A Wartime Nurse

by Maggie Hope

  Her mind wandered to Major Collins. He was a kind man, even though at times he seemed cold. Sometimes she felt an affinity with him, which was silly. She didn’t know anything about him; she didn’t even know if he had a girlfriend or ever had had one. But it had been nice, just for a second or two, to lean on him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Next morning Theda woke feeling much better than she had expected to, just a faint throbbing from her foot. Clara had already gone to work, and Theda turned over in the big brass bed and stretched out luxuriously. Maybe she should go in, she thought, there was practically nothing wrong with her, and after all, Sister was off today. Swinging her legs out of bed, she pulled on a robe which Bea had crocheted for her last Christmas out of scraps of wool unravelled from old jumpers. Wincing only a little as she walked stiffly to the head of the stairs, she went down to the kitchen.

  ‘By, lass, you won’t take a bit of rest when you get the chance, will you?’ demanded her mother. ‘I was just about to bring you up a nice cup of tea and a slice of toast and dripping. How are your feet, anyroad?’

  ‘Oh, practically back to normal,’ said Theda. ‘I might go in to work this afternoon, I feel a fraud.’

  ‘Hmm. That bicarbonate of soda must have worked wonders then, I’m sure,’ said Bea, sounding sceptical. ‘Here, sit down and have your breakfast now I’ve made it for you. Then we’ll have a look and see. Did you sleep all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Theda had lain awake until about one o’clock as it happened, and then, when she heard her father and Chuck going down to get ready for their shift, she had given in and followed them, taking a cup of tea from their pot and swallowing a couple of Anadins with it.

  ‘Mind, you want to be a bit careful with them batteries, I thought you had more sense,’ Matt had growled at her, but she could see he was concerned.

  ‘Aye, you might have burned a hole in the pavement,’ grinned Chuck.

  Back in bed, warmed by the hot tea and a short sit by the fire, she had soon fallen asleep.

  ‘Cold tea you want on that,’ her mother pronounced as she inspected Theda’s feet after she had removed the bandages. She firmly believed that her own remedies were quite as good as anything the medical profession came up with.

  Tannic acid, thought Theda. This time she’s probably right. Her right foot was a bit angry-looking but the redness had faded a little and was sore rather than painful. There were two blisters on her left instep, about the size of a sixpenny piece. All they needed was a sterile dressing. But it would please Bea to apply a dressing of cold tea.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said.

  After dinner, fortified by another couple of Anadins, Theda insisted on going in to work. It was one o’clock when she knocked on the door of Matron’s office. She had gone in on the bus, so her foot wasn’t aching too much.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming in today? I’ve arranged for someone to take your place,’ said Matron as Theda went in and stood before the desk. ‘I understood from Major Collins that you had suffered burns to your feet?’

  ‘Not too bad though, Matron,’ said Theda. ‘They were much better this morning.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Matron was studying a list on her desk. Theda stood for a moment or two. She stared out of the window above Matron’s head, feeling her left instep stinging a little. It must have rubbed against the dressing. Perhaps she had wasted her time coming in, she thought, feeling as grumpy as Matron looked.

  ‘Well, they are short-handed upstairs on Block Two this afternoon – you can give a hand there. There’s a short theatre list scheduled for three o’clock.’

  ‘Yes, Matron. Thank you, Matron.’ Theda turned to go, thinking that her superior had showed little interest in just how badly burned she had been. But as she reached the door Matron spoke again.

  ‘I’ll have a word with Major Collins. He’ll find time to look at your foot, I’m sure.’

  ‘Thank you, Matron.’

  Block Two, the British officers’ ward. Well, it made a change. Theda walked through to the next block and up the stairs to the ward. It wasn’t long since she had been there with the German choir. Some of the men recognised her and as she came in they smiled and waved. At least the ones who were convalescing did; two in the main ward were screened off and she could hear Sister’s voice from behind the screens.

  ‘Lie still a moment, Captain—’

  Theda put her head through the opening. ‘Matron has sent me along to help, Sister.’

  ‘Goodness, has she really? Things must be quiet in the rest of the hospital,’ Sister said. She smiled briefly as she straightened from her position over the bed where she had been coating the Captain’s abdomen with antiseptic. ‘Still, we certainly can use you. Why don’t you take over here so I can get on with something else? The Captain here, he’s for an appendicectomy, and ditto the next bed. Both to prepare and administer the pre-op. I’m sure you can manage, can’t you?’

  The question was hypothetical. Of course she could manage. Theda scrubbed up and put on a gown and mask. A junior opened the screens for her and she went in, taking the forceps holding the sponge soaked in antiseptic from Sister’s hand.

  She worked carefully, covering the whole of the abdomen with the orange liquid and then placed a sterile dressing towel over the area. As she finished she glanced at the Captain’s face. He looked white and ill, but managed a smile. ‘I’ll do anything to get out of parade duty,’ he joked.

  ‘Hmm. Well, I’ll just get you your pre-med and then you can drop off to sleep. Before you know it you’ll be back in bed with it all over. No doubt you’ll get a spot of leave and then it’ll all have been worth it.’

  As she moved the screens she saw that the theatre porters had come in to take the first patient on the list to theatre. It was the American from the side ward. So he hadn’t been transferred yet. He must be having his burns attended to under anaesthesia.

  He was awake. As she watched he turned his head on the trolley and saw her. ‘Just my luck!’ he said. ‘You come in to brighten up the ward and they take me away.’

  Theda had to smile. ‘Go on with you. I’ll still be here when you get back.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of – I’ll come back asleep. Promise you’ll be here when I wake up?’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  The porter took him off to theatre and Theda went to the sink to scrub up again and prepare the next patient. A nice man, she mused, and by the look of him he wasn’t going to be badly scarred. There were his hands, of course . . . what agony it must have been in that burning plane! She thought of the pain in her own foot, a burn so trivial compared to what the American had suffered.

  The afternoon wore on, the three patients on the list came back from theatre and had to be made comfortable and watched until they came fully round from the anaesthetic. The Captain who had had his grumbling appendix removed was nauseous and one of the two juniors on duty had to stay near so as to hold him up when he felt sick. And all the time, in the back of Theda’s mind, she was expecting Ken Collins to come in to see her as Matron had said. Not that it mattered to her if he didn’t, of course.

  ‘You can take your tea break now, Staff,’ Sister said as she passed by and Theda glanced at the clock, surprised to see it was already five o’clock. ‘Then you had better go back to your own ward, we will manage fine,’ she added. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  Theda, just finishing the last Penicillin injection, picked up the kidney dish containing the empty syringe and took it down to the sink at the end of the ward. Penicillin, she thought as she washed the syringe in the sink and rinsed it under the tap before putting it in the steriliser. The new wonder drug. Maybe after the war there would be enough to use on the civilian population, not just the British Forces. Why, it could cut a swathe through infections of most kinds. Well, according to her old nursing tutor it would. Half the hospital beds would be empty.

  Before leaving the ward, she looke
d into the room where the American had been sleeping peacefully since his return from theatre. After all, she had promised to be there if he woke. Eugene Ridley, she read as she looked at his chart on the end of the bed. Eugene Ridley. An outlandish name – she couldn’t imagine anyone calling a baby Eugene. But Ridley was a local name. Idly she wondered if his ancestors had come from the area.

  The line showing his temperature was down, almost normal, she noted. Putting down the chart, she moved to the side of the bed and looked at his face. She eased her left foot slightly, holding it off the floor. It was sore; she would change the dressing when she went off duty.

  The American slept on, his mouth slightly open and showing white even teeth. His face was visible now; only a bandage around his forehead remained and one under his chin. The skin was a patchy red but healing already and his lashes were growing again, the roots must not have been destroyed. Fair they were, with a reddish tinge, though not as fair as some of the Germans’. There was a dimple in his chin. She smiled. It was just like her gran’s.

  ‘Hello, Angel.’

  Theda jumped as his eyes flew open and he grinned, albeit a little lopsidedly as the new skin on one cheek refused to crease so easily.

  ‘I knew it was you, even with my eyes closed,’ he said softly. ‘Thank you for staying.’

  ‘I’m just on my way to tea,’ she said, slightly flustered. ‘Then I have to go back to my own ward.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you can stay a few minutes, can’t you? Have pity on a poor lonely man in a strange land, thousands of miles from home.’

  He was used to charming girls, Theda thought, he must have used that line hundreds of times. It was not surprising, the way he looked and with that accent – most girls had only heard it on the films. The thought reminded her of Clara and her trouble. Oh, Lord, it was easy to understand how and why her sister had got into the mess she was in.

  ‘Staff, I thought you were going to tea?’ Sister’s disapproving voice came from the doorway of the small side ward.

  ‘I am, Sister.’

  As she turned, Theda saw that Ken Collins was standing beside her, frowning.

  ‘I thought you were having today off at least,’ he said. ‘I was surprised when Matron asked me to look at your foot.’

  Theda began to explain but he cut her short. ‘Come on then, let me see it now, I haven’t got all day. Go into Sister’s office and take off the dressing. I’ll be along in a minute. I just want to check on the post-op cases here.’ He stood to one side to allow her to pass.

  In the office, she took off her shoe and stocking and unwound the bandage from her foot. One of the blisters had burst.

  ‘Damn it all,’ she said savagely to herself. She had felt it stinging. It must have been the friction as she walked about.

  ‘Damn it indeed,’ he said behind her, and she jumped. ‘Don’t you ever do anything you are told?’

  He cleaned the foot gently with saline and painted on gentian violet before covering the burn again. In spite of herself his ministrations were soothing. Theda sat back in her chair and sighed with relief.

  ‘That better?’

  ‘Oh, yes, much, thank you.’

  ‘It’s not bad, it will be better in a day or two. Just an awkward place, that’s all. Now I’d better be getting on, patients to see to. But do try to keep off it for today at least.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  Theda looked up at him; he was smiling now, friendly again. He really was the most exasperating man, she thought. She couldn’t always tell what he was thinking and that could be disconcerting.

  ‘Well, I must go and check on your friend the pilot,’ he said lightly, and she opened her mouth to say the American was not her friend but he had already gone.

  When she was alone she pulled on her stocking and shoe and stood up. It felt fine. If she hurried she would just have time to eat the beans on toast that were invariably on the menu on Tuesdays then go back to Ward K.

  By New Year’s Eve, Theda’s foot was almost back to normal. She felt quite light-hearted as she travelled the few miles home. It was her evening off. She had finished at six o’clock and hadn’t to be back on duty until one o’clock tomorrow afternoon, for she had the morning free too.

  There was no one in but her mother. Bea was on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, ‘getting the dirt out for New Year’, as she called it.

  ‘I’ll be but a minute,’ she said as she got to her feet and wrung out her floorcloth in the bucket. Her forehead was red and beaded with sweat. She pushed back wisps of damp hair with one hand.

  ‘I could have done that, Mam. You should have waited,’ said Theda, vexed to see the work had been such an effort for her mother.

  ‘Aye, well, it’s done now.’

  Theda took the bucket from her mother and emptied it in the sink in the middle of the yard. Everything was sparkling clean: the seat and floor in the netty, the outside earth closet scrubbed, even the brick-paved yard had been swilled with soapy water, and the steps of both the back door and the back gate scoured with sandstone until they gleamed yellow in the light that came out of the back door as she opened it.

  Bea made a cup of Camp coffee as the tea ration was running short and they sat down by the fire to drink it, Theda wrinkling her nose at the taste of the chicory. The fireside mat was still up. Chuck hadn’t come in from the pit and would have to have his bath so Theda slipped off her shoes and rested her feet on the burnished fender. It was peaceful there, letting the heat of the fire soak into her, smelling the liver and onions Mam had cooking gently in the oven.

  ‘What about this Major Collins, then?’

  The question dropped into the silence, startling Theda for a minute. ‘What about him?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I mean, what’s he up to, coming round here, do you think?’

  ‘Mam, he’s not up to anything. I told you, he was just visiting his uncle and gave me a lift. Common courtesy, that’s all.’

  Bea gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Aye, I know you told me. But it seems to me he was awful interested in you.’

  Theda pulled a face at her. ‘Now, Mam, don’t you be going reading something into nothing. Anyway, I’m not interested in men any more. I’m going to go in for a grand career in nursing. I’ll be Matron one day. Or maybe, when the war is over, I’ll go off to Sunderland and take my Midwifery Certificate, even be a District Nurse. I don’t intend staying a Staff Nurse all my life.’

  ‘Aye, well, I know it’s not long since . . .’ Be a caught a glimpse of Theda’s face closing up and thought again about what she had been about to say.

  Up until that moment, Theda hadn’t given any really serious thought to her future now Alan had died. But once she had put it into words, she realised she was ambitious, still as she had been when she first entered nursing. She would love to rise to the top, or at least as far as she could go in nursing. She stared into the fire, watching the coals redden and crumble, fancying she saw pictures in the ashes, just as she had when she was small. She could do it, she knew she could, and the war was almost over, surely it was? Though there was Japan . . .

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Chuck, black from the pit, and shortly afterwards Clara came in. Then everything was hustle and bustle as Bea called Matt from his bed and the meal was eaten and then Chuck had to have his bath. The talk was all about the New Year’s Eve dance at the church hall.

  ‘I never learned how to dance,’ Bea said wistfully. ‘Your grandda was strict chapel. For meself I couldn’t see any harm in it, like.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be staying in with you, Mam,’ said Theda.

  ‘Get along with you,’ her mother said sharply. ‘You go along with your da. You want nowt staying in on a New Year’s Eve – you’ll be staying in all year if you do. You might as well enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Aye, your mother’s right,’ Matt put in. ‘You come with me, pet, you’ll have a grand time. You an’ all, Bea, I don’t know why you can’t
come.’ Matt was Master of Ceremonies at the dance which was organised by the Working Mens’ Club to raise money for the children’s summer picnic.

  ‘Nay, Matt, I’ll stay here and make sure we’re ready for the new year.’ Bea shook her head. ‘It’ll be nice to have the house to meself for an hour or two, I can listen to the wireless.’

  In the sitting-room, while Chuck had his bath, Theda found herself alone with Clara as Bea had slipped out to see a friend. Clara was obviously waiting for the opportunity to speak to her and Theda’s heart sank. Her sister had a brittle air about her, vivacious and smiling and bright-eyed, but she was obviously having trouble keeping still. She rushed over to the fire and turned to stare at Theda.

  ‘Are you going to help me?’

  Clara hissed out the question, her voice low but insistent. Her face was pale, but for two spots of colour high on her cheeks, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Why her mother hadn’t tumbled to the truth, Theda couldn’t imagine. Except that she would never ever think it could happen to one of her girls . . .

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Clara, I don’t know what I could do, really I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that! You could if you wanted to, you a nurse. You must be able to get anything you want, if you would only try.’

  ‘Clara, I’ve seen girls coming in to the hospital, bleeding, some of them dying, because they’ve done something to themselves, taken something. You know yourself there was Mrs Downs from Winton Village – she almost died after taking something. It’s not worth it, Clara.’ Theda felt like weeping for her sister.

  ‘Whisht, Dad’ll hear you! Keep your voice down, for God’s sake!’ Clara whispered fiercely. She walked over to the sideboard on the opposite side of the room and stared fixedly at the wooden manger scene Matt had whittled. The baby in the manger was a tiny celluloid doll, an improbable shade of pink, its golden hair painted on along with bright red lips and china blue eyes. Suddenly she lifted her hand and swept the whole thing off the sideboard so that the doll flew across the shiny linoleum which covered the floor and landed, feet sticking up, in the proddy mat by the fire.