It Won't Hurt a Bit (18 page)

We’d to go back to the Home for the break, the walk in fresh air marking the contrast to Ward Four’s supposed ambience. Rosie joined us in the dining room.

‘Well?’

Jo bit into her floured roll and put three large spoonfuls of sugar in her cup.

‘We’ll certainly need energy to get that lot out of bed.’ Over the cup rim her eyes had the sparkle of sun shining on a brown pool.

Rosie rubbed her hands, apparently better pleased with her new ward. ‘It’s all a bit dead isn’t it, especially when you consider that the two girny old mannies are the liveliest there. How’re you finding it, Jane?’

‘I think it’d be easy to get ground down with all that helplessness, and the basic nursing stuff is hard work, but at the very least we’d like to get more up and about and some of the women into the Dayroom.

‘You’ll be lucky. That’s the preserve of Jock and Willie.’

‘Oh, we’ll be taking them outside,’ Jo said in a determined way.

‘I bet they won’t go,’ Rosie got up.

‘That’s funny. That’s what Sister said.’ Wiping her mouth free of flour, Jo stood up. ‘We bet they do.’

We headed back to the ward. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t go in all guns blazing?’

‘No. We’ll give them a day or two.’ Jo was confident.

But it was a fortnight before we were back on duty together and by that time had learnt that whilst the work could be back-breaking and the patients apparently comatose, they could still put up a healthy resistance when it came to change. By comparison, the Ian Charles pace was dynamic.

‘But, Annie, you could be sitting in a comfy chair watching TV in the Dayroom,’ I cajoled an arthritic patient, her joints so stiff, they creaked, her swollen hands lying balloon-like on her lap. My own back ached with the labour of helping patients to move, and since she couldn’t, I thought her pain and frustration must be unbearable.

‘It’s Mrs McGillivray to you, and even if I did get up and go through there, those two old miseries make the place smell like a lum.’

‘Ah!’ Jo put an arm round her. ‘But we’re going to take them out for a nice bit of fresh air.’

Annie shook her off. ‘You’ll have to drag them. Anyway, I bet they won’t go.’

‘Has Shona asked you about putting on a bet by any chance?’ I was suspicious.

‘Yes!’ Annie said, showing the first sign of spirit and interest outside the pill round and bowel chart.

The ward overlooked a scene of green. In front of the hospital there was even a rose garden with some sloping winding walks. They led through a gate to somewhere unknown. If you looked out from any window, the great outdoors beckoned. How could anyone resist it?

As well as making sure bets, we reckoned we should make a nice spectacle of loving care to grateful patients and maybe even acquire a small suntan without the doubtful aid of Fantanstic, yet cynical Annie kept asking us when we were going to admit defeat.

‘Not today,’ I said. ‘Just you watch us.’

She chuckled – a rare and lovely sound.

Acting on an agreed plan, Jo and I marched into the Dayroom.

‘It’s a bonny day out there, wouldn’t you just love to be out in it?’ Jo knelt beside Jock and looked up at him in a winsome way.

His contented expression behind a smoke haze changed to one of horror. He put down his pipe in spluttering disbelief.

A copy of a Landseer painting of a stag, kippered after years of hanging in this male bastion where the only female welcome was Shona with a lackadaisical duster, might have suggested there was a great and wild life outside, but Jock wasn’t having any of it.

‘Naw – jist leave us in peace.’

Meanwhile, Willie was showing a previously unknown aptitude for speed and would have escaped had I not been quicker.

‘Honestly, it’s wonderful out there. Goodness me, it’s stifling in here.’ I caught him by the outstretched arms of his overcoat and before they had time to reach the alarm bell, both men were dressed, bundled into prepared wheelchairs, smothered in blankets and out before anybody could hear their pleading shouts and call the police.

‘They’ll be fine once we get outside,’ Jo shouted above the complaining din while opening the outside door.

Now, we were bowling along in good style. Our plan of surprise attack had worked and we were finding it liberating being outside as opposed to being stuck inside. Certainly the men’s grizzling took away some of the ambience but this didn’t feel like work. The roses were coming into bloom, the sky was blue, the grass was green, somewhere far away we heard the shout of seagulls, the raucous sound softened and carried on a balmy wind. It really was a perfect day.

‘Ah’m needin’ hame,’ Willie piped, his bonnet down about his nose and emanating fury. ‘This is a disgrace! Wait till I tell Shona.’

‘Aye. Hame – noo!’ Jock was no less forthright, slicing the air with a stick he had grabbed as a defence mechanism.

‘Nonsense! We’ve just arrived. Look at the bonny roses – and what a view we get from here. Now, where do you think that road leads?’ We had travelled most of the paths and still didn’t want to return. The sun continued to shine, the air was clear, why on earth would we go back to that stifling hospital air? I pointed the wheels towards the gate. Jo followed, uttering calming words to patients now bordering on the apoplectic.

Through the gate we went, finding a long winding sloping road edged on either side with bramble-entwined bushes. We paused to savour the view. This was the life!

‘Stop!’ cried Willie, filling his lungs with nice fresh air; but it was too late, his pleas had momentarily distracted us, lessening our grip as the chairs, lined up at the top of the hill as if at a starting point, took off on their own. The Grand National had nothing on this. The once heavy chairs, gathering speed, seemed now to be flying, and as they headed for the first hurdle, their riders’ screams grew fainter by the second.

‘Oh my God!’ Jo proved she could run as well as shout, but not unfortunately as fast as our charges disappearing round the first bend. We’d been told nurses shouldn’t run unless it was an emergency. This qualified.

It was easy racing down that slope. Miss Jones had once told us that the autonomic nervous system took over at times when the brain was disconnected and had asked us to think of an example.

‘Your hair stands up to break the wind,’ Rosie had volunteered.

She was referring to arms made goose pimpled to entrap warmth and, once we had all finished laughing, was proved smugly right by Miss Jones. Jo and I could now vouch for fear of doing the same to the head. Still, the hairgrips worked, tethering on our caps, leaving us just dishevelled and anxious but not half as much as our patients, whose bleating sounds came from under some bushes. The passing minutes were recorded by the wheels downside up, still turning and making a startled bird scold in alarm.

‘How long for manslaughter?’ Jo whispered and bent her head like a supplicant.

I followed. Once more, the future looked bleak. I hadn’t thought of prison as a career break, and there and then I made a pact with my maker never to be experimental again, if only our patients would be in one bit.

And there, miraculously, were Willie and Jock, uninjured apart from a few battle scratches gained through unfriendly bramble fire.

‘Thank you, God,’ I whispered, already beginning to regret the deal.

‘We’ll take you home and will never do this again,’ Jo soothed, but our patients had been struck dumb, a prospect more ominous than all their previous complaints. Somehow we managed to wheedle them back into their chairs and soberly returned them to the ward, where they were helped into beds with promises of endless tobacco, no physiotherapy and certainly no fresh air for a very long time.

‘I suppose we better go and tell Sister.’

‘You go first.’ Jo pushed me towards the office door.

I gave a tentative tap.

Sister, looking up from Fishie maintenance, smiled in her benign way. ‘Come in.’ She knocked on the bowl. ‘And here’s the girls, Fishie. We’ve got to congratulate them for getting those two old rascals outside. We never thought they’d do it. What a good thing we backed them, but I’m afraid the rest’ve lost their bet and what about the boys?’

Jo prodded me and considered the floor.

‘It didn’t go very smoothly,’ I said, then threw myself into a career-saving story where we became heroines snatching patients from the jaws of death.

Sister covered her mouth, then turned, shoulders heaving, to a wall cupboard and took out a biscuit tin and a bottle of brandy. Fishie eyed me with his bulbous stare, then flicked his tail and, untouched by drama, continued his circuit. Well, at least he wasn’t searching for a reviver.

‘I’ll get Doctor to check them out, but it sounds as if they’re alright,’ she said as she dabbed away tears, astonishingly of laughter. ‘You certainly know how to spin a yarn, Nurse Macpherson, so I won’t ask too much about the real facts and yes, I did hear a bit of a commotion when you came back, but they’re able to complain and that for them’s Heaven.’

She caught Fishie’s eye as he completed his umpteenth round. ‘But maybe you need some training in proper wheelchair use. Then you could take out some of the others. We really do get stuck in a rut here. Now what about giving out some of this nice tablet I’ve been making and asking Shona to make you a cup of tea. I expect you’ve had a bit of a fright. I’ll go and see if the boys would like a glass of this.’ She pulled the bottle cork out with a practised flourish, poured two generous measures into a matching pair of medicine glasses, set them on top of the biscuit box and, using it as a tray, left us figuring out our tablet quota and wondering how to tell Shona she’d lost.

Along with the other staff members, we concentrated hard on the wheelchair lecture in a wheelchair department big enough to test drive a Daimler. Jo’s biker status was an advantage and the demonstrating technician, impressed by her questions, all but pirouetted, transforming these bulky unlovely barrows into chariots of fire. I hadn’t realised the fascination of spokes, hubs or even punctures, nor the range that a wheelchair could offer in the hands of an expert. Diligently, we took notes and did trial runs practising how to corner, steer, brake and get up kerbs without losing the passenger.

I missed Douglas. He might have liked my geriatric stories but the university was having its summer break. He must have got my ‘let’s save the world but do it independently’ letter. The last time we met, he’d pointed his nose in the opposite direction and jumped on a number twenty-two bus. He’d be back in Alness, where his political inclinations might be making him plan a protest march on behalf of Labour, peaceniks or the workers. My own politics being sketchy, I thought it was good somebody had the time to do it on our behalf.

‘It’ll be Monte Carlo next,’ said Annie. Word of a new tour operation had reached the female ward. She struggled to sit up, the effort making her joints creak and her voice breathless. ‘I’d give anything to get a wee hurl,’ she said, sounding wistful.

‘Me too,’ said her neighbour, ‘and we’ve been talking about going along to the Dayroom as well. We could watch racing on telly.’

Jo arrived with a wheelchair. She parked it beside the bed with the expertise of Ben Hur. ‘Your chariot awaits, Mrs MacGillivray. You too shall go to the Ball. Nurse Macpherson and I are taking you and your pal. Sister says we’re allowed.’

Annie’s face lit up as she shoved herself forward, her hands paddling the bed clothes in a big effort to shift them. ‘Well! Just look! I think I’m moving better already – all I need is a little help.’ A straight leg stuck out from under the blankets, followed, with much grunting, by the other. Then, with a shout of triumph, Annie launched herself into space, making a perfect landing into a wheelchair whose recently pumped tyres held firm.

‘There. I did it!’ Panting but jubilant, she turned to her friend. ‘Hurry up or we’ll miss the sun and the two-twenty at Doncaster. I wonder if those two old devils know we might want to change channels.’

‘They’ll be wanting into our chairs next,’ grumbled Jock, sitting hard on the best-placed chair and drawing heavily on his pipe.

‘Aye, and making us put these out,’ added Willie, stoking up. ‘Mebbe it’s time we wis hame.’

Changes were afoot for us too.

‘Did you see we’re going to theatre?’ asked Jo. ‘We’re back in the A.R.I. – it’s up on the board. You’re going to the Ward Nine’s and I’m in Ward Eight’s.’

‘I hope you don’t meet Sister Gorightly then. Have I ever told you about her?’

‘Jane! The whole hospital knows about you and Sister Gorightly, but haven’t you heard? She’s suddenly got a calling and she’s off to do good works in a leper colony.’

‘What?! She’s off to Edinburgh?’

‘Don’t be daft – Glasgow!’

‘Are we talking a missionary position?’

‘Ha ha! I’ve heard that one before.’

We went to tell Sister we had a shift.

‘Fishie and I are sorry you’re going,’ she said, whilst Willie and Jock might have celebrated had they not decided they had had enough of hospital life; it was quieter at home especially since the Dayroom had become full of women pondering the racing columns, recalling the joys of the Tea Dance and eyeing up the men bounced out of bed to join them.

‘I never thought I’d be sorry to leave this place,’ Jo said, taking off her apron and draping it over her arm.

‘Me neither, but I don’t know why you’re being so careful with that, we’re going to be out of uniform for the next few weeks. Still, it’ll be nice to be back in the A.R.I. Woodend’s fine but lacks the action. Let’s go! Don’t you just love flitting!’

Back in Foresterhill, I knew what theatre staff wore was a far cry from the swaddling prescribed by Matron; but then, theirs was a world separated from the real one by swing doors and a red line painted on the floor over which you dare not cross. Across it, gowned, masked and otherwise scantily clad aliens would transfer onto their beds post-operative patients, unconscious, labelled and with a list of instructions as if they had been remodelled.