‘Aye. They may’ve forgotten. Or it’s maybe too thick to see ’em. Thick as a blank plank it’s getting, so it is.’
‘Farm near the road, George?’
‘Not too near. Not too far. We take the road round the far side of the loch to the patch, then we’ve to turn left when the path divides and follow it over the field. It ends at the croft.’
Dai asked, ‘On our feet from the path?’
‘That’s right, Doctor ‒ ah, ha! That’s not old Gil Fraser! One of the grandsons!’ He braked carefully and stuck his head out of his window to bellow at the figure waving something white, that had suddenly appeared and seemed to float in the languid swirls of yellow and blue. ‘We’ll follow you, boy!’ He closed the window and we crawled on behind the guiding, waving wraith that turned into a boy of about sixteen when we reached the path. Outside, with the ambulance engine off, the silence hurt the ears and any conversation bounced flatly off the thickened air. We followed the boy up the path and over the field in single file. Occasionally Dai Evans and I stumbled, half-blinded by the blind night. Both Shetlanders walked as if it were clear. None of the farm outhouses were visible even as shadows, and I only saw the light in the kitchen window of the croft when in touching distance of the back door. It was a tiny building but none of us saw the light in the one upper bedroom. The boy said something in dialect only George understood. ‘His grandad’s up with his grandma and told him to stay down. I’ve said I’ll take you up.’
The stairs were as narrow and steep as a ladder and ran up into the bedroom through a kind of trap-door in the floor. Dai Evans had to go up sideways.
A small, white-haired man rose from a hard chair by the bed in the wall. He looked old, anxious, but nothing like as old as his real age. He explained carefully what had happened, but in the Thessa dialect and again George had to translate. ‘He’ll wait with the boy,’ George added, ‘and they’ll both come back with us.’
Mrs Fraser’s closed, sunken face looked her age. She was in a semi-comatosed sleep and in what at first sight looked her open coffin. The bed was an oblong wooden box nailed into the wall recess and the highish outer side was immovable. After we rolled her in blankets the two men lifted her bodily out of the box and on to the stretcher on the floor. We knelt in a row to fix the straps. George said it was as well she was under. ‘Being strapped in worries the womenfolk, and specially when not so young. That’s it. She’ll not shift from this.’
‘No.’ Dai stood up flexing his powerful shoulders. ‘I’ll get down to steady the ends when you tilt her down.’
I asked, ‘Which end do you want me?’
They decided it would be easier between them. ‘Get down and get the furniture out of the light to let the Doctor back, Nurse.’
‘Right.’ I collected both medical bags and went down backwards.
The old man and the boy understood my sign language and lifted aside the heavy table covered with a faded, red plush cloth with a bobbled fringe. They had on overcoats and Mr Fraser a black peaked crofter’s cap and the boy a knitted brown pom-pom hat. A plastic shopping bag packed with the things Mrs Fraser would need in hospital waited with two oil hurricane-lamps on the dresser. The Frasers communicated with each other in silence and as if that long-established habit was providing a mutual sanctuary. When the stretcher was eventually squeezed rather than eased down, they looked at the wrapped, strapped figure, then exchanged long glances. They did the same after their offer to help lifting had been refused, then silently replaced the table and straightened the cloth tidily, yet awkwardly as if it was the first time either had done ‘woman’s’ work. The boy went up to turn off the bedroom light, then returned for one of the lamps and the plastic bag. The old man took the other lamp, opened the door and stood aside watching the mist swirl in and the stretcher-bearers, the boy and himself, file out. He closed the door after us, left the key in the outside lock and did not turn it. The boy moved closer to him and they walked ahead, side by side, holding up their lamps. No one said a word as we followed, George at the head, Dai at the foot. I walked sometimes beside the stretcher, sometimes behind, and the mist and the mud muffled our steps, the lamps made dim orange circles in the blackness that was as still and dark as death. Crossing the field, I had the feeling that I had done all this before, though I knew I hadn’t, and then placed the cause before we reached the path down the hill, in a particular verse from The Burial Of Sir John Moore At Corunna.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.
No similarity of moonbeam and bayonets, but enough to make reaching the warm, lighted interior of the ambulance, and portable oxygen, a blessed relief.
Later, Dai came into Casualty to say Mrs Fraser had picked up a little and a married nephew living near Thessa harbour had persuaded Mr Fraser and the boy to spend the rest of the night in his home. ‘He’ll run ’em up here in the morning and back to the farm if she’s no worse.’
‘Thank God for the extended family system. Beats the Social Services hands down when it works.’
‘Huh! Try telling that to any Third World peasant who’s borne her first dozen by your age and never known her belly filled by anything but a foetus.’
‘Start the revolution tomorrow, Dai. I’m too tired tonight.’
‘Typical. Bloody typical. Just ignore the problem and it’ll get up and go away.’
I sighed. ‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. But as there’s nothing I can do ‒’
‘One can always do something!’
‘Like what?’
‘If you were committed you wouldn’t have to ask!’
‘You’re committed?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Then what the hell’ve you done about it? Streaked for the starving masses? Big deal! Two weeks in a pie factory as a student, and you’re God’s greatest gift to the labouring classes since the Good Lord Shaftesbury!’
He closed his mouth slowly. ‘What’s got in to you?’
‘Sorry.’ I glanced at the empty accident-table. ‘Sometimes I can take committed trendies with my morning coffee. Sometimes I need a glass of strong liquor in my hand. Sometimes I just can’t take ’em and this is one of ’em. What did you say the Med. Super said about. Mrs Fraser?’
He repeated the physician’s prognosis, and added, ‘He thinks she’ll make more hay next year, so does Moray, and both seemed to want to be slapped on the back for it. Bloody cruelty at her age ‒ and her old man’s.’
‘Damned sight less cruel than being left to rot in some geriatric ward. Or being made to feel past the job you’ve done all your life. I won’t gripe if I can make hay in the eighties. But if someone tries shoving me in a ward without my teeth, God help ’em! I won’t!’
He frowned. ‘I never realized you were such a little bitch, Charlotte. You and Jenny Pringle should get together! Every time I’m hauled in to give an anaesthetic she’s holding forth in the theatre rest-room. I’ll bet she wrecked tonight’s dinner party with one of her lib-spiels. Or hadn’t you heard she and Moray were dining with the Med. Super, and his wife? Moray came in to see what was going on here after seeing her home.’
‘I saw him leaving just now.’ I yawned. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’
‘There’s a bundle of charm you are, girl! I think I will.’ He looked at me very thoughtfully. ‘You’ve gasted my flabber.’
‘Don’t let it bug you, Dai. Sleep well. ’Night.’
He nodded at the clock. ‘Five to three. ’Morning!’
I watched him cross the hall then went to the window to look at the mist and discovered it had vanished. That did not improve my temper and I continued to feel irritated until the Night Super came to write the night report in Casualty as Haralda needed help. ‘I’ll call you back if necessary, Staff.’ No one else came in, and I finished my shift in the medical ward. I enjoyed those
last few hours as I much preferred bedside nursing. I found Casualty work interesting, when it was not agony, but had always detested knowing patients only by their names, or labels, and specifically the last. The names I forgot; the labels I couldn’t forget. That made the difference.
There were several new faces and several old missing when I got back to Olaf but the turnover was far less extensive than I had expected after surgical nursing in Martha’s. In the women’s ward, Mrs Leisk, still knitting at the double, provided me with the family trees of all but one newcomer, a Scot injured after a fall on a rig and flown in during my time off. To compensate, Mrs Leisk gave me advance information on a patient she said was due in tomorrow evening. ‘When Kenny Norris comes, dear, be sure to tell him I’ll be in to see him soon as he’s settled and give him my regards. If he has a mite of difficulty remembering which Mrs Leisk I am, you tell him it’s his Bella’s eldest sister’s eldest girl, Dolly. Bella was Mrs Kenny, dear and gone these forty years but he minds her well.’
I made a note on the upturned corner of my apron hem. It was the first I had heard of this admission as Sister Olaf had not mentioned Mr Norris’s name in the detailed notes she had left me last evening before having today off. It was a non-op day. Magnus arrived for his morning round before Alan, so I asked him.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I only fixed this after breakfast with old Kenny’s eldest married daughter Mrs Burns. How’ve you come by this?’ And when I explained, ‘Who did this morning’s paper round?’
‘Robbie, as usual, Mr Moray.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Problem solved. Robbie is Mrs Burns’s nephew and Mrs Leisk’s ‒ I forget which ‒ cousin. Now. Shall we start with Angus?’
Angus was the young rigger. He had both legs and his left forearm in plaster and his normally chubby red face was still pale and flabby. According to Maggie McEuan, his one free hand was a worse menace than both Danny’s. He came from the North East coast of Scotland, had been a fisherman before working on a rig, and until I got used to it, I found his speech nearly as incomprehensible as the Thessa dialect.
‘How’d you feel today, Angus?’
‘Nane the waur, Dochtor.’
‘Good. You took quite a wee tumble on to the deck.’
Angus beamed with pride. ‘Och, aye. A fair stramash when I cam doon. Ma bluid rose aboot a hundred feet.’
‘I doubt a hundred, laddie. More like fifty.’ Magnus checked the condition of the plasters, circulation, the chart and moved on to the next bed.
In the corridor I asked, ‘What exactly is a “stramash”? A smash?’
That evoked one of his more melancholy, but not despairing glances. He no longer appeared to despair in Olaf. I didn’t know why not. ‘I think it would be more aptly defined as, uproar, disturbance, or possibly, a row.’
‘Thanks.’ His back was to the ward, and probably hid me from the men, though I could see them round the side of his right arm. Angus’s right arm was busy. Maggie leapt about three feet and nearly dropped the thermometer she was shaking down. I controlled my expression, but Magnus had glanced round. ‘Cheerful patient that boy,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ he replied, dead-pan, ‘though all but smashed to a jelly last Monday morning. His age is his ally. If the very young don’t kill themselves, or damage their brains they can usually bounce back so fast one wonders what’s hit one. Another story for Mr Norris. I want him in for a good rest before any talk of an op.’ We moved on to the women, then slowly back past the empty children’s ward to the head of the stairs. ‘Anything else you require of me, Staff Nurse?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you, Mr Moray.’
‘Good. Of course,’ he added gravely, ‘you will let me know when you require the additional plaster on Angus’s good arm?’
‘I’ll ring you, personally, Mr Moray,’ I said as gravely.
‘Please do.’ He glided off down the stairs and I went back to the office grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
Maggie was waiting, puce with indignation. ‘Staff, what’s wrong with my behind?’
‘Nothing, Maggie. That’s the trouble.’
‘Staff, what’s a girl to do?’
‘Polish up her footwork. And never take a holiday in Italy. Have you? Then don’t. You won’t be able to sit down for a month.’
‘Is that a fact?’
Thessa had gone deeper than I realized. ‘Aye, Maggie. So it is.’
Mr Norris was a long-retired fisherman and had worked in his father’s boat when Queen Victoria had her Diamond Jubilee. He was very small, wiry, with a deeply etched, tanned face, and a slow smile. ‘Do I mind my Bella’s niece Dolly? You tell the lass, Nurse. I mind well how my Bella let young Tom Leisk come courting young Dolly in our front parlour when I was away at the war. Great War, so it was, Nurse. Dolly’s old dad had some strict notions, you’ll ken, but I kent young Tom well. Sailed with him many a time. He’s a good boy I told my Bella on my leaf. You let ’em come. They tell me Dolly’s doing right well. She is? That’s as it should be. You tell her to be along to see me in the forenoon and to take care of herself. I’ll rest now, Nurse. Tired I am, so I am.’
A couple of afternoons later Magnus arrived in the office doorway with Mr Norris’s latest X-rays just as Sister finished the handing-over report. He hesitated. ‘I’ll return ‒’
‘We’ve done, Mr Moray. I’d like a look at those before I go.’
I switched on the screen and the three of us studied the illuminated plates. ‘Very clear.’
‘Big,’ said Sister. ‘Decided to do him, Mr Moray?’
‘You think I should consider the alternative, Sister?’
‘No. Some might.’ She sat down, nodded to me to do the same.
‘You can see as well if you take the weight off your feet, Mr Moray.’
He seated himself absently, his eyes concentrating on the screen. ‘Despite his age, after a good rest, I think he’ll tolerate it pretty well. Old, but tough, which, naturally, is why he’s old.’
Sister nodded. ‘Folk tend to forget that when they talk of getting old. Survival of the fittest, that’s all. T’others have gone in youth and middle age.’
‘Indeed.’ He switched off the screen and sat again. ‘While you’re here, Sister, I’d like your views on Mrs Leisk’s discharge ‒ oh, forgive me, Nurse ‒ it is merely that Sister is more acquainted with local domiciliary problems. Next week?’
‘Around the middle.’
‘I agree. Wednesday? Right. You’ll tell her, Nurse?’
‘Yes, Mr Moray.’ I made a note. ‘Are you always able to keep surgical patients in this long?’
‘When possible.’
Sister added, ‘When not, happen we make it so. You’ll not argue that, Mr Moray?’
He smiled quietly, ‘No, Sister. Nor the difference in attitude to the matter consequent on working in a community small enough to make it impossible for a surgeon to step outside a hospital without running into ex-patients and their relatives. Discharges from a big city hospital one only sees again at follow-up clinics. “All well?” “Aye, Doctor, apart from this wee pain or the wee tiredness”. But in a small place, “Doctor, you sent our Jeanie ‒ Johnny ‒ my man ‒ home too soon! Not a wink of sleep did any of us get last night! Why’s he got that pain ‒ cough ‒ backache?” Very salutary.’
I said, ‘I can imagine.’
Sister asked, ‘How soon are you pitching out your hernias, your hysterectomies, in Martha’s?’
‘The uncomplicated, a week to ten days. Sometimes less.’
‘Appendices inside of the week?’
‘About that. Same in Scottish cities, Mr Moray?’
‘Roughly.’ He watched us both, reflectively.
Sister sniffed. ‘Sounds like a factory-belt. You find it good therapy, Staff?’
I thought a moment. ‘Medically, yes, I think so. That is, I think it helps speed up recovery in the long-term, but in the short-term I think it can be pretty miserable for the patients. When they get home f
eeling, as so often, quite ghastly, they can have a tremendous problem persuading their families they aren’t putting it on. The general attitude seems to be “Well, the hospital’s sent you out, you were only in a few days, so obviously you’re fit and stop fussing”. Can be very tough, particularly on women with families, having to cope long before they should. Luckily, as Martha’s has some very efficient convalescent services, we can usually get round the problem by discharging to convalescent homes first. I am very glad you can hang on to them longer here, as they go back to their normal lives and homes. But,’ I added, ‘the other angle that can’t be overlooked in city hospitals is the waiting list. Martha’s has queues waiting for every “cold” bed.’
Magnus said it was the same in his mainland hospital. ‘I’ve never worked in any teaching hospital that did not have too many patients chasing too few “cold” beds. Inevitably, during the wait, many cease to be “cold”, turn urgent and have to jump the queue. So all the waiters move back one, or more. Until we have more beds, more medical and nursing staff, I see no answer to that one.’
Sister said grimly, ‘There’s another I don’t see answered. All this do-it-yourself therapy may be ‒ I just say may be ‒ of benefit to patients, but to my mind it’ll be no help to the nursing ‒ nor since you depend upon us, Mr Moray ‒ the medical profession. Short-stays and rapid turnovers may shorten your lists, but it’ll give the nurses no time to learn clinical nursing and that’s not learnt from books or lectures. That’s learnt at the bedside. And that’s why, from all I read and hear, clinical nursing in Britain today is a dying art. Can you deny that, Staff?’ Reluctantly, I shook my head. ‘Then you’d best get your teeth into sorting it, lass, seeing you’re about to start running the shop. Did you know our Staff Anthony’s going back to take over the biggest acute surgical ward in St Martha’s, Mr Moray?’
‘No, Sister.’ He caught my eye and his eyes smiled. ‘I didn’t appreciate we were briefly entertaining the future of the British nursing profession. Congratulations.’
I blushed. ‘Thanks, though I wouldn’t say that ‒’
In Storm and In Calm Page 9