Ring O' Roses

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Looks that way, Mr Charlesworth.’

  I was down as off at six, but Dolly and I had already arranged that I would stay on till she got back at seven. It was Henty’s day off, and though Roberts was a good senior student, she wasn’t even an acting staff nurse and it was Monday. Smithers was still too new and the other girls too junior to help Roberts run the department alone. I paired Roberts with Mr Charlesworth, asked Smithers to stay on ‘lights and messages’ and felt a new sympathy for Butler as I saw the look the girls exchanged.

  Joss was watching me. Just after, waiting for the ambulances, he asked, ‘Roses or carnations?’

  ‘Roses, please.’

  By half past eight all seven men had been moved to the wards. I left Dolly to do the notes with Joss when he got back from supper. On my way out I met Dr Gray in Emergencies’ hall. As always now, he enquired mournfully after my own and the A.U. staff”s health and advised me to see we all kept up the extra vitamin tablets and took at least a ten-minute brisk walk in the fresh air every day. ‘Don’t forget, Sister, sensible prevention can well prevent the necessity for cure!’

  ‘I won’t forget, Doctor. And how are you?’

  He was a dapper little man with the face of a highly intelligent and kindly rat. ‘I think I’m well, thank you, Sister. Can’t say I’ve had time to reflect on the matter. Do I look well?’

  I smiled. ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  ‘Good, good,’ he said sadly. ‘I haven’t a spare male medical bed tonight.’

  Chapter Six

  I was late off, but Miss Mackenzie was later. ‘In and out till we closed,’ said Dolly.

  ‘Like this morning.’

  ‘And when you were off this afternoon. She hung till we suddenly emptied ten minutes ago. We can’t be doing things wrong or she’d have said so. Maybe she’s just decided she likes the A.U. better than Emergencies?’

  I shook my head, thoughtfully. This was beginning seriously to worry me. It had made sense in my first week, but being well into my second with only one more full day in charge, I would have expected ‒ and hoped ‒ Miss Mackenzie’s visits would have decreased. The reverse had happened. ‘She doesn’t like accident work. She told me the other night she’s too old for it now. She said it took the stamina of youth as well as training to withstand the pressure. She thinks that’s why we haven’t an Accident Consultant on the Staff. All our present pundits qualified before this place was opened and though she didn’t say it, I gathered they wouldn’t touch the job if you gave it to them with a plastic rose. If Michael Roth makes the Staff maybe he’d take it on, having been an S.A.O., but having been one ‒ why ask for his coronary in the late thirties instead of the usual late forties?’

  ‘Mother Mack tell you all that?’ I nodded. She propped her elbow on my desk, her chin on her hand and flapped her eyelashes. ‘Ooh duckie! She fancies you!’

  I smiled. ‘Oh no! If she has a weakness ‒ which could be denied ‒ it’s for a braw laddie in a white coat. She once told Hill (Butler’s predecessor) that at the risk of seeming prejudiced she was forced to admit there was no nicer laddie than a nice young Scots doctor.’

  ‘I know why she’s haunting us! She fancies Mr Geddes! Our Hamish! Wait till I tell him!’

  ‘Don’t you dare! The poor boy’s terrified enough of her as it is! He was so ham-strung by her watching him cut off a leg plaster this morning, the ends of his tie somehow got caught in the shears and he had to cut half of it off to save himself from strangulation.’

  She slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her shout of laughter. ‘What did Mother Mack say?’

  I mopped my eyes. ‘She didn’t. She just looked at him.’

  Peter ambled through the open doorway. ‘What’s happened to the customers? And why the unseemly levity?’

  I caught Dolly’s eye. ‘Just having a jolly handing over report.’

  Joss was back from tea. ‘What’ve you done with them all?’ He peered round my office as if expecting to see patients stacked on the filing cabinets. ‘Tuesday and the rush hour’s started. Damned unhealthy.’

  I jerked my head at the sudden red flashing above the door and listened-in on the red receiver. Dolly whispered, ‘Health restored, Mr D.,’ and he gave her a thumbs down sign.

  The evening was busy and Miss Mackenzie was with us for most of it. Next morning was busier. She did not come in once. By lunch time, Mr Geddes and I were equally unnerved.

  Dolly and George Charlesworth were back on dating terms. Later, Dolly vowed she had told him to keep it quiet and he’d only let it out to Dave Palmer who swore he’d just mentioned it to only one of the medic students. In the event, before the first patient came in that morning, the entire A.U. staff knew for a fact Hamish Geddes was the dead spit of the great and long-gone love of Miss Mackenzie’s life, a gallant little Highland M.O. last seen playing his bagpipes when not operating single-handed on the beaches at Dunkirk. Poor little Mr Geddes went puce behind his mask every time the double doors swung open. He only relaxed after lunch when Joss sent him to work in the plaster room. His relief was short-lived as we promptly had an in-rush and had to get him back.

  A girl who had broken her left arm falling down some narrow, stone basement steps and a hefty young Irishman in semi-coma and with a badly slashed face came in together. The Irishman had been carried to the hospital by five of his mates. They sat red-faced, anxious and exuding beer fumes in our relatives’ rest-room. They said the patient was a Michael Joseph Murphy, aged thirty-one, and wouldn’t hurt a baby unless he’d the drink taken. ‘One jar and there’s no holding him back at all.’

  Mr Palmer asked how many jars Murphy had had before the fight started?

  The mates were appalled. ‘Mother of God, Doctor, would a decent man be counting?’

  Mr Geddes and Nurse Smithers were with the girl in C3, Mr Charlesworth and Nurse Henty with a West Indian railwayman in C4. He had a hairline skull fracture and some very bad bruises, but had been incredibly lucky. A car with faulty brakes had run straight into him as he was correctly crossing a light-controlled pedestrian crossing. He had been flung right over the car and landed head down on the opposite pavement. He was twenty-one and a keen amateur boxer. He probably owed his luck equally to both.

  Murphy was in C5, as Cl and C2 were awaiting seriously injured men on their way in. After his initial examination, Joss beckoned Mr Palmer. ‘Dead drunk and no other damage I can find, but get a picture of his head and let me see it. Fix that face. All yours, Dave.’

  Mr Palmer crossed himself. ‘Sir, ever so dear sir, can I have danger money, please?’

  ‘Leave it to me. I’ll see your next-of-kin gets it. Get a medic to help you.’

  I said, ‘And Nurse Fisher, Mr Desmond? Nurse Hedges can run the Shock Room.’

  Joss hesitated then smiled. ‘Yep. Good idea.’

  Fisher was my size, red-haired and the prettiest girl in the A.U. Mr Palmer said he was lost, but lost. ‘It’s not that I’m anti-feminist, Sister ‒ nay, I’m all for the burning of bras ‒ they do so get in the way ‒ but I just think a pretty little dolly doesn’t look her best without her teeth.’

  Joss said, ‘If Murphy surfaces to find a pretty little dolly holding his hand, chances are no one’ll lose their teeth. Use force on a surfacing drunk his size and his won’t be the only face that needs about fifteen stitches. Also there’s over a thousand quid’s worth of equipment in this cubicle.’

  I went for Fisher. Joss came out of 4 as she disappeared round the drawn side curtain of 5. The only innovation I had made was to return to the former Sister Accident’s custom of always keeping the end curtains of occupied cubicles open as I shared her view that this made supervision and movement easier. Etiquette insisted I ask Joss if he objected. He hadn’t. ‘We closed them at Benedict’s, but when in Rome …’ was all he said. He had shown the same adaptability from the morning I took over. He never now referred to the A.U. as ‘the Unit’, used any but Martha’s jargon, or wore his Benedict’s tie. This ma
de my job a lot easier, even if it underlined with a new clarity his earlier belligerence on Butler’s behalf. I hadn’t much time to let this bother me, but I remained aware that I had shoved it to to the back of some mental cupboard, just as I did with clothes to which I had suddenly taken a dislike. I could then forget the things existed. I hoped it would work as well with Joss, but as I didn’t dislike him realized I was giving hope a tough job.

  The expected patients again arrived simultaneously in separate ambulances. One, a bricklayer’s mate, had fallen thirty feet onto rough ground, and had a fractured pelvis and some ugly lacerations, but his head was unhurt. The second man had been driving a heavy lorry that had hit the side of a road bridge and then overturned. He had multiple injuries and his condition was dangerous. He went into Cl.

  Joss had about two minutes in which to tell Mr Charlesworth what he wanted done for the bricklayer’s mate, I caught Nurse Black’s eye, mouthed ‘Medic’ and nodded at C5 then C2. She nodded back and swiftly collected Mr Palmer’s assistant and joined Henty and the J.A.O. in C2.

  Eight of us worked together on the man in Cl: Joss, Peter, a pathologist, radiographer, Mr Geddes, Smithers, two medic students, and myself. The only person who spoke at all, and only very occasionally, was Joss. He and I were working on the man’s ripped open abdomen. Peter had him anaesthetized. The pathologist and one student were setting up a blood transfusion in his left ankle. The second student was cutting off the left, and apparently less damaged, side of his clothes. Smithers was very carefully cutting the right trouser leg as shafts of bone were glinting through the sodden thick material. Mr Geddes was cleaning surgically the right leg. The radiographer, a girl, was swinging the heavy portable around for necessary X-rays as if working a box camera.

  Someone lightly touched my shoulder. ‘Just to say, please ignore us, Sister. Forgive the interruption, Mr Desmond, Miss Evans, our Chief Nursing Officer, stepped back to Miss Mackenzie waiting about a yard from the table. Neither spoke to us again and I had no idea how long they stood there. Afterwards Fisher said for about ten minutes. Joss did not recall seeing them at all.

  I had thought Fisher good, but I had not realised how good until that afternoon. Nurse Donkin, the new third year, was ‘lights and messages’. Fisher was the same set, but while Henty and I were tied up, Fisher took over as well as a good senior staff nurse. The porters arrived and removed the West Indian and the girl in C3 to wards. Murphy surfaced and began muttering angrily.

  ‘There, there,’ said Fisher’s voice, ‘there, there. You’re all right, dear. No, don’t try and sit up. You had a little accident, you’re in a hospital, I’m a nurse ‒ the doctor’s just stitching a little cut on your face ‒ quietly now ‒ just hold onto my hand …’

  Mr Charlesworth appeared beside Joss. ‘I’d say mine’s ready to shift to I.C. Shall I carry on here whilst you look?’

  ‘Yes.’ Both men stripped off their gloves and put on clean. When Joss returned from C2 they did so again. After a heavy day our used-gloves count often ran into three figures. ‘Go with him, George,’ said Joss.

  Donkin was hovering. I nodded twice. She vanished to ring the lodge for porters and the special I.C. trolley and the ward to say a patient was on the way. Shortly after she was back with a memo sheet. She held it out for me to read without altering my position.

  I said, ‘Mr Desmond, female, seventy-one, fractured right tib and fib on the way in. Home accident.’

  ‘Palmer. I want the J.A.O. here.’ And when Mr Charlesworth returned. ‘He can use another drip. High in that left arm, George.’

  A little later the drips and blood were running in well and the internal haemorrhage had stopped. Joss asked, ‘Sister, do we know anything about this chap beyond the name on his driving licence?’

  ‘His home’s in Manchester. The police have contacted his wife and she’s coming down as soon as some relative arrives to look after their three children.’

  ‘Hold it!’ Peter spoke sharply. ‘Foot’s going up to top.’

  We all froze as if playing grandmother’s footsteps, and watched Peter. ‘Stopped.’ He pulled off his stethoscope with one hand, pulled forward the scarlet-framed ‘crash’ trolley with the other. Joss had come to life, had his gloves off and started cardiac massage.

  Giving cardiac massage is very exhausting. Whilst the qualified men took it in turns, Henty and I kept the man’s injuries at blood-heat and Smithers kept the sterile saline we were using at the right temperature. That entailed constant topping up and changing of the bowls in the double-bowl stands. Once, a medic student asked, ‘Will you have to open up his chest wall?’

  ‘If necessary,’ Joss grunted, but it shouldn’t be as he’s started again. He should be able to manage on his own soon.’

  He was right. ‘Good.’ He stood back, pulled off his sodden mask, dried his face with it, and chucked it away breathing as if he had run a mile in two minutes. ‘How’s he your end, Peter?’

  ‘Nicely.’

  Another pint of blood had run in before Joss murmured, ‘Do we know their ages, Sister?’

  ‘All under five. Two boys, one girl.’

  He didn’t say more. We worked on in silence till the man was fit to move to I.C. Peter, George Charlesworth and Henty went with him. The rest of us removed gloves, masks and stained gowns in that same silence. It held an element that was hard to define and was present in all the faces when the masks came off. It was one I had noticed before, on both sides of the Atlantic, after what went down in the notes as ‘successful therapy for cardiac arrest’. It wasn’t triumph, satisfaction, or even relief, as most of us knew death too well to underestimate the strength of the opposition. It was not unconnected with the fact that the name Lazarus made instant sense to anyone with the sketchiest Christian upbringing, and particularly so now. Lazarus had been a young man when he was raised from the dead.

  Miss Evans sent for me that night. The day report from Intensive Care was uppermost on her desk when the Office Sister ushered me in and ominously closed the door on her way out. I had been too tired to be overshaken by Miss Evans’s summons, but when she asked me to sit down, the combination shattered me. In Martha’s it could only mean one of two things: bad personal news, or a professional bouquet.

  Miss Evans was smiling. ‘I gather you had a little trouble with that man in Cubicle 1 after Miss Mackenzie and I left you this afternoon. But Sister Intensive Care says he seems to have settled down quite nicely tonight.’

  I breathed more naturally. ‘I’m so glad.’

  ‘Of course.’ She went on to ask me to stay in Butler’s job until she was fit to return. ‘Possibly two or three months, possibly more. Glandular fever can take a long time to clear up. No objections? Good. I admit I can ill spare Miss Kenton from the Orthopaedic Block and, on reflection, see no occasion to alter present arrangements in the Accident Unit. But one point must be made clear, Sister!’ She then lectured me sternly on the subject of off-duty, said I must have this Saturday off and Miss Kenton would relieve me for the day and next week, when Staff Nurse White returned, from midday Friday to midday Monday. ‘All right, Sister? Good girl.’ As I stood up, she added with the lack of formality that was one of the many reasons for her popularity, ‘Now I’ll tell you something that’ll make you forget your poor feet, Sister. You may share it with your staff. It is Miss Mackenzie’s considered opinion that our present Accident Unit is a credit to St Martha’s. Thank you, my dear. Goodnight.’

  I tottered back to my office and since we were finally empty, into my chair. A mountain of notes was waiting. I just stared at them. Joss was at supper. I wondered how he would like being a credit to St Martha’s and smiled, foolishly.

  Peter put his head round the door. ‘What did she want?’

  We were still oozing smugness when Joss returned and infuriated me by saying he had known I was staying on for the last two days. ‘How can you be so mean? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Union rules, dearie.’ He began sorting notes. ‘
Why don’t you go home? Nurse Henty can manage these.’

  I hesitated. ‘Take hours.’

  ‘She’s a bright girl. Good experience for her.’

  Peter said Joss was right and he’d get a porter to get me a taxi as he was on-call. ‘All you look fit for now is bed, Cath. Just wish I could take you there myself.’

  ‘There, there, dear boy, ever so there, there.’ Joss had Dave Palmer’s voice perfectly. ‘Keep it cool. Get going, woman!’ He looked up at Peter then back at me. ‘Don’t worry. If necessary, I’ll get Nurse Fisher to hold his hand.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘There’s no need for you to stay as long as myself, dear.’ Mrs Desmond adjusted the angle of her ginger straw in the hall mirror. It was less than a yard wide. ‘The Vicar has to see Tom Mercer about the guttering on the Lady Chapel roof and will run you back. I must stay till the end or umbrage will be taken as they stay for ours.’ She glanced at the closed study door, then added quietly, ‘I’m sure the old ticker’s fine and it’s just indigestion, but as your father always said ‒ when in doubt, see an expert. You’re certain this won’t get you into any trouble?’

  ‘Positive! I’ll have to do it through Miss Evans, but both she and Dr Lincoln Browne will understand you want to be reassured without worrying your family.’

  She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Darling, am I fussing about nothing? Is it just my age and because my children have grown up and gone?’

  I suddenly felt very old. ‘I think you’re being very sensible. If you were Mum, I’d have said exactly what I did this morning.’ The study door was opening. ‘Feeling strong, Vicar?’

  We were going to the annual summer church fête in the next parish. Mr Desmond’s aversion to fêtes was an old family joke and on his own admission the reason why his own was always successful. He left it entirely to his P.C.C. and his wife.