It was nice to dress up when I went to college. I realised I needed to concentrate on my pre-nursing course – but my friend Ann was keen to rush down to the canteen at lunchtime to start chatting to the new lads on the plumbing and electrical courses. I was more than happy to accompany her.
It was my first taste of independence and I loved it. I started seeing a boy with curly blond hair called Sam – my first boyfriend! But how would Mum react?
We went on a few dates and he seemed lovely. He was mad on football and was a Villa supporter, so I went to my first football match. I also went to his house to meet his dad and little sister. Sadly his mum had died the year before, so I tried to give him some comfort.
He hadn’t been to my house and it was something I was dreading. One night there was a knock on the door and there was Sam standing outside. He thought he would surprise me, which he certainly did. I grabbed my jacket and shouted to Mum as I left, ‘Just going for a walk in the park!’
We held hands as couples do and enjoyed a lovely spring evening. As Sam was giving me a rather passionate good night kiss, Mum suddenly appeared at the front gate and shouted, ‘Don’t forget about the dogs!’
Sam now looked confused but trying to be helpful said, ‘Do you want me to walk your dogs?’
‘NO!’ Mum replied sharply. ‘Phyllis knows what I mean.’ She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house.
I was so embarrassed by the whole incident, particularly when Sam asked about taking the poodles out the next time I saw him. The romance ended rather abruptly.
5
Nurse Training
I’d always wanted to be a nurse since I was a little girl. It appealed to me to be doing a job that would make a difference to people’s lives by helping them through difficult times, for instance recovering from illness. Nursing has enabled me to do that and more.
When I was just 17 I completed a pre-nursing course at college and passed – first class! Feeling very proud of myself, I then applied to become a cadet nurse, and was accepted on a course, subject to a successful medical.
Unfortunately this raised questions like, ‘Are there any hereditary illnesses we need to know about?’ When I said that I was adopted it stopped the conversation dead. I was so nervous. Firstly, I hadn’t spoken about my adoption to anyone since I’d been bullied in primary school. Secondly, I was wondering whether I should mention that I had been told both my natural parents had died of TB. I decided to say nothing, as this version of my parentage never rang true anyway.
My worries disappeared when I received a letter from the School of Nursing at Dudley Road Hospital, which informed me that I had been accepted on to the cadet course. By the summer of 1973 I started working on the wards, gaining practical experience before attending college. Three out of the five days we studied for our GCE O levels.
As cadet nurses we weren’t expected to work late shifts, weekends, nights or bank holidays, and for six months we worked Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m., usually being allowed to finish at 3.30 p.m. on Friday afternoons. This, however, depended on the ward sister you got.
It was an enjoyable time in my life and being adopted was something I rarely even thought about. I was young, doing a job that I loved and had made a lot of new friends. They were from various religions with different beliefs, and all pleasant and friendly with each other. I had the opportunity of meeting lots of other people my own age who were not Catholic. It was a great feeling.
There were two incidents during this period that I have only just realised were significant.
When I started working at the hospital I travelled on the number 11 bus, which went around the outer circle of Birmingham. I usually caught the bus at about eight in the morning, giving me plenty of time to be on the wards by nine.
I will always remember my first ward, which was ‘female medical’. In those days men and women were always on different wards, and they weren’t specialised as now. If a woman was admitted with a medical condition she would automatically go to a female medical ward. If she was coming in for an operation it would be a female surgical ward.
This left male medical and, last but not least, male surgical ward, which was the most popular with the cadet nurses. Surgical patients were a lot younger, which inevitably meant there was friendly banter on the wards. The men didn’t seem to complain as much as the women. Or so it seemed to us cadet nurses.
Each morning I would get off the bus on the corner of Heath Street, which was the road that ran alongside the hospital. There was wasteland on the left side of the street – the houses had been completely demolished and it was fast becoming the local rubbish tip. On the right side there were about 30 dilapidated terraced houses; some of them boarded up with galvanised steel, while others appeared to have people living in them. It was a long road and on the corner there was an old pub.
I usually arranged to meet my friend Patsy on the bus and we’d walk down Heath Street together. We felt safer in twos, and we felt vulnerable if we ever had to walk down that street on our own.
We were usually laughing and joking about all types of things. I remember feeling quite envious of Patsy as she was working on a male surgical ward, but at least she had some funny stories to tell me. Most of the time we were in our own little world and not really paying much attention to what was actually happening around us.
One particular morning there was a woman standing at her window and looking out. Her house was about halfway down the street. The reason I remember it so well was because she seemed to be in a trance, just staring at us.
She looked really scary. Her hair had been dyed black at some point but her roots were very noticeable and it looked like she hadn’t brushed it in months. She was wearing an old candlewick dressing gown, with a mug (of tea, I assumed) in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
It was very unusual to see anyone who lived in that street awake early in the morning, so perhaps that was another reason why we noticed her at the window. Patsy joked, ‘Look at that woman staring at you. Are you sure she’s not a long-lost relative? Come to think of it, she does look a bit like you!’ I remember giving her a friendly nudge and we were both giggling as we hurried along the street.
The second thing happened at the end of July 1973, when I was delighted at the thought of breaking up for two weeks’ holiday. I arranged to meet Patsy at the end of our shift and we walked through the hospital grounds together linking arms, as we so often did. Then at exactly the same time we took a deep breath and a little skip and shouted, ‘Yes, fresh air and we’re on holiday for a whole two weeks!’ It was a lovely summer’s day and the sun was still shining, even though it was late afternoon.
We decided to go for a walk in Summerfield Park which, is at the far end of Dudley Road. We sat there chatting, comparing our stories from the wards, before realising that we had lost all track of time. We hurried along Dudley Road as we were both conscious that we were going to be in serious trouble for getting home so late.
We noticed a few chairs had been placed on the pavement outside the pub on the corner of Heath Street as it was still very warm. A drunk Irishwoman sat on one of the chairs with a pint of cider in her hand. Two men, also the worse for drink, were sitting either side of her with pints of beer in their hands, leering. As 17-year-old girls we were feeling really scared and uncomfortable because of the two men’s unwanted glances.
Patsy whispered, ‘Why are they looking at us in that pervy way?’ I said we should just ignore them.
One of the men suddenly stood up and almost fell over at the same time. He just about managed to save his dignity and steadied himself, then hesitated as if he was about to come towards us. Changing his mind, he started shouting in a strong Dublin accent, his voice slurred and his manner intimidating, ‘These are the posh birds that work at the hospital. They won’t look at the likes of me.’
Then, with his hand shaking and his other hand steadying his index finger, he pointed at himself as if to ensure we had no
doubt who he was actually referring to. ‘No,’ he continued, ‘we wouldn’t be good enough for ʼem.’
The second man who was sitting in the other chair was laughing, then he suddenly shouted, ‘Are you both still virgins? Only we can soon put that right.’
We became even more anxious and were desperate to get away. By now they were all laughing as if they all thought it was one big joke. All of them were very drunk and had probably been drinking for most of the day. It was before the licensing laws had changed, so I’m sure they’d been drinking heavily before even going to the pub.
Patsy grabbed my arm and shouted, ‘Come on, Phyllis, your mum will be wondering where you are.’
Looking back, I now wonder, could that possibly have been my birth mother sitting on the chair between those two drunken men, laughing about crude remarks being made to two young, innocent girls? We both started to run along Heath Street as fast as we could, terrified of the two drunk men and upset by their lewd comments.
We were relieved when the bus arrived almost straightaway. From that day we always referred to that pub as ‘the dirty old man’s pub’. We avoided walking past, especially if it was a sunny day and there were going to be drunks sitting outside.
It was only when writing this book that these two incidents came back to me so very clearly. I am now certain that it was my mother I saw both times.
Although I think every child deserves to know the truth about their birth parents, they also need to be told in the right way. To have found out that my birth mother was a down-and-out and a chronic alcoholic at such an impressionable age could well have done more harm than good.
I remember when Patsy shouted my name, the drunken woman looked towards me. She did appear troubled in some way, as if she was in deep thought, or maybe she was just too drunk even to have noticed. I’ve often thought to myself that perhaps, when she was sober, and had had time to reflect on what had actually happened that day, she may have realised that she too had a daughter called Phyllis whom she had left at the orphanage more than 16 years before.
But for me, then, it was paramount that I concentrated on my studies to enable me to qualify as a nurse. If I had met my alcoholic mother then, it would have changed my life, and I fear not for the better.
It was now May 1974 and I was heading for my eighteenth birthday. I’d arranged to go out for a few drinks with some friends but it certainly wasn’t going to be in the type of pub my mother frequented. I always thought of her on my birthday, and wondered if she was thinking about me.
I completed my cadet nurse’s course, and on 4 July 1974, I started my nurse training. It was American Independence Day, and I remember thinking it was an appropriate date to move into the nurses’ home.
I was at last independent and also very relieved that I wouldn’t again have to walk along Heath Street. The nurses’ home was situated at the back of the hospital, and the bus stop was outside – buses went straight into the city centre in the opposite direction to Heath Street. Obviously, at the time I had no idea that in fact it was my own mother who I was trying to avoid.
I threw myself into my hospital training and relished being well on the way to becoming a fully qualified nurse. I can still conjure up the plastic swing doors which led to the traditional Nightingale wards and never seemed to close properly; the long, echoing corridors and the old fashioned lifts with metal criss-cross gates that were squeaky and heavy as you heaved them open and shut.
I also absolutely loved being a young 18-year-old, living away from home. Some nights we went out to pubs and sometimes we played music having a girly night in. I was starting to enjoy myself, although I was always aware about not getting too close to the boys – I didn’t want to get pregnant.
Five of us from the course went on a trip to Jersey, a first girly holiday! I was able to be bubbly without the fear of being told off. But it was also important to me to study hard and get on. I was conscious of being respectable and getting things right, and I was always level-headed.
At that time I drifted apart from my adoptive mother. Only Dad came to see me at the nurses’ home. He came to look over my first car, which I was buying from a ward sister, and he came up to the ward and looked so proud of me in my uniform. I just visited Mum on Boxing Day with the rest of the family and on her birthday.
There was another significant incident when I was a year into my training and working in the Accident and Emergency Department. My placement was for eight weeks, enabling me to gain experience in critical care. It wasn’t somewhere that I really enjoyed working, mainly because some of the trained staff could be quite intimidating. It could be frantically busy and often very scary. You had to think on your feet; at times it was a matter of life or death.
There was a particular Irish staff nurse who worked in the department. She was referred to by the students as ‘The Battle Axe’, and she was a real bully who didn’t have any time for those still learning. It was as if she had forgotten that she was once a student herself, and she had no patience.
One morning I was unlucky enough to be working on the same shift as her. I heard her talking to one of the junior doctors who was complaining that, ‘I can never find anything in this department.’ I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by his comment and was probably just having a general moan, but the staff nurse immediately became defensive and shouted, ‘That’s the bloody student nurses for you. They’re always putting things back in the wrong place.’ Before he could even respond she continued, ‘Why the hell we have them on such a busy department, God only knows.’ I was a nervous wreck if ever I had to work on her shift and I never learnt a thing. I was determined that when I qualified I would never treat a student in such a way.
If you worked a Saturday late shift it was inevitable that you would be dealing with the local drunks. They had often been fighting and needed attention for their cuts and bruises. Usually arrested by the police for being drunk and disorderly, they were very loud and disruptive, shouting abuse at us.
When you were sitting in the staff room you would sometimes overhear the doctors and nurses complaining about the problems the drunks were causing within the department – you’d hear, ‘I wish they would get their lives sorted out as they are costing the NHS so much time and money.’ The feeling was that we should be looking after really ill people who deserved our help, as that was what we trained for.
Although understanding their point of view, I always had a degree of sympathy and felt empathy towards vulnerable people, especially when they had some type of addiction. After all, alcoholism is an illness and, as health professionals, we should be there to help everyone.
Another frustration about working in A & E was that you never got to know the patients. When they were brought in they were normally taken straight into a cubicle and then, if they needed to be admitted, a porter and a nurse would escort them on to the ward.
The patients were often referred to as cubicle numbers instead of by their names, and you didn’t get to know them as individuals and were usually left wondering how they were getting on.
I was working a 12-hour shift one Saturday. It was June 1975, and I had desperately wanted to change with another student nurse so I could have the day off, but I knew it would be almost impossible. Saturday was not a popular day to work, let alone having to work for 12 hours, so reluctantly I had to do the shift after celebrating Patsy’s nineteenth birthday on the Friday night. I certainly wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
I arrived on duty that morning at 7.30 a.m., feeling hung-over from the previous night’s celebrations. To make matters even worse the Battle Axe was in charge of the department on that particular day. This of course added to the agony of having to work the shift that I would never forget.
When handing over to the day staff, the night staff said that a 47-year-old woman called Bridget had been brought in around 2 a.m. by the police. Of course, the name meant nothing to me at the time, as I didn’t know my birth mother’s Christian name. She had been
arrested for being drunk and disorderly and was involved in some type of disturbance in the local pub. They had said she was ‘a known alcoholic and lived in the area’. The police were concerned about a cut on her forehead, which was deep and had bled a lot.
She had been taken to one of the cubicles and I could hear her shouting and swearing in a strong Irish accent. She was very loud and was making my hangover even worse.
Her face was swollen and badly bruised with a mixture of congealed blood and eye make-up on each cheek. I noticed a tatty-looking pair of sandals hanging over the trolley. The rest of her was covered by a blanket.
The look of trust in her eyes strangely moved me, as she determinedly clung to the bed’s stainless steel safety sides. In my hung-over state I wondered, How on earth can anyone feel like this all the time? I was a student nurse and only into the second week of my placement, and I hadn’t had a lot of experience in dealing with drunken, aggressive patients. The whole thing was daunting, to say the least.
I tried to give her some reassurance but she wasn’t listening. She started to throw her arms around and at one point, almost punched me in the face. Eventually I managed to calm her down and give her a wash. She had wet herself and needed to be made comfortable, and with a bit of a struggle I managed to put a clean nightdress on her. She did appear to be more settled and lay down and was soon fast asleep. I was then sent on a coffee break.
On my return the Battle Axe shouted at me, so that everyone could hear, and I wished the ground would swallow me up – ‘Nurse Price, can you wake up? Whatever is the matter with you this morning? Get the woman in cubicle two a vomit bowl unless you want to have to clean her up again.’
As I turned my head away she shouted, ‘Come back. Don’t you realise that if someone has been drinking to excess, you must always put them in the recovery position? They could easily inhale their own vomit, which could cause them to aspirate and possibly choke. Then young lady, you would certainly be in a lot of trouble, and would you really want that on your conscience?’ To think I could have been responsible for my own mother choking!
Finding Tipperary Mary Page 7