Flowers on the Grass (31 page)

“Danny!” she cried. “He’s after us!” She reeled forward into noise. A scream, a great grinning radiator on top of her, Daniel in her ear, “You bloody little——” and she was knocked forward, stumbling to the pavement among the screams, and turned to see Danny’s suitcase scattered open on the road and the crowd beginning to gather.

Sister Ferguson liked to see her fractured femurs all together on one side of the ward, with their Balkan beams exactly parallel and the foot of their beds raised at the same slope. She would really have liked them all to have identical fractures, so that their legs could be slung at the same angle and the tin cans with the extension weights in them all hanging at the same level.

She would be glad when this new patient had had his operation and was settled down for at least a month with his beam and pulleys. He was at the top of the ward now, by the desk, where she could keep an eye on him, but as soon as possible she would move him half-way down and line him up with the other femurs.

Sister Harvey had her Balkan-beam women scattered about all over the ward, which was not only insulting to Mr. Penny-feather and inconvenient for the nurses, but spoiled the look of the ward as much as bed wheels akimbo and counterpanes awry. But Sister Harvey thought more of her wireless and her artistic flower arrangements than of tidy lockers and undeviating beds, and there were nurses on her ward with hairstyles that—well, that was the way things were in the profession nowadays.

The ward clock was out of order. Sister had rung down to the electrician three times about it, but he did not seem to think it as important as she did. A voice called from a bed behind her: “Half-past ten by my watch, Sister. Time you went for your coffee.”

“Thank you, Sonny.” Sonny Burgess had been in her ward for two years with his spine in a plaster cast. They were part of each other’s lives. On her way out of the ward she stopped by the new patient’s bed. He was asleep, and he still looked very shocked, as far as you could see for the dirt and grazes on his face.

“Nurse Saunders!” she called. “I’m going to coffee. Keep an eye on this femur man, and if he wakes you can start cleaning him up. I can’t think what the night nurse was about to leave him like this. She had plenty of time.”

She would have to speak to her about it this evening, and the night nurse would be furious and do no mending, or mark all the new pillow-cases in hideous letters an inch high, as she had done last time Sister had scolded her. She always said she had no time, but Sister believed she spent half the night reading, and didn’t wake people up for their fomentations. In her day, night duty had
been
duty, with three night sisters prowling round to keep you on your toes, but you couldn’t say a thing to these girls nowadays. All this extra money and heated bedrooms and dances every Saturday had gone to their heads. It might recruit more nurses, but what kind? “When I did my training at the Northants General,” she was fond of saying, “we were there for work, not for sport.”

The nurses at St. Patrick’s quoted that, she knew. “When I did my training at the Northants General-” she could hear them giggling, when they thought she was not near. They thought her an antiquated martinet. Ferocious Fanny Fossilson, they called her, but it could not be helped. Whatever the younger ones like Sister Harvey thought, she believed it was impossible to run a ward properly without rigid discipline. A man had died once, twenty years ago, because she had not done what she was told. She had never forgotten that.

In the sisters’ room they were reading the papers and talking excitedly. “You’re in the news, Fergie,” they greeted her. “At least your new femur is. Look, he’s got quite a write-up.”

“I suppose that will mean those reporters trying to get into my ward at all hours,” she complained, but she could not help being quite thrilled at what she read in the paper. “Fractured humerus!” she scoffed. “They always get it wrong. I daresay the whole thing is a tissue of lies.”

“Oh no. The policeman told Nurse Jones about it in Casualty. He’s quite a hero.”

“Well, he’d better not try any heroics in my ward,” Sister Ferguson said, pouring herself some coffee.

“I don’t suppose he’s as brave as all that, Fergie dear. He only argues the toss with lorries, not with you.” They laughed. They always laughed at everything Sister Morris said. When
she was in training she had won the gold medal three years running and was the youngest staff nurse ever to be made a sister, but she was going to throw it all away to marry Dr. Methuen next month. Already she had cast off all sense of responsibility, and Sister Ferguson was sorry for whoever got Out-Patients after her, for the linen cupboard down there was a shambles.

She started to tell them about her osteotomy case, which had taken a really interesting turn; but with their thirst for sensation, they only wanted to hear about Mr. Brett, who after all was only just another fractured neck of femur with slight concussion, and everything going according to plan.

“I see old Penny has got the reduction down for his list this afternoon,” Theatre Sister said. “You coming with him?”

“I suppose I shall have to,” Sister Ferguson said, although she always deliberately fixed her staff nurse’s day off for Mr. Pennyfeather’s bone days, so that she could go to Theatre. Mr. Pennyfeather was one of the few people who had been at St. Patrick’s as long as she had.

“The old Thomas’ splint and Balkan beam, I suppose?” said Sister Harvey. “Penny hasn’t altered his technique since the first war.”

“And what’s wrong with that? His femurs knit. That’s more than Sir Isaac’s elbows do, with all his new-fangled gadgets. The old ways are often best. I hope I may live to see steam kettles come into fashion again.” She took some pins out of the front of her dress and plunged them here and there in her cap, which would not settle this morning, because she had washed her hair last night. She did this regularly once a week, although it did not show, since she wore her cap covering practically all her hair, which was what she had been brought up to believe a cap was for.

“I suppose,” said Sister Morris, “if your hero goes septic he won’t get penicillin?”

“Ah, now you’re laughing at me,” said Sister Ferguson, and went back to her ward.

She made the nurses go round tidying all the beds again before Matron’s round, although Matron, who was fifteen years younger than Sister Ferguson, always said that she didn’t want her hospital to be all mitred corners and no fun. She was one of the new sort. Matrons had been matrons in Sister Ferguson’s day, without all this talk of democracy and taking
the nurses to the theatre. Oh well, her own kind was dying out. She would retire soon and leave the field to nurses without stockings and taps that stayed polished without daily rubbing. Where would she retire to? She never thought of that, for her life beyond the hospital was a blank. She could not imagine existence without it.

When
Matron came into the ward, willowy in her high-necked navy dress, one of the probationers, who was scrubbing out a locker, scrambled to her feet and scuttled away in search of her cuffs, but Matron told her to go on with her work and not bother. Sister bit her lip. It might be her hospital, but it was not her ward, and she had no right to come in undermining the discipline that Sister took so much trouble to establish.

Mr. Brett was awake, and Matron asked him what he would like her to do about his family.

“Family?” he said thickly, for one side of his mouth was bruised and swollen. “I haven’t got any.”

“I’ve had enquiries from people who’ve seen it in the papers,” Matron said. “A Mrs. Brett, who said she was your aunt-”

“Keep’em all out,” he said. “I don’t want anyone. There was a girl called Pam though. Can’t remember her other name.” He put his hand up to his head and seemed surprised to find the hand in bandages.

Sister thought it sounded like some girl he had picked up somewhere, but Matron said: “Oh yes, the child whose life you saved.”

When Sister came back to him after Matron had gone Mr. Brett said: ’ What was she talking about? / saved Pam’s life?”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re quite a national hero. I’ll bring you the papers when you’re well enough to read.”

Nurse Saunders was in trouble with Hodgen’s splint, so Sister, who believed in helping with the practical work in her ward, rolled up her sleeves and cleaned up Mr. Brett and prepared his leg for the theatre herself, as it was Mr. Penny-feather’s case. She never took any off duty on her staff nurse’s day off, although Nurse Saunders in her impulsive way was quite good; better than Staff Nurse Fitt in many ways.

“Why don’t you go out and get some sun, Sister?” Nurse Saunders sometimes said. “I’ll be all right on my own.”

“But you’re not State-registered.”

“That makes no odds. The men aren’t going to die because I’m wearing the wrong colour belt.”

“It’s not ethical, Nurse, to leave you in charge.”

“But all the other sisters do it-”

“Nurse. I am not all the other sisters.”

Mr. Brett seemed a pleasant young man. He swore a little, but she was used to that. She thought he was going to be quite an amenable patient, although when she came to give him his injection he made a fuss and jerked his arm so that the needle jabbed him and he said: “There, I told you it would hurt.”

She was tired when she came back from Theatre. Mr. Pennyfeather was very slow and it was no joke to stand on the alert for an hour when you were fifty-five. She went into her office to change her shoes and Winnie the ward maid brought her a cup of tea and told her that she’d missed a bit of fun.

“There was two reporters come up while you was in the theatre, wanting to talk to our ‘ero. So I tell them ‘e’s gone and show them the empty bed. Laugh! they thought he’d kicked the bucket and dashed away like lunatics so as to get their story in first.”

“Winnie, you didn’t tell them that? It’ll be in the paper.”

“What’s it matter? Brighten it up a bit. I didn’t tell them, anyway. I just said, ‘He’s gone,’ I said. They can’t sue me for purgatory.”

Winnie, like the other ward maids, did and said more or less what she liked, for she knew she was as gold. She looked like nothing on earth, wore her stockings spiralled round her legs and her cap hanging by one pin from hair that Sister itched to get at with the Sassafrass bottle, but she did her own work adequately and anyone else’s with enthusiasm.

Sister had sent the nurses to tea, but she stayed in her room for a few minutes while she drank hers. Sonny would keep an eye on the ward. When she went in, he had raised himself on his elbow as far as his plaster would allow and was shouting at Mr. Brett, who was hazily reaching for the glass of water on the next man’s locker.

“Doesn’t know the first thing about operations,” Sonny complained to Sister. “I should have told him before about not drinking. Bad as having kids it is, trying to run this ward. Here you—young Michael! Stop playing with them ropes. You’ll have them off the pulleys.”

Sonny had been in the ward so long that he* knew more about it than anyone except Sister. He instructed new patients, organised convalescents to sweep the floor and lay the fires while Winnie amused herself with someone else’s job. He watched the visitors of patients on diets to see they did not slip forbidden food into their lockers, and kept an eye on crafty old men who tried to get out of bed. The nurses told him about their love troubles, and anyone new to the ward always came to Sonny if she wanted to know what to do or where to find things.

When he was back to his normal senses Mr. Brett turned out to be not so amenable after all. Sister had got her twenty men almost as well trained as her nurses, and always made it clear to new patients from the first that she would stand no nonsense. Most of them were a little afraid of her, if only because their well-being was in her hands, but Mr. Brett gave her a lot of trouble.

He made a fuss about everything. He complained of the pain, and of Mr. Pennyfeather, and of whoever had built the hospital on a hill where buses changed gears. He complained of his bed, the heat, the cold, the food, and every time Sister passed his bed called out plaintively that he was hungry. He refused to let the night nurse wash him at six in the morning, was rude about the hospital pyjamas and smoked at all the times when it was not allowed. When the house surgeon came to put up his leg into the extension tackle, he cursed Mr. Dearmer, who cursed him back, and made such a commotion that the porter, who was fixing the beam, said it was as good as a pig-killing.

Afterwards, every time a nurse went by he called her to adjust the pulleys or the padding, swearing that he was dying of agony. Sister wanted to tell him about the bravery of men she had nursed during the war, but she had once said that to a man in Casualty who was making a fuss about a splinter under his nail, and he had calmly pulled up his trousers and shown her two quite new aluminium legs.

She told Mr. Brett that if he wanted to behave like a private patient he had better go up to the fourth floor.

“Can’t afford it, my dear woman.” She could not get him to call her Sister. “I’ll have this on the Government.”

“Well then, you must behave yourself. I can’t keep you here if you’re going to upset the whole ward like this.” For
he was a subversive influence. The other men took courage from his insubordination, complained about things they had accepted cheerfully before, and were impossible to get back into bed at night when they had been up for tea. Mr. Brett led a strike against rice pudding and plums. He got an irresponsible up-patient to give him the ends of his ropes and let his leg down himself, and soon all the femurs were doing this when they were uncomfortable. Sister had to ask Mr. Penny-feather to speak to them, which was extremely mortifying.

The newspaper men, quite disappointed to find he was still alive, had been back to see him once or twice, but they had dropped him now for more topical things. It showed how much people were influenced by the papers, however, for strangers kept writing or sending him parcels and one girl wrote a letter every day asking him to marry her. He always read it aloud after breakfast to the men, who made remarks about it that Sister did not like.