‘Nurse Fraser, go down to X-Ray and ask for Mrs. Paul’s new plates. I expect they are still wet. If Dr. Vagus does not want to let you have them, will you say that Mr. Spence wants to look at them, stat, and we will send them back directly he has seen them? Quick as you can, Nurse.’
The Sister-in-charge of the X-Ray department received my request quite as gloomily as had the Theatre porter. But I remembered the porter’s advice and repeated word for word what Dexter had said.
Sighing she stood up. ‘If Mr. Spence wants them, you’ll have to take them. Mind you bring them back directly they have been seen.’ She led me into a cool, semi-darkened room, in which the many wet plates were hanging in rows. She removed three plates, clipped each separately on a holder and handed them to me in turn. ‘Be careful not to let them touch each other or anything else, or, as they are still wet, you may ruin the pictures.’
‘Yes, Sister.’ I accepted the plates gingerly and wished, not for the first time, that I possessed more than two hands. A third would be so useful now; four even better. A well-trained octopus, I mused, as I carried the plates along the basement corridor and up the two flights of stairs to the ward, would make a wonderful nurse. And the only uniform it would need would be a cap. I had a sudden, vivid mental picture of an octopus racing ahead of me on five legs, wearing my cap and carrying my plates in three tentacles.
A voice behind me asked, ‘Are you doing the admissions this afternoon, Nurse?’ It was Elsie, the Catherine ward maid.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I heard the Sister carrying on about them when I come out for me milk just now.’
I groaned. ‘Oh, dear! What have I done now?’
‘The Sister will tell you.’
Sister did, directly she had hung the wet plates on the rail reserved for them. And she told me what I had not done in front of the patients, Mr. Spence, his registrar, his houseman, and the rows of students. ‘Nurse Fraser, did you admit Mrs. Stevens?’
It was a catch-question, I realised, since, naturally she knew I had done the admitting that afternoon. My mind went quite blank. ‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Are you not aware ‒’ her voice was clear as a bell ‒ ‘that the temperatures of all new patients have to be taken on their admission?’
‘Yes, Sister.’ I was now really puzzled. I knew I had taken nine temperatures. I had nine figures in a row marked in ink on the reverse side of my apron hem.
‘Did you take Mrs. Stevens’s temperature, Nurse?’
‘Yes, Sister?’
She thrust a blank chart at me. ‘Then how do you account for the fact that it has not been recorded here?’
I looked momentarily at the chart, then at Sister. ‘I’m sorry, Sister. I am afraid I must have forgotten to chart it. I ‒ er ‒ have got a note of it.’
She said icily, ‘Then perhaps you will be good enough to copy your note on to this chart now? Mr. Spence is waiting.’
My hand shook as I took my pen from my bib pocket. I had to turn up my apron hem in front of them all to read what I had written. I was conscious of the many amused glances I was receiving from the students. When Sister had taken back the chart, they closed about Mrs. Stevens’s bed, and as I pushed my way out of their midst, I noticed that Tom Dillon was standing beside me. He caught my eye and lowered one of his own in an unmistakable and encouraging wink. I had passed him before I realised what he had done.
I turned back at once, but he was no longer looking at me. I was sorry to have been so rattled by Sister’s public reprimand. Tom’s wink had been friendly and I badly felt the need of a friend just then. I wished I had not seemed to cut him dead.
Catherine was a long ward; I had thought I had walked quickly to the Staff Nurse, but she held other views. ‘Nurse Fraser, what has come over you? You dawdled down the ward as if you were strolling at a garden party. Have you cut the bread and butter, or set the teas yet?’
‘No, Nurse.’
‘Go and see to them at once.’
I fled down to the kitchen, feeling very breathless and thinking longingly of my imaginary octopus. In the kitchen I was delighted to find Elsie buttering a great heap of cut bread. ‘Elsie, you’re an angel! Thanks awfully.’
‘Is Nurse Fraser in here?’ Chalmers, who had returned from the Theatre, stood in the doorway. ‘Give me a hand with these oxygen cylinders, will you?’
I glanced despairingly at Elsie, murmured, ‘Yes, Nurse,’ and went out to the flat. Three small oxygen cylinders were propped against the fire-buckets. Chalmers nodded at them.
‘They are all empty and have to go into the stands in the clinical-room. We’re using the large cylinders this afternoon now these have run out. Nurse Dexter wants them replaced, stat, as emergency spares. I have telephoned the dispensary, and the porter will be up with the large ones he is bringing as replacements. I can’t waste any more time on them as I must go back to Miss MacCrombie. Will you just fix them in their stands, scrawl “empty” on them, and leave them in the clinical-room now?’ She did not expect or wait for an answer.
The oxygen cylinders were heavier than I anticipated, never having attempted to move one without a stand before. I could not carry any of them, so I lugged the first along the floor like a sack. It slid quite easily over the polished surface, and I felt quite pleased with what I imagined was my ingenuity. I fixed the cylinder in its stand fairly easily, dusted my hands and went back for the other two. I walked straight into Tom and the tallish young man with fair hair who had retrieved my block. They were carrying one cylinder each.
‘Where do you want these put, Nurse?’ asked the fair man.
‘In the stands here ‒ and thank you very much.’
Tom nodded slightly as he set down his cylinder. His companion was far more affable. ‘A pleasure, Nurse. Call on us any time. Only too happy to oblige, eh, Tom?’
Tom nodded again.
‘You’ve saved me a good five minutes’ work,’ I told them gratefully. ‘Is the round over?’
‘Just finished. Sister and old man Spence are going through the thank-you-so-much Sister, and think-nothing-of-it Mr. Spence, routine.’
‘Then I’d better get on with my teas. Excuse me, and thanks again.’
They flattened themselves against the clinical-room wall to let me go past, then followed me out into the flat. The place was now full of students who were hanging about in the usual aimless fashion they had after a teaching round, waiting for Mr. Spence to stop talking to Sister in the ward doorway. Until the consultant walked right out of the ward, it was not considered etiquette for his students to take themselves away.
Elsie helped me to reset the trays on the large tea-trolley. She opened the kitchen door a little. ‘Let’s get some of this steam out, Nurse. There’s no wind this afternoon. Real cooked, I feel.’
I heard the fair man’s voice through the open doorway. He was not talking loudly, so he must have been standing directly in front of the door. ‘Now why couldn’t our little friend Monica have told us she wanted those cylinders carried into that room when we brought them out for her? Did my ears deceive me, or did she not categorically state, “By the fire-buckets”, Tom?’ Tom must have nodded in answer, because the same voice continued, ‘Talk about a crazy, mixed-up senior nurse! Your curly-headed friend would seem to have more than enough on her plate without taking on Monica’s surplus jobs.’
Someone else asked, ‘Who is Tom’s curly-headed friend? The brickdropping damsel? I say, chaps, have you heard about old Tom’s double life?’ There was a low rumble of speedily stifled laughter.
The fair man spoke again. ‘Tom hasn’t got time for a double life now. And he’s got a big date ahead of him. No straying from the straight and narrow any longer, eh, Tom?’
There was a scuffle of feet, and then the kitchen door was flung wide by Nurse Chalmers. ‘Nurse Fraser, aren’t you ever going to have tea ready? It’s gone half-past three. And what have you done to your apron?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve got black streaks round the
hem.’
I looked down quickly and saw she was right. I had not noticed them. ‘I expect I got them off the oxygen cylinders,’ I said.
‘I don’t see why,’ she retorted coolly. ‘I’ve managed to keep myself clean. You’ve got to learn not to get grubby.’
The fair student appeared at her side. He smiled at her cheerfully. ‘Possibly you’d have got grubby too, Monica, if you had laid a hand on those cylinders.’ He flicked the front of his jacket with a faintly affected air. ‘Behold the honourable dirty marks gained in your service. How about you, Tom? Did you escape unscathed?’
‘No.’ Tom loomed behind her. ‘Look.’ He held out his hands. ‘Black.’
It was a slight overstatement, as they were only very faintly grey. I would have been amused, as well as grateful for my two unexpected allies, had I not seen the way Chalmers was looking at me. She said she had no time to waste chatting with students. ‘I would advise you to take in those teas, Nurse Fraser. Sister will want to know what has delayed them.’
The students moved aside as I pushed the large trolley towards the ward; their gazes now were not so much amused as sympathetic. I was touched by their attitude. Somehow I did not feel quite so much an outsider, although I was very conscious of the black streaks ornamenting my apron skirt. But they had turned Chalmers into my open enemy. One of them was important to her ‒ and as Tom was about to be married, it was most probably the fair student. It was he who had spoken so firmly in my defence. It was kind of him, but I wished he had not done it.
Chapter Three
For the next few days I concentrated exclusively on my work on duty, my lectures off-duty, and sleep. Few junior nurses suffer from insomnia; I certainly did not.
‘You don’t look or sound like you, Sue,’ Jill said one day. ‘You’ve gone all serious. Are you sickening for something?’ she added anxiously. ‘Because if you are, please don’t take it. I could not face being left in Catherine alone with Chalmers. She doesn’t like me now because you and I are friends.’
‘Ever since that fair man spoke up on my behalf she has practically hissed whenever I’ve come in sight,’ I said. ‘Really, I can’t think why. I don’t even know his name; I had never seen him before and haven’t seen him since. She knows quite well juniors in their first ward don’t have any social life.’
Jill surprised me by saying she knew who the fair man was. ‘His name is Mark Jonathan, and he is working on the medical side at the moment. He is mostly in Margaret Ward.’
‘How in the world do you know that?’
‘Sally Ash told me.’ Sally was another member of our set, and one of the two juniors in Margaret, a woman’s medical ward. ‘Sally knows Thomas, too,’ she went on. ‘Or rather she knows who he is by sight, although she didn’t know his name until I told her. She said there was one medical student in Margaret who was about ten feet high and never spoke a word, and I knew it could only be our Thomas.’
‘But how can Thomas be on the medical side when he is always around in Catherine? We are surgical.’
‘I asked that, too. Sally didn’t know the answer but she says he and this man Jonathan are terrific friends. Jonathan does the talking and Thomas does the listening. And do you know what else she told me? Mark Jonathan and Chalmers used to be around a lot together last year. According to Sally, everyone thought they were practically engaged. Then it stopped. Just like that.’
‘How does Sally come to know that?’ I was intrigued. ‘Who told her?’
‘Someone called Page. Her Senior, who sinks to gossiping with juniors!’
‘What stopped the friendship between Chalmers and Mark Jonathan?’
‘No one seems to know. It just stopped. It’s all considered a terrific mystery, as Mark Jonathan is known to fancy the girls. He has had half-a-dozen pre-Chalmers girl friends, and, so Sally says, parted on the best of terms with them, and has remained on the best terms. Page said Mark Jonathan was in the wrong trade; he’s a born diplomat. Yet he and Chalmers are known to be on anything but good terms, and nobody knows why. Except perhaps Thomas, who doesn’t count.’
‘Why not?’ I queried, more sharply than I could have wished.
Luckily Jill was too engrossed with her theme to notice my tone. ‘Sue, be sensible. Can you imagine anyone trying to get any information out of Thomas? You might as well try and appeal to a block of granite.’
I had to smile. I thought over what she had said. ‘It’s obvious that Chalmers has got a chip the size of a house on her shoulder, and people like that are always on the look-out for imaginary slights. Since that afternoon she has been quite unbearable.’
Jill looked worried. ‘I hope she isn’t getting you down, Sue. Don’t let her do that. After all, you won’t have to stick her for much longer. We’ve been over our three months in Catherine. Cheer up.’
‘I will,’ I promised. I wished I could feel as sanguine as I sounded. Time was getting up speed. Thomas’s wedding must be due to take place very shortly. In a confused way I was longing for it to be over. I knew it could not have taken place yet, because I still saw him almost daily, sometimes a couple of times a day. We exchanged nods and formal ‘good mornings’, otherwise he never spoke to me at all, and not even Chalmers could have imagined that he came into Catherine to look at anything but the microscope. I wondered casually about the microscope in Margaret Ward. Why did he not use that?
Next evening a patient called Mrs. Ellis questioned me, as Jill had done, while I dusted her locker for the last time that day. ‘Is something wrong, dear? Are you feeling poorly, these days? You’ve lost your bright smile. We’ve all been missing it, I can tell you. And we’ve missed your little chats and the good laughs you used to give us. Got something on your mind to worry you, have you, dear?’ she added anxiously. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
I smiled at her pleasant, middle-aged face. ‘Have a heart, Mrs. Ellis! I’m supposed to be nursing you, not you me. I feel fine. I’m just trying to be a little less noisy.’
‘There, now!’ she beamed. ‘You look more like your old self already. Don’t try and be too quiet, dear. You keep on smiling and making us laugh. I was only saying to the Sister this afternoon that I didn’t know what I would have done without young Nurse Fraser when I first came in.’
I felt incredibly cheered. ‘Mrs. Ellis, that was nice of you. Thank you for putting in such a good word for me.’
She smoothed her top sheet neatly. ‘Why shouldn’t I put in a good word, dear? It’s true.’
When Sister was serving lunches next day, something happened that made me want to thank Mrs. Ellis still more. While Sister had been dishing up the normal diets, she had glanced several times towards Bed No. 18. When Sister began the special diets, she asked her Staff Nurse if anything had upset Miss MacCrombie in Bed No. 18. ‘That young woman looks very sad this morning. Is she quite comfortable?’
Nurse Dexter glanced anxiously towards the young Scotswoman who was sitting propped up on many pillows, with her hands patiently folded, and her eyes half-closed. ‘I have just been talking to her, Sister. She says she’s quite comfortable, only not at all hungry. She asks to have only milk.’
Sister looked thoughtful. ‘I would like her to have something more solid than milk. It’s high time she was on a full light diet, but I know she is being exceedingly difficult to coax.’ She took a warm plate from the electric food trolley and a small jar of creamed chicken. ‘It is also high time we succeeded in cheering her up. A girl of her age has no business to look so perpetually concerned.’
She added a tiny helping of minced vegetables to the chicken and glanced at me as Chalmers stepped forward with the tray. One of Chalmers’s official duties as Senior Probationer was the feeding of patients too ill to feed themselves. Sister looked at Chalmers with that same thoughtful expression on her face, then turned back to me. ‘I think Nurse Fraser may feed Miss MacCrombie this morning.’ She handed me the tray. ‘I expect you will be met with an outright refusal, Nurse, but I would lik
e Miss MacCrombie to eat at least some of this. See if you can persuade her.’
‘Yes, Sister.’ I was thrilled to be given this job, and not even the irate glance I was receiving from Chalmers could spoil my pleasure. Sister seldom allowed her juniors to do any feeding, since she did not consider that we had yet acquired the combination of skill and tact that is necessary when you want to coax someone who has no wish or intention of eating to eat.
Miss MacCrombie was polite but adamant in her refusal. ‘I’m not at all hungry, Nurse. I’d rather not eat now.’
I smiled at her and thought hard. Sister was an excellent nurse; if she considered Miss MacCrombie needed this meal, there was no question but that she did. ‘Won’t you try just a little creamed chicken? It’s easy to swallow, and everyone says it’s very nice.’
Jean MacCrombie was only three years older than myself. She was a pretty girl with a sweet and often wistful expression. She had thick, red hair and a fine sprinkling of golden freckles over her pale face. I did not know her well, as she had always been too ill for me to do more for her than clean round her bed and occasionally help to lift her into a more comfortable position. In all our wards the nursing of the very ill patients was done almost exclusively by the experienced nurses.
She moved her head restlessly. ‘Och, no, Nurse! I’m not hungry. I can’t eat.’
I looked round. Sister was watching me from behind her trolley. She gave me a grave little nod of encouragement. I noticed that Chalmers was smiling slightly to herself. Her smile clearly said, ‘I knew she’d be useless’. I looked back at the girl in front of me. She looked younger than twenty-two; she looked as if she might easily be Jill, or Sally, or one of the others in my set. ‘Miss MacCrombie, be a pal,’ I said softly. ‘Do something for me.’ Her eyes opened wide, and a trace of curiosity flickered through them. I decided to go on thinking of her as one of my set. ‘You needn’t eat much, just a little, a very little. But do be a pal and help me out. It’s as much as my life is worth to carry this plate back untouched to Sister.’
The Fair Wind: A moving 1950s hospital romance (The Anniversary Collection Book 6) Page 4