A Nightingale Christmas Wish

by Donna Douglas

  As she walked away, Adam called after her, ‘Don’t forget me, will you?’

  She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘How could I?’ she replied.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘PARRY, ONE RECEIVING dish – enamel. Blake, two pillowcases. Everett, three test tubes and one bucket with lid . . .’

  Kathleen Fox stared out of the window while Miss Hanley’s droning voice washed over her, reciting the weekly inventory.

  Every week, all the ward sisters had to complete a full inventory of their store cupboards and report back to the Assistant Matron. Miss Hanley would then report the missing items to Kathleen. Every week she would have to sit at her desk, listening patiently to the tedious list of what was missing from where, and why.

  As she allowed her attention to wander over the courtyard and the haphazard arrangement of ward blocks, clinics and outbuildings that surrounded it, she wondered how many precious hours of her life she had already wasted listening to the Assistant Matron’s endless lists.

  ‘Can’t they just order another one?’ she interrupted, when Miss Hanley reported that a catheter tube had disappeared from Hyde ward.

  Miss Hanley stared at her, her broad, mannish features blank with incomprehension. ‘I beg your pardon, Matron?’

  ‘It’s only a catheter tube. Can’t Sister Hyde get another one from the stores?’

  ‘Well, yes, she could. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘Then what is the point?’ Kathleen kept her voice level, but inside she wanted to scream.

  ‘Matron?’

  ‘Why do we carry out these checks every week, Miss Hanley? Can’t we trust these women to organise the running of their own wards without looking over their shoulders, constantly checking if they have enough pillowcases?’

  Miss Hanley’s face reddened. ‘The point is they shouldn’t have gone missing in the first place,’ she said. ‘These things have to be accounted for. Surely you as Matron should be concerned . . .’

  I have bigger things to worry about than a missing bucket! Kathleen wanted to blurt out, but she held her tongue. The last thing she wanted to do was burden anyone else with her problems.

  ‘You’re right,’ she sighed. ‘Please go on.’

  At last it was over. As Kathleen stood up, pain lanced through her, making her catch her breath. She clenched her teeth to stop herself from crying out.

  It was too much to hope that Miss Hanley wouldn’t notice. ‘Matron? Whatever is the matter?’ she asked, springing to her feet.

  ‘It’s nothing. Just a little pain, that’s all.’

  ‘Can I get you something? A glass of water?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ She straightened up gingerly. ‘There, you see. It’s gone now.’

  ‘You’re still very pale. Perhaps you should see Dr McKay?’

  Wouldn’t you love that? Kathleen thought. Miss Hanley would be behind her desk in a moment, making lists and driving all the ward sisters mad.

  ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother him. It’s just a bit of abdominal cramp, that’s all. Women’s troubles, as the patients on Wren would say!’ She forced a wry smile.

  ‘If you say so, Matron.’

  Kathleen closed the door, and finally allowed herself to succumb to the wave of pain that washed over her. It was worse today. And the bleeding was getting worse, too.

  Automatically, Kathleen’s hand strayed down to her abdomen. She hated herself for doing it, but she couldn’t stop herself feeling for the swollen curve through the thickness of her uniform. Was it her imagination, or had it grown bigger in the past couple of days?

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she told herself aloud. Just the fears and fancies of a silly woman, that’s all.

  But those fears and fancies had been giving her sleepless nights since before Christmas. For months before that, she’d ignored the twinges and odd spells of bleeding. It was the change of life, she told herself, only to be expected in a woman her age. But as the weeks went by, the twinges had turned into a constant pain that gnawed away at her as she tried to go about her duties. It was getting harder and harder to push it from her mind.

  It was time she talked to someone about it, she decided. She was supposed to be going to a concert with her friend Frannie that night. Surely she could talk to her? They’d shared their secrets and troubles since they were trainees together in Leeds. There was nothing Kathleen couldn’t tell her.

  But as soon as she met her friend outside the hospital gates and saw the broad smile on her face, Kathleen knew she couldn’t dampen her spirits. Frannie was in such a good mood, Kathleen didn’t want to worry her. And besides, desperate as she was, she didn’t want to put her thoughts into words, because then her nameless fear would become real and she would have to face it.

  So instead she pinned a smile to her face and listened to the concert and tried her best to ignore the nagging pain deep inside her belly and the troubled thoughts that crowded into her mind.

  Afterwards, as they walked back through the darkened streets to the hospital, she asked Frannie about her admirer, John Campbell.

  ‘Don’t call him that!’ Even in the darkness she could see the blush rising in her friend’s face. ‘He’s just a friend, that’s all.’

  Kathleen thought about the tall, good-looking soldier. The way he’d stared at Frannie that night at the Christmas Show was far more than just friendly. ‘But you’ve been seeing a lot of each other?’

  ‘We’ve been to a few concerts and exhibitions together. I like his company,’ she admitted shyly.

  ‘Have you talked about Matthew much?’

  Frannie shook her head. ‘I’ve tried asking about him, but John always changes the subject. I think the memory of his death still hurts him.’

  ‘And does it still hurt you?’

  Frannie was silent for a moment. ‘I’ll always miss Matthew,’ she said finally. ‘He was my first love, and it was tragic that he was killed so young, before he’d even had a chance to live. I suppose I’ll always think about what our lives might have been like if he’d come home . . .’ She smiled bracingly. ‘But you can’t live in the past, can you? As John says, you have to keep looking to the future.’

  The future. It wasn’t something Kathleen liked to dwell on too much these days.

  ‘And do you think you have a future with John?’ she asked teasingly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Frannie replied quietly. ‘But I’d like to think so.’

  Kathleen grinned at her friend. ‘Imagine you, of all people, with a soldier!’

  She’d meant it as a joke, but Frannie’s face clouded over. ‘Don’t,’ she said shortly. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

  Kathleen was instantly sympathetic. Whatever Frannie said, her fiancé’s death had left scars on her heart. They’d all lost loved ones in the last war, but it had left Frannie with a deep fear of conflict.

  But sooner or later she would have to confront the fact that the man she was falling in love with was a soldier.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ she went on. ‘He’s never going to be called to fight again, is he?’

  Kathleen knew better than to argue. If her friend had decided to close her mind to awful possibilities, who was Kathleen of all people to judge her for it?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE ATMOSPHERE ON Holmes, the Male Surgical ward, was very different from that on Male Orthopaedics. There was no laughter, no fun, no teasing the nurses or calling out to each other between the beds. It was unnervingly quiet, the only sound the slow, steady ticking of the clock on the wall and the muffled squeak of the nurses’ shoes on the highly polished floor. There were screens pulled around several of the beds, and even the patients Effie could see lay still and silent under their covers. One or two brave souls at the far end of the ward were propped up on their pillows, reading or doing the crossword with studied concentration. But she noticed how their eyes darted around the ward, as if they were expecting a reprimand at any moment.

>   Sister Holmes was very different from Sister Blake, too. They were roughly the same age, both in their early forties, but while Sister Blake was small, slim-boned and dark, Sister Holmes was rounded, bosomy and blonde. Her face was as round and pretty as a doll’s, with prominent blue eyes, pink cheeks and pert rosebud lips that looked as if they’d been painted on. Wisps of honey-coloured hair escaped from under the edges of her goffered bonnet.

  But looks could be cruelly deceiving. For all her rounded curves, there were no soft edges to Sister Holmes. As Effie and Devora Kowalski skidded around the corner just on seven o’clock, Sister Holmes was standing in the doorway with her watch in her hand.

  ‘A minute late,’ she tutted. ‘Not a good start, is it?’ She looked them both up and down. ‘And that hem is more than eight inches from the ground, O’Hara. Report to Matron at nine o’clock.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’ve got long legs, can I?’ Effie grumbled as they unfastened their cloaks. ‘I’ve already sent it to the sewing room twice to have the hem taken down. There’s nothing left to stitch!’

  ‘I don’t know what she’s doing here so early anyway,’ Devora joined in. ‘Sisters aren’t supposed to come on duty until eight.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she ever goes off duty,’ Effie said. ‘She probably sleeps standing up in the broom cupboard, waiting to catch out unsuspecting students.’

  Devora snorted with laughter. ‘Shhh! She’ll hear you.’

  ‘What are you two doing?’ Anna Padgett, another student from their year, loomed out in front of them. She was the self-appointed leader of Effie’s set, and always top of the class.

  ‘I might have known you’d be here early,’ Effie said. ‘You could have waited for us.’

  ‘And make myself late? No, thank you. Anyway, you’d best hurry up. Sister wants us to hear the night report.’

  After the night nurse had stammered her way through her report – timed, of course, by Sister Holmes – the ward sister went through their instructions for the day.

  ‘We have several patients due down to Theatre,’ she announced. ‘Two hernias, a haemorrhoid and a partial gastrectomy. Wilson, you’ll be accompanying the patients down to Theatre and bringing them up again. I assume you have all dealt with a post-operative patient before?’

  ‘I have, Sister.’ Anna Padgett’s hand shot up first as usal. Effie and Devora rolled their eyes at each other.

  ‘Good,’ Sister Holmes said. ‘You and Foley can sit with them until they regain consciousness, check their temperature, pulse and respiration, and make sure they’re comfortable and that there are no complications. As for the rest of you . . .’ She looked around and her china-doll gaze fell on Effie. ‘O’Hara and Kowalski, I want you both to assist Staff Nurse Lund in specialling Mr Webster, our head injury in Room One. Kowalski, you can help this morning, and O’Hara can take the afternoon shift. Nurse Lund will tell you what you have to do.’

  Effie glanced at Anna Padgett, who looked furious. She always thought she should get the most interesting cases because she was the cleverest. Now, thanks to her hasty actions, she was going to spend the day sitting with a haemorrhoid op. Served her right for always having to be first, she thought.

  But Effie wasn’t sure how she was going to enjoy specialling Mr Webster. Sooner or later she knew it would bring her into contact with Adeline Moreau. How would she be able to smile and act normally around her, knowing what a scheming, calculating heartbreaker she was?

  Sister Holmes went through the other post-operative patients, and the care they needed, and once again Effie was struck by how astonishing ward sisters’ memories were. They knew, without consulting their notes, every patient’s name, their condition and everything about them, right down to their last bowel movement. Effie doubted if she would ever be able to achieve such a feat. Her mammy always said she was far too much of a scatterbrain.

  When she’d finished giving out the work lists, Sister Holmes dismissed them all with a sharp, ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Hurry up!’

  It was a phrase Effie heard a great deal during that morning. Sister Holmes did everything at double speed, and always with her watch in her hand. She operated like a machine, and nothing was allowed to get in the way of the smooth running of her ward.

  ‘She’s really not that bad once you get used to her little ways,’ Daphne Anderson, the junior staff nurse, said breathlessly as they whizzed around making the beds. Sister Holmes had already warned them she expected each bed stripped and made in under two minutes.

  ‘I might not live that long,’ Effie sighed. At the rate they were going, her heart would give out long before her off-duty time came.

  And if her heart didn’t give out, her feet definitely would.

  Effie was making her last bed when Adeline Moreau came strutting down the ward in her red coat. She was smiling at everyone, nodding to the nurses as if she were visiting royalty. But when she saw Effie her smile froze into a grimace of dismay.

  ‘Mr Webster’s fiancée,’ Daphne Anderson whispered. ‘So elegant, don’t you think? That coat didn’t come from Columbia Road market, I’m sure.’ She sighed. ‘And she’s so devoted, poor thing. Comes in every day just to sit beside his bed.’

  ‘I’m sure that must drive Sister mad,’ Effie said, but Daphne shook her head.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s been a great help to us. Having her there watching over Mr Webster means we don’t have to sit with him all day every day. Although Nurse Lund makes sure there’s always at least one of us in sight of him,’ she added.

  ‘Nurses! Stop whispering at once!’ Sister Holmes hissed furiously. ‘Weren’t you taught in training that it’s very rude to talk over a patient? And you’ve taken two minutes and twenty-five seconds to finish that bed,’ she added.

  ‘Anyone would think we were in the Olympics!’ Effie muttered at her retreating back, then jumped as Sister Holmes shot back, ‘If you were then you would hardly qualify for a medal, O’Hara!’

  At twelve Nurse Lund summoned Effie to take Mr Webster his lunch, which had been sent up from the kitchen.

  ‘You’ll need to feed him, of course,’ she said as she led the way down the short passageway of private rooms set aside for patients who were particularly poorly or who had paid for private care. ‘He’s still very weak and can’t do much for himself at the moment, but his improvement is remarkable when you think he was barely conscious a few weeks ago. He’s a very determined young man, as you’ll find,’ she said.

  ‘Can he do anything for himself, Staff?’ Effie asked.

  ‘Not very much at the moment. He’s having to relearn everything from scratch, so it’s bound to take time. His speech is coming on very well, but you’ll need to be very patient with him.’ She nodded towards the tray Effie was carrying. ‘You’ve fed a patient before, I take it?’ Effie nodded. ‘That’s good. Remember, always treat him with dignity and respect. He may be helpless but he isn’t a child.’ She smiled. ‘Although I daresay he’ll remind you of that soon enough, if you go too far.’

  ‘His mind is quite sharp, then?’

  Mary Lund smiled. ‘Sharper than yours, I daresay. Although he gets confused sometimes and his memory is still very patchy. The consultant has also directed that he needs to be stimulated if he’s to recover fully, so keep talking to him and asking him questions, but don’t over-tax him.’

  Effie’s mind was racing with all these instructions as they entered Mr Webster’s room. Adeline was at his bedside. Effie deliberately didn’t look at her, focusing her attention on the young man in the bed.

  Richard Webster looked a great deal better than he had the last time she’d seen him. The bandages that had swathed his skull were gone, and his shaved head was covered with a soft down of light brown hair. He was pale and delicate, his skin translucent, his wasted limbs as slender as a dancer’s. But his hazel eyes shone with warmth and intelligence as they regarded Effie.

  ‘And who’s this?’ His voice sounded thick and slurred, as if his ton
gue were too large for his mouth and he couldn’t quite master it.

  ‘This is Nurse O’Hara, Mr Webster. She’ll be helping me look after you this afternoon.’

  Effie sneaked a sideways look at Adeline. Her smile was fixed on her face, but her eyes were dark and cold.

  ‘O’Hara . . . you’re Irish?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Effie nodded.

  ‘I like the Irish nurses. They’re the pretty ones. And I reckon you’re the best-looking so far.’

  ‘Now, Mr Webster, what have I told you about flirting with the nurses?’ Mary Lund chided him. ‘And in front of your fiancée, too.’ She turned to Effie. ‘Nurse O’Hara, this is Miss Moreau.’

  ‘Call me Adeline.’ She was a brilliant actress, Effie had to give her credit for that. She rose from her seat and held out her hand in greeting, wearing the brightest, warmest smile Effie had ever seen. She gave away no hint that they were anything but cordial strangers.

  But then she was probably used to covering up, Effie thought. After all, she’d had an affair with her fiance’s best friend behind his back.

  ‘Pay no attention to Richard,’ Adeline went on, shaking her head at the young man in the bed. ‘He’s quite incorrigible, aren’t you, darling?’

  Richard’s slack mouth curved in a sheepish grin.

  ‘Miss Moreau has been a tremendous help to us in looking after Mr Webster,’ Staff Nurse Lund went on. ‘We really don’t know where we’d be without her.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Richard mumbled.

  Effie watched Adeline turn towards him and reach for his hand. She might be a brilliant actress, but the affection for him in her face was quite genuine. Effie was touched, until she remembered the heartless way Adeline had treated Adam.

  ‘Now, Mr Webster, Nurse O’Hara will be giving you your lunch,’ Mary Lund said.

  ‘I can do it,’ Adeline put in quickly. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble, and I’m sure Nurse O’Hara is very busy.’ Her panicked eyes fixed on Effie.