The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

‘I wonder if dear Peter asked her not to tell you.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t take any notice‒’ I broke off as I grasped her meaning. ‘You think ‒ she and Peter ‒?’

  She spread her hands expressively but said nothing.

  ‘I never thought of that, Lisa.’

  She said she had a Gallic mind. ‘I always think of these things, dear girl. Sleep on it ‒ it might account for a lot. And now I must go to bed.’ She collected her washing things which were now strewn around my room, rewrapped her dressing-gown, and left me.

  For once I did not drop asleep immediately I was in bed. I thought about Carol. Peter and Carol. And then I thought how strange that sounded, but how it was no more strange than the odd thought I had in the theatre, and which had caused me to drop that bowl. I fingered my forehead in the dark; it was not even a little sore. I hoped I would be able to see Carol soon; I wanted to tell her that as far as I was concerned she was welcome to Peter. I decided to be tactful about this; no wonder she had been so annoyed with me at that dance. I smiled to myself. At last something added up. I turned over and went to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  OUT-PATIENTS IS A TENSE DEPARTMENT

  Ten days passed before I was allowed to see Carol. Her bronchitis turned to bronchial pneumonia, and she took longer than usual to respond to the antibiotics with which she was being treated. I inquired daily in Susan; Sister Susan took the flowers, magazines or notes I brought with an adamant ‘Not today, Nurse Snow. Perhaps, tomorrow!’

  Matron, unfortunately for me, produced a spare staff nurse to take the place of the scarlet-fevered Nurse Brent, so I was sent back to O.P.s and my children. I enjoyed the children, but found the department over-heated, over-full, and, what with the constant presence of a disapproving Sister, over-powering. I was not alone in this; one of the probationers handed in her notice, a second demanded to be transferred from O.P.s, and even Nurse Blakelock looked haggard and as if she had dropped from her normal twelve stone to a worn out ten.

  John was around the department as usual, and when he was about Sister was more often than not with him. But she seemed to take no comfort from his presence, and in his absence became quite unbearable. A Sister makes or mars a ward or department. The work was the same as it had always been, Blakelock was sweet and soothing, but not even the patients and a pleasant staff nurse can compensate for an unhappy Sister, and she must have been miserable to have spread her gloom around as she did. O.P.s became an unhappy department, and we nurses lived for our own ‒ and Sister’s ‒ off-duty.

  I watched John to see if he noticed the increased tension among the staff. If he did he gave no sign, but the housemen were well aware of the situation.

  ‘So help me, Gill,’ said Tom, ‘you girls are sterling characters, but now I loathe this place. Fact. Even old Rufford’s caught on. Heard him creating in the canteen the other day. Wanted to know what had got into the department ‒ apparently his clinic had been messed up.’

  ‘It certainly was messed up.’ I told him how Sister had played havoc with the appointments list, to the fury of the mothers and the dismay of the almoner. And then she thought it would be quicker if we did things according to St Martha’s methods. ‘We did it,’ I said grimly, ‘but we won’t do it again! Rufford nearly went through the roof. She wanted kids only in here ‒ Mums outside.’

  He grinned, then, as Sister appeared at the far end of the corridor, rushed on. She had seen him, of course. She sailed up to me.

  ‘Nurse Snow, if I find you neglecting your duties again and flirting with the house-surgeons I shall send you straight to Matron.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Sister.’ She knew quite well I had an empty room and was waiting for the first patients to arrive. I would have liked to have advised her not to say ‘flirting.’ It dated her. I put her age at least ten years above my own on that showing.

  That evening she was off. Before she went she left instructions that Nurses Smith and Snow were to scrub out the splint cupboard before going to supper. The splint cupboard was the pros’ province, but we were so delighted at the prospect of having her out of the department that we would gladly have scrubbed each of the ten waiting-rooms.

  ‘This is sheer bliss,’ said Lisa, as she arrived with the bowl of water. ‘Peace, perfect peace ‒ and dear old Blakelock in the office, smiling! Imagine that, Gill ‒ smiling! Some one loves us after all!’

  I rolled up my sleeves. ‘Poor old Blakelock ‒ she has the worst of it. Fancy having to staff to someone like that ‒ for a two-year stretch! No wonder she’s lost weight.’

  ‘Before she goes, dear girl, our chubby Blakelock’ll have a waist like yours.’ She shuddered. ‘Thank heaven my days are numbered. I’ve done over four months. I must be off any moment ‒ or I’ll go to Matron like that kid Martin. You watch out. And I’ll tell Matron why. I’ll tell her’ ‒ she climbed on a stool ‒ ‘that if I haven’t wept by eleven each morning I consider it’s a bumper day ‒ and how poor little pros are all reduced to acute melancholia. Heck.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  She said she was not tall enough.

  ‘Come down, and I’ll do the top.’ We changed over. ‘But, Lisa, what’s got into her lately? Why is she so much worse? I’d have thought everything was what the doctor ordered. She’s got John in her pocket ‒ what more does she want? If she doesn’t like the job why on earth did she take it?’

  Lisa removed a pile of aeroplane splints from the next shelf. ‘What makes you so certain he’s in her pocket?’

  I soaped the brush. ‘Obvious.’

  ‘No more obvious than before. I know he took her to the dance, but he has to take someone, and it has to be a Sister. That’s positively traditional.’

  I said unthinkingly, ‘Is it also traditional for S.S.O.s to have tête-a-têtes with Sisters in darkened departments?’

  ‘How’s that? Having a which with who?’

  Having said so much, I told her the rest.

  ‘Wow! You devil, to keep that quiet all this time! But’ ‒ she tugged at my apron ‒ ‘hey! When was this?’

  ‘Weekend before last. Pass me your soap. I’ve dropped mine.’

  She held her bar absently. ‘Something mighty queer about that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s been so foul-minded since then. Haemadementia, plus. And she shouldn’t have been. If she had had a merry weekend chez John ‒’

  ‘Don’t forget he was on ‒ she can’t have seen much of him ‒’

  ‘Phooey. She knows the score there ‒ she’s a nurse. That wouldn’t be a snag. No. They must’ ‒ she beamed up at me triumphantly ‒ ‘have had harsh words that weekend. Otherwise she’d have been full of the joys of spring ‒ like she was when she first set eyes on the dear man. And, come to think of it’ ‒ she scrubbed feverishly in her concentration on the love-life of our betters ‒ ‘our John has been glowering round the hospital lately like one vast thunder cloud. Maybe that love has withered like the leaves in autumn.’

  I said my heart bled for them. I was glad I was standing on that chair and well above her head. Lisa would want to know why my emotion should make me grin idiotically at the wet shelf.

  ‘The course of true love,’ she said sadly, ‘runs no more smoothly for the upper classes than for a lowly fourth-year. Life is set with pitfalls. I’ve finished this shelf.’

  ‘So’ve I.’ I lifted an aged Thomas’s splint off a nail by the ceiling. ‘I’ll do the wall. Hang on to this, honey.’ She straightened and held out her arms. ‘No progress with Tom?’ I asked, as she clasped the long unwieldy object against her chest. ‘Haven’t you taken Aunty Gill’s advice and let him see the love-light?’

  She shook her head mournfully. ‘No dice. Look at Sister ‒ even you. It doesn’t work, Gill. Thanks, all the same. Tom doesn’t see me at all these days, like I said.’

  She was standing with her back to the open door. The department was officially closed, the clinics had ended, the patients gone, but our cor
ridor was a short cut to several wards, and was used as such by the men. A trickle of white coats had drifted by in the last twenty minutes, glanced incuriously at us as we scrubbed, and passed on. Now a white coat lingered in the doorway. Tom Thanet, who could not have failed to overhear what Lisa had said, was staring at her back. I was about to welcome him, when he shook his head slightly. He did not move.

  Lisa grappled with her splint. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘how corny you can get. All I can think of now is how I let him slip through my hands when I was a bright young pro, and how I didn’t know what I was losing until I found I’d lost him.’

  Tom came in slowly. He said very quietly, ‘Looking for something, Lisa?’

  I got off my chair. ‘I must get another brush ‒ this one has no hairs left.’ I gave them no chance to answer, but I doubted if they even heard me. Lisa was clinging to the splint and looking at Tom; Tom was gaping at her as if he had never seen her before. I thanked Heaven and Matron’s Office that Sister was off and went to find Blakelock. ‘Something else I can clean, Nurse? Nurse Smith is just finishing the splint cupboard.’

  Blakelock nodded impassively. ‘No doubt Mr Thanet can reach the top shelf.’

  ‘Yes, Nurse.’ I did not ask how she knew Tom was in there; Blakelock always knew what was happening in the department, and the knowledge never worried her, which was why she was such a good staff nurse.

  She told me I could go off duty. ‘I expect you want to visit Susan. How is Ash?’

  ‘Getting on. I haven’t seen her yet. Sister Susan gives me a nightly report.’

  She sighed. ‘Sister Susan is a Joe’s girl. Makes a difference.’ Which was the only criticism of Sister she ever allowed.

  Sister Susan promised that I might visit Carol next evening. She asked me to fetch some of Carol’s belongings.

  ‘Now Nurse is better she will prefer her own nightgowns. And as you are her friend she will not object to your going to her drawers. I have her keys here.’ She gave them to me. ‘And will you bring her face powder and hair-curlers, Nurse Snow? Nurse is particularly anxious to doll herself up again.’

  After supper I asked Home Sister if I might go to the Night Nurses’ Home, and explained my reason.

  ‘Of course, Nurse. You will save me a job.’

  Carol was a neat person, and I found what I wanted immediately. I shut her make-up box; collected a brush and comb; pyjamas; bed-jackets; then, remembering her love of bed-socks, I opened the drawer again. I could not find them at first, so I unlocked a lower drawer. They did not appear to be there either; I shifted the clothes carefully, I did not want to untidy anything. I found a pile of bed-socks and pulled out two pairs. The toe of one of them was bulky. I smoothed it, then felt something small but hard under my hand. I shook the sock over the bed casually, wondering if some hair-curlers were caught up there. But at the same time my hands, trained to think for themselves, had recognised the familiar contours of what they had touched, even when disguised by the woollen sock. Consequently I was not very surprised when I picked off the white bed quilt four small glass ampoules of morphine sulphate. I was not very surprised, but I was very shocked. And I did not know what to do with them. I held them in the palm of my hand and jiggled them thoughtfully. Then I put back the empty socks, took an alternative pair, closed and relocked the drawers, took the things I had come to fetch over to the hospital, left them with Sister Susan, and went back to my own room.

  Later, when I was in bed, someone knocked quietly on my door.

  I called, ‘I’m not asleep,’ and reached for my bed-side lamp.

  Lisa bounced in, her face illumined with happiness. ‘Gill, you devil. Why didn’t you tell me he was standing behind me when I was letting down my back hair?’

  I blinked at the light. ‘Discretion and I go hand in hand. Now tell me, how’s it going?’

  She flopped on to the foot of my bed and took off her shoes. She said everything was going as well as could be expected. ‘But, dear girl’ ‒ her eyes danced ‒ ‘I never knew anyone could be so happy.’

  I lay back and smiled at her. Tonight she looked beautiful.

  ‘So the course of true love can run smooth?’

  ‘Wonderfully smooth. Do you know what he said?’

  I said, ‘That until tonight he never realised that you took anything or anyone seriously?’

  Her jaw dropped, ‘But that’s uncanny. That’s just what he did say!’

  ‘Not uncanny. I’ve always thought that myself until these last weeks, and I’ve known you nearly four years. How did you think he could guess?’

  She said she was long past thought. ‘But Gill ‒ how did you know he was even interested in me?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said honestly, ‘but I didn’t see why he shouldn’t be. Every other man in the hospital is, ducks, so I thought on the law of averages ‒’

  ‘That’s been the snag!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘All those stupid men ‒ getting in the way ‒ no, don’t laugh’ ‒ she waved me down ‒ ‘it’s true ‒ they’re a bind and a bore. Do you know why he didn’t ask me to the rugger dance?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘He was sure I was booked,’ she said mournfully. ‘See what being a one for the boys does for a girl! He’d got the idea I was the Toast of the Medical School and the Belle of the House-Physicians ‒ and thought I was just bound to be booked! Everyone thought so ‒ and I didn’t go.’ Her voice died away in laughter. ‘Now I’ll have to take the veil.’ She sighed with pleasure. ‘Won’t it be restful?’

  I asked how much progress she and Tom had made in the last three hours. ‘When I left you in the splint cupboard you were barely on speaking terms.’

  She said they had made quite a bit of progress. ‘We’ve dealt with everything from engagement rings to country practices. You know how I talk, dear girl ‒ and what with one thing and another my tongue sort of ran away with me.’ She stopped short. ‘I clean forgot. How was Carol?’

  ‘I didn’t see her. Sister said tomorrow.’

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ she said, ‘you’ll be able to get everything straight then.’

  I said it would be very nice, and as I knew that her delight in life would not be able to blunt her intelligence if we started discussing my affairs, I pretended to yawn. ‘Sorry, ducks,’ I apologised.

  She jumped off my bed. ‘I shouldn’t have woken you! I am sorry. You look all heavy-eyed and blurry. But I had to tell you what you’d done.’

  I smiled at her. ‘I’m glad you did. And I can’t tell you how glad I am about all this. I always said you and Tom would make a good pair.’

  ‘Liar ‒ you only said it a couple of weeks ago.’

  I said I refused to be put off. ‘Time is immaterial. Only not now it ain’t ‒ so if you don’t mind, honey, I must go to sleep. Otherwise I shall be out on my two feet in O.P.s tomorrow.’

  She laughed and said she would love to see Sister’s face if I laid my little head on one of the benches and slept among the nippers. She said she was even looking forward to O.P.s tomorrow; that she loved everything and everyone in the department, including dear Sister, but best of all she loved the dear splint cupboard.

  I woke early next morning as you always do wake early when you are worried. I lay and watched the cold grey October dawn run into a colder and still more grey morning. The heavy clouds moved sluggishly across the sky; they were no heavier, no more threatening, than my thoughts. I wondered if I had done the right thing in getting rid of that morphia.

  I was past minding its original disappearance; I was not happy about the mess it had made of my life, but I had accepted it. What I could not now accept was that Carol was responsible. And I wondered how many more of my little problems were due to her.

  Peter. The change in his attitude since that night. I had automatically assumed he had cooled towards me because I was under a cloud. But I now remembered that only on that night had he grasped that she was Ashton Ash’s daughter. He was a practical young man,
and not one to confuse business with pleasure. If Carol had shown herself even mildly willing he would have had no compunction in transferring his attentions to her. And in fairness, why should I blame him? We were not and never had been engaged and, as Lisa had said, a rich wife is as useful to an ambitious young doctor as to any other man.

  I smiled wryly; that last date I had with him ‒ why had he asked me? Relaxation before the serious business of the evening? Or had he told her he just had to ask poor old Gillian ‒ she was so blue ‒ and had they enjoyed a splendid laugh over it?

  I did not mind them laughing; I had no feelings at all about that angle, no gloom to spare from the shock that Carol had taken that wretched stuff ‒ that, and the general depression I felt these days. But why she should have done anything so infantile and pointless I could not understand. What had she to gain? It was so stupid.

  I longed to be able to unburden to someone. I could not talk to Lisa about all this. It would not be fair to hand her this baby; she might feel that something should be done about it, or she might tell Tom, and somehow it would get around. Everything got around Joe’s. It was a chatty hospital.

  I stopped pretending to myself and thought how much I would like to talk to John. I let my mind relax into a glorious bout of wishful thinking in which there were no Sister O.P.s, Matrons, inquisitive colleagues, or traditional barriers between myself and him. I thought how restful he was, how kind, and above all how sensible. I could do with some of his sense, and his strength. That quality, where he was concerned, was not only physical.

  It was not yet seven, but I got up quickly. There was no future in this kind of wishful thinking. I dressed and went over to breakfast, where for the only occasion in my training I found I was the first nurse in the dining-room.

  My room was busy that day. Mr Rufford had an orthopaedic clinic all morning, and from one-thirty to four John took a mammoth general surgical clinic. The benches were full of old appendices, repairs, removed glands, and an occasional once-fractured skull that should really have been seen by Mr Ravel the cranial surgeon, if Mr Ravel had not been occupied in the theatre with a freshly broken head.