A Nurse's Life: Heart-warming and humorous tales from a 1950s student nurse (Nurse Jane Grant)

by Jane Grant

  A Nurse’s Life

  Heart-warming and humorous tales from a 1950s student nurse

  Jane Grant

  Copyright © The Estate of Jane Grant 2014

  This edition first published by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  www.greatstorieswithheart.com

  First published in Great Britain in 1960 as Come Hither, Nurse

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Other titles available in this series

  More from a Nurse’s Life

  A Sister’s Life

  A Country Life

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Preview chapter: More from a Nurse’s Life

  Preview: A Country Practice by Judith Colquhoun

  Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell

  Preview: Home from Home by Cath Cole

  Preview: City Hospital Book 1: New Blood by Keith Miles

  Preview: A Doctor’s Life by Dr Robert Clifford

  First year

  Chapter One

  It was a murky, drizzling January day when I got off the bus and walked up the drive to Borwood, carrying my heavy suitcase. I could see, as I hurried out of the rain on to the pillared porch, that the house was large and stuccoed, with big square windows, and evergreen shrubs planted on each side of the front door. It was one of several Victorian mansions on the outskirts of this country town, and had, before I was born, been the home of a rich man and his family. These houses had now become Homes of a different kind, and some of them were Schools. Borwood was a Training School for Nurses, attached to the big London Hospital of St. Bernard’s.

  I was feeling very frightened and also worried in case nursing was not really my vocation. Ever since I was six years old I had said I wanted to nurse, but lately, as it came nearer the point when I should start training, everyone had begun telling me what hard work it was and how I should hate it. All except our family doctor who said, ‘Be a nurse, Jane. I’ve seen nearly everything in my life, but I’ve never seen a nurse who’s bored.’

  Now I was cold and tired and scared, and also homesick. I rang the bell, and was admitted by the porter and shown into Sister Tutor’s room.

  Sister Charlotte was a tall, fair woman, much younger than I expected, and her greeting, though dignified, was welcoming and polite.

  ‘How do you do. I hope you will be happy here.’

  She then went on to say firmly that if I felt this was not going to be my ‘vocation’ (how that word kept cropping up) I must leave immediately and save her time and everybody else’s. But, she added rather more gently, seeing my crestfallen face, there is no job like nursing, and it is a real opportunity to help your fellow human beings. At the moment, I did not feel at all kindly disposed to any of them.

  I was assigned to a subordinate Sister, and ushered up a flight of stairs, Sister leading, the porter following behind muttering darkly about the weight of my suitcase. I was shown into a room with four beds in it. Seated on one was a pretty girl obviously in the depths of gloom.

  The Sister Tutor told us with the air of someone about to hand us a present, that this was to be our home for the next three months; also that the view was quite nice really, once you got used to a tree blocking up the window. She then retreated, and my companion and I smiled weakly at one another.

  We both said simultaneously, ‘What’s your name?’ then stopped, and started again simultaneously.

  She said, ‘Mary Ross.’

  I said, ‘Jane Grant.’

  There was a heavy silence, and I started glumly to unpack.

  A little while later our third companion was shown in; a tall girl with a loud laugh, obviously completely at ease. The Sister Tutor repeated her patter and left us again.

  ‘Hullo! My name’s Sarah Harben. What’s yours?’ Without waiting for a reply she exclaimed, ‘Gosh, what a frightful dump this is! Have I got to get all my things into that chest of drawers?’

  Later on our fourth room-mate arrived. She was called Pat Summers; she was little, blonde and giggling, and she was bursting with a story of the adventure that had made her late.

  ‘It was simply frightful!’ she began. ‘I got off the bus and the conductor said, “That’s Borwood.” So I went up the nearest drive and got to a house, and the hall door was open. I wandered in and knocked on a door and a voice said, “Come in,” and I walked in and there was a monk!’

  ‘No!’ we exclaimed. ‘A monk? Not really a monk?’

  ‘Yes, a real monk. It was awful, because I didn’t know whether I ought to call him Father or Brother.’

  ‘How frightful!’

  ‘Golly, how extraordinary!’

  ‘What was he doing?’ asked Sarah, darkly, with sudden Northern Presbyterian curiosity.

  ‘Doing? He was reading Punch and listening to the wireless.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Was he, honestly?’

  ‘Crumbs! What did you do?’

  ‘I asked him where the Sister Tutor’s rooms were, and he looked at me blankly and said, “I’ve lived here for ten years, and I’ve never seen a woman in here before, much less a Sister Tutor”.’

  The ice was now thoroughly broken. We were overcome with mirth, and Pat was just recounting how the monk had explained that the house was a Training School for Monks (not Nurses), and how he had been terribly kind and carried her suitcase to the front door of Borwood; her tale being punctuated by trills of girlish laughter ‒ when the door opened and the Assistant Sister Tutor appeared.

  There was instantly such a dead silence that there was hardly need for her to say in the quelling voice of authority: ‘You are making much too much noise!’

  Crestfallen, we began to murmur apologies.

  She went on: ‘Put your uniforms on, come downstairs and assemble in the First Classroom as quickly as possible.’

  We put on
the uniform dresses and caps laid out for us. The caps had been made up in readiness by the previous set, which was fortunate because of all the complicated sewing and fluting that is necessary. Unluckily, the one on Pat’s dressing-table had met with an accident and the thread was broken. Instead of being neat and compact, with the correct eight flutes at the back, it was the size to fit a hydrocephalic head instead of Pat’s small neat one. Not only was it broad, but it billowed out at the back. She looked like a drunken chambermaid. We stared at her and let out further, but more subdued, screams of merriment.

  We could do nothing to put matters right as we had not yet had our first lessons in cap making, so, the rest of us trying to look brave and Pat trying to look normal, we trooped downstairs. On reaching the bottom step we discovered we had none of us put on our aprons.

  This made us late, and we got a sour glance from Sister Tutor, as we crept in, falling over each other.

  ‘From now on,’ she was saying in momentous tones, ‘nobody is Miss. You are all Nurses. I forbid the use of Christian names anywhere but in your bedrooms. You must never leave your bedroom in incomplete uniform. All nurses must have a good breakfast; you have a hard day in front of you, and I have no patience with girls who will not eat well. Those who don’t eat enough I will speak to personally!’

  She looked round the room, paused, and said solemnly: ‘We have a great tradition to uphold as St. Bernard's is one of the best hospitals in the world. Therefore nurses will not behave in an unseemly manner when shopping in the village. At all times when they are in uniform they will do all that is possible to uphold our good name.’

  Awestruck by these words, I was horrified to receive a dig in the ribs from Sarah and to see her grinning broadly.

  The St. Bernard’s Training School contained about fifty probationer nurses at one time; these were trained for three months before going on the wards. During the year four ‘sets’ of nurses received training. Nurses were put in bedrooms in groups of four: how these groups were sorted out is unknown to me. Did the psychologists pick out those of similar backgrounds and tastes? Did Matron take notes when she interviewed us, and send down our files to Sister? Or, as seems more probable, was the arrangement one entirely of chance?

  Whatever the system, the result was that, in nine cases out of ten, the strangers with whom one shared a bedroom became, by the end of one’s training, one’s most intimate friends, and this was recognized by the authorities, who, as far as possible did not separate the original quartet.

  The first few days at Borwood were frantically busy and confusing. They were divided into periods of classes, practical work, meals, and study periods. During one of these, Mary had gone to see Sister Tutor about leaving early to catch a train at the week-end. She came back into the classroom and announced: ‘Sister Charlotte wants one of us to volunteer to be a patient for the blanket-bathing class.’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Does the victim have to be blanket-bathed?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Mary, obviously knowing nothing about it.

  I asked what blanket-bathing was.

  ‘Oh, I know!’ said Sarah. ‘I remember now my mother had one when she was in hospital. They put blankets next to your skin to raise the temperature.’

  ‘It sounds bliss,’ I said. It was a very cold day and the classroom was none too warm. I added, ‘I’ll be the patient if nobody else wants to.’

  Mary went off to take my offer to Sister Charlotte. A group of nurses sitting in front of us started to laugh and said I was brave. I took no notice, though I did remember at that moment the advice of my brothers never to volunteer for anything.

  The time came for our class. I went into the Practical Classroom, which was icy cold, and changed into the very unglamorous pyjamas that the hospital provided for patients. I got into the bed, which was in the middle of the floor surrounded by chairs for student nurses. They assembled, chattering, while my friends hurled ridicule at me from the front seats, and I sat there, trying in vain to look at my ease.

  Sister Charlotte walked in briskly, and all talking abruptly ceased.

  ‘Now, Nurses,’ she said, ‘blanket bathing is one of your most important treatments. An ill patient greatly appreciates being washed.’

  An appalling vision began to present itself to me. Sarah grinned, Pat giggled and Mary gave a sympathetic smile. A whisper went round the class.

  ‘It is really,’ Sister Charlotte continued, ‘merely a matter of common sense. You must have plenty of hot water, get up a good lather, and remember to keep the patient warm.’

  She rolled up her sleeves and approached me.

  ‘First of all we strip the bed,’ she said, and started peeling off the counterpane. ‘Then we get our hot water.’

  She signalled to the junior Assistant Tutor, who rushed out of the room carrying two enormous jugs.

  ‘We get out our toilet requisites,’ said Sister Charlotte, rummaging in the locker beside the bed. ‘Then we fill our bowl.’

  The assistant, returning, poured out the water.

  ‘You must,’ said Sister Charlotte firmly, ‘undress your patient completely.’

  There was a stifled gasp from the class, while I turned bright red.

  She then proceeded to peel off the pyjama jacket from my frozen body, bending my arm at right angles to my back. I tried desperately to retain my modesty with the blanket. She then moved down to my feet and started pulling at the trousers; airily handed the pyjamas to her assistant to put on the radiator, and advanced on me with the flannel.

  She washed me thoroughly, remarking at intervals on points of interest.

  ‘You must never forget, Nurses’ ‒ digging her fingers in my ear ‒ ‘to wash the ears thoroughly.’ She lifted my arm above my head. ‘Always remember to wash the areas where excess perspiration takes place, twice, and powder.’

  By this time I had studied the ceiling to the point where I knew its every detail, for I did not dare to look at my classmates. As she finished with my final leg (‘You must always start with the limb farther away from you’) I gave a deep sigh of relief, and perked up enough to give a weak smile at my friends.

  Sister Charlotte then stood back from the bed, but showed no signs of putting on my pyjamas again.

  ‘Now it is very important, Nurses,’ she said, emphasizing every word, ‘that when a patient is in bed all day, the Pressure Areas should receive a great deal of attention. They should be treated four hourly.’

  She then poured more hot water into the bowl, and asked me to turn on my side. She whisked back the blanket, soaped her hands and remarked: ‘You must lather the buttocks well, first washing, then rubbing.’

  She continued to suit the action to the word, while my teeth chattered and the bed springs creaked. ‘To harden the skin,’ she went on, having dried the affected area, ‘put spirit on.’ This she applied, further lowering my body temperature. ‘Then powder well.’ I thought the whole thing sounded rather like a cooking-recipe.

  Much to my relief, she then returned my pyjamas and dismissed the class.

  My sympathetic friends transported me, white and shaken, to our room, where I had the last slice of Sarah’s birthday cake to restore my morale.

  The next day’s demonstrations were also a little shattering to the nerves. A man from the local fire-station was called in to teach us emergency fire-drill. The climax consisted in having a rope put underneath your arms, and being dropped out of a window from the top floor. Interest was heightened by nurses getting hit on any window that happened to be open at the time, or becoming stuck on the shrubs growing in the beds underneath.

  One night when we were all lying awake, talking, we heard a slight scuffling noise. Sitting up in bed we saw a mouse walk boldly across the floor and get into the waste-paper basket, where it noisily proceeded to feed on the remnants of food left from our latest party.

  We did not quite know what to do about it.

  ‘After all, it looks q
uite a nice mouse,’ said Mary.

  ‘I somehow feel I don’t much want to have it there,’ said Sarah.

  Pat leapt out of bed. ‘I don’t mind mice in the least,’ she said. ‘I like them. I’ll take it down in the basket, and let it out of the front door.’

  Unfortunately, it appeared that the mouse did not wish to leave us. It climbed on to the rim of the basket while she was still explaining her intentions to it. She put out her hand to grab hold of it, and in a nice friendly sort of way, but just to put her in her place, it bit her finger.

  Pat let out a loud shriek, and dropped the basket. We all leaped out of bed and surrounded her, examining the injury with professional interest.

  ‘It’s broken the skin!’ she moaned. ‘I know I shall get Bubonic Plague.’

  We had that day had our fever lectures, and had been much impressed by the lurid tales of diseases carried by rats.

  ‘Let’s go and ask Sister,’ said Mary.

  We rushed in a body down to the Sisters’ sitting-room, saying to each other that Pat should be given an immediate injection of something.

  We were confronted by three hostile-looking Sisters. Standing in our pyjamas, realizing that in our excitement we had forgotten to put our slippers on, and with the wound we had come to display getting smaller every minute, we did not feel at a very high point of morale.

  ‘Very well, Nurse,’ said Sister Charlotte bitingly to Pat, ‘If you come to me in sick bay tomorrow I will treat the lesion ‒ if I can still see it.’

  She turned to the rest of us.

  ‘And what is the matter with you, Nurse?’ she asked each of us in turn.

  We tried feebly to explain that we had come to give moral support to our injured comrade. In our

  confusion, we inadvertently mentioned her Christian name.

  Sister Charlotte said caustically: ‘I see, Nurses, that not only do you act impetuously, but you do not listen to what I tell you. I have told you before that I will not allow the use of Christian names in public.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It is also well past your bedtime.’

  Considerably abashed, and quite silent, we turned and trooped up to bed.