It Won't Hurt a Bit (19 page)

I’d learnt this was the first and scariest part of recovery, and I couldn’t cross the Rubicon red until I was allowed. So now, I dithered.

‘You must be our new nurse?’ A figure approached, her cotton frock closely hugging her slight figure’s every move. ‘Hello. I’m Kathy.’ Introductions apparently didn’t need a mask – seeing her smile was as encouraging.

‘You’ll need to put on overshoes before you come over.’ She pointed to a nearby cabinet stuffed with canvas slippers as big as clowns wear. I chose a pair and put them on, thinking Kathy’s sandshoes looked light while mine promised trench foot.

‘Can I come over now?’ I asked, ignoring them.

‘Sure. Don’t know where your shoes were last so the overshoes keep down infection. Sister asked me to show you around. I’m actually the auxiliary but they allow me to do everything but operations,’ she grinned. ‘I had to draw the line somewhere. Now, you’ll need to get changed first.’

She was young, friendly and helpful, and took me to a room just big enough to allow chest expansion. ‘Let’s see.’ Frowning, she picked a frock from a bundle on a shelf. It was similar to her own: flimsy to the point of muslin and perfect for accentuating bullet-proof underwear.

‘Fat on display,’ I griped.

‘Not at all – it’s nice to see a curvy model. And don’t worry, it gets so hot here, you’ll find even this gets uncomfortable.’ My dresser dimpled and, as I struggled with the change, handed over some safety pins. ‘Sorry about the buttons or lack of them. The only one who seems to notice is Dr Stewart the anaesthetist. You have to watch him, he’s a right lecher.’ A sigh hung behind the laugh.

‘I’m overheating,’ I said, aware of my feet’s continued cross messages.

Kathy picked out a pair of large sandshoes, which would have had me jumping for joy had I not been trying to be invisible. Even the barren changing room reeked of disinfectant, sending enough antiseptic signals to wipe out all forms of life.

‘You’ll be alright this morning. We don’t start operating till this afternoon, so I can take you round without anybody bothering us.’ She reflected for a moment, then added without enthusiasm, ‘That is until Staffie comes along.’

‘Staffie?’

‘Yea – Staff Nurse – we just call her that. She says she likes it, says it’s better than the way we pronounce her name. She’s Indian.’

Kathy continued the tour.

The theatre had an overall air of clinical gloom. No cheery chit chat here, apart from my advisor, who also fell silent as we took in the bare walls, grey tiled floor, gleaming chromes and some fearsomely complicated-looking machines. I’d have given anything to do a bedpan round in Ward Four instead of gazing at anaesthetic machines and getting a lecture about an operating table worth the attention of a Marquis de Sade.

‘It’s important you learn how to work it as sometimes you need a quick response, especially if the patient chokes.’ Kathy demonstrated its versatility with a practised foot and accomplished hand. The bed shot up, down, and tilted back and forth at such a rate, just watching gave me vertigo.

‘This is the sucker and it takes away excess blood from the wound site so that the surgeon can see what he’s cutting.’ My instructor waved a relaxed hand in the direction of yards of plastic piping. ‘If you don’t get genned up on this, some of the surgeons will go off their heads.’

I felt faint.

In a small adjoining room, there were sterilisers and enough dazzling chrome to bring on a migraine.

‘All the instruments have to be done like this.’ There was a tray-load of instruments waiting beside a machine reminiscent of Ma’s Burco boiler. The auxiliary placed them in and with a deft flick of the wrist and scrutiny of monitoring dials, she switched it on. ‘If I do this now they’ll be cooled down and ready for this afternoon.’ She spoke as if they were a batch of scones.

‘Operations? Today?’

The auxiliary nodded and I added panic to my illness list.

Quick tripping sounds alerted us to a newcomer.

It was Staffie. I gazed at her with respect, particularly since Kathy alleged she had had her appendix removed under local anaesthetic; maybe she’d lost a few inches of height in the process, for despite the clumpy-heeled white shoes, she was so small I could see right over her head.

‘Having a big operation like that without a general anaesthetic’s certainly putting faith in the firm,’ I had marvelled, but Kathy said this miracle had been done in India and was unlikely here where the surgeons preferred their patients unconscious.

Staffie didn’t seem so brave today. She trembled and fluttered like an exotic butterfly, her dress like gauze, her eyes gleaming and anxious. ‘The operating list has been put forward, the surgeons are going to be here any minute – we’ll need to have the instruments ready. It is just our luck to have a new nurse today and Sister with another day off.’ Shaking her head, she headed for the sterilising room, beckoning her second in command. ‘Come on, we must be quick.’

‘The instruments are already on and should be ready any minute now.’ Kathy was calm; her hand described an invisible halo.

‘Good! They take ages. We’ll leave Nurse to take them out whilst we look for the surgeons’ gowns.’ Staffie fluttered away, followed by Kathy at a more leisurely pace.

I didn’t want to add scalding to my sick list so, knowing the instruments would be too hot to handle, and mindful of haste, I filled a sink with cold water and tumbled them in giving them a nice brisk swirl to ensure even cover. ‘What on earth?’ began Kathy, alerted by the metallic clatter; her brown eyes went as round as Maltesers. ‘You must have forgotten me telling you that tap water isn’t sterile. We’ll have to do them all over again. Drat!’ She seized the tray and started flinging the instruments back in. It sounded like a bad orchestral tune-up. Was deafness another hazard?

Staffie too had come to investigate. ‘You stupid girl – they’ll never be ready now – Mr Milne will go mad,’ she screeched, then lapsed into her own dialect, the drift of which was perfectly plain.

‘This place sounds like Bedlam.’ Mr Milne the surgeon had arrived. ‘Where’s Sister?’ He was small with eyes as cold as the North Sea and a manner best suited to someone unconscious.

‘She’s a day off and there’s going to be a delay as we’re having a bit of trouble with the sterilisers,’ Kathy lied fluently. ‘We’ll be ready very soon – but you know what equipment can be like.’ She shrugged expressively and widened her eyes. ‘Why don’t you have a cup of coffee with Dr Stewart and we’ll get things going as soon as we can.’

‘And you will not forget that we have with us a new nurse,’ Staffie put in, ‘so she’s not up to what you call speed. All of these things make life for me difficult.’

‘Just get on with it then.’ Mr Milne, aiming for authority with a magnificent glower, departed.

‘Hard to look impressive when you’re that little,’ Kathy observed. ‘Why don’t you go and lower the operating table to fit him whilst we get the other stuff ready.’

‘Yes, yes, and do it properly – for me too – this is an emergency.’ Staffie danced about in a lather of excitement.

The operating table had a pedal that I remembered was like an accelerator capable of performing many tasks. Gently I stepped on it. The table inched up. I tried again. Up it went. Beginning to panic, I gave a quick pump. Another few inches with a column of steel previously invisible emerged whilst the tabletop neared the ceiling.

‘How are you getting on?’ sang Kathy, and without waiting for a reply, ‘As soon as you’re finished that, come and give us a hand getting the trolleys ready.’

Mopping sweat from my brow, I gave another sharp foot jab and shut my eyes. Was nursing really worth this anxiety? Maybe I should just leave before the heart attack.

Some irate clanging from the sterilising room said things were heating up, so I left the table to its own devices and hurried to the call.

‘These are ready now and this is what you do.’ Busier than a chef, Kathy took huge forceps to lift out the instruments onto a sterile-clothed trolley, then pulled over the surplus to complete their cover. ‘Take that through to theatre, but mind how you go. If you bang into anybody, the whole thing’ll be contaminated,’ she frowned in concentration, ‘them too.’

‘Kathy,’ I began, but she was in a hurry.

‘Sorry, can’t stop now – Staffie’s going mad in the scrubbing up.’

Most carefully, I wheeled through the trolley and whilst there, gave the table another pump on the off chance it had decided to cooperate. The table rose another foot. Now I couldn’t see its top.

‘Nurse Macpherson,’ Staffie’s voice sounded muffled, ‘come and see how you do this.’

Both she and Mr Milne were waiting, scrubbed, gloved, masked, capped and with their sterile gowns on, which had to be tied at the back. Kathy extended her arms and made nice long distance bows. ‘If I go too near,’ she explained, ‘they might have to re-scrub. Now they’ll need me to open the operating theatre doors for them. I think the patient’s coming through too – we’ll all be in theatre so join us once you put on your mask and cap.’

‘Um – about the table,’ I began, but already the cavalcade had started and there was nothing I could do to stop either them or the patient now being wheeled in by the anaesthetist.

I walked as if on eggs to the changing room, drew my cap down and my mask high, leaving just an eye slit. I could hear raised voices coming from theatre and considered making a run for it.

‘Nurse Macpherson. Come in here!’

Slowly, I walked into theatre. The operating table had grown into a rather grand bus shelter. It even had a queue of irate passengers sheltering under it.

The words were out before I could stop them.

‘The number twenty-three will be along any minute,’ I said, horrified by an escaping giggle.

‘Are you home?’

‘Uh-huh, take a pew.’

Maisie was lying on top of her bed reading a hospital romance and clicking her heels in pleasant idleness. Her room was such a haven of order and calm I should have felt guilty about disturbing it, but then she hadn’t had any flittings had she?

So –

‘I’ve had the most awful of days.’ Throwing myself into a chair and drumming my feet got her attention. ‘Theatre’s awful! I’ll never last – if it’s not a sterile vacuum one minute, it’s high drama the next – and seeing people under the knife …’ I drew breath, squeezed shut my eyes at the memory, and was about to continue when there was a knock at the door and Jo bounced in.

‘Ah, Jane! This is where you are. How did you get on? Hi, Maisie.’

‘Come in, why don’t you?’

‘Thanks.’ Jo was breathless. ‘What a great day I’ve had. Theatre is brilliant, miles better than geriatric and I’ve even been helping the surgeon.’ She slid onto the floor, her hands folded in beneficence, her face wreathed in smiles.

I was dumbstruck and jealous.

Maisie put down her book and sighed, ‘I don’t know why I’m reading this stuff when I know the reality is us lot tucked away into cupboards, toilets and sluices as soon as anyone medical appears. You must be in a special category, Jo.’ She looked at the book cover with its nurse gazing up at her medical hero. ‘You’d wonder who’s inspired this rubbish.’

‘Yeah, it’s a well-known fact we cannae speak – nay even proper.’ I was sour, wishing the surgeon’s fury had subsided as quickly as the table under Kathy’s expert foot. It had been humiliating being thrown out of theatre too.

Jo looked holy. ‘We’ve still got to remember they’re human. You know I’d to tell my surgeon to use a different scalpel after the first incision.’

‘But the man’s near retiring!’

‘Fancy nobody pointing it out to him before.’ Jo was shocked.

‘I’ll never reach these heights.’ Despair crept into my voice. ‘One moment we’re told to love and cherish our patients and the next, we’re carving them up.’

Saint Jo clicked her teeth and sounded impatient. ‘Your trouble is your imagination. You just have to forget that’s a person lying there and remember Miss Jones’ lectures.’ She looked into the middle distance as if admiring a landscape. ‘It’s just the same only the colour’s better.’

But theatre continued to be a nightmare where the best I could do was avoid collision and try not to be intimidated by a surgeon, as short in size as he was in fuse, and a Staff Nurse who resorted to hissing when the language barrier became insurmountable.

Anyway, what was normal about wearing a next-to-nothing theatre muslin and tying those small fierce presences into sterile gowns? These intimate encounters were fraught with peril lest a human hand would touch and the scrubbed person be forced to go through the whole laborious sterile dressing procedure again. Swinging Sixties? I mused, tying Mr Milne in one day and so close I could have had him quivering and defrocking by a careless gesture. Swinging Sixties hinted fat lazy Dr Stewart, who inevitably dropped some piece of equipment he was far too busy and important to pick up himself, but who always made time for a leisurely look down the front of our dresses as we returned it.

And it was useless complaining to Staffie since she had managed to stay his hand and drop his jaw with some Hindi jabbering, but Kathy understood and had had enough of sly nips, gropes and innuendo. She said she’d a cure.

We’d become good friends and theatre was fine at the weekends when there were no operations. We could catch up on hospital gossip whilst mending the linen, and cleaning and oiling the surgical instruments to help them withstand the sterilisation rigours.

‘This is what we’ll do,’ said Kathy, spitting on scissors to shine them, putting them aside and picking up a pair of theatre trousers. ‘Now tell me, Jane, have you a boyfriend?’

‘No – you?’

Kathy’s expression became remote. She said she had been crossed in love – a phrase so quaint, Maisie’s book must have been doing the hospital rounds.

‘Och, he was a fine lad, Johnny,’ she sighed after a good tirade on his infidelity, ‘but I’ll have nothing more to do with him, not even if he crawled all the way from Inverness. Mind you, it’s a long way away. I think I’ll try Mintlaw next – they’ve good dances there.’ Her big brown eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away on the back of her hand. ‘Staffie’s had a bad experience too and she’s had her thyroid out.’ The comparison seemed to cheer.