by Betty Neels
Gregg was on duty when she got back, and half an hour later Sister went for her rather tardy half day. Georgina was putting a collar and cuff bandage on a small cyclist who had broken a collar-bone and Ned was washing his hands while she did it. Sister had popped her head round the door as she went and wished them a quiet day, and when she had gone he said in the most casual of voices:
‘They’ll make a wonderful pair.’
‘Who?’ she frowned an enquiry as she tucked in loose ends.
‘Good lord, George, do you go around with your head in a bag? Sister and old Bingham, of course.’
Georgina helped the boy on with his coat and tucked the useless sleeve tidily in the pocket, then sent him outside to the clerk’s desk before she replied, ‘They’re going to be married, you mean? I knew they were friends.’ Although now she thought about it, the Registrar did come very often and sometimes unnecessarily to Cas. She took the towel from Ned and dried her own hands, and said gloomily, ‘I’m glad, they’re both dears, but Gregg will be Sister.’
He gave her a quick look. ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that, George.’
She had straightened the couch, and now began to refurbish the trolley.
‘You know, Ned, this ought to be a marvelous day, and it isn’t. I feel at least forty, with nothing left to live for.’
He turned at the door, laughing. ‘You need a husband, my girl. Who shall he be? Tall, dark, rich and handsome; clever of course, and ready to buy you all the tea in China.’
She made a face at him. ‘That’ll do splendidly to go on with.’
‘Good. In the meanwhile, talking of tea, I’m going to get some—there’s sure to be a cup going in Men’s Surgical. That’s where I’ll be if I’m needed.’
Georgina nodded understandingly. Ned had a roving eye, which had settled, for the time being at least, on the pretty staff nurse on Men’s Surgical. She hoped that there wouldn’t be anything much in, so that he could get his tea in peace.
She went off duty half an hour late and on the way along the corridor to the Nurses’ Home remembered her promise to the mother of the pin-swallowing baby, and had to turn and fly back again and up two flights of worn stone steps to the children’s ward. As she suspected, he had been operated upon that afternoon in order to preclude perforation. He was lying in his cot, still drowsy from the anaesthetic, and his mother was sitting with him. Georgina spent several minutes listening to her troubled little voice, nothing in her relaxed manner betraying her impatience to be gone.
She caught the train by the skin of her teeth. Great-Aunt Polly lived in a small village in Essex, some miles from Thaxted. It had been Georgina’s home, since she had gone to live with Aunt Polly; that had been when she had been a little girl of nine. Her father, a schoolmaster, had died suddenly and unexpectedly from ’flu, and her mother had died a week or two after him, leaving a bewildered little daughter, as frightened as she was unhappy. Great-Aunt Polly had carried her off to live with her in her small timbered cottage, and had been father and mother to her ever since. Georgina sat in the train, looking out of the window at the dreary London suburbs, thinking about the old lady. She would be able to repay her now with a hundred and one small comforts…She lost herself in a daydream which lasted until the train slowed down at Thaxted. She picked up her case and jumped out, an attractive girl in her well-fitting corduroy coat and high boots.
The small, rather ramshackle local bus from Thaxted, the last from that town for the day, took her to within a stone’s throw of the cottage. The cottage stood a little way down a narrow lane leading off the village street. There was an ancient hornbeam on the corner, and on the opposite side the apple trees at the end of her aunt’s garden, even on a dark November evening, combined to make a lovely picture in the cold moonlight. She unlatched the little gate and walked, a great deal faster now, up the brick path and beat a tattoo on the Georgian brass door-knocker before opening the door and going in. The passage was brick too, a little worn in places and covered with an Afghan rug, also worn, but still splendid. The back door faced her and each wall held two doors, from one of which a plump elderly woman bustled.
‘Miss Georgina! It’s nice to see you, that it is. Miss Rodman’s had her supper and I’ve kept yours hot…put that bag down, and go and see her. Did you pass?’ She peered at Georgina anxiously and was swept into a violent hug.
‘Yes, Moggy, I did. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ll tell Aunt Polly.’
She opened another door and went into the sitting-room where her aunt was waiting. She sat, as she always did, in a stiff-backed chair, her almost useless legs on a little Victorian footstool, her sticks on either side of her, so that she need not ask for help if she should want to get up. She hated to ask for help—Georgina had been almost sixteen when Great-Aunt Polly had been stricken with polio, and could still remember very clearly the look on the old lady’s face when her doctor had told her that it was not very likely that she would walk again. She belonged to a generation who didn’t discuss their ailments; she hadn’t discussed them then, but over the following years she had progressed from wheelchair to crutches, and finally, to sticks. Georgina and Mrs Mogg, who had been with them for as long as she could remember, had watched her struggles and said nothing, knowing that that was what she would wish, but the day Aunt Polly took her first awkward steps with her two sticks Georgina had gone down to the Three Bells in the village, and come back with a bottle of hock under one arm, because she wasn’t sure what to buy anyway, but quite obviously the occasion called for celebration. She crossed the little room now and slid on to her knees beside her aunt’s chair and hugged her, just as she had hugged Moggy, only with a little less vigour because Aunt Polly was a small dainty person despite her will of iron.
‘I’ve passed,’ said Georgina, knowing that that was what her aunt wanted to hear.
Aunt Polly smiled. ‘Yes, dear. I knew you would, of course, but congratulations all the same—I’m very proud of you.’
Mrs Mogg had come in with a tray on which was Georgina’s supper—steak and kidney pudding and a nice assortment of vegetables and a little baked custard for afters. Georgina got up and took the tray from her, put it on the floor and sat down beside it, and Miss Rodman said:
‘Mrs Mogg, will you get the glasses and the Madeira? We must drink to Miss Georgina’s health—and you eat up your supper, child, you must be hungry.’
Georgina fell to. She had an appetite and enjoyed good food. Mrs Mogg came back with the wine, and they sat, the three of them, drinking it from very old, beautiful glasses which she fetched from the corner cupboard. Presently, when she had disposed of the steak and kidney, Georgina told them what Matron had said and Aunt Polly nodded and looked happy, then glanced at her sharply and said, ‘But is that what you want, dear?’
Georgina polished off the last of the custard. ‘Yes, of course, Aunt Polly,’ she said stoutly, and remembered rather clearly that Ned had said that what she wanted was a husband. She turned her back on the thought. ‘Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married,’ she went on, anxious to talk about something else. ‘That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a Junior Night Sister’s post to start with anyway, and that won’t be for quite while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg.’
‘You might marry,’ said Mrs Mogg chattily. Georgina gave her a wide smile. ‘Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they’re far too busy and penniless to marry, and if you’re thinking of rich consultants, they’re all married. Besides, it will be nice to earn some real money at last—it’s time I did my share, you know.’
Miss Rodman straightened an already straight back. ‘That is very good of you, dear Georgina, but Mrs Mogg and I are old women. We need very little, and we manage. You’ve worked hard, the money is yours to spend. Why don’t you go abroad?’
Georgina lied cheerfully, ‘I really don’t want to, Aunt Polly. Perhaps later on when I’ve had more experience—I think I’ll stay at St Athel
’s for a year or two and get that Sister’s post, then see how I feel.’
She got up and carried her tray out to the kitchen where she put it on the scrubbed wood table, then took the dishes to the sink and washed up, singing cheerfully in a clear voice so the occupants of the sitting-room would hear how happy she was.
Chapter Two
St Athel’s looked grim and grey on Monday morning. Georgina walked into the cold, well polished hall of the Nurses’ Home and started to climb the stairs to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be all right again. But somehow she wasn’t, despite the fact that Gregg had a half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy—too busy to think on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o’clock and Ned telephoned to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker—he was on the medical side, which didn’t prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty. When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper, what with Mr Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while pronouncing an obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles’ fracture a Potts’. She had asked him crossly if he hadn’t learned the difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.
‘Days off,’ snapped Georgina. ‘I’ll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back,’ and had the satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr Baker would serve her purpose as well as any, she supposed.
He backed to the door. ‘I merely wished to know,’ he stated coldly, ‘because I’m not completely satisfied with your work.’
‘I’ll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning,’ she said with equal coldness. ‘I’m sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other housemen—she wouldn’t like to think that our standards aren’t up to yours.’ She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.
When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs Mogg. The cake disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the conversation turned, as it always did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into the QAs, two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting married or engaged.
A voice said, ‘George, you haven’t told us what you’re going to do.’
‘Well,’ she began; she wasn’t sure if she should mention about getting a Sister’s post, ‘I thought I’d stay here…’
‘Did Matron dangle a Sister’s cap before you?’ someone wanted to know.
‘Later on…it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I’ll do my Midder.’ She had only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.
Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn’t show through, and presented herself, outwardly composed, at Matron’s office. She came out again within a couple of minutes. Night duty—four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience, Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too, several days at home each fortnight. She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, ‘Thank God! That woman who’s on now calls me for the merest scratch—besides, you’re nice to have around.’
Georgina chuckled. ‘Go on with you, Ned,’ she said comfortably. If she had had a brother, she would have used the same tone of voice she was using now. ‘But I promise not to call you for scratches!’
They started on their separate ways and as they went he called over his shoulder, ‘Are you on tonight?’
She went on walking away from him. ‘No, tomorrow,’ she replied, thinking that she must remember to ring Aunt Polly.
Night duty on Cas followed a pattern, she discovered, after she had been on for a few nights. Until eleven she was kept busy by a steady influx of people who ‘didn’t like to bother the doctor’; toothache, teething babies, bruises it was best not to enquire too deeply into; boils and headaches, cut fingers and ingrowing toenails; they crowded into the benches, confident that someone would do something for them, and in the meantime it was pleasant to have a natter. After the pubs closed, it was the turn of the drunks, cheerfully escorted by a constable, who as often or not gave a helping hand. There was seldom very much wrong with them, but they wasted everyone’s time, for they invariably needed stitches.
After the first night, when there were two or three waiting for scalp wounds to be sutured, Ned suggested that she should give a hand, and after that she added stitching to her duties; of course he did the complicated cuts, but very often it was only a case of one straightforward stitch, which the patient was frequently far too drunk to notice. The crashes followed a pattern too—round about midnight and five or six in the morning, so that Georgina quite often ate her dinner at two o’clock in the morning and had to miss tea altogether, but that was something you expected if you worked on Cas, and it didn’t occur to her to grumble about it. She slept like a log during the day, and there were nights off to look forward to.
On this, the fifth night, however, she had gone on duty tired after an almost sleepless day. She smiled at the waiting patients as she passed them and went on into the office to take over from Sister, who was looking, surprisingly, quite different from usual. She gave Georgina one or two police messages in an abstracted sort of manner and told her that Ned would be on duty, and that Mr Bingham would be available at ten o’clock. There was something in the way she said this that made Georgina look at her carefully. Sister was excited, and excitement had turned her into a very pretty woman. She caught Georgina’s eye and said almost diffidently, ‘Mr Bingham and I are going out to dinner—to celebrate. I might as well tell you, Staff. We’re going to be married.’
Georgina put down her cloak and bag. ‘Sister, how wonderful! I am glad, and wish you every happiness. What a pity Mr Bingham has to be on duty—it’s his night on call, isn’t it?’
Sister got up and draped her cloak around her shoulders. ‘Well, yes, Staff, it is. But we shan’t be long—if anything big comes in, Ned can get help and send for Mr Bingham—there’s the phone number on the pad.’
She smiled dreamily, said goodnight, and slipped away. Georgina rolled up her sleeves and put on her frills, thinking about Sister and Mr Bingham. Sister would leave, of course. She went across to the cubicles and checked their contents with practiced speed, not because she didn’t trust the day staff to leave everything in a state of readiness, but because each one of them did it when they came on duty—it was a kind of unwritten rule no one forgot. This done, she began on the patients.
The benches were half cleared when she heard the ambulance. The two cubicles nearest the door were empty; she pushed back the double doors and wheeled two trolleys as near as possible to
them, and found time to warn the waiting patients that they would be delayed. It was Ginger on duty. He drew up with a little rush and got out to join his mate.
‘Evening, Staff,’ he called politely. ‘Got an RTA here. Two kids and a man.’ He had opened the ambulance door and was pulling out the first stretcher. ‘Head injuries—broken legs for the little boy—man’s a walking case.’
She flew to the telephone and dialed the doctors’ quarters and waited a long minute while Ned was fetched. She said merely, ‘An RTA, Ned,’ and went to the first cubicle where the little boy was. He was still on the trolley and unconscious, and she thought that that was a good thing when she whisked back the blanket and looked at his legs. Nothing much to see, but there were already bruises showing between the splints—probably both femurs. He didn’t look too bad, and his pulse was good. The second child was a little girl, semi-conscious and bleeding from head wounds. She had long straight fair hair, hopelessly tangled and matted with blood. Georgina took her pulse too and hoped that she was right in thinking that she wasn’t badly injured. The third patient came in on his feet, looking rather white. He was holding his right hand against his chest, and said surprisingly, ‘I’m sorry to give you this trouble. The children?’
Georgina said quickly, ‘The doctor will be here in a moment—he’ll have to examine them first. Come and sit down. When we’ve seen to them and I’ve a second, I’ll get a sling for that arm of yours. It looks like a collar-bone.’
She smiled at him, her brown eyes soft with sympathy. He was about her own age or a little younger; very good-looking, with fair hair and blue eyes and a mouth that looked as though it could laugh a lot in happier circumstances. She left him sitting, and went at once to the small boy, to be joined at once by Ned. He stood looking at him while she cut away the clothes from the quiet little body, and then at a word from her, steadied each leg as she eased off the shoes and socks.