‘There are many ward sisters in this hospital who will be envious of our status today, becoming a two-consultant ward. Think yourselves very lucky. Life may become more difficult, but that is a challenge we must be seen to relish. Brave face and all that. But remember this. It is Mr Scriven who is our first priority. He must and will always come first. This new Mr Gaskell has to earn his stripes.’
The night nurse, who had been trying to suppress a yawn, suddenly spoke.
‘Sorry, Sister. There is a letter here for you. The porter brought it down last night.’ She opened the desk drawer, took out an envelope and gave it to Sister Antrobus. Everyone thought that Sister Antrobus was about to explode. What if the night nurse hadn’t heard what she said and had forgotten to give her the letter? A twelve-and-a-half-hour shift was no excuse. But Sister Antrobus was so intent on the letter that reprimanding the night nurse for shoddiness went clean out of her mind. She began to read the contents out loud as the night nurse slipped thankfully out of the room.
‘Ah, it’s from our new consultant, Mr Gaskell. I had thought it was from Mr Scriven.’ A look of disappointment flitted across her face. ‘He has written that he disapproves of long periods of bed rest.’ Sister Antrobus looked over the top of her glasses at the assembled nurses, but if she had expected a shocked reaction she was disappointed. There was none. Shorter bed rest meant fewer bed baths. The day staff approved of Mr Gaskell already. She read a passage again, her lips moving rapidly, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had seen, before she continued, almost to herself: ‘Well, I’m not sure I agree with that. As we know, Mr Scriven removes his post-hysterectomy abdominal sutures after fourteen days. Mr Gaskell is going to abandon the two-week rule and his are to be removed after eight days.’ Sister Antrobus’s voice had risen in disbelief. ‘He also wants to introduce a new antiseptic wash called chlorhexidine instead of soap and water douches. He also writes that he “will begin experimenting with metal clips for abdominal hysterectomies instead of catgut suturing”. The chlorhexidine solution will be arriving on the ward today directly from pharmacy. He says we are to dilute one part chlorhexidine with twenty parts of warm water in a half-gallon jug. Don’t anyone get any of that wrong.’ She slammed the letter on the desk and looked round. Pammy felt her head lighten with the effort of absorbing all she had heard.
‘Beds, now,’ said Sister Antrobus. ‘Every bed bath to be finished before coffee or there will be no coffee. I am off to Matron’s office. Ward round is at ten. Theatre list starts at two. Don’t anyone let Nurse Tanner give a nil by mouth a drink; we know how easily that can happen when a fool is on the ward.’ With that, she flounced out of the room with the offending letter from Mr Gaskell in her hand and Pammy firmly on her radar.
As soon as Sister Antrobus had said ‘Don’t anyone get any of that wrong’ Pammy had known her chances were slim. She had one stroke of luck, though: Staff Nurse Bates (‘my name is Kate, but don’t ever call me that on the ward’) appeared to be nice and friendly, and Pammy thought she might at least survive the morning, if not the week.
‘Come on then,’ said Staff Nurse. ‘Let’s start with the bedpans and then we can crack on with the beds.’
She walked very fast, and Pammy had to run to keep up.
‘Gosh, stop. Don’t ever run, will you? You’ll be sent outside to stand in front of a firing squad if you do that. The head of the last nurse who ran on ward two is still on a spike on the banks of the Mersey.’
Pammy blanched, and Staff laughed. ‘I’m only joking, you idiot. Right, this is the sluice room. And here is the bedpan trolley.’ Staff took hold of the white enamel trolley at one end and swung it away from the wall. ‘See how nice and clean the night nurses have left it? That is how Sister Antrobus expects it to be every minute of the day. It’s not always possible, so just be aware, if she walks into the room while you are shovelling shit and thinking to yourself can life get any worse, it can. The Anteater can come in and show you by just how much.’
Pammy stood still, too afraid to speak or respond.
‘Nurse Tanner, you will have to get used to something. Sister Antrobus will show you no mercy, ever. She will always find something wrong; she will never praise you for doing something right. Did you see the trick Nurse Jones pulled on you? Be careful there. She wants to be a staff nurse on this ward when she qualifies, and has a nasty turn about her. Sister Antrobus loves her. That won’t be the only trick she will try to pull on you.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ said Pammy. ‘I don’t know how, but so help me God, I will get her back.’
‘I bet you will.’ Staff Nurse grinned. ‘Of course, that post will be allocated by Matron, who will always be on the side of the Anteater. So don’t say you haven’t been warned. Right, now, listen.’ She began pulling metal bedpans down from their resting place on top of a long warm pipe. Despite the pipe, the room was freezing, because the large sash windows were half open. ‘Our bedpans on ward two contain more blood than anything else, and as you will see, a little goes a long, long way.’ She laughed out loud as Pammy’s own blood drained from her face once more.
‘My best tip to you is to move as fast as you can and keep pulling the flush as soon as the tank fills. Just keep the water running. It helps with the smell, just a little.’
She had led Pammy to what looked like an oversized toilet, with no seat and a huge tank attached to the wall behind it.
‘Watch me.’ She took an empty bedpan over to the long white shallow sink and filled it with water. ‘See, you leave the sink taps running, don’t turn them off ever. You take the dirty pan from the trolley, tip and flush at the same time – that way you get rid of the smell faster – then turn and shove it straight under the running tap, leave it and lean back for the next one. When you have two in the sink you begin the scrubbing with this.’ Staff picked up a bristle brush and a container of detergent. ‘Try not to get too much of this neat on to your skin; it bloody well burns. Then, with two pans clean, you pop them up on to the pipe and take the next dirty from the trolley and begin again.’
‘Right, I’ve got that,’ said Pammy. ‘I’ve changed a few bad nappies in my time. I’ll be fine.’ Her voice sounded far more confident than she felt.
Staff Nurse smiled. ‘Well, maybe you can tell me the difference after you have worked on one of the general surgical wards. Here’s a couple of golden rules to help you survive. Don’t ever be caught smoking in the bathroom when you are bathing a patient. Some of the new charge nurses are really fine about that on their wards and some will even slip you a ciggie to take in with you, but not on here. On some wards you can have a ciggie in the dayroom with the patients, and God love her, Sister on ward nine smokes when she’s chatting to patients. She says it makes them feel better if she has one with them when she’s giving them a bit of bad news. But on here, Sister Antrobus is very, very weird about it. She has a no smoking rule. When I’m desperate I sneak into the bathroom when it’s empty and lean out of the window, and I actually saw her once, when I came back out, walking around the ward with her nose in the air, trying to trace the smell. She’s never caught me, though, and by the way, the patients hate her. She never stops going on at them about smoking in their beds.
‘Always be one step ahead of her. Never bring a whole packet on to the ward, just slip a couple into your apron pocket. You can always cadge a match from a patient. They all smoke, the patients. Every one of them has ciggies and matches in their handbags. The domestics clean the bedside ashtrays, not us, so you don’t have to do that. We have enough to do.’
By the time ten o’clock arrived, Pammy had no idea how she hadn’t yet thrown up. She had helped her mam and other women in her street change a baby’s nappy often enough, and she had even cleaned up Lorraine’s vomit when she was ill, but they weren’t grown women and there had been no blood to deal with. There were times during the morning when, more than once, she had to hold on to the side of the huge white sink and let the water run clear as she swall
owed deep, deep gulps of air. It was her first morning, her first bedpan round, and she wished it were her last. Four more rounds faced her before her shift was over. As soon as she had finished the bedpans, she headed straight back out on to the ward to find Staff Nurse Bates and help her with the round known as backs and beds. She was terrified she hadn’t left the sluice room clean enough or had done something wrong, and worried that she had taken ages longer than she should have.
She found Staff Nurse behind a set of drawn pink curtains at the bedside of a patient. She was nervous, feeling as though she maybe needed to wait to be asked to enter, or knock on something.
‘For goodness’ sake, come in.’ Staff leant over the bed and pulled the curtain back. ‘This is Mrs Toft.’ Staff smiled at the patient, who was lying flat on her back in the bed. ‘Mrs Toft will be with us for a while, won’t you, my lovely?’
Mrs Toft grinned back at her. ‘I do wish you would call me Dottie, Staff Nurse,’ she said.
‘God, so do I,’ Staff Nurse replied, ‘but if I did, Sister would have my guts for garters. This is our new probationer, Nurse Tanner.’
Pammy smiled at the painfully thin woman in the bed. She recognized the name and knew from the day report she was a cancer patient healing from a radical vulvectomy, and she had to steel herself not to show a scrap of emotion on her face as she helped to remove the draw sheet from under her and replace it with a new one. Dottie weighed next to nothing and Staff said, ‘While I hold her up, Nurse Tanner, you give her bum a good old rub for me.’
Pammy didn’t need to have that explained to her. Sister Ryan had hammered home the care of pressure points and bedsores, and although she had only ever practised on a dummy she knew exactly what needed to be done. She tipped the surgical spirit from the bottle on the trolley into the palm of her hand and rubbed the bony coccyx of Mrs Toft as with almost no effort whatsoever Nurse Bates held her up off the clean draw sheet.
Staff Nurse set Mrs Toft back down for a moment while Pammy placed the top back on the brown ribbed bottle of surgical spirit.
‘Now take the lid off the tin of zinc and castor oil cream and I’ll lift her again. Are you ready, my lovely?’ Staff Nurse smiled down at Mrs Toft and a look of trust and affection passed between them.
‘OK then, one, two, three.’ She lifted Mrs Toft but this time Pammy could see that the effort showed on her face. ‘Cover her hips too.’
The antiseptic smell of the thick white cream filled the air as Pammy scooped out a generous amount and rubbed it in, working as fast as she could.
‘Now, sprinkle some of that talcum powder on to her back. It stops the sheet pulling her skin one way while we move her another. Then slide the rubber ring into a clean pillow case and place it underneath her.’
Staff put Dottie Toft down for a moment and then lifted her again, and Pammy was touched by her tenderness as she whispered, ‘Are you all right, my lovely? This isn’t hurting you, is it?’
Dottie, a woman who had suffered a great deal, nodded. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Good, because that is all we want, isn’t it? For you to be happy and to feel well again. Don’t you worry about anything. We will have you right as rain as soon as we can.’
As they gently laid Dottie back down on the ring, Pammy saw Dottie’s wound for the first time. She felt nauseous. God, please no, don’t let me faint.
After they finished her bed bath, Staff picked up Dorothy’s tin of Irresistible talcum powder and shook it under her breasts and arms. The air became filled with white powdery clouds as they all coughed and spluttered. ‘And a bit for me too,’ Staff laughed as she pulled open the top of her dress and pretended to tip the talcum powder down. Dottie giggled like a small child at her antics.
‘Pass me a ciggie now you’ve finished, would you, love?’ she said, smiling at Pammy. Pammy pushed the table across the bed, with her ashtray and cigarettes.
‘There you go, Mrs Toft,’ she said with a smile.
‘For God’s sake, don’t set them curtains on fire again,’ said Staff Nurse, wagging a playful finger. ‘I’ve only just finished sewing the new pair to replace them.’ She turned to Pammy. ‘Matron made me sit up all night, she did, after our Dottie almost burnt the place down last week.’ Dottie tried to protest at what were obviously Staff Nurse’s mischievous white lies, but she was laughing far too hard and began to choke on her cigarette smoke.
‘Right, enough of that.’ Staff Nurse looked down the ward anxiously. ‘Sister Antrobus will be back in a moment and if she sees you laughing she will be sending me to Matron on report.’
Once they had cleared everything back on to the bed bath trolley, placed the wire cage over Dottie’s pelvis and covered it with a clean sheet that they folded down at the top to exactly eighteen inches, Pammy put the used bedding on the dirty linen trolley. As she turned back to say goodbye to Dottie and draw the curtains, Dottie reached up and gave her hand a little squeeze.
‘Staff Nurse told me you were joining her and I would be your first bed bath. I hope I wasn’t too difficult for you, and that thing down there, it wasn’t too much of a shock?’
Pammy responded instantly. ‘Oh no, not at all. I will never forget my first bed bath, and thank you so much for being so nice to a stupid probationer like me.’
Pammy knew she really would never forget her first patient. She had learnt more in those few minutes than she had in weeks in the classroom, the most valuable lesson being the way Staff had made Dottie laugh and feel better. As good as any painkiller or medicine. Nursing wasn’t all about the tablets or the dressings or the bedpans. It wasn’t about clean floors or an eighteen-inch turn-down; it was about really caring for your patient enough to brighten her day. She also knew she would never forget the overpowering scent of Irresistible talcum powder. It was something she would never smell for the rest of her life without thinking of Dottie Toft.
*
Jake and Martha sat on the low wall in front of the bins, while Jake rolled a cigarette and Martha held her cup of tea in one hand and his in the other. She watched as he carefully twirled his Rizla paper between finger and thumb.
‘When are you going to tell your mam, then?’ Jake asked. ‘We can’t keep the date a secret for ever. You will want to plan a nice wedding, won’t you?’ He slipped the tobacco tin into his overall pocket and lit up, then reached out to take his tea.
‘We can tell her together on Sunday,’ said Martha. ‘Me mam has said I should take you to our house for yer tea when we come back from the park.’ Jake grinned from ear to ear.
‘Great, I can’t wait. What do you bet everyone in the hospital will know, before we even get back into work on Monday morning?’
Martha laughed. ‘Jake, everyone in Liverpool will know, never mind St Angelus.’
‘Can I give yer a kiss here, Martha?’ Jake asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘No, you bloody well cannot,’ said Martha. ‘Get back to work now. I’m not marrying a man who hasn’t got a wage.’
As Martha walked back to her kitchenette next to the consultants’ sitting room, she grinned to herself. I want a hat, she thought. Not fancy, just a nice pillbox with a net veil and a pretty flower. She smiled to herself as for the hundredth time she tried to decide when and how she would ask her friend Josie if she would be a maid of honour.
*
He had been watching her through the window, his eyes never leaving her face. As he had left the house that morning, his wife had thrown a potted palm down the stairs and it had caught him between his shoulder blades just as he opened the front door. It had hurt, but not as much as it had dented his pride, or inflamed his anger. He had restricted her housekeeping allowance in order to limit her daily alcohol intake.
‘Give me more money,’ she had screamed at him. That was after she had thrown the plant and before she had slipped down the wall, like a rag doll, and slumped on to the floor. When he turned to look back up the stairs, he saw that her face was puce with anger.
‘Give me so
me bloody money,’ she screamed again.
Earlier in the morning she had been pleasant enough, claiming the money was for food and a few necessities. When he told her he would buy whatever she needed on his way home she lost her temper, and then she tried to kill him by aiming the potted palm down the stairs and at his head.
As he watched Martha and Jake, flirting and giggling, he felt a resentful anger bubble up within.
*
Martha washed up the dishes that had been left in the sink. She had put the last of them in the cupboard and was just drying her hands on her apron, ready to damp-polish the sitting room, when he took her by surprise. The doctors were all busy in outpatients and it would be another hour before any of them returned to the sitting room, half starved and looking for lunch.
‘Hello, my sweet,’ he said as he pushed his way in, forcing Martha backwards with him.
‘Mr Scriven,’ she said in an alarmed voice. But that was the last thing she was able to say for some time as his hand slammed over her mouth and she felt her knees buckle beneath her.
Chapter fifteen
As the four girls met by the back entrance of the hospital to walk home together, they fought for the gaps in the chatter to explain their day.
‘I only nearly mixed up two blood samples,’ said Victoria. ‘A junior doctor just shoved them into my hand and asked me to shake them all the way to the pathology laboratory. I had absolutely no idea what he was on about, but a third year saved me and then when she took them out of my hand she said, “Which belongs to who?” Well, I had no idea and the doctor was on his way out of the door until she stopped him, and all the time she was shaking these glass tubes to stop the blood from clotting. It was enough to make one want to give up on the first day.’
‘Well, I bet you didn’t have a long conversation with a dead body, get flung into a dirty linen basket and start a fight on the ward,’ Dana chirped, and in unison they all cried, ‘Oh God, Dana, you are so Irish. Are you making all that up?’
The Angels of Lovely Lane Page 23