The Healing Time

by Lucilla Andrews

  Joel had slid down against the wall. His head and shoulders were slumped over his legs. I found his temporal pulse. It wasn’t easy to find. ‘He’s passed out. I don’t know why. Will you get Sister William and Mary? I’ll stay.’ She was still hovering. ‘Stat, Nurse! He needs a physician.’

  Joel was stirring. ‘Not a physician, S.S.O.,’ he mumbled. ‘Acute abdo.’ He tried to sit up too fast and knocked himself out again. He fell sideways on me. I lowered him to the floor, carefully pulling his legs out of the lift to get his head down. I had his tie off and was undoing his collar when Maggie appeared. She took Joel’s pulse whilst I covered him with the blankets she had brought with her. His closed face was grey, sunken and beaded with sweat. Maggie flattened her hand very gently over his middle, then glanced up at me. ‘P.A., P.G.U., or P.D.U.,’ she mouthed. ‘Ring the S.M.O., direct. I’ll wait.’

  Dr Bush, our Senior Medical Officer, had a bland physician’s voice. ‘Sister thinks he’s perforated? Dear, dear. I’d better take a look at him. Thank you, Staff Nurse.’

  Three minutes after his arrival, he asked me to ring Mr Lawrence, the Senior Surgical Officer.

  ‘Blown his appendix, has he?’ queried the S.S.O. unemotionally. ‘The things these physicians get up to. Right. I’ll be up.’

  Twenty minutes later, Joel was in the Wing general theatre. As was customary in Martha’s when a patient was a senior member of the hospital staff, the op was done by Mr Lawrence assisted by Mr Brown under an anaesthetic given by Dr Bush. The op was still in progress when Nurse Hills called me out of Mary main ward. ‘Sister Brecklehurst wants you on the phone, Staff.’

  Liz had been on my mind. ‘Nurse Holtsmoor here, Sister.’

  She said tensely, ‘We’ve just had a message from the general theatre.’

  My inside turned over. Any message sent out during any op was seldom reassuring. ‘I hope nothing’s gone wrong, Sister?’

  ‘The perforation is proving extensive. Of course he’ll have to be drained and as Lister is packed with so many fluish students, Mr Lawrence is reluctant to expose an acute surgical case to the infection. We haven’t an empty room in the Private Wing, so Mr Lawrence wants Dr Kirby to go into your empty William Small Ward One. He should be with you in about fifteen minutes. The theatre’ll ring you when they want your junior to bring him up to you.’

  I was glad he wasn’t dead. I still thought, Oh God! ‘Right, Sister. Thank you.’

  ‘I take it by now you’re up to immediate post-op nursing?’

  ‘I hope so, Sister.’

  ‘Not much one can do, is there? I must say I think Mr Lawrence very wise to avoid Lister, but I still feel the warding of any man in one of his own wards a most undesirable circumstance. I can’t imagine Dr Kirby will like the arrangement.’

  Her and me, both. ‘I’m afraid not, Sister.’

  ‘Unfortunate,’ she said and rang off.

  Nurse Hills was one set senior to Parsons. She was short and very sturdy, with light brown hair and pale blue eyes. She was quite pretty and would have been prettier had she looked less sulky. She heard the news with open horror. ‘He’s coming to us! Staff, I do not grog nursing doctors! I’ve worked in Lister! Doctors as patients ‒’ She tightened a hand round her own throat and stuck out her tongue. ‘Why does it have to be us?’

  ‘Because there’s no other handy bed. Will you get it ready whilst I finish off in Mary main?’

  ‘All right.’ She went off, then came back. ‘I’ve just remem- ‒ I rescued some flowers from the landing-floor and put them in water in the clinical room. Then I saw they were yours. Do you want them on the desk? This was with them.’ She produced an envelope from her apron bib. ‘Sorry I forgot.’

  ‘I had, too.’ I pushed the envelope in my apron bib to open later. ‘Thanks for saving my flowers. Shove ’em on the desk if you’ve got a moment; if not leave them where they are.’ A light was flashing on the panel. It was from Mary main. I hurried back. ‘Sorry to leave you sucking that thermometer, Mrs Clive.’

  ‘That’s not why I rang, Nurse. Not up, is it?’

  ‘No. You’re fine.’

  ‘I fancied I was, duck, seeing I feel so well in myself now and not even got a niggle of a cough.’ She sat forward to brush out her long white hair. ‘I rang as there’s something we want to ask you.’

  ‘Is right, Mrs Clive.’ Mrs Amato in the next bed put down the roller she had been about to add to the row over her forehead and exchanged an anxious glance with Mrs Soames on her left.

  Mrs Soames lowered the matinée jacket she was crocheting for her latest grandchild. ‘The other nurse is new, dear. We thought you’d tell us best.’

  No-one now seeing those three would easily recall their near-moribund appearance on Thursday evening. ‘What can I tell you, ladies?’

  Mrs Clive took a conspiratorial look round. Every patient in the ward was sitting forward expectantly. ‘Is it right what they’re saying, dear? Has our Doctor been took bad? Our Dr Kirby?’

  How they knew already, I had no idea. Hills clearly hadn’t told them and I very much doubted any of the day nurses had. That they knew didn’t surprise me. Ward patients always know everything about any event occurring in or near their ward as soon as the event happens, and frequently before. Since the truth, if not all the truth, would worry them less than an evasion, I gave it. Even so, that rocked their world.

  ‘It don’t seem right!’ Mrs Soames shook her head over her crochet. ‘The Doctor poorly! I mean you don’t sort of think of doctors getting poorly! And ever such a kind young man like our Dr Kirby! Tch. Tch. Tch. I’m ever so sorry, dear. We’re all ever so sorry. We’ll miss him, shocking.’

  The ward nodded in appalled unison. Mrs Clive had an idea. ‘Can you get us a Get Well card for him, dear? A nice big fancy one we can all sign?’

  I had known the patients liked Joel, but never how much till that night. Before I had them all settled I had fixed to buy Get Well cards for both main wards and all the medical patients in our small wards.

  Mr Worstley echoed the rest. ‘Happen it shouldn’t but there’s no denying it comes as a shock to discover doctor’s human as the next man. I’m that sorry, lass, and now I come to put my mind to it, I’ve a notion I thought he looked right poorly today. I reckoned he was just tired ‒ and who’d not be, the hours these hospital lads work. If you were to ask me, lass, time they got themselves a union to work on job.’

  I was not enjoying my night. The work and the patients were fine, but I wanted to crawl back under a stone. I had fallen into the same error as the patients, but with far less excuse. Never once had it struck me to remember Joel was human and consequently subject to human ailments.

  Constant fatigue frayed the most equable temper. Fatigue, plus the insidious onset of a condition like a ‘grumbling appendix’ could have the Archangel Gabriel himself snapping. I had been such a big-hearted Nurse Nightingale Holtsmoor over Jolly’s migraine. Hadn’t I diagnosed her correctly all by my clever little self? Big deal ‒ even if I could travel in a small lift with a man about to collapse with an acute appendix and been too busy blowing my top to notice he looked anything more than the wrong colour.

  The phone pinged. ‘General Theatre, Wing. Can we have a nurse for Dr Kirby?’

  ‘Yes, Nurse. How is he?’

  ‘Not yet round. Otherwise, satisfactory.’

  I sent off Hills, then went into William Small Ward One to check all was ready. It was. I was backing towards the door and still looking at the neat theatre pack sitting on the electric blanket in the empty bed, when Dr Cousins appeared at my elbow.

  ‘Himself?’

  ‘Yes. My junior’s gone for him.’

  ‘Sure to God,’ he observed, ‘if there’s one certain fact in this hospital life we lead, it is that there’s no certainty at all what’s going to happen next. And a fine doctor I am! It’s small wonder they didn’t hand me an M.D. with my Membership.’

  I glanced at him. ‘You missed it too?’

&
nbsp; ‘Didn’t I just! And the man my boss, no less and sitting right next to me at supper tonight and drinking no more than coffee. And do you know what I thought?’ I shook my head. ‘That he’d no worse than a hangover from the night out he had last night with Liz Brecklehurst. I’ve just seen her. She tells me he took nothing stronger than tomato juice, saying maybe he’d eaten something to upset his guts. I was really sorry for the poor girl. She’s taken this hard, and so will Wally Brown, and who’ll blame the decent man? There’s no pleasure at all in shoving a sucker into the peritoneum of one of your best friends.’

  ‘I never realised he and Kirby were that.’

  ‘Indeed they are, which has made for sweetness and light for the Wing residents. There are few worse hells than working under bosses at each other’s throats. I’m wondering how we’ll fare with Dr Rowlands. You’ve heard he’s taking over as S.M.R., W.?’

  ‘Night Super told me. I don’t know him. Do you?’

  ‘Not well, but seeing he’s Bob Bush’s senior deputy in the old blocks there’s no doubt he must know his medicine since he only joined us from the Antipodes three years ago.’

  ‘Australia or New Zealand?’

  ‘I’ve no conception. You think it matters?’

  ‘It probably will to him.’

  ‘So it will. If I’m to make the right impression, I’d best find out.’ He blew me a kiss. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Mrs H, and I love you for it!’

  Mr Brown was very late for his round that night. He sipped his strong, sweet tea, looking as if he found nothing and no-one lovely. ‘Only two types. Only two types in the whole ruddy medical profession. One never stops diagnosing and treating himself for the incipient ailments he hasn’t got; the other ignores his symptoms until said symptoms refuse to be ignored any longer and you have to scrape the pieces off the floor.’ He looked at Joel’s open door and allowed himself a gloomy smile. ‘I’ve just offered to cut down the nearest plane tree to provide extra-ammunition for all the breast beating presently taking place on the medical side. Kirby could’ve used a few twigs himself in the anaesthetic room. He surfaced enough to explain his appendix had been playing up for the last two or three weeks but as it wasn’t too bad he hoped he’d get away with it. Trust a good physician to hash up his own surgical diagnosis! Good job you were with him when it blew.’

  ‘Yes.’ (If one overlooked the medical fact that an emotional scene was highly undesirable immediate pre-op therapy.) I looked at my jonquils which had now appeared on the desk and remembered absently I had still to read George’s letter. ‘How do you think he’ll do, Mr Brown?’

  ‘We’ve got the little swine out, but as he’s in the profession, if anything can go wrong, by God it will! So I’m not tempting providence, Staff.’ He drained his cup. ‘I leave that to the physicians. Well. One more look at him and I’m off to bed, or you’ll be picking me off the floor!’

  A few minutes later Hills removed his empty cup yawning her head off. ‘Doesn’t anything ever happen in this ward?’ She looked superior as I grabbed the nearest wood. ‘I know we’ve had one admission, but on my last nights in Catherine we’d them coming in all night long.’

  It was the first night of her second term on nights. Catherine was a major accident ward. I reminded her William and Mary was a transition unit. ‘You can’t expect the same blood and thunder as in accidents.’

  ‘I’ll just die of dreariness!’

  ‘Make a change from an S.M.R., W., collapsing on our doorstep.’

  She was unamused and, after a few hours’ familiarity with Joel as a patient, unimpressed. ‘I suppose you don’t mind being slack as it must all have been so much slacker when you trained. I mean, nothing like so much traffic.’

  ‘Horse and buggy days, dear, and me and Miss Nightingale doing the night rounds in Scutari. God, did the tallow in our lamps pong! Almost as bad as the gangrene. Smelt gangrene yet? You will and you’ll remember it when you do. Another thing one never forgets is the night-long battle with sleep one’s first night back on. So why don’t you stop tempting fate and go out on the balcony for air? Then let’s have our tea early. The combination should wake you up.’

  She did not look as intelligent as Parsons, nor did she look a fool. She took herself off to the balcony with the speed of a junior who has suddenly decided she had better watch her step. I was rather amused to catch myself thinking I hoped she would for both our sakes. I wondered which had pushed me so deep back in the groove? Having to cope with, or without Joel? Whichever it was, it was obviously only a question of time before I chimed in on the old ‘student nurses nowadays are not what they were in my day’!

  Chapter Eleven

  SACKCLOTH AND ASHES FOR TWO

  Nanny was lightless and lifeless as an electronic tomb. The twin, blank screens of the cardiac monitors mesmerised me and then showed me my reflection duplicated. Had they been mirrors, I would have turned their faces to the wall.

  It was nearly time for another check on Joel. I went all round, starting with the women and ending in William One. No-one was awake.

  Joel had come round shortly after returning from the theatre, and having consciously unclenched his teeth to let me take out his airway, had slid instantly into a heavy sleep. Hills and I had raised his head and shoulders on pillows, but he hadn’t known it.

  His sleep now was lighter but the strong smell of the anaesthetic lingered in his ward air just as its effects were lingering in his body. He had slipped a little down in bed, but not enough to justify the new very real risk of waking him that any lifting would involve. On all counts, he needed as much sleep as he could get.

  He was very pale, but no longer a greenish-grey, and his skin texture looked much more normal. Against the whiteness of his face, gown, and bed linen, his hair and eyebrows stood out darkly. The shadows beneath his eyes were nearly as black.

  At first I studied his unguarded face only clinically, then seeing how much younger he looked in sleep, my mind went back to the years both my night juniors thought buried in the dust of history. Latterly, they had often seemed that way to me. I wondered now, did they happen? Or did I dream them all up?

  I flicked my watch out of my bib pocket to take his pulse and then noticed the small scar under his right eyebrow. Having deep-set eyes, that scar now could only show when his eyes were closed. It was the result of a kick in the face at rugger in ‒ when? My second? No, third year. I smiled involuntarily, remembering how he had come to call for me that same evening with closed right eye and hideously swollen nose. Being then senior enough to entertain male guests in my room until nine-thirty, I had insisted he needed an ice-pack and taken him up to my room for treatment. (According to Parsons that particular privilege had now been extended to ten-thirty and the Home Sister on-duty who still stalked the corridors during the permissive period was still known as the Chastity Watch.) My sponge-bag had had a leak one end and faulty zip the other and the ice-cubes had been much too big. Joel had screamed blue murder. ‘Off, girl, off! It’s all going down my bloody neck! Help! Sanctuary! Where’s the C.W.? Get off my chest, girl!’

  Home Sister had stormed in without knocking. ‘Nurse Dexter, what is going on? And WHAT are you doing to that poor boy! Is this your handiwork, Nurse?’

  We had told her the truth. We were never certain she had believed us.

  ‘Hallo, Pip.’ Joel had woken and was watching me, dreamily. ‘Am I in William?’

  ‘Yes. Too many flu bugs in Lister. The S.S.O.’s snicked out your appendix and you’re doing nicely.’ I took his pulse. ‘Very nicely. How do you feel?’

  ‘Sloshed.’ His speech was faintly slurred. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Half-past two, Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Tuesday? What’s happened to Monday?’

  ‘It went.’ I clicked open the blood-pressure box. ‘Mind if I take your pressure whilst you’re awake?’

  ‘I’m not awake, darling, I’m floating way up here.’ He flapped a hand over his head. ‘Be my guest.’


  ‘Thanks.’

  He gazed at me intently through the hangover haze of post-anaesthesia as if that was the only way he could focus properly. In the morning he might vaguely recall seeing me now, but it was highly unlikely he would remember more than that, and certainly not anything either of us now said. At his present stage, any spoken words were coming straight out of his sub-conscious. In general, in general anaesthesia, the conscious sleeps first and wakes last.

  ‘How’s my rate, Pip?’

  ‘Fine.’ I pulled off my stethoscope and tucked it through my belt.

  ‘Not going to give me the score?’

  ‘Not me.’ I smiled at him. ‘You are far too sloshed.’

  ‘I am, aren’t I?’ He grinned euphorically. ‘Maybe I should do this more often?’

  ‘Maybe you should get some more sleep. Let me get you a bit higher ‒ first ‒ hey, Joel, stop that, love! Pretend you’re a log and leave this to me. You chuck yourself about like that and you’ll bust the S.S.O.’s stitchery and he’ll bust my neck! That’s better.’ I laid him back by the shoulders, then readjusted the pillow directly under his head. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Nice thanks.’ His eyes were half-closed. ‘Lovely girls, you nurses. Don’t know what we patients’d do without you.’

  ‘Ministering angels, that’s us. Thirsty?’

  ‘Dry as hell.’

  ‘Have a sip of lemonade.’ I raised his head with one hand and the feeder to his lips with the other. ‘Only sips, or you’ll bring it back and that’ll upset the S.M.O.’

  ‘Will he bust your neck?’

  ‘In two places.’

  He took my neck in his hand as I bent over him. ‘Too soft for violence. What now?’

  ‘I just want to check your dressing.’ It was intact. ‘Joel, listen. You’ve got a drain in here. Can you try and remember that?’

  ‘A drain?’ He opened his eyes, wide. ‘Why? I perforate?’ I nodded. He was very amused. ‘That was a turn-up for the book! Who gassed me? Bob Bush?’