The Quiet Wards
Lucilla Andrews
Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2017
This edition first published 2017 by Corazon Books
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
First published 1956
www.lucillaandrews.com
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover artwork images: Shutterstock © izusek/sheff/Bairachnyi Dmitry/Apostrophe
Also by Lucilla Andrews
from Corazon Books
The Print Petticoat
The Secret Armour
One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)
A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)
In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)
Corazon Books is reissuing
all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.
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FOR
DR. T. AND ANN
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Preview: One Night in London by Lucilla Andrews
Preview: A Nurse’s Life by Jane Grant
Preview: A Country Practice by Judith Colquhoun
Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell
Preview: A Doctor’s life by Robert Clifford
Preview: Home from Home by Cath Cole
Preview: City Hospital by Keith Miles
Chapter One
ONE NIGHT IN ROBERT WARD
Robert Ward was very quiet that night, but few of the men were sleeping. Robert was a men’s acute surgical ward, with twenty beds each side. All the beds were occupied, and the men watched us with troubled eyes as we moved in and out of the drawn cubicle curtains round bed number 18.
Behind those curtains Sister Robert stood still as a statue at the foot of the bed. The sleeves of her navy blue dress were rolled high above her elbows; one hand rested lightly on the metal transfusion stand attached to the bed-rail. She watched the slow, steady trickle of blood through the glass drip-connection.
‘A little faster, Nurse Snow,’ she murmured. ‘Put that pin in the top hole and see if gravity will do it. I’ve opened the screw as far as it’ll go. If we can’t speed it up we’ll have to let Mr Dexter know.’
I moved the pin and the blood ran more quickly. Sister dropped her hand. ‘That’s it. Now there’s nothing more we can do until he comes round. Your probationer must sit with him while I give you the rest of the report.’
I went outside the curtains and beckoned to the pro who was hovering round the cluster of empty wheelchairs at the end of the ward.
‘Stay with him, please, Nurse,’ I said when she joined me, ‘and don’t leave him for anything, no matter who calls. I’m not sure yet how we’ll manage the other men, but I’ll work that out later.’
She nodded uncertainly. ‘Do I ‒ do I have to do anything for him, Nurse Snow?’
‘Take his pulse every ten minutes; keep an eye on the blood, and if it slows down call me at once. Or if his pulse varies more than ten either way ‒ it’s a hundred and two now ‒ put your head between the curtains and call me, no matter who I’m with or what I’m doing. I’ll hear you and come at the double. But don’t leave him. Got that?’
She nodded again. She looked terrified.
‘You take over now.’ I held back the curtain. ‘Sister wants to finish giving me her report.’
Sister Robert pulled down her sleeves and walked to the table that was hidden behind red screens in the centre of the ward.
‘Sit down, Nurse Snow, and we’ll run through the others. It won’t take long. Fortunately Admiral Kerry is our only ill patient.’
By ill she meant dangerously ill. All our men were bed patients; only seven of the forty patients had reached the stage of being lifted into wheelchairs for afternoon tea. Robert, being an acute ward, dealt only with operation cases, and our patients were moved to a convalescent ward directly they lost their stitches. It was a pleasant and interesting ward, but it was never empty or slack.
Sister did not linger over her report. It was after 10 p.m., and officially she should have been off at nine. When she had finished I walked with her to the outer door of the ward which lay at the end of the small corridor we called ‘the flat.’ That was a point of etiquette.
‘I’m afraid you’re in for a bad night,’ she said, as I held open the door for her, ‘since one of you will be tied up constantly with the Admiral. I asked Matron about a spare night relief, but she said that the only spare senior nurse is specialing an accident in Charity, so I’m afraid you will just have to manage as best you can. But I’ll have a private word with Night Sister on my way out and see if she can produce someone, if only for an hour or two.’
I thanked her and she left. I went straight back to bed 18. Nurse Fraser, the pro, looked round hopefully.
‘Shall I get on with my routine, Nurse Snow?’
‘Not just yet.’ I explained what Sister Robert had just told me. ‘I’ll have to see to the others first and give out the sedatives before Night Sister and the men arrive. I’ll be as quick as I can, but until I’m free you’ll have to stay put.’
She was very young. She had a small, thin face, and her fair hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She had not yet learnt how to manage her cap, and it was sliding over one ear. She looked like a pigtailed and very frightened schoolgirl. I sympathised with her. I had been equally scared by serious illness when I started training nearly four years ago. Now it disturbed me, but did not scare me; I had been taught what I should do and what I should not do. This was the difference that training made. Pros are always scared because they think they have to do everything.
The men were as thoughtful as patients are when they suspect the presence of death in a ward. No one mentioned the man behind the drawn curtains, but their voices were compassionate.
‘I’m fine, Nurse. You don’t have to bother about me.’
‘Let’s have a couple of them tablets, duck, an’ I’ll not trouble you again.’
‘Thanks awfully, Nurse Snow ‒ but my dressing is grand. No, it doesn’t feel as if it’s sticking.’
The ward was full of merchant seamen, stevedores, shop assistants, schoolmasters, barrow boys, and West Indians, all of whom had become ‒ Robert. Robert was a body that spoke in assorted accents but with one voice. Tonight the voice said, ‘I’m O.K., Nurse. You get back to that poor old chap that’s bought it behind 18.’
Half an hour later I was filling in the dangerous-drug book, when a girl called Carol Ash walked into Robert ‘flat.’ Carol was a plump, round-faced girl; her cheeks were pink, her hair dark brown. She looked as if she had stepped in from the country, but she was a Londoner born and thought the countrysid
e was only tolerable when viewed from inside a closed car travelling fast. She was Night Senior Nurse in Ellen, a women’s convalescent ward. I watched her hang her cloak on a fire-bucket and then walk up the ward to the table.
I looked up and smiled. ‘Hello,’ I said quietly. ‘What goes on in Ellen?’
She leant on the back of Sister’s empty chair. ‘Nothing goes on in Ellen. Which is why I’ve come to special your Admiral.’
‘Thank Heaven for that.’ I beamed with relief. ‘You’re the best news I’ve had in months. But why you? Who’s standing in for you?’
She sat down. ‘June Pickering. Her woman in Charity died an hour ago. Night Sister said she didn’t want to shove Pickering straight on to another specialing job and she knew I enjoyed it, so she asked if I should like to come.’ She looked down the ward through the gap in the red screens. ‘Ellen is like a tomb these nights, so I jumped at it. I hate,’ she added very quietly, ‘having time on my hands.’
‘I can believe that.’ I handed her the report book. ‘Read that ‒ and then I’ll tell you all.’
I did not say any more because I knew she would not want me to say more. Carol was a good friend of mine, and what had recently happened to her had happened to me during my first year in hospital. We were both only children; and now neither of us had parents. But at least I had been fortunate in having a few months between losing my father and mother. Carol had gone to Norway with her parents last June. One morning her parents had gone out for an early drive; their car had been in a head-on collision with another car, and Carol returned from that holiday alone. Matron had given me leave to go to Newcastle to meet her, and since that time our friendship had deepened.
She read the case history slowly. Then, ‘Tell me the rest.’
‘Not much to tell.’ I was listening to the sounds of the ward as I spoke. The men were breathing quietly, but consciously. They, like us, were waiting. ‘Chronic G.U. His ulcer perforated some time this afternoon when he and his wife were on a shopping spree in town. He’s retired, lives in Hampshire. Joe’s was the nearest place, so they brought him in. There were no free private rooms, and anyway there was no time to bother much about those niceties. He went down to the theatre this evening, and the S.S.O. patched him out. He’s not yet round; he’s on continuous whole blood ‒ he’s a good age. See here’ ‒ I put my finger on the place in the report ‒ ‘and he’s mighty shocked.’
She asked after his pulse-rate and blood-pressure, and I told her what they had been fifteen minutes ago.
She nodded. ‘I’ve got that taped. Has our John been up to see him yet?’
‘Our John’ was Mr Jonathan Alexander Dexter, Master of Surgery, the Senior Surgical Officer resident in the hospital.
‘No. No one’s been up. Sister Robert herself didn’t get away until after ten, so that’s just as well. And anyway the poor man didn’t get back from the theatre until just before we came on duty.’
Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought you said he was done this evening?’
Hospital evenings start at 5 p.m.
‘We went down about six. But they had to hold everything on the table and give him some blood.’
She said, ‘That’s quite a time. What was our John doing? He’s usually pretty snappy with his knife.’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno. I’m only a wretched nurse, ducks. But Sister Robert did say she had never seen a man in such a mess. She took him to the theatre herself. I suppose John took longer than usual because he had more than usual to sort out.’
She smiled rather grimly. ‘I’m disappointed. I thought maybe our peerless S.S.O. might be slipping.’
I stood up. ‘Our peerless S.S.O. isn’t human enough to slip. But let’s go and relieve that pro, or the poor kid will have a nervous breakdown.’
She did not move. ‘I expect he’s human,’ she said, ‘but I can’t help wishing that once in a way he would make a mistake ‒ only not necessarily on this miserable sailor.’ She tilted her face to look at me. Her averted face was very attractive. ‘You know, he reminds me of you, Gillian. You both sail around Joe’s a few inches off the ground. You never touch down, do you?’
At another time I should have been fascinated to discuss any resemblance between myself and the S.S.O., but I was worrying about my Admiral.
‘You could be right,’ I said, ‘but we’ll thrash it out later. Let’s just sail up the ward, shall us? My child is stiff with fear about the poor man, and I’m stiff with fear about them both.’
She stood up slowly. ‘Anything you say, Gillian.’
We had nearly reached the drawn curtains when we heard the flat door open. Night Sister and a couple of men were in the flat.
‘I’ll have to leave you to it,’ I murmured. ‘You all right?’
She looked at me. ‘I’m not your pro, dearie.’
‘Sorry.’ I raised a hand apologetically and walked quickly away.
Night Sister and the doctors had stopped by the closed kitchen door. Night Sister was nodding to herself. She was a thin, neat Scotswoman. For some peculiar reason Night Sisters are almost invariably Scots. Miss Mackenzie was a pleasant woman in the late forties. Her face was permanently grey and her shoulders hunched from years of tiptoeing round darkened wards, but her temper was unruffled by lack of sleep and no one had ever known her to be anything but calm and thoughtful for her patients, the medical staff, or her nurses.
She said, ‘I’ll away, Nurse Snow. I’ll be back when you are less busy.’ She looked through the open doors of the ward. ‘Nurse Ash has arrived?’
‘She’s with Admiral Kerry now, Sister, thank you.’
She nodded, and the rustle of the lace frills on her cap was louder than her voice when she spoke again.
‘She will stay with you all night, Nurse Snow.’
I thanked her, and she asked quickly after the Admiral.
‘Not round yet, Sister. Otherwise his condition is unchanged since we came on duty.’
She glanced up at the S.S.O., who was the taller of the two men beside her. ‘I will see you later, Mr Dexter?’
He roused himself. He was still wearing his long white theatre-gown, cap, and mask. The mask had been pulled down and hung loosely round his neck. He looked very tired.
‘Whenever you want me, Sister,’ he said civilly. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to you when you rang from Charity, but I was in the middle of that last appendix. I’ve just come from the theatre. I suppose both those women are all right?’
‘Aye,’ said Sister, ‘they’ll do. As I do not doubt this poor man here will do, Mr Dexter.’ And she disappeared from my elbow.
The S.S.O. glanced at me. ‘So he’s not round yet, Nurse Snow?’ He used the flat tone that all trained hospital staff use at night. It is sound that carries far less than a whisper.
‘The admiral had not come round a quarter of an hour ago, Mr Dexter. I have not seen him since then.’
‘I see.’ He felt for his pockets, discovered that he was still in a gown, and propped his knuckles on his hips. His shoulders were slightly raised, as if he was carrying a heavy weight. He made no move to go into the ward, so I stood with my hands behind my back and buttoned my sleeves under my cuffs as I waited, correctly, for the S.S.O.
The houseman who was with him had been shifting from one foot to another. Now he dodged round the S.S.O. and cleared his throat.
‘Excuse me, sir ‒ er ‒ Nurse Snow ‒?’
I said, ‘Yes, Mr Thanet?’
Tom Thanet was a burly young man with a broad strong-featured face and a very deep voice. He was one of the most junior house-surgeons in the hospital.
‘Anything you want me for? Or shall I push off?’
Mr Dexter said coolly, ‘When Nurse Snow has dealt with me, Thanet, I have no doubt she will find the time to answer your questions.’ He looked at me instead of Tom as he talked, which was as well, since Tom was winking at me.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Tom mildly, ‘my mistake. See you later, Nurse Snow.�
�
‘Nurse Snow,’ said the S.S.O., ‘are we to spend the entire night making assignations in this doorway? Or could I persuade you to allow me to see my Admiral?’
I smiled feebly. ‘Shall we go now, Mr Dexter?’
‘It might,’ he said, ‘be an idea.’ He stood back and waited for me to precede him up the ward. As we walked by, the men on either side lifted their heads and then, seeing who I was with, relaxed. John Dexter might at times be short with his housemen, but he had that effect on all patients.
Carol was taking Admiral Kerry’s pulse. The S.S.O. said, ‘Go on, Nurse Ash,’ and waited by the bed. He watched the still unconscious man in silence, then reached an arm my way for the temperature chart. When he had read all he wanted he handed it back, still in silence. He tapped the glass connection lightly.
‘This as fast as it’ll go, Nurse Ash?’
‘Yes, Mr Dexter.’
‘I see.’ He looked at the man again. ‘I may have to put up a fresh drip. It’ll mean a cut-down if it’s necessary. I’ll do it ‒ so if you have trouble, ask Nurse Snow to get me. Right?’
Carol said, ‘Yes, Mr Dexter.’
He walked closer to the bed; touched the man’s pulse, his cheek, his forehead; turned back the bed-clothes and looked at the top dressing. He nodded to himself. ‘He’ll have to have at least another pint,’ he said, ‘maybe more.’ Then he straightened and moved back to the foot of the bed and stood again, watching the thin, pinched face of the sick man.
At last he had seen enough. He glanced at Carol. ‘Good night, Nurse Ash ‒ thank you,’ he murmured automatically, and held back the curtains for me. When we were outside them he said, ‘I may as well look at the other men while I’m here. I don’t like doing this ward before midnight, but this looks like being a busy night, so I want to get as much done as I can before I get caught up in the theatre again.’
‘Very busy, Mr Dexter?’
‘The theatre has been,’ he said laconically. ‘I’ve had two perforations already this evening. I’m not a superstitious man, but I can’t help feeling there’ll be a third. There generally is.’
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