Final Year

by Claire Rayner

  “That’s why,” I said, slapping it down on the counter.

  He shrugged and picked it up, smoothing it carefully. “Best reason I can think of,” he said. “Top of the stairs, on the right. Twenty-one A. Help yourself.”

  I ran up the stairs like a child. I’d found her! I hadn’t even thought what I’d say when I did. All that had mattered was to see her. Now, I hesitated outside the peeling door, and thought fast. How could I persuade her to come back? Chick had tried to stop her from going and she had failed. What could I say that would change her mind? Then I remembered something Chick had said. Perhaps that would work -

  I pushed the door open gently. A single light burned in the grubby room, and Joanna’s shabby little suitcase was sitting forlornly on the bare chest of drawers. Joanna was lying on the bed, looking straight up at the ceiling, her face empty and drawn. She looked years older than she had the last time I had seen her - was it only that morning?

  She turned her head as I came in and closed the door behind me. Now I was with her, I felt tongue-tied.

  “Avril,” she said dully, almost without surprise.

  I took a deep breath. Then I said urgently, “Joanna - please come back. There’s all hell let loose because you’ve gone. They’re saying it’s my fault - that I drove you away. I’m in awful trouble - and it’s not my fault, really. If you come back, just to say - well, anything you like - but just to show you’re all right, then it’ll be all right, I know it will. Otherwise they’ll say I’ve driven you to suicide or something.”

  It sounded a thin story to me. Would Joanna believe it? I stared at her anxiously.

  “I can’t - “ She turned her head restlessly on the flat pillow. “I can’t. It’s all such a mess - “

  I moved quietly to the side of the bed and sat down beside her. “Please, Jo. It would be much easier if you did - for you as well as for me. Matron - cares about you, you know. Maybe it isn’t such a mess as you think. And if you come back, p’raps they can sort things out for you.”

  She shook her head miserably. “I can’t,” she said again, in the same flat voice.

  I remembered what Chick and I had said about Jo at breakfast - about the way she didn’t stick at things, about her being like an eiderdown. That whichever place she was put, she just stayed there. And I decided to make use of that pliability in her to get her back.

  Gently, I urged her to a sitting position, and then to her feet. She stood swaying, blinking at me owlishly.

  “You’ve got to come back,” I said decisively. “And I’m not going to argue with you. Where’s your bag?”

  She made no move, so I looked quickly round the room, and saw it on the floor by the bed. I rummaged in it, and found the two pounds Chick had lent her. That would pay the bill, I thought as I half led, half pushed her towards the door.

  Getting back was a nightmare. I left her case at the hotel, telling the clerk to send it to the hospital the next day - that I was a nurse, and that Miss Jennings was ill, and if he didn’t do so, I’d have the police after him. He looked startled at first, but the magic name of the hospital had effect. People nearly always do as they’re told when a hospital is mentioned.

  Somehow, I got Jo on to the pillion of the scooter, pulling her lax arms round my waist, and holding her hands in front of me in one of my own, while I steered a wobbly course with the other. I used all the back streets to go back. I couldn’t risk the over-loaded scooter in heavy traffic, especially with a passenger who was a dead weight. It was a longer route, and I was fit to drop by the time I saw the welcome light burning over the main gate to the hospital.

  The gate porter was inclined to be jocular when he answered my ring, but his words died in his throat when he saw Joanna’s white face and drooping body. I told him he needn’t book us in - we were going straight up to Matron’s flat. I could almost have laughed at the sight of his dropped jaw as we passed him - that late nurses should go to see Matron at this time of night was obviously more than he could comprehend.

  I piloted Joanna across the courtyard, my arms aching with the effort of holding her up. She was walking like someone in a coma, almost. I remembered that she had been up all the night before, and that she had probably not slept during the day either. So I made a final effort, and almost carried her to the lift, and up to Matron’s flat.

  I knocked on the door with my heart in my mouth. It was very late - well past midnight - and even though I knew Matron would be relieved to see Joanna, I wasn’t sure how she would react to a visitation at this hour.

  She came to the door, her dressing gown pulled round her shoulders, looking oddly young with her sleep-rumpled hair. She took one look at me, then at Joanna, and smiled in pure joy. Then she, too, put her arms round Joanna, and we both carried her into the little sitting room. We settled her on the couch, and Matron brought an eiderdown from her own bed and wrapped it around the girl’s body.

  Joanna struggled up and tried to speak, but Matron pushed her gently down again. “Now now, my dear,” she said. Then she turned to me.

  “Find Night Sister, Nurse. Tell her we shall want a bed prepared in the Sick Bay, and a porter with a chair to take Nurse Jennings there. And ask her to order a small meal for this poor child.” She turned back to Joanna.

  “Have you eaten today, Nurse?” she asked gently.

  Jo looked puzzled for a second, then shook her head.

  “Not hungry - “ she murmured.

  “Nonsense.” Matron was brisk. “Tell Night Sister to order hot soup and some thin toast, Nurse Gardner. And then go to bed immediately. You are on theatre tomorrow, remember. You will need your rest.”

  As I turned to go, she suddenly put her hand out and stopped me.

  “Nurse Gardner - “ she smiled at me warmly. “I’m very pleased with you, my dear. I didn’t think my words could have had such an effect so quickly. Thank you.”

  I blushed, and smiled back, almost trembling with relief. I had found Joanna, and Matron wasn’t angry with me any more. I was warm and happy again - happier than I had been for quite some time.

  I looked back once again from the door, before I closed it softly, and went to look for Night Sister. Matron was sitting on the edge of the couch, her hand on Joanna’s forehead, with an expression I had never seen before on her face, a strangely familiar look I couldn’t quite recognize.

  It wasn’t until I was climbing into my pyjamas, half an hour later, that I remembered where I had seen that look before. It was the one the mothers in the maternity wards wore, the first time they were shown their newly born babies. I felt glad for Joanna, then.

  I fell asleep happily, thinking about Joanna, but thinking most of all about Peter, and our date for Saturday. Life seemed pretty good again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It felt decidedly odd to be at the day staff breakfast the next morning. I had been eating my breakfast in the evening for so long that it seemed all wrong to be eating poached eggs at seven a.m. But it was a pleasant meal. Already, the news of Joanna’s return, and my part in it, had spread like wildfire, and the others were more than friendly - they nearly fell over themselves in their attempt to show me that I was no longer beyond the pale.

  As I sat at the theatre staff table, surrounded by friendly faces, I felt warm and happy. I honestly hadn’t realized how much I cared about the goodwill of other people. Being back in the fold seemed to highlight the lonely unwanted feeling of the day before.

  “Matron was right,” I told myself, as I listened to the cheerful talk all round me. “I’ve been far too wrapped up in myself for far too long. It’s time I came out a bit.” And I buttered another piece of toast with relish.

  As I left the dining room on my way to the theatre to report for duty I was stopped by Home Sister, who had been supervising breakfast.

  “Matron wants to see you in her office, Nurse Gardner,” she said. “Hurry along, will you? She’s there now.”

  “So early?” I said, surprised. “Matron doesn’t come
on duty until eight-thirty as a rule.”

  Home Sister sniffed. “I don’t see why you should think you have any right to ask, Nurse,” she said sharply, but her eyes twinkled a little. “As it happens, she went to the Sick Bay early to see young Jennings. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Yes, thank you, Sister,” I said meekly, and escaped down the stairs to tap on the office door.

  Matron greeted me with a warm smile. “Are you happy to be on day duty, Nurse?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you, Matron,” I said, and smiled back.

  “It was rather foolish of you to go out as you did last night, Nurse,” Matron said. “But I must say I am very pleased your journey was so successful. But I’m a little puzzled - how did you know where to find Nurse Jennings?”

  I told her how Chick and I had worked out where to look, and she laughed when I’d finished.

  “Dear me,” she said. “I have been harbouring a detective, it seems! I must confess I would never have thought of looking for someone lost in London like that!”

  I blushed a little, then I said impulsively, “Please, Matron, How is Nurse Jennings this morning? Will she - are you - ?” I stopped suddenly. I had nearly asked whether Matron would sack her, a piece of impertinence that would have deserved a blistering reproof, I knew.

  “She is tired, and still rather disturbed, Nurse,” Matron tactfully ignored my confusion. “No doubt you are wondering what is to happen to her?”

  “Well - yes, I am, Matron. I feel rather - responsible, you see.”

  She looked up at me, her face friendly. “I am very glad to hear that, Nurse,” she said. “Now, while it has never been a policy of mine to discuss one nurse’s affairs with another, perhaps under the circumstances I can relax my rule. And since I would not like a flood of uninformed gossip to run over the hospital, you need not keep what I tell you from your colleagues.”

  She leaned back in her chair, and her voice became businesslike.

  “I have already discussed this with Nurse Jennings this morning. I guessed she would waken early, and be anxious to see me, so I went to Sick Bay this morning. She will not be dismissed from the Royal - “

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “ - but at the same time, I cannot permit her to continue working here after an attempt to cheat at an examination. That would be a very poor example to junior nurses. I have decided, therefore, that she should go to our country convalescent home to complete her three years of training. She will not, of course, be allowed to complete her hospital examinations, which means she will not be awarded a hospital certificate. But that does not mean that she will lose the opportunity to sit for the State examinations. Working in the quieter atmosphere of the convalescent home, I hope she will be able to study for those examinations to better effect.”

  “Then she can still get the job at the school she wants her brother to go to?”

  “I gather that the school normally demands a hospital certificate from its nurses, as well as the State qualification,” Matron said, smiling reassuringly when my face fell. “However, I am, fortunately, in the position to give her the sort of personal reference that will persuade the school to waive this rule in her case. I have been able to promise Nurse Jennings that I will do that, if she manages to pass the State examinations. She is a good, kind girl, and working with disabled chidren will bring out the best in her, I am sure. So although she may not be able to make much progress in a hospital career without her hospital certificate, that will not matter to her. She only wants to work with these children - which is excellent. Far too few nurses are willing to do this work, and I am delighted to be able to encourage a girl who does.”

  “I’m awfully glad, Matron,” I said. “It would have been dreadful to feel I’d been the cause of spoiling things for Jo - Nurse Jennings. Thank you.”

  “Very well, Nurse.” Matron reached for the big report book on her desk. “Now, you must go on duty, and I must see Night Sister. Remember what I told you yesterday, Nurse. You have already made an effort to act on my words, and I appreciate that - but you still need to go on trying. Don’t let me down.”

  I hurried to the theatres with my head high. It was as though a great weight had been lifted from my back. I thought wryly of the things I had said to Chick yesterday morning. No wonder she had been so angry with me. I had sounded so callous - so selfish.

  “Perhaps I’m kidding myself,” I thought, as I hung my cape in the theatre nurses’ cloakroom. “But I think I was being hard and bitter because I was really upset myself about Joanna. I didn’t really mean to split on her. It just sort of came out before I knew it.”

  As I changed into a theatre dress, and pushed my hair under the tight all-enveloping theatre cap, I laughed a little. One way and another, I was being forced to look at myself with new eyes. And I didn’t much like what I saw. Selfish, over ambitious, a bit of a prig - I was all those things and more, it seemed.

  Then I remembered Peter. He seemed to like me as I was. That mattered to me - mattered a lot. For a moment I thought again about our kiss under the stairs, and I shivered delightedly. “Roll on Saturday!” I murmured under my breath, as I tapped on Theatre Sister’s office door.

  She looked at me sharply, over the operation record book she was filling in.

  “Ah! Nurse Gardner! Nice of you to put in an appearance. Are you sure this isn’t too early for you?”

  “Sorry, Sister. I was with Matron.”

  “Hmm. Well, now you are here, perhaps you can do some work. You are not new to theatre, are you? I seem to remember having you here last year?”

  “Yes, Sister. I was here for three months during my second year.”

  “Then at least I can hope you won’t be as stupid as you might be about the work. Very well, Nurse. Start in the main anaesthetic room, please. Clean it thoroughly, check all the Boyles’ machines, and lay the Pentothal trays. We are starting the first list at nine, so get going - quickly, girl, quickly!”

  I scurried off to the main anaesthetic room as fast as I could go. Sister could be a holy terror, especially with people who were slow. The last thing I wanted was to start on the wrong foot with her. I’d had enough trouble to last me a lifetime, this past few days. All I wanted now was a little peace.

  I washed the green tiled walls of the anaesthetic room, and polished the taps and cylinder heads on the machines. As I ***lugged a new oxygen cylinder into place on the side of one of them, and turned the tap so that the little indicator bobbed high in its tube, I hummed softly under my breath. It was nice to work in the daytime. Night duty was behind me at last, and I felt good.

  Joe Smallwood, the senior anaesthetist, lumbered into the room just as I put the Pentothal tray ready on the trolley beside the machine. He peered at me shortsightedly, and then smiled.

  “Hello! Are we to be honoured with the presence of the brilliant and beauteous Avril, then?” He pulled a gown on over his green theatre suit. “This’ll make Dickon’s day!”

  I tried to look prim, but it was difficult. Joe had been at the Royal for a long time, and he was one of the nicest men on the staff - friendly, unassuming, cheerful.

  “Good morning, Sir,” I said, looking down my nose.

  “Oho! So we’re to be all professional then? None of the scintillating chat we get at the common room parties?”

  “No! For Pete’s sake, Joe! You know what Sister’s like about too much fraternizing between her nurses and the medical staff. Have a heart. Do you want me to be scragged?”

  “All right, sweetie,” he said soothingly. “Professional we shall be then, cross me ‘eart. Mind you, I bet Dickon won’t.”

  “He’ll have to be,” I said shortly, passing him an ampoule of sterile water.

  He started to mix the first batch of Pentothal. As he drew the clear pale amber fluid up into his syringe, he looked at me shrewdly.

  “Hmm. Dickon in the dog house?”

  I flushed a hot scarlet. “Of course not.”

  “Or
have you seen a face you like better?” He filed an ampoule of curare briskly, before snapping the head off. “Nice lad, our Dickon. Nicer than any registrar in the place, if you ask me.”

  I was furious. It was bad enough the nurses gossiped, without Joe starting.

  “I didn’t ask you!” I snapped. “And I’m not likely to, either. Don’t be such an old woman. The way some of you men gossip is worse than the nurses!”

  Joe shrugged. “Sorry. I’m just a friend of Dickon’s, that’s all. As for gossip - well, tell your friend Chester to stop behaving as though he owned you. To listen to him talk, you’d think - oh, well, never mind.”

  So Peter was talking about me as though he owned me! I was pulled two ways at once as I thought about the implications of this. Part of me was delighted. Peter being proprietorial was a lovely thought. But another part of me wondered, fleetingly, whether he was doing it because he really cared for me, or because he wanted to score over Dickon. I had recognized this tendency in him myself, after all. That was why I had been provocative over the coffee cups. But there wasn’t much point in worrying about it. I’d find out more on Saturday, I promised myself.

  The day sped by in the never ending rush of successive operations, in the sluicing of stained dressing towels and packs, the scrubbing and boiling of instruments, the perpetual preparation and cleaning up of the anaesthetic room as case followed case into the gleaming green tiled theatres.

  The patients on the trolleys blinked bleary-eyed at me, as they were wheeled in, apprehension struggling behind their drug-induced calm. On an impulse, I held the hand of one woman as I stood beside her, waiting for Joe Smallwood to come and give her the preliminary injection of Pentothal, before starting the anaesthetic machine. Her fingers closed convulsively round mine, and she turned her head on the flat hard pillow and smiled weakly at me.

  “Bless yer, love,” she said, her voice slurred. “You lot look proper robots in all that gear you got on. Nice to feel a real warm hand when you’re scared. I’m ever so scared - “