by Jane Grant
She lay gasping for some time. Then quite suddenly the fit left her and she began talking about a holiday she had had at Eastbourne, as if nothing had happened.
I had had my first lesson, and from then I watched her more carefully. All the same, I was off my guard when she threw a magazine in my face and seized me by the throat. I smacked her face sharply, and managed to ring the buzzer on the wall. She was still fighting when another nurse arrived, and together we were able to subdue her.
That afternoon, after we had had several more fights, the great Dr. Deane came to see her, attended by a retinue of housemen and Registrars. He sat easily on the bed and, after greeting her, carefully introduced each member of his retinue. She looked rather dazed, but spoke to each one of them, and they all muttered, ‘Good afternoon,’ back.
Then Dr. Deane said, ‘How are you today, Mrs. Neville?’
‘I've had a dreadful day, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ve been fighting with Nurse all the time.’
He looked faintly surprised, and gave me an inquiring glance. I shifted my feet and tried not to look too much the demon of the piece.
‘Why d’you fight with Nurse?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got to, Doctor. I’ve got to get rid of this thing inside me. It’s ruining my life.’
‘Will you get rid of it by fighting yourself and other people.’
‘Well, it seems as if it’s quieter then. And the voices don’t keep nagging me afterwards.’
‘What sort of voices are they?’ he asked.
‘A man’s voice, and it keeps telling me to kill myself. Oh, will you be able to send it away?’
‘I'll try, Mrs. Neville,’ he said gently.
‘But will you say definitely, Doctor?’
‘No doctor can say that, Mrs. Neville. I’ll do my best. That’s as much as I can say.’
She became agitated, ‘But you promised you would!’
‘Now, you’d hate me to be dishonest with you,’ he said firmly. ‘You wouldn’t like me to tell you something I didn’t believe myself?’
She listened eagerly, seeming to agree.
‘If I told you you definitely that I was going to cure you, I would be telling you something I don’t even know myself. This much I can tell you, I have seen several patients in the same condition as yourself, and have cured them. And I think that I have a very good chance of curing you.’
She smiled at him, reassured.
Twice a week, the Depressions were given electric convulsive therapy. For this they were given a general anaesthetic and a muscle relaxant. Then two very carefully regulated electric currents were passed through pads placed on the temples. The result was a mild contraction of the muscles, and when the patient woke up some quarter of an hour later, he would be very confused and suffering from amnesia. The intention of these treatments was to shake up the brain so that the patient became less fixed on depressing ideas. No pain was felt, but the treatment was very disagreeable and all patients hated it.
When the muscle relaxant was injected, the muscles of respiration were temporarily paralysed, so that oxygen had to be given under pressure. The Anaesthetist was a cheerful little man who usually recounted his war experiences and anything else that came into his head, while engaged in administering the anaesthetic. He would quite happily shoot a syringe of pentothal into a patient’s arm without looking at him after inserting the needle, and begin a long and involved story about how he had got the better of a sergeant-major in Germany, smoking heavily all the while, and occasionally resting his lighted cigarette on the top of the oxygen cylinder.
One day I was waiting by a patient till she came round from the anaesthetic. She began to make the most awful noise, a kind of throaty yodel, and the Anaesthetist came back to see what was the matter. He glanced at her, and quickly gave her a smart slap on the the face.
‘Open your eyes, Miss Whatever-your-name-is,’ he said. ‘And stop that noise.’
The yodel ceased abruptly.
‘Does she know she’s doing it?’ I asked, rather bewildered.
‘Oh, yes. She’s naughty, this one. What you must remember about these patients, Nurse, is that they’re naughty as well as batty.’
For some of the patients it was indeed difficult to feel much sympathy. Many of them were still in the hospital merely because they did not wish to make decisions for themselves. These were usually the very rich, whose troubles had been increased by excess of money. They paid for a private room and treated the nurses like slaves, venting on them their frustrations and ill-adjustments.
As patients improved in health they were encouraged to go out on trips to the outside world. Most of them were accompanied by nurses, and the rich were not all selfish and and exacting, for some were generous enough to entertain their nurses to dinners and theatres. On one such trip I was not so fortunate. I went with one of my patients, a Mrs. Donaldson, on her first excursion.
She was a little, anxious woman, whose husband bullied her. In her anxiety state she jumped if anyone spoke to her, and she always took a long time before she answered the most casual remark.
We went out with the idea of having a bus to the West End, to see the shops. The traffic terrified her; she was afraid that every car, however remote, was going to knock her over. Before the bus had gone two stops she was asking to get off. The West End, she said, would be too much for her. Could she go somewhere quiet?
I suggested the British Museum. She did not like the idea. She said she thought she would like to go round some interesting building. The Tower, I suggested? She agreed to this, so we went into the Underground and took tickets to Tower Hill. As the train started she trembled violently, and every time it stopped or started again she looked terrified.
We reached Tower Hill, and walked down to the river, where we stood for a while watching its flow and the passing boats. She no longer wished to see the Tower; could we, she said, go for a walk instead? We walked up back streets till we came out by the Monument.
‘Would you like to go up the Monument?’ I said rashly. ‘It’s a lovely day and you’ll get a good view.’
‘All right,’ she agreed.
We paid our admission and started walking up the stairs. We got about halfway up, when she chanced to look out of one of the windows and immediately showed great agitation.
‘Isn’t it funny?’ I said gaily. ‘People seem to be walking at an angle, and the buses look tiny!’
Mrs. Donaldson had turned quite pale. ‘I can’t go another step, Nurse,’ she said.
‘Oh, come on,’ I urged. ‘We’re over halfway there.’
She sat down on a stair. ‘Not another step will I go,’ she said trembling.
I began to be alarmed. ‘Oh, well, we’ll go down then.’
‘No,’ she said, tight-lipped. ‘No.’
‘But Mrs. Donaldson,’ I protested frantically, ‘we can’t just stay here!’
‘I'm not moving,’ she said. ‘I feel queer.’
‘Well, you’re only going to go on feeling queer if you sit there. Come on! Look ‒ there are people waiting to pass!’
There was indeed a little crowd forming a queue. I moved close against the wall, and the two streams of traffic squeezed past us smirking, while I tried desperately to look unconcerned.
‘Come along, dear,’ I urged. ‘You really must move.’
But she remained adamant. I began to get worried.
Unless I actually pushed her down the stairs I could see no method of moving her. I stood by her for a quarter of an hour, coaxing, cajoling and arguing, but she remained stubborn and unmoved.
A woman came down the stairs with her two little boys. As she approached I said nervously: ‘I wonder, Madam, if you would ask the porter at the entrance to come up here.’
The good soul smiled sympathetically and said yes, of course she would. They got past us, and one of the little boys, looking back, screwed his head round so much that he lost his balance and fell down four of the stairs.
A few
minutes later the same little boy returned.
‘’E says ’e can’t leave the gate. Says you’ll have to wait till ’is mate comes back from tea.’
Mrs. Donaldson was now muttering with rising hysteria, ‘I won’t go, I won’t go!’ I was on the verge of tears myself.
A young couple then came down the stairs; I had seen them go up some time before.
I addressed the young man with desperation. ‘Would you very much mind ringing up St. Bernard’s Hospital and telling them Nurse Grant is stuck with Mrs. Donaldson in the middle of the Monument?’
I told him the number, and tried to give him three pennies, but discovered I hadn’t any.
They passed us and disappeared, and I heard them talking about the incident in voices that faded with their pounding feet. ‘I reckon she’s nuts,’ said the boy. ‘Which one?’ asked his girlfriend.
I sat down beside Mrs. Donaldson and tried one last attempt at reasoning with her. ‘Do you want to stay up here all night?’
‘I’m not moving,’ was the only reply.
The young couple did not appear again. After what seemed an age the porter arrived.
‘Young chap says he’s phoned the hospital.’ He stood at the bend of the stairs staring at us, obviously fascinated by the situation.
It was about twenty minutes after this that there was the sound of excited masculine voices, and heavy pounding on the stairs. There appeared in single file on the stairs, two ambulance drivers, the ward sister, and one male nurse.
Sister bent down and spoke to Mrs. Donaldson. ‘Are you going to come down, Mrs. Donaldson, or do we have to carry you?’
It was an empty threat; just how they intended to carry her down the narrow twisting stairs was never quite clear.
The five of us were now standing in line, one below the other. Mrs. Donaldson was beginning to enjoy the situation.
‘I like it here,’ she said.
Sister, the male nurse and I, all started to plead simultaneously, but becoming aware that we were
talking to ourselves, all stopped simultaneously.
There was an anxious pause. Then the nearer of the two ambulance drivers said quite calmly: ‘Come on, old girl. Hold my hand.’
She rose like a lamb and walked steadily down the stairs. We followed in a line, silent and downcast, and feeling extremely small.
Chapter Thirty-two
After my holiday, I went on to a male surgical ward where Charles Betterton was the houseman. He was as full of charm as ever, and just as shaky over diagnosis and treatment.
He attempted to put an infusion up on an old man in the ward, and failing miserably to find a vein; he smiled sweetly at the patient and said: ‘You’re being very good, old boy, but’ ‒ with a hopeless gesture ‒ ‘you really ought to do something about those veins of yours. They’re non-existent!’
The old man’s face quite clearly indicated that he believed every word and felt himself to blame.
One day, while coming down the stairs from the surgical block, I suddenly saw Mr. Cheshire coming up. I became so unnerved and peered so anxiously at him to follow his every movement, that I missed my footing and fell down the next flight of stairs, landing in a heap almost at his feet.
He merely scowled, and inquired, ‘You got a septic foot as well?’
There was one child in the ward, a ‘blue baby’ of eight who had come in for investigation with a view to a possible operation. This little boy, whose name was Peter, was very quiet and good. He got easily tired, and had a tendency to blueness about his hand and the tips of his ears. If he got excited or exerted himself he became breathless.
The men were all very kind to Peter. Any who were well enough would wait on him, sit on his bed and talk to him, or read him Teddy Bear's Annual.
Peter’s nearest neighbour was a north countryman of about forty who was recovering from a bad appendix operation. His name was Bean and as he was very tall and thin, he was known as Bean Pole. One day I greeted him in the usual way with: ‘How’s old Bean Pole today?’
He gave me a shock by replying in Etonian English with every appearance of serious offence: ‘Nurse, have you ever asked yourself what Matron would say if she heard you address me in this insulting manner?’
He then winked, grinned cheerfully, and added in a Yorkshire accent: ‘What’d she do, lass? She’d lie reet down and have a good faint, that’s what.’
Bean Pole was a great pal of Peter’s and was always appealed to when Peter wanted to understand anything about the strange hospital world. One day there was roast lamb for lunch.
‘Would you like mint sauce?’ I asked Peter as the trays came round.
‘What’s mint sauce, please, Mr. Bean?’
‘Mint sauce? Mint’s what Nurse’s got. Sauce is what you’ve got.’
On the other side of Mr. Bean was a man who had come in in a critical condition the week before with a strangulated hernia. When I served his lunch Mr. Bean looked critically at the plate and remarked: ‘Well, I don’t know. You coom in here ’alf dead on Friday. Lights dim on Saturday. Fish and chips on Tuesday. I suppose it’ll be Music and Mayfair on Thursday!’
One day we had as a casualty a boy of about twenty who had had an accident on his motor bike, colliding with a car. His face was very badly injured, so that the features were quite flat, with bloodshot eyes appearing very small, due to the vast swelling around them. His arm had also been broken. In spite of his condition he was very cheerful, put his good thumb up and tried to wink at me.
His mother was allowed into the ward to see him that morning. She went up to his bed and passed it without recognising him. She said anxiously to me afterwards: ‘He looks so terrible. Is he all right?’
I explained that a lot of the disfigurement was due to bruising. She said sadly, ‘He’s really so good looking.’
The boy, whose name was Alec, had a series of operations. First his jaws were wired together, with wires passing through his cheeks. He had to be fed with a straw through a gap in his teeth. Photos were obtained, showing his appearance before his accident, and in the operations which followed the plastic surgeon tried to reproduce his features as much as possible.
Charles explained to him one day, ‘Sorry you’ve not got much of a nose, old man. We had, actually, nothing much to make one of.’
Alec squinted up at him. ‘Yours isn’t so hot either,’ he said between his teeth.
‘Well, anyway, it’s not synthetic,’ said Charles.
It was now the beginning of December, and preparations were started for Christmas. Usually each ward is got up to represent some particular setting, and this year we were going to be a Bar. We wrote off to all the big breweries to get such properties as posters and ashtrays, and the patients were set to work making decorations and accessories.
The ward is emptied as far as possible before Christmas, but in our next casualty week we took in a serious case, a boy of nineteen called Fred, a cheerful Cockney who was a builder’s mate, and had fallen off some scaffolding and broken his back. We put him in the next bed to Alec.
Fred had several operations, but they were quite useless, and he was permanently paralysed from the waist downwards. But such matters are not mentioned in hospital wards, and men particularly, seem to have the faculty of accepting the inevitable and living cheerfully in the moment. Alec and the Bean Pole, who were allowed to get up, spent much time waiting on Fred, and he kept up his spirits by insulting them.
‘’E’re ugly,’ said Fred one day to Alec, ‘when you going to get your new face?’
Alec replied unintelligibly that on that day, Fred could have a wash to celebrate.
‘Can’t you take that plum out of your mouf?’
I approached with Alec’s milk, and he mumbled: ‘Whack-ho, here comes my bottle.’
‘If you don’t stop drinking all that milk you’ll be mooing,’ said Fred.
Owing to the wire contraption on his head, and his swollen eyes, Alec was continually losing his balance
and falling over. One Sunday he fell down at the foot of Fred’s bed, and knocked all Fred’s possessions from his bed table on to the floor. The Bean Pole, laughing heartily, started to pick them up.
‘’Ere, Nurse!’ Fred called to me, ‘is Matey coming round the ward today?’
‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘You know she usually does on Sundays.’
He beckoned me closer. ‘I’m warnin’ you, Nurse,’ he said. ‘I’m going to put in a complaint.’
‘What about?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘I want my bed moved. Living next door to that clumsy great ox, there ain’t one fing he ’asn’t knocked off me locker. He’s a proper menace, that young Alec is.’
Alec got up from the floor with dignity, spurning the help offered by Mr. Bean and by me. He muttered something which I did not understand, but Fred kindly interpreted each sentence for our benefit, as he spoke it.
‘Mumble ‒ mumble ‒ mumble.’
‘’E says, “Get Mr. Richardson to put ‒”’
‘Mumble ‒ mumble ‒ mumble.’
‘‒ “some wire through that young squirt’s mouth to stop ’im yacketing.” That’s what ’e says,’ added Fred. ‘Like his sauce.’
‘Don’t know how you can oonderstand ’im so well,’ said the Bean Pole. ‘Sounds like interrooption on Long Wave to me.’
‘You get used to it after a bit,’ said Fred, ‘same as you get used to bashing your ’ead against a brick wall.’
When Fred felt low, the Bean Pole would sit by his bed, painting a glowing picture of the cruise to the West Indies he would be able to take on his compensation money.
‘You lucky lad!’ he exclaimed. ‘Coom spring, when Alec and me’ll have noses to grindstone, you’ll be in the soonshine in your bathing troonks. Soonshine and tropical stars for you, trouble and traffic jams for us!’
On Christmas Eve the decorations went up. A space was cleared in the middle of the half-empty ward, and here was set up a long piece of polished wood, which the students had procured and fitted up as a bar. On this stood glass mugs, pint size, which, to get a realistic effect, they had filled with enema soap solution, whipped up to a froth, and coloured with black coffee. In between the glasses were ashtrays with proprietary names and a cigar box with trick cigars which exploded when you lighted them. All along the wall were advertisements of different makes of beer, and patients who were forced to stay in bed had bottles of beer arranged on intravenous stands, with rubber tubing suspended from them.