk during her sleepless afternoon in the night seniors’ basement shelter-dormitory.

  ‘I did not mince matters to Matron this morning, nurses,’ said Sister Wally in her handing-over report to her night staff at nine p.m. ‘If we’re to have more nights like last night, Matron, I said, my night senior must have a senior relief. And who can say we won’t? All that talk about the invasion ending the war ‒ huh! Allies’ve been in France since June and haven’t reached the Rhine yet. Last night, as I reminded Matron, was quite as bad as those nights in June and July when as Mr Churchill himself had to admit, over one hundred flying bombs were being aimed at London every day. And if not all got through, as we all know, enough arrived to fill every ward in this and I daresay every other London general hospital. And then ‒ as I reminded Matron ‒ no rockets. Nor then were the Senior Medical and Surgical Officers sending me DIL admissions who should have special nursing. Take Briggs, Matron, I said ‒ carcinomatosis ‒ a total gastrectomy ‒ secondaries everywhere ‒ of course, he needs a special. As does Jarvis. Jarvis.’ Sister Wally’s cap frills rustled with indignation. ‘Naturally I appreciate the SMO’s predicament, nurses, and when Jarvis was admitted four days ago in a state of collapse after his first coronary thrombosis, as there wasn’t a spare medical bed in a basement or ground floor ward and he was unfit to be moved more than across the road from his home, I agreed we must take him. But, as I reminded Matron, he is an acute cardiac patient and acute cardiacs need absolute quiet, and absolute rest, which means special nursing day and night. I asked her how anyone could expect my two night nurses to special any single patient in a ward filled with bed-patients and with casualties coming in all night. I found forty-eight patients in my ward when I arrived on-duty this morning, Matron, I said, and to the great credit of my two night nurses, Briggs and Jarvis were amongst them. But I refuse to risk a repetition, for my patients’ and my night nurses’ sakes. Unless you can send me a senior Special to help out tonight, Matron, I am afraid I shall refuse to go off-duty. Not,’ Sister Wally added unemotionally, ‘that I expect poor Briggs to last another night, but you’ll shortly have this Major Browne. You’ll have to divide yourself in three, Nurse Smith ‒ and very glad I am to see you.’ Sister paused to study the newcomer’s pinched, taut, intelligent face. Nurse Smith was twenty-six but at that moment looked ten years older. ‘I know you’ve done a great deal of specialing. I’m sure you’ll manage nicely. You’re very pale. Not much sleep today?’

  ‘Not much, Sister.’

  ‘I never slept much my first afternoon back on nights. What time did you arrive up from the country hospital?
’

  ‘Just after one, Sister.’

  ‘Good. Time for a nice rest if not much sleep. I expect you’re glad to be back? Everyone feels so out of things down in the country.’

  Nurse Smith said politely, ‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’ Nurse Carter glanced at her covertly. Nurse Dean correctly kept her gaze on the hands correctly folded in her lap.

  ‘When was it you left us here, Nurse Smith?’

  ‘End of August, Sister.’

  ‘Nice little break in country air. However, back to business and this Major Browne ‒ with an E ‒ still in the theatre. I’m afraid the SSO is having to amputate the right leg. Poor Mr MacDonald.’ The cap frills rustled sympathetically. ‘Amputations so distress him ‒ there it is. Apparently a tram went over the leg just outside our main gates this evening. I’m afraid the War Office aren’t too pleased at our taking him in as we’re a civilian hospital, but how were Casualty to know he was in uniform until they’d washed off some of the blood? I’ve just had the War Office on the’phone again. I’m afraid I was a bit short with my caller. Well, really, I said, if the British Army imagines St Martha’s Hospital will ever refuse admission and treatment to a dying man because of some nonsensical red tape, then the British Army knows nothing about St Martha’s Hospital and isn’t it time it did since St Martha’s Hospital has been caring for the sick of London since 1428? I’m afraid he didn’t like that. But, as I was saying, still in the theatre and not too well. Nearly died on the table. However, Mr MacDonald has been able to continue with the fore-quarter ‒ Nurse Carter, you are a senior second-year. Tell me what I mean by a fore-quarter?’

  Nurse Carter looked at Sister with wide, dark blue, intentionally blank eyes. ‘It is an amputation of the leg that requires the surgeon to disarticulate the hip-joint and remove the limb from that joint, Sister.’

  Sister nodded briefly and addressed her senior night nurse. ‘Put him in 31, Nurse Dean. Much less disturbing for the other patients to have all three DILs on either side of my ward table, and less disturbing for the three not to be close to the entrance. Always so much coming and going at night. Leave that student with the cracked ribs in 30. He shouldn’t be in more than the one night or need much attention and having him there leaves more room for the screens on either side. Nor do I ever think it a good idea to have DILs side by side. So upsetting for the relatives if they peep between the screens ‒ and, of course, they always do. That reminds me, I haven’t told you about the Major’s next-of-kin. His wife. A ‒’ she checked in the large ward log book, ‘a Mrs Adela Browne, home somewhere in Hampshire ‒ not too far ‒ address in our Address Book ‒ on her way up now. We haven’t been able to contact her but the War Office say they have and she should reach us some time tonight. I hope the trains aren’t too delayed. The Major doesn’t sound too well to me. Now about tonight’s emergencies; as I’ve just told you, we packed nineteen off on this evening’s convoy to the country and as you can see, we’ve managed to get the middle clear again and I’ve left you five empty beds on either side up the balcony end. And what’s more, Nurse Dean,’ Sister Wally smiled with pride, ‘I’ve actually managed to get hold of ten proper mortuary sheets so for once you won’t have to manage with ordinary sheets. I think ten should be adequate, don’t you?’

  Nurse Dean thought so. Nurse Smith pressed her pale lips more tightly together and tried, unsuccessfully, not to think on the subject. Nurse Carter studied her hands and dwelt on the thought that it was being so cheerful that kept Sister Wally going.

  ‘Thank you, nurses.’ Sister Wally flicked down the neatly upturned corners of her apron skirts and rose to signify the report was over. ‘I hope you have a good night. Nurse Carter, a word in your ear before you disappear to make the drinks! Don’t forget what I said this morning. Next time I come on and find you’ve used up my patients’ breakfast tea, I shall send you straight to Matron.’

  ‘I won’t forget, Sister,’ said Nurse Carter, politely. She waited until she was alone in the small ward kitchen and had shut the door, to explode aloud. ‘My God, what does the bloody woman expect me to use when my night’s tea’s run out? Boil up the leaves the wardmaid’s used on the floor?’ She re-filled and slammed back on the gas cooker the hot water urn. ‘Is it my fault I’ve to hand out tea all round Wally’s every time Jerry lobs us a near miss? Did I ‒’ she demanded of the large double milk saucepan ‘ask him to try and flatten us last night? Am I supposed to grow my own bloody tea?’

  ‘Carter, stop this ghastly row!’ Nurse Dean had come in quietly. Nurse Dean was a pleasant-faced brunette with calm, candid brown eyes and a figure that at first sight reminded every Martha’s man and every Martha’s male patient under forty, of Betty Grable. It was a rare man who remembered Betty Grable after the first few moments in Nurse Dean’s presence. She was only a few months older than Nurse Carter, though two years senior in hospital time, and her brisk, slightly maternal and often over-poweringly efficient manner had her openly tipped in the Sisters’ Home as a future Matron. Only her friends in her own set and a very few of her juniors were aware of the schoolgirl that still lay beneath her manner and uniform. Nurse Carter knew the schoolgirl was there but didn’t think this would in any way affect her senior’s chances of being Matron of Martha’s. Only two things could stop her, she thought: her legs.

  ‘Sorry, nurse. Sister’s narking about my tea got under my skin.’

  ‘She always gets browned off about tea. You know she does, so why bother to flap? Just shove on the milk then give me a hand with Jarvis. He must be higher and Nurse Smith’s already tied-up with Briggs.’ She watched Carter turn down the gas under urn and saucepan. ‘I’m glad we’ve got her. She’s a marvellous special.’

  Nurse Carter had worked in other wards with Nurse Smith and liked her. She assumed her best dumb blonde expression. It was a good best. ‘Yes, nurse.’

  Nurse Dean noticed but was untroubled by her junior’s expression. Carter seemed a bit dumb sometimes, but she couldn’t help that, she thought charitably, as everyone knew chocolate-box blondes always were dumb. But in her confidential report to Sister Walter Walters she had made it clear that Carter was shaping nicely as a night junior and wasn’t actually that type of blonde. ‘Just not interested, Sister. I think she was engaged to some RAF type ‒ shot down in flames over Bremen or somewhere ‒ and that’s why she decided to train. She was a VAD first.’

  ‘If you ask me, Nurse Dean,’ Sister had retorted with some asperity, ‘that’s why most of the girls we’re now getting are here. Of course, we do need them and some of them make quite good nurses, but I’m not sure this influx of wartime-onlys will do our profession much good. These new nurses seem to me to question things too much ‒ there it is. But I’m relieved young Carter isn’t proving the handful I expected when she first came to us on nights. Between ourselves, nurse ‒ one look at that naughty little thing’s eyes ‒ and doesn’t she know how to use them! ‒ and I was expecting every houseman and resident student to haunt my ward at night and to have even my DILs sitting up demanding Brylcreem. I was almost grateful to Jerry for keeping the main body of our medical school down in the country.’

  Jarvis was a printer who had served three years in France in the last war, been wounded four times, and in the last few years of peace twice admitted to Martha’s with bronchial pneumonia. Directly the nurses slid their arms into the lifting position, with the automatic response of an old hospital hand he dug in his heels and let his body and arms sag limply. ‘My trouble, nurses ‒’ he gasped on the short breath of the acute cardiac, ‘always loved my ‒’ gasp ‘food. Thanks ‒’ gasp ‘nurses. Lovely.’

  The nurses straightened their backs and breathed deeply. Jarvis weighed fifteen stone; Nurse Dean, the taller and heavier girl, just over eight. They were fond of him and watched him with more anxiety than they showed. He was a good and normally very cheerful patient, but the loss of his home had left him too subdued even to make his usual joke about being made of feathers. His small, deep set
eyes were tired and angry, his heavy blue jowls sagged beneath the bulbous green mask, his stomach sprawled wearily onto his fat thighs, and he had closed his eyes before Nurse Dean dismissed Nurse Carter with a flick of her eyebrows.

  Nurse Dean stayed with him, one hand on his wrist, the other adjusting the rate of the oxygen. The tall black oxygen cylinder stood just behind his locker and she stooped for a closer look at the speed of the bubbles in the flow-meter through which the oxygen passed before reaching the mask. Attached to the last was a green rubber bag that rose and fell with each respiration. She watched the bag until it ceased to flutter and settled into a regular rhythm. Too rapid and too shallow, she thought, but at least steady. She studied his total appearance clinically, uneasily, and remembered the anger in his eyes. The emotion wouldn’t help his heart but it would help his will. She knew from first-hand experience that any patient still capable of anger was a patient still determined to fight for life. From his pulse, his heart was fighting now, but it was a very tired heart. It all depended on how long his will could power his heart and how quiet they could keep him. She was not an imaginative girl but, as her reflexes had been conditioned, at that last thought she glanced instinctively up at the invisible sky.

  That one distant rocket remained the only thing to have dropped on London since the night staff took over, when Nurse Carter came in from the balcony just before eleven. Earlier, as the night nurses were streaming sleepily into the dining-room for supper, the air-raid sirens had moaned the Alert that after five years had become as easily ignored as an habitual alarm clock in the morning. No one within a flying bomb’s range needed a warning siren; the noise of the engines and the sight of the fire spitting from the tails provided enough warning; experience taught that the bombs were relatively safe until the engines cut off, the fire went out and the dive started. And then the bombs were deathly dangerous. No sirens wailed to warn the approach of a rocket, as the V2s came too high, too fast, and too silently. The first anyone knew of a rocket attack was when one landed.