A Nurse's Duty: A 1930s Medical Romance

by Sheila Burns

  When I had finished I sat there for a little while trying to pull myself together, because this was not too easy. Then I went downstairs into the hall to look up the trains.

  I borrowed an A.B.C. from the inquiry office, and was looking in this when the doctor came down the stairs and saw me.

  He said, ‘Nurse, what are you doing?’ and his tone was very sharp. I knew that he was startled. For a moment I did not know whether to try to shuffle out of it with an excuse, or to tell him the truth, which was that I could not bear to stay. Then I decided on the truth.

  ‘I could hardly stay, could I?’

  I saw the muscles of his face twitching, and the hurt look in his eyes. It was very seldom that he ever showed what he was feeling, for he wore that mask which every doctor can don to perfection. When he wanted to hide his thoughts he could hide them better than any man I ever met, but this was no time for that kind of thing. He was wretched, and I knew it.

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere where we could talk? Somewhere where we should not be disturbed? I have got to have this thing out.’

  The hotel book-keeper who had been listening to every word in her little glassed-in desk, peered forward and suggested the card-room, which at this time of the day was always empty. We went inside. It was small and looked desolate and bare, for the card-tables were stacked together in a corner, and the fire had only recently been lit. There was no warmth in it; it flickered with a jaundiced light, but I felt so disturbed and so dreadfully anxious as to what would happen next that I don’t think I noticed much. There were two easy chairs before that miserable fire, and I went to one hoping that it would prop me up. My knees wobbled, and I felt really ill.

  He came across to the hearthrug and stood there, his hands sunk into the pockets on either side of his double-breasted coat. It was the way that he always stood. It was a characteristic attitude of his, his eyes watching me, his voice low.

  ‘I want to apologize on my behalf and on Iris’s for the dreadful scene that has just been forced upon you upstairs.’

  His voice was quite official, and I heard mine replying, very faint and very far away. I was saying something foolish about it being all right, when all the while I knew that it was not all right. It was one of the most horrible scenes I had ever been through.

  ‘I told you when you undertook this case that my wife was a very difficult patient. I did not think that she would behave like this, because I hoped that she had got over her habit of making scenes. She hadn’t! I told you before you came down here that our life together had been complicated and difficult.’ It seemed now that all the doctor’s mask of reserve had slipped and I was looking into the heart of the man, the real man, who had suffered terribly.

  ‘Please don’t tell me,’ I begged.

  ‘A man hates to admit failure, but I have failed. The thing that hurts me now is that the fact of my own failure should hurt others. For instance, a girl like yourself, who had been subjected to one of these very painful scenes.’

  ‘I shall forget it,’ I said, and realizing how miserable he was, pulled myself together and tried to reassure him. ‘This sort of thing comes all in the day’s work, and it is nothing to worry about.’

  Still there was something that he was keeping back, which I realized, for he still stood on, his brows knit, his hands still sunk deeply.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘do not suppose for a single moment that I shall ever remember what she said. In medicine the best and kindest thing to do is to forget. I know that her remarks were quite wrong.’

  ‘She jumped at some foolish conclusions,’ I reminded him, ‘but then she is a sick woman, and sick people do get silly fancies.’

  But the conclusions, unfortunately, had been right. I did love him, and knowing how much he was going through I could only love him more, not as a doctor, but as a man ‒ the man with the wounded heart which he was showing me for the first time.

  ‘It is all terrible,’ he said, as though he had arrived almost at breaking point. Then quickly, because I think he realized that he wanted to get it over, ‘I have always had a very sincere admiration for you; she knows that, and that is why she has said these insane things. She can’t help it, and you must forgive her. Iris has all her life been inordinately jealous.’

  ‘Please don’t speak of it. It is quite all right. I know that she did not mean what she was saying.’

  He stopped speaking.

  I saw him looking at me, and in his eyes was something to which I could not blind myself. It was not imagination. It was not the longing in my own self which had provoked this look; it was the fact that at that particular moment I realized that he cared for me ‒ she had been quite right. It showed in every line of his face, in every expression, and it was going to make my future a great deal more difficult.

  Perhaps I should have controlled myself, but I couldn’t. The tears were coming, and I knew that I had got to get out of the room, and quickly, or break down, which would be awful.

  I said before I could stop myself: ‘It has been so dreadful! Please, I just can’t go on nursing her; I can’t bring myself to go through with it. Do let me go back to the home. Nothing can ever make this position possible, and we have to think of her.’ Then I was ashamed that I had said so much.

  He took my hand and gripped it hard. We may have stood there for a minute or an hour. I don’t know which it was. I don’t suppose I cared.

  When he spoke again his voice was quite ordinary and calm, just as though the whole thing had never happened at all, and we were doctor and nurse discussing a troublesome patient who had given us more than the usual amount of trouble.

  ‘Of course I understand. I know exactly what you mean. You could not go on nursing her under these conditions, and it would be too much to ask of you. I will telephone Miss Vaughan that you are on the way back, and will explain that it is no fault of yours.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I wanted to linger, even though the lingering hurt me a good deal more. But he had greater sense than I had, for he went to the door and held it open for me.

  I think that I shall always remember the little card-room, and can see it again to-day. A crowd of tables stacked in the corner, the newly-lit fire wheezing among the sticks, and the way that Ray had looked at me there, his eyes telling me the truth about his feelings for me.

  ‘Good-bye, Katy.’

  I went back upstairs and put on my bonnet and cloak, feeling almost numbed. The porter had already fetched down my luggage. It was going to be dreadful returning to the home which I had left only such a few hours before. Everybody would be asking questions. It would take something to put Tenny off, and that Night Sister Johnson who had been jealous of my getting the trip at all.

  Still, I hadn’t got back to the home yet, I kept telling myself, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

  I went out of the hotel and drove away.

  It was bound to be a wretched journey up to London. I kept telling myself that I must pull up my socks and have some sort of a story ready; in the home Dr. Harper was a hero, and everybody hung round him and every word that he uttered, so that they would be all agog to know what could have happened to explain my speedy return from nursing his wife.

  It wasn’t going to end here.

  It was going to be dreadfully difficult meeting him again when he came in to operate. It would be far better if I were never to see him again, and yet instantly I knew that life without him would be unthinkable. I could not let the whole affair drop, even though it might be fairer to his wife, and to me in the long run. It would be quite dreadful seeing him only across the operating theatre, his face masked, the stern, cold, resolute man who was fighting for his patient’s life. His orders being rapped out authoritatively, and all the while the sounds of the operating theatre, the tenseness, the tinkle of an instrument being flung into an enamel bowl, and he giving me orders and directions, inquiring as to symptoms and no more.

  Now there would never be the chance for us
to meet again in any friendly or intimate circumstances. They had all been put behind me.

  Tenny would know!

  And Birdie and Sister Johnson would know. The whole home, surging round the incident, would make the most of it, and their questions and conjectures and banter were all going to hurt me dreadfully.

  Only I had got to go back to them.

  The train seemed to race too fast, or to go too slowly; I did not know which. Eventually it drew into Waterloo Station, with the crowds surging round it, and never a friendly face among them all. There is nothing much more lonely than a big London station when you come to think of it, and here some of the most tragic farewells and meetings, and some of the happiest ones, are staged.

  I saw lovers walking hand in hand, and envied them. I saw lovers parting, and even envied them those brief tears. All my life I had wanted to fall in love, and had set it high above me as being the most exquisite experience that life could give me, now I knew that it was a cruel experience and that it hurt more than all others and would go on hurting for the rest of my life. Because there was no way out.

  The taxi took me to the home. We drove into that district which seems to be entirely peopled by the medically minded ‒ Harley Street, Wimpole Street, Welbeck Street, with all their little offshoots of nursing homes and hospitals. They were long, silent streets where, behind shuttered windows, doctors give verdicts, terrible verdicts, or those which released sufferers from pain. I saw visions of white caps fluttering behind those uncurtained windows. How well I know it all, and my whole life would be spent here!

  The taxi stopped at the home itself, and I got out and rang for George to help with my luggage.

  I knew now, perhaps for the first time, how new patients must feel when they arrive for their operation, because I felt exactly like it. The shivering on the brink. That awful expectancy of something dreadful and unknown which lay ahead. An operation on the senses, which was what was happening to me!

  I had come back to forget that there was such a man in the world as Ray Harper, even though his eyes had admitted the truth, and he had confessed that he cared for me; even though we both loved one another, I had got to put all that behind me.

  I had come into the home to get well from that almost incurable malady of the heart ‒ the malady of being in love.

  Miserably I went inside.

  Miss Vaughan greeted me in her sitting-room, and I felt again like a naughty schoolgirl.

  She expressed surprise. Oh, yes, she had talked to the doctor on the telephone this morning, but she was most surprised to think that I had come back so soon. It didn’t do for nurses to quarrel with their patients. She seldom let a nurse take a patient away, and now she much regretted that she had done it in this case.

  I knew that she was angry.

  It upset all her arrangements, of course, and she had got the temporary nurse in doing my work. I should have to go back to the theatre for to-day while she made arrangements. Back to pro’s work. Back to swabs and enamel bowls, and clearing up and sterilizing. Back to the dirty jobs.

  The odd thing was that none of the others said a word; they seemed to accept my return all calmly as though it were quite the usual thing to happen.

  ‘Oh, so you’ve come back.’

  ‘What’s Ventnor like?’

  ‘Did you have a nice time? How is she getting on?’

  I had got to take up life again and realize that all that had happened had been a passing affair, something gone for ever now. I had to absorb myself in the routine which would go on for the rest of my life, something which was inescapably part of me. It would surround me.

  On duty at half-past seven every morning of my life, trooping up the stairs after the chilly breakfast in the basement, with the discussion of the night report books and the same old chatter of the nurses who never went anywhere or saw anything beyond the four walls of the home itself. Coming to work and being on duty practically all day, preparing people for the theatre, calming their fears, and then receiving them back again ready to nurse them to health. Taking in bunches of flowers on their behalf and fixing them into vases. Ushering visitors into quiet bedrooms and watching doctors coming and going and Sister superintending.

  I sat down in that tiny room of my own, and I thought however should I face it all, how should I manage to go through with it?

  Something inside me told me that I had got to.

  You can’t be cowardly when it comes to living life. I had always longed for romance. What woman doesn’t? I had always thought about the marvellous time when a girl fell in love. Well, I had had romance, and I had fallen in love, and I had not gained too much by either of them.

  Other women have fallen in love with married men, and they also have suffered for it. Their hearts may have been broken, but they have carried on with the duties which life ordains for them. They have been resolute because they have had to be.

  Next morning I was on duty again.

  Same old routine. Same old monotony.

  ‘You look awfully pale, Katy. Not feeling too well?’ asked Tenny. Even she had not asked about why I had returned to the fold, and considering that she was usually a very curious person, it was a wonder.

  ‘I don’t feel too good.’

  ‘It was that wretched patient of yours. She knocked spots off you. What an exacting woman! I can’t think why a beautiful man like Dr. Harper could ever have married her.’

  I thought to myself, oh, if he had never married her! But that wasn’t going to do either of us much good now. He had spoilt his life, because he had seen a pretty face on the stage, and it was too late to undo what had been done. We can’t go back in life.

  Tenny went on talking.

  ‘You’ve heard about Birdie?’ she asked. ‘Oh, it was the biggest excitement and it all happened the other night. The Padre in number seventeen fell for her. She just laughs and won’t tell us anything about it, but there is more in this than meets the eye. You’ll see. Imagine Birdie as a parson’s wife! I can’t, can you?’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  I didn’t want to discuss Birdie’s future; I was in that dreadful sore mood when somebody else’s happiness hurt a little too much. Perhaps it was selfish, but when you have had a bad blow, you get a reaction. I had got it badly at this moment, too badly. I felt that I wanted to die.

  Tenny came closer. She said: ‘You’re feeling unhappy, I know that. Miss Vaughan called us up and said that there was to be no discussion. She put on her best seven-years-a-matron appearance and that is why nobody has mentioned it, but I wondered if there wasn’t anything you’d like to tell me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘There are times when you can’t talk about things, Tenny, they hurt too much,’ and I turned from her.

  If I had stayed I should have made a fool of myself. It would be awful to break down when all my impulse was to go hard and to brazen the whole thing out. Work was obviously the antidote. Work was what I ought to undertake, and that was why I went straight down to the theatre.

  Two days later I was put back on the floor again with a case that had just come in.

  ‘It is better for you than theatre work,’ said Miss Vaughan, and I was glad to be released, because I had kept thinking all the time how awful it would be if I had to work for him. I was just at that pitch when I don’t think I could have borne seeing him standing there, authoritative and austere, a man in white who was aloof and who had no time for anyone or anything but the business in hand.

  I went to see after the little girl who had come in to have her tonsils removed. She was a bright little thing, watching me with shining eyes.

  ‘Theatre case at eleven,’ Sister told me, ‘all that is needed is just to keep her amused. She is a bit highly-strung, got a nervy mother, and she needs quietening a little.’

  She was a nice little kiddie with bright golden curls and dancing eyes. She was brave too, in spite of what Sister had said.

  ‘They put you to sleep, don’t th
ey, so that it shan’t hurt you?’ she asked.

  I knew that she would have an injection and only when that had taken effect would she be given her anaesthetic, but I pretended that she would be taken down to the theatre because she thought that it was the kind of place where they had pantomimes. She had been to see ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ last year, and was hoping that she would see something of the kind while her tonsils were being taken out.

  ‘It’s all like fairies, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  Most patients are scared stiff, although they try to keep it from you, so that her naive way of putting it made a great change for me.

  I explained that only certain people could have their tonsils out and that it made them strong and big and beautiful. She thought it was all great fun.

  At half-past ten I suggested that she should get a little nap first, so that she should be all fit and well when she woke up.

  ‘Got to pop something into your arm,’ I told her, ‘it’s all part of the magic, only the fairies get frightened that there might be one wicked one about, and if we put this stuff into your arm it helps them an awful lot.’

  She laughed at that. She was awfully good about it too, buttoning up her mouth and then saying, ‘I’m glad that’s over, it pricks, I s’pects it is because it is such a very bad fairy.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I told her. ‘Now, what about a tiny bit of a snooze and I’ll wake you when it is the right time?’

  She curled up contentedly enough and presently I saw her eyelids drooping. Sitting beside her, I knew that I envied her mother. It must be a joy to have children and I sometimes wonder if anybody’s life is wholly complete without them? If Iris and Ray had had a child of their own I don’t believe that they would have been up against such tragic difficulties. I don’t believe that they would have drifted so apart and that she would have needed people like Bill Dawson to amuse her. Iris and Ray. There I was thinking of them again when I had promised myself that I wouldn’t think of them whatever happened.

  I dismissed them quickly out of my mind, and turned again to the child, now sound asleep. That was when I got on the telephone to the anaesthetist in the theatre.