by Betty Neels
‘Sister…’ Sir Richard, his voice raised, had obviously been waiting for her to say something, but she had no idea what it was. She apologised and bent her mind to the problem as to whether Mr Drew should have his insulin increased or not. On her own at last, she sorted notes and tidied away charts, had a quick consultation with Joan and went to her dinner.
‘Late again,’ observed the occupants of her table.
‘Sir Richard,’ Euphemia murmured, and made a face. ‘An hour and a half, and I’ve lost count of the forms to be filled in…it’s not my day!’
And as it turned out it wasn’t. Visitors came and went, and all but one student nurse had gone to tea, leaving Euphemia to deal with drips and the inhalations Sir Richard approved of for his chest cases, while the nurses tidied lockers and beds and bore away the unsuitable food and sweets which the visitors always brought with them despite Euphemia’s patient explanations as to what exactly the patients were allowed. The nurse had just left the ward, her arms full of the diabetic’s toffees, the duodenal ulcer’s iced buns and the bunch of bananas given to a nasty case of colitis, when there was a loud rumbling which became a roar of sound as one side of the ward seemed to shake and quiver and become submerged in a cloud of dust and broken glass and falling plaster.
CHAPTER NINE
EUPHEMIA, BENDING OVER Mr Cummins, clutched the edge of the bed to prevent herself falling. Something catastrophic had happened, but for a few seconds her shocked brain didn’t react, then common sense, training and a naturally calm disposition took over. She gave Mr Cummins’ grey face a reassuring smile and took stock of the ward. The opposite wall had taken the full force of the explosion, so it must have been outside in the street below and although the wall still stood, it was cracked and sagging and the plaster was dropping in great chunks off it. The windows had been blown out and there was glass everywhere. Luckily it had fallen in the centre of the ward and missed the beds and their occupants, but not all of them. Euphemia could hear shouts and moans above the general din now, and some of the up patients were staggering around in a dazed manner.
The inner wall seemed solid enough at the moment. There were no windows on that side, and the floor seemed solid too. She wasn’t so sure about the centre, though, but she would have to risk that. ‘Everyone stay where he is!’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘There’ll be help in a moment, so don’t worry.’ The absurdity of her words struck her as she uttered them; she was worried stiff and terrified too. Supposing the outside wall collapsed—or the floor? It didn’t bear thinking of, so she didn’t, but edged her way cautiously from bed to bed making sure that each patient was at least alive. They were, some of them only just, but it was no time for intensive care it was imperative for her to get to the other side where the moans were getting louder. She went to the end of the ward and started to cross the floor gingerly as near the end wall as possible. When she reached the ruined door she saw the student nurse picking herself up off the landing floor. She waved gamely when she saw Euphemia and started towards her.
‘Oh, good girl!’ cried Euphemia. Nurse Shotter wasn’t quick or particularly clever, but she loved her work and now she was showing pluck when she might so easily have been indulging in a screaming fit. ‘Come carefully, the floor’s not too safe.’ She put out a hand and steadied the girl into the ward. ‘There’ll be help presently, but I don’t think we’d better wait for it. Will you go very carefully down the inner wall and lead out all the men who can possibly walk? I can see the stairs—they’ll be the safest place, I should think. Sit them down on the treads, then they can be got away when we get help.’ She gave the girl’s arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘But go carefully, for heaven’s sake. I’ll be on the outer side—on no account are you to come there, and if anyone comes warn them not to come over until someone lets us know if the floors are safe.’
‘But, Sister…’
‘Off you go, Shotter.’
Euphemia watched her make her careful way to the first bed. Dicky was in it; he looked scared, but as always he did as he was told. He began to get carefully out of bed under Shotter’s guidance, and Euphemia turned away and started for the first bed on the other side. The dust was subsiding now, leaving the beds thick with it, their occupants too. Testing the floor at each step, she made her way slowly from bed to bed, wiping faces, looking for injuries, reassuring them with a cheerfulness which sounded hollow in her own ears and must have sounded even more so in theirs. The two top beds held men who could walk if they had to. Euphemia guided them, one at a time, keeping close to the beds, listening to the ominous creaks from the floor beneath them. That left ten men to move. Six of them just couldn’t walk, the others oughtn’t to, but they’d have to. She paused for a moment to look across to the other side and saw that Shotter had got four men away already and at the same time became aware of the noise going on around her—shouts and cries and every now and then, the sound of bricks tumbling. She wondered what the damage was outside and below them and remembered with thankfulness that it was the OP Department and the early afternoon clinic would be finished.
She could hear sirens wailing now and someone out in the street giving orders. It wouldn’t be long before they got help now, in the meantime she had better move some more patients. She still wasn’t happy about the floor, and if it gave way it would be difficult to get the men out of the beds farthest away from the door. That made Mr Crouch next. Mr Crouch had a great many reasons for not getting out of his bed and making the journey to the door. Euphemia listened patiently to them all while she dragged on his dressing gown and slippers, swung his protesting legs out of his bed and urged him past the other beds. He disputed every inch of the way and she was a nervous wreck by the time they reached the landing where Nurse Shotter took him over.
It was on the way back to the end of the ward that Euphemia felt the floor beneath her shudder. There was a nasty cracking sound too, and she stood still, too frightened to move. But nothing happened and presently she crept on again, intent on reaching Mr Cummins, who was looking almost unconscious. A small surge of sound and low voices made her stop and look round. There were men at the door—policemen, firemen, hospital porters standing in a bunch listening to Tane, towering above them, his jacket off, his hair colourless with dust. Euphemia’s heart gave a great leap so that she lost her breath and her voice came out in a high squeak. ‘Don’t come along this side,’ she called, ‘the floor’s beginning to move!’
They all looked at her, calling out heartening remarks like: ‘Hold on, Sister’, and ‘You’re OK now’, but Tane didn’t say a word, only muttered something to the men and started towards her.
‘Don’t—don’t come,’ cried Euphemia, ‘the floor’s going to give and you’re far too heavy!’
She heard him laugh and then watched while he came slowly up the ward. When he reached her he said: ‘Hullo—they’re getting the fire escapes into position, we can get them out through the windows. It won’t take long.’ He smiled at her. It was a nice smile, full of confidence and cheerfulness and tenderness too. She discovered that she wasn’t afraid any more and said in a voice which shook only a very little: ‘Mr Cummins isn’t very well—could you look at him? The others aren’t too bad, but some of them have got cuts from the glass…’
She had a cut herself, although she hadn’t noticed it. She had lost her cap too and her hair was a fearful tangle of dust and plaster, its pins lost, so that it hung in matted clusters round her head. She was white under her dirty face too and her hands shook a little as she turned down the tumbled bedclothes so that the doctor could take a look at Mr Cummins.
The doctor bent calmly over the bed, seemingly unaware of the creaks and rumbles going on around him. There wasn’t much he could do, but Mr Cummins, opening his eyes to see a doctor bending over him, took heart and began to breathe properly once more, happily not altogether aware of what was happening around him. He whispered: ‘That was a bit of a bang,’ and nodded, quite satisfied, when the doctor said
calmly: ‘A gas main in the street outside: it’s being dealt with now and there’s nothing for you to worry about. We’ll have you out of here and in a clean bed in no time.’
The man in the next bed had a cut arm. The doctor examined it briefly and said: ‘Tear up a sheet and bind it fairly tightly, it’ll hold until we can get it seen to.’ He turned his back on Euphemia and began a careful journey back towards the door, to meet the two men waiting by the end bed. They had a light stretcher with them and the three of them lifted its occupant on to it and the two men began their slow progress to the door. Euphemia, ready with her first aid, tore up another length of sheet. There was a man two beds down the ward with a small head wound, she might as well bind it…
‘Stay where you are,’ called Tane sharply, ‘and keep still!’ The floor heaved slowly as he spoke and she watched with fascinated horror as its centre slowly caved in and sent a shower of cement and wooden flooring on to the rubble below. There were still a couple of feet beyond the ends of the beds. She wondered how long it would be before that broke away too, although the inner wall of the ward was still holding and the floor comparatively solid on that side. And as though she wasn’t scared enough she had to stand and watch the doctor making his way along the ruined edge of the floor. He did it unhurriedly and with a monumental calm, and when he reached her finally she couldn’t detect even the smallest quickening of his breath. He didn’t speak to her but edged past towards one of the shattered windows behind Mr Cummins’ bed. A moment later she knew why; the first of the fire escapes had arrived.
‘You will do exactly as I say,’ said Tane, ‘and you are not to move unless I tell you to,’ an order she was only too glad to obey. She discontinued Mr Cummins’ drip, miraculously still in position, folded back the bedclothes, covered him with a blanket and stood, hardly daring to breathe while Tane bent over the bed, picked up the old man and passed him through the window to the fireman waiting at the top of the escape. It seemed unlikely that he would survive the journey to the ground, but at least he had a chance. The escape disappeared from view and Tane leaned back over the empty bed, picked her up and set her gently down close to the next bed.
It was Mr Duke’s turn. He had no drip, but Euphemia did as she was told—rolled back the bedclothes, tucked a blanket round him and waited while Tane picked him up and edged him through the window behind the bed into the arms of the firemen on the second fire escape. It took a good deal longer this time, because Mr Duke was a long thin man and difficult to manoeuvre, and Euphemia, watching, longed to express her feelings with a good scream. She did in fact let out a whispered shriek during the next fifteen minutes, for after the next man had been got away and she was wrapping a blanket round the very last patient, the floor’s rumblings became louder and a great deal more of it went the way of the rest, carrying part of the end wall with it, which left them standing on a kind of sagging shelf under the windows, the row of beds still there, battered and awry.
Euphemia, who had never fainted in her life, thought how nice it would be if she could now and come to safely on the ground. The patient was semi-conscious and uncooperative, and it seemed to her that Tane would never get him through the window. But he did, and that left the two of them with the second fire escape already on its way up. Euphemia gave a gusty sigh and managed a smile. It lasted barely a second, for there was another cracking and tearing and the end bed began to slide slowly over the edge of the floor and toppled over in a kind of slow motion into the mess below. ‘Oh,’ said Euphemia, ‘look—they’ll all go!’ She cast a despairing glance at Tane and was annoyed to see him looking quite calm. ‘I’m frightened,’ she snapped in a quaking voice. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Terrified. Let’s get up into this window, we can hold on to the wall.’
‘There won’t be a wall,’ she wailed, and then said: ‘Sorry,’ in a voice rigid with fear but under control again.
Tane went first, testing the rubble round the broken window, and pulled her up after him. There wasn’t much room, but the wall, although damaged and heavily cracked, might stand even if the rest of the floor went. Which it did a few seconds later, leaving them with nothing but the wall to which they were clinging. Tane put an arm round her shoulders and tucked her head against his chest. His voice, very quiet and steady, calmed her even though it didn’t stop her shaking. ‘The escape is almost here,’ he told her, ‘and when it is you’re going to be a brave girl and do exactly as you’re told. Don’t look down, just look at the fireman.’
‘You’re coming too? Tane, I won’t go without you.’
‘I’m coming too. Here we are—now, do exactly as I say…’
She thought at first that she wouldn’t be able to do that; she was stiff with fright when she saw the gap she would have to cross to reach the escape—a very narrow gap, only a few inches, but supposing she slipped?
‘Come along, darling,’ said Tane briskly.
It was being called darling that did it. Euphemia leaned out, grasped the rail of the escape and was safely there with the fireman’s steady arm round her, watching Tane doing the same thing. There didn’t seem much room; the fireman was a big man too, but she was thankful to feel safely squashed between them, because she hated heights. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and without knowing it, clung to Tane’s arm. Now that they were safe she felt dazed and very sick. She hardly realised the fact that they had reached the ground and the doctor, looking into her greenish white face, took her hands firmly from his sleeve and handed her over to the Senior Nursing Officer and Home Sister.
She was only just aware of being put into an ambulance and driven the short distance round the hospital to the Nurses’ Home, undamaged by the blast, and she made almost no protest when she was undressed, bathed, her hair washed and popped into bed. She slept all night and, being young and strong, woke at her usual time in the morning, feeling none the worse for her experience. To Home Sister’s agitated advice to return to her bed for the day she replied quite truthfully that she felt very well and that since she was, she would go on duty, because there must be a mass of work to do. She was greeted like a heroine at breakfast and there was such a lot to be told and listened to that no one remembered that the Senior Nursing Officer had accompanied Doctor van Diederijk over to the home late on the previous evening and paid her a visit. They had stood in her room, looking down at her sleeping face with its curtain of dark hair spread on the pillow, and the Senior Nursing Officer had murmured something appropriate about her being a brave young woman who had done her duty. She had expected the doctor to say something in like vein, or at least agree with her, but all he said was: ‘Well, she looks fine to me. She’ll be perfectly all right after a good night’s sleep.’
The Senior Nursing Officer had been a little shocked by his indifference and then excused him because, after all, he was a foreigner and somewhat cold in his manner, even though his manners were perfect.
Euphemia found her patients temporarily housed in the physiotherapy department at the other end of the hospital, which had escaped lightly from the blast, having the whole of the centre of the vast building as well as the wing which had caught the full force of the explosion, between it and the burst gas main. The men were in hastily erected beds arranged haphazardly around the whole department, and although the ill ones were connected to their drips and monitors there was a woeful lack of simple equipment. Euphemia went round having a word with the men and then repaired to the tiny office where she gathered her nurses around her to be given a brief résumé of what had happened after she had left the scene.
There were cries of admiration for her conduct, of course, but she was a modest young woman and while she thanked them she pointed out that if any of them had been there they would have done exactly the same as she had done. ‘And Nurse Shotter,’ she observed, ‘was very brave. We can all be proud of her.’ Everyone looked at the student nurse, who went bright red and mumbled something. ‘She could have turned tail and run for it, and I wouldn’t have
blamed her.’ Euphemia beamed at the girl. ‘What luck they came when they did or we should have been in the soup.’
‘It’s in all the papers,’ said a voice. ‘No one was hurt—not badly, anyway. Lucky it wasn’t the rush hour.’
‘What will happen to the ward, Sister?’ asked Joan Willis. ‘We can’t stay here, can we?’
Euphemia shook her head. ‘It’s not very likely. I daresay I’ll know more about that later on. I’ll let you know when I do. Now let’s get to work, there’s an awful lot of stuff we simply must have right away—I’ll make a list and see if I can get it at once. The men have recovered marvellously, but all the same I think I’ll get Doctor Walker down to take a look at Mr Cummins.’
Terry came presently, pronounced Mr Cummins in a fair condition, considering his experience, and after a look at the remainder of the patients followed her into the office. ‘And you, Euphemia?’ he wanted to know. ‘Quite the little heroine and none the worse for it.’
She said seriously: ‘Nothing like that. I couldn’t do anything else, could I? I was scared stiff.’