Connie’s Courage (42 page)

She ate her breakfast as quickly as she could, and hurried onto her own ward, ‘Sister Pride, Matron wants to have a word with you.

No matter how many years she spent nursing,
she would always feel this little quiver of anxiety whenever she was sent for by Matron, Connie acknowledged ruefully, as she hurried in obedience to her summons. It was a reflection, perhaps, on the number of times she had been summoned before her for misdemeanours during her early training. She was commanded to enter Matron's office the moment she knocked on the door, Ah, Sister Smith good!'

Although officially she was now Sister Smith, virtually everyone still referred to her as Sister Pride, much to Connie's relief, and it took her aback slightly to hear her unfamiliar surname.

‘You may have heard about the sad deaths of our colleagues at Walton Hospital,' Matron began, waiting whilst Connie inclined her head in acknowledgement. Walton's Matron has sent me a message asking if I have any senior nurses, or even better a trained Sister, I can spare to take over two of their maternity wards. I am loathe to part with any of my nurses, especially those most senior, but Walton's Matron, Mrs Roberts, tells me that they have had more admissions than they can possibly hope to cope with, and having already lost a Sister … Mrs Roberts herself has had the influenza but thankfully is now recovering. The choice must be your own of course …'

Wryly Connie listened, knowing that the reality was that the choice had already been made for her.

When am I to report to the Maternity Hospital, ma'am?' she asked calmly.

‘You may go immediately, Nurse. Or should I say, Sister, Matron smiled approvingly.

There was no time for Connie to tell anyone where she was going, and when she reached the Maternity Hospital she was despatched immediately to make herself known to Mrs Roberts, the Matron, who greeted her with evident relief.

‘One thing I am insisting on all my nurses doing, Sister, and that is making sure they take care of their own health – that means eating regular meals, whether one wants them or not! I have given our cooks instructions that soups, broths, fruit juices and whole fruit are to be made available to my nurses at all times! A nurse who does not take proper care of her own health is doing our patients as great a disservice as she is herself. I understand from the Matron at the Infirmary that you have an excellent nursing record.

‘I've worked most frequently on surgical wards, Connie felt bound to explain.

Matron's mouth compressed.

‘As you will discover, I am afraid that our maternity wards have been turned into a form of surgical ward by this dreadful influenza.' She gave a faint sigh. ‘We have mothers coming in who simply do not have the strength to fight this affliction, and dying virtually as they give birth. Naturally we are making every effort to save their child, even when that means … She broke off and gave Connie a bleak look. ‘I understand you are a mother yourself, Sister?

Silently Connie nodded her head.

Then I am sure you will understand how much it means to a mother, even in the throes of death, to know that her child is saved.'

Connie's stomach had started to knot, but she still nodded in agreement.

‘The maternity wards?' a nurse commented to Connie, when she had asked Connie where she was to be working. Gawd, I pity yer. It's Bedlam up there, babies howling and screeching as the surgeons tek ‘em from their dying mas. Poor motherless little sods, and who's to look after ‘em heaven alone knows, cos mostly their das are at the Front.'

Connie had thought that nothing could be worse than what she had seen already, even if the rows and rows of tightly-packed beds filled with dying patients brought in by their families bleakened the heart and the soul; but she had been wrong, she admitted, several hours after she had first walked into the maternity ward.

Here indeed was a form of hell on earth that affected her emotions; tore at her heart as nothing else ever had or could.

Women, their bellies huge with their unborn children, lay dying – or dead – whilst surgeons worked to remove the living children from their bodies.

One young woman in the corner of the ward screamed to Connie to help her, but when Connie
would have gone over to her, the surgeon shook his head and told Connie tersely, Leave her,' explaining grimly. She was brought in three days ago –

she's nowhere near full term. We can't save her or her child.'

The newborn babies were taken screaming to the nursery for fear of them being infected, and none of the nurses from the maternity ward were allowed to accompany them. They had to pass the babies over to a masked nurse who bathed them and then passed them into the nursery itself.

Connie had come on duty at ten in the morning. At midnight she was still working, having stopped only to drink some broth as ordered by Matron and eat some fresh fruit.

As fast as one woman was delivered and her body removed to the makeshift morgue that had been set up to try to accommodate the growing number of bodies, another one arrived to take her place. Some poor souls were literally abandoned by their families at the door of the hospital itself, including women whose pregnancies had barely even begun.

Connie couldn't help but pity these poor souls; already infected they had been brought here in reality to die, and their child with them.

You will tell them to have me babby christened, won't yer?' one terrified woman begged Connie, her eyes bright with fear in her sunken face. Don't let the poor little bugger be buried unshriven.'

‘She can't be any more than four months, the doctor Connie had summoned to look at her, told Connie. ‘She's hardly showing at all.

‘The mother swears she's gone seven, she's been starving herself thinking it would stop her getting the flu.'

The doctor shook his head. ‘I ve got forty women here close to term. I can't afford to waste time operating on one who it's obvious I can't deliver a living child from.

‘How would you feel if she was your wife, and that your child? Connie demanded furiously.

He was only a young man although he looked grey and old.

‘My wife died last week,' he told her emotionlessly. ‘And our son died with her. He was just over a year old.

Virtually the same age as Lyddy!

Thank God she had agreed to leave her daughter with Ellie! Gideon had banned anyone from visiting the lakeside house, and Connie had at his request given him over the telephone, instructions on how to keep everywhere disinfected.

In between doing what she could for her patients, she prayed that her family wouldn't contract the virus, and most of all that her precious Lyddy would be safe!

The child she had not wanted had become more precious to her than she could ever have imagined.

It was just over a week since Connie had first started working at the Maternity Hospital. Carpenters had had to be hired in order to cope with the demand for coffins, and Connie knew that the sound of newborn babies crying for their dead mothers would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Part of the problem was that terrified families were bringing their sick into the hospital at the height of their infection, when movement or disturbance of any kind was very bad for them, and Walton hospital itself contained row after row of beds of dying patients.

‘We can't take in any new patients, one of the maternity ward doctors told Connie as she came on duty. ‘The wards and the corridors are already full of dying women, and we had another five brought in last night. Four of them will die before they can deliver, he added bleakly.

‘And the fifth?' Connie pressed.

‘Dead already, he told her curtly.

Adjusting her mask, Connie started to move down the ward, pity and anger wrenching at her heart. These women were so weak that even if they could survive the illness, they simply did not have the strength to endure labour.

‘Connie … Connie … Is that you?

Quickly she turned to look toward the woman calling her name, ‘Vera!

She could barely recognise her friend in the woman lying in the bed. Her belly was huge with advanced pregnancy, but her face was sunken and
waxen, death already staring from her eyes, as rigours shook her body.

‘Vera it's all right,' Connie tried to soothe her.

There's no need to lie to me, Connie. I'm dying, and I know it. That's why I came here. It's the baby … I knew if I could get mesel' here it ‘ud have some chance. I'm full term, and from the way ‘e's been kicking at me he's a healthy little varmint. Even if I don't go into labour before … well, I know what it's all about, Connie. I've heard as how they're tekkin' the little ‘uns from their dead mothers to save ‘em like …'

She flinched as a convulsion suddenly seized her, her belly going rigid.

See. He knows himself.' She gasped as a birth pang gripped her. ‘Not that the poor little sod is going to ‘ave much of a life. A bloody orphan that's what ‘e's going to be!'

‘What about Bert and your family?' Connie protested, as she monitored Vera's pains.

Cast me off they ‘av. Anyway, this ‘un ain't Bert's.'

She was growing weaker in front of Connie's eyes.

Very few of the mothers lived long enough to see their child born, most of the babies being taken, as Vera herself had just said, from their bodies.

Connie,' Vera was gripping her hand so tightly that Connie's fingers had gone white.

I want yer to promise me that you'll look after the little ‘un for me. I heard as how you've got one
of your own … Promise me, Connie. We was good friends once.

‘Vera. You should be saving your strength, Connie urged her, but Vera was refusing to be placated or sidetracked.

‘Promise me!

‘Very well, Connie gave in helplessly. ‘I promise.

Numbly Connie looked at the sleeping baby in her arms. It was just over a week now since he had been born; just over a week since his mother had died; just over a week since she had promised Vera that she would look after him for her.

Unlike her own Lydia, he was the ugliest baby Connie had ever seen, thin as a skinned rabbit, blue-white, with a sheen of carrot-coloured hair.

He was also angry, noisy, and constantly hungry. The only reason he was asleep now was because the one way to get him to sleep was to walk up and down carrying him, and Connie had walked virtually all the way from the hospital to Nora's with him.

‘Bloody ‘ell, we'll be glad to be rid of ‘im!' one of the nurses in the nursery had told Connie bluntly, ‘a right little bugger he is. Upsets all the other babies with is crying an sets them off as well!

‘What will happen to them all? Connie had asked her tentatively, as she had looked round the rows and rows of cribs, each containing a motherless child.

To know the full horror of the influenza epidemic one only had to walk into this room, and learn that not a single one of the mothers of these babies had survived the epidemic.

The nurse had given an exhausted dismissive shrug.

Well they've all got families of one sort or another, and I suppose they will be taken in and brung up by them. We've had a fair few wimen in who ‘aven't got husbands – it ‘appens all the time, but we've had more of them recently on account of the War. Mind you, even if they ‘ave got a dad, like as not he'll have to farm ‘em out to someone who can look after them, if he can afford to. Them as can't will probably end up in the poorhouse orphanage. I could make mesel a fortune tekkin ‘em in, if I was of a mind to do it.'

Listening to her had banished Connie's hope of trying to find a respectable woman who could take charge of Vera's son, which was why she had had to take him home with her, having already warned Nora of the addition to their household.

Fortunately Nora had been delighted by the news that there was going to be another child in the house. I miss your Lyddy so much …'

Connie was missing her desperately herself, but whilst the influenza was raging through the city she was not going to risk her daughter's health by going to visit her.

As she had known she would, she found Nora in
the kitchen, ‘Well, here he is Nora, she announced wryly. ‘Little Georgie, and a real little … Nora, what is it? What's wrong? she demanded with concern as she saw Nora's tear-swollen eyes. ‘Is it Davie? Have those men …?'

Blowing her nose, Nora nodded her head. ‘They came round late last night, Connie, after you'd gone to work. Banged so hard on the door, they did, I thought they were going to put it through, never mind waking up half the street.

She gave a deep shudder. ‘Davie was that scared.

‘What did they want? Connie asked her.

‘Same thing as always! This house! Only this time …' Fresh tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, Connie, I ve never said anything about this to you, and perhaps I should have done, but I was that pleased to have you lodging here, and I thought that if you knew you'd want to leave.

‘You know how Davie is … he doesn't mean any harm. But folks will torment him like, and he's a big strong lad.

Connie's heart was beginning to sink. ‘What are you trying to say?

‘There was this man … posh chap … been in the Army. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but someone did tell me as how they had seen him speaking to Davie, and having a bit of a go at him, like. Davie never said anything to me … but seemingly … Nora was crying so hard she could hardly speak, and Connie put a comforting hand on her arm.

‘Nora, whatever Davie's done I know it wouldn't have been done out of malice. If someone's been tormenting him.'

‘Well, that's what I've been thinking. But I was that shocked when they told me, Connie. I'd no idea … I'd heard about this Captain being found dead, like, but it was a while back now, and I never imagined that Davie could have had anything to do with it.'