Final Year

by Claire Rayner

  I enjoyed the week. Not one of the papers really bothered me, although I joined in the moaning and groaning about them, just for the sake of it. It was a hospital tradition to behave as though each question had been designed to catch you out, and that the people who set them were devils incarnate. If I hadn’t joined in the groaning, I would have been considered very odd indeed, and having had one experience of being shut out of the group, I didn’t want another.

  There was one bad moment on Tuesday, however. I had quite forgotten that Joanna would be coming to do her State exams, and when I suddenly saw her lank fair hair and slender body at the door of the classroom, I wanted to hide, I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know whether I should go up to Joanna and speak to her, or whether to wait and see what she did. But she took the initiative into her own hands, and came weaving through the cluster of nurses by the door to speak to me.

  “Hello, Avril,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks,” I said uncomfortably. “And you? Do you like it at the convalescent branch, Jo?”

  “It’s lovely! Everyone goes at half the pace they do here, and the children are adorable. I’ve had time to swot a lot, and I’m not nearly as worried about today as I thought I’d be. Avril - “ she hesitated, then plunged on. “I never really thanked you for what you did for me. I was awfully silly that night, all woozy, and - “

  “Thanked me!” I was amazed. “Jo, for heaven’s sake! I’d expected you to refuse to talk to me at all after what I did. I’m really awfully sorry about it - I didn’t mean to shop you. It just happened, somehow.”

  She shook her head so vigorously her hair tumbled into her eyes. “You were absolutely right, Avril,” she spoke more firmly than I had ever heard her speak before, “I was stupid even to think of cribbing. I must have been mad - but I was in such a flap about it all, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was desperate, or I would have had more sense - and more honesty. If you hadn’t told Matron, I wouldn’t have had a hope of getting the State - and I think I have now. I mean - “ she pleated her apron between her fingers, “if you hadn’t brought me back that night, I would never have been sent to the convalescent branch, and I wouldn’t have been able to work properly for today if I’d still been here at the Royal.” She looked up and smiled a little shyly. “I’d not be here at all, come to that - I’d probably be working as a shop assistant somewhere, and never have been able to get a job where I could be with Richard. Thanks so much, Avril. And forgive me for all the trouble I caused you - that Coventry business and everything - “

  The invigilator for the exams arrived at this point, so we couldn’t talk any more, but I settled down to the day’s work feeling a great deal better. Everything was really fine for Joanna now, and that was marvellous.

  But as I said to Chick later that evening, as we drank hot chocolate in my room over a post mortem of the papers, “I’m sort of glad it happened in a way - not just because it turned out better for Jo, but because it showed me the sort of person I was becoming. I’m not really a bitchy type, Chick - I was just thoughtless about other people.”

  “I’m glad too, honey,” Chick said. “Because you were getting a bit - bitchy, as you put it. I hope everything turns out well for you, too. I wish - “ she had stopped short.

  “Wish what?”

  She looked at me over the edge of her cup. “Well, I wish Dickon was still here. He’d be pleased, too. Do you - miss him at all?”

  I thought for a moment. I had tried not to think about Dickon at all, but there was no doubt I did miss him. His untidy hair and lumbering fingers had been so integral a part of my landscape for so long. I missed his comfortable presence, the way he used to know how I was feeling without having to be told -

  So I nodded. “Yes, I miss him,” I said soberly. “I wish he were here too. But it would have been so difficult if he hadn’t gone away. Peter - “

  Chick rubbed her hands through her hair. “Blast Peter,” she said crossly. “If he hadn’t turned up, you’d still be going out with Dickon, and one day you’d have married him, which would be the best thing that could happen to you. He really is the man for you, Avril, not Peter.

  I began to get angry again. “I don’t know why you’ve got such a down on Peter,” I said hotly. “He’s - well, what’s wrong with him? Tell me exactly what you’ve got against him?”

  “I can’t really, damn it,” she said. “He’s charming, and amusing, and good-looking and clever - I see all that. But I just don’t trust him.”

  My anger evaporated as I looked at her troubled face.

  “Perhaps that’s why,” I said, more cheerfully. “Psychological block, that’s what it is. You just can’t believe that someone with all those attributes can be sincere as well. But he is, Chick. If he wasn’t would he have asked me to meet his parents? Perhaps I’m putting too much significance on that, but I never yet heard of a man taking a girl to his parents’ place if he wasn’t serious about her, have you?”

  “You could be right,” Chick grinned at me. “I guess my ideal is the ugly type. Look at my Joe! And Dickon was no oil painting, but I always liked him. And I can’t argue about going to see Peter’s people. That is significant, I guess.”

  “There you are, then! You’re just an old wet blanket.”

  “I’d just hate to see you hurt, love, that’s all.”

  “Fiddle faddle! I won’t be hurt. Not by Peter. I love him and I think he loves me.”

  “You don’t know? Hasn’t he ever said he does?”

  “He hasn’t had much of a chance to tell me in so many words, after all!” I was on the defensive again. “Have you ever tried to conduct a romantic conversation in a theatre, with a junior nurse nipping in and out with buckets of water?”

  “Lots of times!” Chick said wickedly. “You should listen to Joe and me in OPD minor ops, sometimes! We’ve got a sort of code. It’s a great help!”

  I tried to forget what Chick had said about Peter, over the past weeks, but I couldn’t. Even after she had said, “See you at breakfast!” and gone off to meet Joe, I sat on in my room, thinking. She was a pretty shrewd judge of character, and I had never known her to be quite so adamant in her condemnation of someone before. But then I shook myself, and went down to join the rest of my set in the television room, where they were hooting with laughter at each other’s ribald comments on the regular hospital serial we watched scornfully every week.

  The weekend went by in a peaceful catching up with the routine work of the theatre. Sister was off to the country, she told me, so I would have to cope with any emergency that might come in, but I was quite happy now about acting as staff nurse. I had taken a brain case, and there was no emergency that could arise that would really faze me after that.

  But there were no emergencies, and Monday came with the theatres thoroughly up-to-date with all the jobs that had piled up during the past busy weeks. All the drums were packed and sterilized, all the gloves mended and powdered, the needles cleaned and ready for use. I started the day’s work in a cheerful frame of mind. Soon I would be going down to the coast with Peter. I felt like a child waiting for Christmas – as though the day would never come. But my happiness was shattered at lunch time. The senior nurse from male surgical, Jean Dennis, came in late, looking miserable.

  “The boy in the road smash,” she said to me abruptly. “The case you took one night, remember?”

  “Yes?” I felt cold suddenly.

  “Died this morning. Never came round at all.”

  “Oh, no!” I said. “What happened? Did he start to bleed again?”

  “They think so. There’ll be a post mortem, of course, so we will know for sure then. They’ll have to do a P.M. anyway, because of the inquest.”

  “Inquest?” Chick cut in. “Why?”

  “Law of the land,” Jean made a grimace. “I suppose it’s necessary, but I feel damned sorry for his poor little wife. And for Mr Chester. If a patient dies after an op. without recovering consciousness, it�
�s a coroner’s case. Didn’t you know that?”

  I knew. Once before, a man had died without recovering from his anaesthetic, and there had been an inquest. That time there had been no blame attached to anyone, because the patient had had an aneurysm no one could possibly have diagnosed before the op., and it had been that that had killed him. But this time –

  “Jean,” I said urgently. “Do they think he died because of the operation, or because of his injuries? And what has Pet – Mr Chester got to do with it?”

  Jean spoke through a mouthful of roast beef.

  “Sister thinks it was the op., that an artery tie went or something, but the R.S.O says he’d have died of his injuries if he hadn’t been operated on, so the coroner can hardly blame Mr Chester. But he’ll have to be there at the inquest – he did the operation.”

  “When’s it to be? Any idea?”

  “Tomorrow, probably. They don’t waste much time. P.M.’s this afternoon. Sister’ll have to be there, too – nurse in charge of the ward, and all that. She’s in a right flap about it, too. Running us ragged, she is. Still, I dare say I’d be the same, in her shoes.”

  So would I, I thought. I felt desperately sorry for Peter. It must be dreadful to stand up in a court and tell a coroner exactly what one had done, and risk being censured for it – or even blamed for a man’s death.

  I was off duty that afternoon, and I spent it sitting in the Nurses’ garden, ostensibly reading a book, but really watching the courtyard like a hawk, hoping for a glimpse of Peter.

  But his familiar sleek head didn’t appear, and I went back on duty miserably, hoping that perhaps he would come to theatre and I could speak to him then.

  But he didn’t come, and I worried all the evening. At nine o’clock, after I went off for the evening, I tried to phone him.

  Joe answered the common room phone. He was his usual cheerful self, and I had to exchange some banter before I could ask to speak to Peter.

  There was silence for a moment, and then Joe said:

  “He’s out, Avril. His old chief – you know the bloke I mean? – turned up in a flaming great Rolls and took him out to dinner.”

  “Oh,” I said flatly. “Well, never mind. I dare say I’ll speak to him later.”

  “He’ll probably be late. The four of them were in evening rig.”

  “Four of them?”

  Joe’s voice sounded unwilling. “Well, the big chief himself, his wife and his daughter. I imagine they’re going on somewhere. Chester said something about a night club. Lucky devil.”

  “Lucky devil indeed,” I said as lightly as I could. But I felt a little bereft. I knew Peter had to hobnob, as he called it, but I did wish I could hobnob too. It would be fun to go to a night club with Peter, I thought, as I hung up the phone. To dance with him. I never had danced with him. I remembered how he had said we would go to a hospital dance together, but somehow it had never been possible. My accident with the phenol, and then my sick leave.

  But then I cheered up a little. Surely, if Peter was at all worried about the next day’s inquest, he would have come and told me about it. He knew I had been concerned about the man – that I felt guilty about the delay with the silk sutures.

  No, I assured myself. There was nothing to worry about. The inquest would be a routine matter, and Peter’s evidence merely a matter of form. The poor man had been so badly injured it had been very unlikely he would live. No coroner, however difficult, could possibly blame anyone at the hospital for his death.

  All the same, I was on tenterhooks all the next day, waiting to hear from Peter about what had happened. Time dragged by as though each minute were an hour long. I was so abstracted that Sister asked me if I felt ill, and I wondered momentarily whether it mightn’t be an idea to plead a severe headache, and ask to go off duty early. But I decided not to. If I stayed in the theatre, I might at least see Peter, whereas, tucked away in my room, I hadn’t a hope of a glimpse of him.

  I was just going off duty at eight, feeling thoroughly miserable, when Sister’s phone rang. I stood at the door of her office, waiting until she had finished answering it, so that I could report off duty. She stood there listening, looking so fixedly at me that I dropped my eyes to avoid hers. She spoke only briefly, saying “Yes” or “No” or “I see”, and all the time, I felt her penetrating gaze on me.

  Finally she put the phone down and said icily, “Shut the door, Gardner.”

  I did, wondering what on earth was the matter.

  “That was Matron,” Sister said. “She wants you to write a clear account of everything that happened that night you scrubbed for a decompression for Mr Chester. You are to write exactly what happened, how the case progressed, and what was said. You are to omit nothing.”

  “Why Sister? What’s happened?”

  “That is not for me to say, Nurse. You are to prepare this account, and take it to Matron in the morning. You need not come on duty first, but go to the office at nine o’clock. She will tell you what it is all about then. Good night, Nurse.”

  I went over to my room in a state of utter confusion. What had happened at the inquest? Something must have been said that had alarmed the hospital committee so much that they had decided to hold their own enquiry. That was the only reason Matron could possibly have for asking for a written account like this. Twice before, since I had been at the Royal, a nurse had had to prepare a written account of an accident on a ward, or an operation, because the committee wanted it as evidence.

  I was frightened. Very frightened indeed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I stood outside Matron’s ofice, clutching a sheaf of closely written pages, feeling like a condemned man awaiting the arrival of the hangman. I must have looked as bad as I felt, because Joe, hurrying past me on his way from his room to theatre, stopped and peered myopically at me.

  “My dear girl!” he said, his voice concerned. “Whatever’s the matter with you? You look like a ghost – white as a sheet, and shadows all round your eyes! Are you ill?”

  I brushed his enquiries aside impatiently.

  “I’m fine – Joe, what happened yesterday? At the inquest?”

  “The inquest?” he frowned fleetingly. “Well – “

  Matron’s door swung open, and Night Sister came out, pulling her cape on to her broad shoulders.

  “You can go in, Nurse Gardner,” she said. “Matron’s free now.”

  Joe, with a friendly grip on my arm, turned and disappeared along the corridor, and with my heart in my mouth, I tapped on the half open door.

  “Come in!” Her voice sounded high and cool, and I pushed the door wider, and walked across the thick dark carpet to stand in front of the desk. I put the sheaf of papers down on it, and stood with my hands folded on my apron, waiting.

  “Sit down, Nurse,” she said, her voice expressionless. Then she started to read what I had written. The clock on her desk ticked softly, and the paper rustled as she turned the pages. I sat and stared at the carpet, counting the flowers in the pattern, foolishly, carefully as though my life depended on getting the total right.

  It was nearly fifteen minutes later when she put the papers down on her desk after reading and re-reading my account of the emergency decompression. She raised her head and looked at me, and I looked back at her as directly as I could.

  “There was an inquest on this man yesterday. Did you know that?” she asked.

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “Have you heard what happened at that inquest?”

  “No, Matron.”

  She stood up suddenly, and walked over to the window to stand staring out at the sun-dappled courtyard below. With her back to me, she said unexpectedly, “Is Mr Chester a particular friend of yours, Nurse?”

  I stared at her straight, dark-blue back, too dumbfounded to answer her. She turned round and repeated her question.

  “Yes, Matron,” I stammered. “That is – “

  “I don’t want to hear any details, Nurse. I merely wanted t
o know whether he was a particular friend. And whether this friendship had any bearing on your decision to scrub for this case yourself, rather than ask Sister to come back to do so. Did it, Nurse?”

  I couldn’t have lied outright, even if I had been a good liar, which I’m not.

  “I felt that the fact that it was Mr Chester’s case would make it easier for me,” I said carefully, hoping my words sounded plausible. “I thought he would be – kinder to me, because of our friendship.”

  “And you wanted to see him.” It wasn’t a question, but a plain statement of fact. So I said nothing.

  “I am amazed, Nurse Gardner. Whatever your other faults, and we have discussed those in the past, you have never, as long as you have been here, put your personal feelings before your work. Indeed, my complaint was that you showed a lack of feeling. What has happened to alter you like this?”

  Quite suddenly, I wanted to tell her everything, to pour out all I felt at her feet. The effect that Peter had on me, the way his touch, or even the mere sight of him, made me tremble. But I couldn’t, not possibly.

  “I don’t know, Matron. I’m sorry.”

  “I am too. For several reasons.” She came back to her desk and sat down again. “One of them is this.” She picked up a foolscap sheet of paper, and I could see it upside down. It was headed, “Final Nurses’ Examination Results. Spring 1961.”

  “These are the results of the final examinations, Nurse. They are waiting for me to allot my own marks on ward conduct and general deportment during the past three years, before they will be published.”

  I stared at the sheet of paper like a mesmerized rabbit. The results. The results. The words rang through my head like a bell.

  “Up until yesterday, Nurse, I would have had no hesitation in awarding you ninety per cent, which would match your theory results. This was despite the fact that you had shown a tendency to be lacking in fellow feeling for your patients and colleagues. But, after our conversation at the end of your senior night duty, and the way you went out to find Nurse Jennings, I felt that you were not really as selfish as you seemed, but merely needed help – which I was willing to give. You seemed willing to accept the help and guidance that would show you the way to be a truly compassionate nurse. Now, however – “