It Won't Hurt a Bit (25 page)

‘Should anything untoward happen, will I let you know?’ I asked after an update.

‘I don’t know where you get your terminology – untoward surely isn’t a medical word,’ she made a line of her mouth, ‘and no, don’t call me – I wouldn’t know where to start in this place. You’re supposed to be capable and with some common sense. After all, you’re a second-year student and should be learning to cope without too much hand-holding, and you’ve got him.’ She pointed to Rip Van Winkle.

She left me in a frenzy of anxiety, which at least cured the notion of sleep. I longed for my grey belt.

‘How old’s your baby?’ I asked Mrs Joy, now disposed to chat having been thoroughly roused by Sister.

‘She’s just six weeks old. The doctors said I shouldn’t have family, but what do they know?’ She looked into the distance, the ghost of a victory smile lighting her face. ‘My man’s looking after her – she’s lovely and I can’t wait to get home to see the pair of them.’ She gestured towards the equipment. ‘I’m only here for a few hours more, surely?’ Her sunken eyes were alive with longing.

I saw the flushed cheeks and held her temperature chart against me as if warding off evil.

Tacky, now awake, went to get coffee. We didn’t joke about his snoring but I watched him go, a fellow traveller on a dark night. Anxiously, I kept up small talk with Mrs Joy with the foolish idea that if we kept everything to the normal, nothing would divert. One easy passage to the next. Morning with its fresh hope would come, certainly? Curious thoughts, simple to ridicule in daytime, were easy to imagine during the watches of the night, when the wait for dawn could be tortured and too long. I hadn’t the expertise of the medics but like Mrs Joy, I clung on.

A little time off delivered by a blue belt, equally reluctant to shoulder responsibility, allowed me some respite in the dining room. I gave Maisie a blow-by-blow account of the night’s work.

‘Mrs Joy’s young, pretty and uncomplaining but she’s so anxious to see her baby, she’d do anything to get home. Everybody’s heard about her. I couldn’t stand something happening to her on my watch, I’d feel so guilty.’

‘Och, I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ said Maisie. ‘She’s managed to hold on so far and that must be a good sign. Now, do you know how to turn the heel of a sock? I’m getting stuck with my knitting.’

Jo was sitting beside us saying very little. She had plenty on her mind but I was too preoccupied to care. Nurses always thought their own dramas unbeatable, and I couldn’t think that Jo, with her matter-of-fact approach, was having a worse time.

When I got back, the familiar signs of emergency were only too obvious and with a hollow feeling, I hurried towards it. The blue belt, pleased to see me, left. Once more the fighting team was back with all the accompanying rush, but this time the thread of life was going.

For several hours we fought a losing battle. I tried to stifle images of a six-week-old baby crying in the night as I searched shelves, poured out lotions and scoured the cupboards for what the medical staff demanded.

‘Give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,’ Tacky ordered.

I gazed at him aghast. Yet I did not find it difficult to place my lips on the airway over ones vomit-spattered, foam-specked and blue, and do what we all had laughed and joked about in the safe and healthy quarters of the classroom.

But to no avail. Just as dawn crept in, the pitifully slight figure convulsed and Mrs Joy died.

‘Well, at least you’re not on as an extra.’ I too was getting ready for duty but with a light heart.

Maisie, however, wasn’t consoled. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll get to read this tonight. Apparently Orthopaedic’s hectic.’ She threw a textbook into her carrier bag. ‘Changes! And we’re still stuck on night duty with everybody else on days exploring the far-flung outposts of the A.R.I.’s training empire. We’ll miss Jo, though I don’t suppose she’s complaining. She hated Intensive Care. Said theatre stress levels were nothing compared to somewhere crisis bells went off every five minutes. She’ll find Sick Kids a breeze. As for Sheila, I’ve forgotten what she looks like.’

‘I’m just delighted to be back in an actual ward. I’m replacing Rosie in male medical.’

‘Well, she’ll have knocked them into shape! Now she’s gone to the T.B. Ward in the City with Hazel, I believe she’s about to wean the world off spitting, not to mention fags.’

I said, ‘She didn’t get very far with Charles the auxiliary. On her watch and during his break I saw him reading tea leaves in the smoking room. He got through a packet at a sitting – speaking of which,’ I felt in my pocket and took out my own cigarettes and lit one with a small coal from the fire, ‘you?’

Maisie shook her head; the curls danced. ‘And you shouldn’t. I don’t know why anybody would want to go into that awful staff room – even if you don’t smoke, you come out smelling like an ashtray.’

A lecture loomed. A change of subject was needed and having lately noticed a sprightliness in my flat mate, the furry mules and even the hair net banished, I was curious. ‘For all your complaints about night duty, you’re looking pretty perky yourself.’

‘Am I?’ Maisie refused to bite, then looked so shifty it made me suspicious.

‘You’re definitely up to something, Maisie. I don’t care what you say and I think at the very least you could tell your old pal what it is.’

She sighed and threw up her hands. ‘Well, ok, I’ll tell you. Since you’re so snooty about my voice, I’ve taken up Talkin’ Blues. Listen, here’s one, I’ve just heard it. She patted her head as if adjusting a Stetson, coughed twice, then managed, ‘Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette,’ before I grabbed her and dragged her out the door.

‘I’m sorry I asked. Come on, Tex Williams, duty calls. We’ll be late if we don’t hurry and I don’t want Charles hanging about getting a chance to tell me about the joys of the last nurse.’

Once Day Sister had given us the patients’ reports, I readied for responsibility with a list of duties for him to which Charles responded not at all. Maybe his thick specs blinded him to efficiency.

‘I’ll just have a wee faggie,’ he lolled across the office desk, ‘and what about a cuppa? Everybody needs one before starting the night.’ He waved languid nicotine-stained fingers towards the kitchen and blew a perfect smoke ring to the left of my right ear. He appeared oblivious to a ward full of shouting patients and ringing bells, and deaf to the call of a kettle switch I expected him to throw.

Much as I was dying to light up, I felt I couldn’t yet, so I returned his pale blue gaze, vaguely discernible behind the bottle ends, and aimed for a cool, ‘I’ve got the Kardex to read.’

I’d tried to sound dismissive, but Charles just tapped his cigarette in the direction of an ashtray and continued to inhale with the enthusiasm of a dedicated fan. I gave up and went round the ward, hoping that at least the patients would recognise me as a person of some authority.

‘Where’s Charles?’ everyone asked whilst someone handed over a slip of paper.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s our list for who wants tea and when.’ A patient, so breathless and cyanosed I thought he’d been gentian-attacked, seemed surprised by the question.

‘But it says two o’ clock!’

‘Aye.’

‘So – who makes it?’

‘You! Och! Canny! Mind my back,’ he grumbled, unappreciative of a brisk pillow pummel. ‘Now you’ve gone and moved me, just as I was getting comfy.’

‘You need to sit up to help your breathing.’ Bossiness was tempered by the knowledge that he would soon wriggle back down to navy blue.

When Charles eventually deigned to appear I asked about catering, which seemed to reach peak level at 4am.

‘You’ve got it,’ Charles beamed. ‘Gives the boys something to look forward to. It can be a long night.’

He added that all previous good and caring senior nurses were happy for him to have a well-earned nap, and yes – they had made the tea.

I was shaken, ‘Even Rosie?’

Charles smiled as if in fond memory. ‘What a girl! One of the best. I’d only to tell her once that I don’t take sugar. I hated being such a nuisance but I just had to keep her right.’ He yawned largely.

There was no time to dwell on the miracle that was Rosie, for the first night turned hectic with emergency admissions and tea-making was relegated to a place called later. Charles turned into a surprising hero. His long legs covered the ward in half my time as he willingly answered the call of tired men made anxious by the approach of night. Jokes had never figured in our lectures but Charles could have majored on their medicinal value, evidenced by ribald laughter and the feeling of fun he brought to bedsides.

But at last, everywhere and everybody became quiet, allowing us to draw breath sitting in the middle of the ward at a small desk, its light shaded like an air raid precaution. Charles took up a lot of room but left enough space for me to write the morning report.

Just before recording a perfect sleep all round, including my partner, I looked up to be surprised when someone waved. I waved back but the waving persisted.

I nudged Charles, but his snoring grew louder, so I got up to investigate.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you see the time? I’ve slept in.’

‘No you haven’t. It’s not morning yet. Go back to sleep.’

‘But it’s time for tea.’

I’d forgotten all about it, but Mr Time and Motion looked so upset, I went to the kitchen, where I hoped the loud crockery sounds would wake Charles. They didn’t; but did everybody else.

‘Just in time,’ they chorused, sitting up looking bright as children at a midnight feast.

I should just have thrown in the towel and done a full trolley round. It would have saved an endless tray trek, but then, stealing over the ward, came the sound of so much spitting you might have thought we were in a chest ward.

I allowed myself a smile as weak as the tea, meantime slumping into my chair, feet throbbing and with lead-weighted eyes.

Charles woke.

‘Tea?’ he beamed.

‘You can blooming well make it for yourself.’

Charles muttered something about the past pure reign of perfect seniors and stomped off to do his share of crashing around the kitchen.

I was dreading morning. Rosie had been coy about working with Charles, so I didn’t know about his two-speed approach to work and how the ‘Go’ one would make light of the usual slog. The half hour before handover time, in an immaculate ward with every patient and every strand of hair in place, was such a bonus, I began to feel petty about the tea making.

‘Crikey, Charles, you’re amazing. I’ve never been in a better organised place.’

Charles smoothed a lock of hair to the side and gave a careless shrug. ‘I like a tidy ward. Makes the men feel things are right.’

‘Hey, Nurse! You forgot to do my wallies,’ a patient shouted, pointing at teeth as brown as the inside of a well-used teacup.

‘I’ll sort that,’ said Charles. ‘You go and tidy yourself up, Jane – you look a right mess.’

Amused but reluctant to be on the end of Charles’s universal hairbrush, I went to repair the ravages of a night of responsibility and on return was met by Charles with a smile as big as the false teeth ones grinning up from the bottom of the pink basin he was holding.

‘I thought I might as well do everybody’s and save time.’ He jiggled the container so that a sound like chatter reached up from its depths. ‘Now, where’s the Eusol? It’s just the ticket for a batch clean.’

Somehow, we got off duty before a nervous breakdown and before war broke out between those patients delighted with new and better-fitting teeth and those who might never eat an apple again. Such, however, was their loyalty to Charles that the muttering was confined.

Somewhere in a nearby sluice, things would be settled later. However, the men were more vocal about the responsibilities of a senior nurse, the necessity for her to anticipate disasters, concentrate on making a decent cup of tea and most importantly, her vital role in not upsetting Charles.

‘How’s Charles?’ Maisie asked.

I told her I’d left a ward of folk with mouths like horses’ teeth and letterboxes, was worried this might figure in my ward report and worst of all, I’d upset Charles.

‘Golly! How did you manage that? It’s one of the unwritten hospital rules. Nobody likes to do it. Not even Rosie.’ As if reassuring herself she still had hers, Maisie sucked her teeth. ‘When I think of all the cups of tea I made when I was a junior, I’d have thought I’d done my share, but my junior’s a right weedy Alice. Last night it seemed easier just to make her one on the off chance she’d perk up a bit.’

Even if Maisie resented being on night duty, she was definitely up to something and it wasn’t singing lessons. She should have been moaning more about her new ward and weedy Alice. I was getting really curious but forgot when Mrs Ronce, anxiously waiting for us in the hall, handed over the phone.

‘Glad I caught you. I’ve just had your friend Rosie on the phone. She says to tell you that Hazel’s been rushed into hospital with a burst appendix. She’s in Intensive Care and you’re to visit her this evening before you go on duty.’

Oblivious to the smell of burning milk, she tapped her head as a memory prompt. ‘Oh yes – she said you might not get in to visit because Hazel will be poorly but to try anyway.’

A bus rattled past, shaking the house, making the grandfather clock chime a discordant reproach and scaring the cats upstairs.

‘Did she say any more than that?’

‘Well she said she’d see you tonight and not to bother the ward in the meantime.’

‘Typical!’ snorted Maisie. ‘She’s so bossy she wants to be in charge all the time. It’s a good thing I’ve got the hospital number. Now, let’s see …’ already she was dialling.

Mrs Ronce went off to rescue the kitchen, whilst dithering in a state of anxiety, I thought about Hazel with her easy humorous way. Hard to imagine her lying ill and in pain.

It could only have been a few minutes but it felt like an eternity before Maisie put down the phone.

‘Well?’

Maisie grimaced. ‘She’s in Intensive Care because she’s got peritonitis. She’s on a drip and in an oxygen tent. Apparently she didn’t complain about the pain until she collapsed on duty in her ward, and by that time the damage was done.’