by Kate Eastham
Alice saw Michael open his mouth to reply, but he seemed unable to speak. In the end he nodded, muttering something about not knowing what his missus would say, but it seemed that a deal had been struck to Sister Law’s satisfaction.
‘Now take the patient to bed five. And where are his crutches?’
Michael and Stephen were nonplussed. ‘I sold them,’ said the patient. ‘The dog needed food and some man with a bit of money needed crutches.’
‘We’ll supply you with another pair,’ declared Sister, laying a hand on the patient’s shoulder.
‘Now come along,’ she said, as the orderlies sagged at the knees with the weight of the patient, their faces red with exertion.
‘We might as well have a look at this new admission,’ said Mr Jones, striding after Michael and Stephen as they made their way up the ward.
‘Come on, Nurse Sampson,’ he called. ‘You can observe the assessment.’
It took a few minutes for the dog to be accepting of anyone examining his master, but in the end Michael was able to hold on to him at the bottom of the bed. The veteran had been found collapsed on the street. His right leg had been in a terrible condition for years following a war wound sustained in the Crimea. Alice remembered from last time the violence of the injury, the big chunk of flesh missing from the calf. This time the leg was angry, swollen, and oozing yellow pus on to the clean hospital sheet.
‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to rescue it again, Mr Swain,’ said the surgeon. ‘We will need to take you to the operating table, and when you’re under the chloroform, I’ll make my assessment, but you might be waking up without the blighter this time.’
Alice saw Mr Swain nod; he seemed resigned to his fate.
‘How do you feel about that?’ said Sister Law, as she gently pulled the sheet back over the man’s legs.
The patient shrugged and appeared lost in thought for a few moments, but then he spoke, his voice low but well-spoken. ‘I have so much pain in that leg every day, I’ve felt like chopping it off myself … but if you can clean it up and save it, I would be grateful. I’ve heard about phantom pain, from some of those who served out there with me. From what I’ve heard, the pain can be just as excruciating, with or without the limb.’
‘Very true,’ said Sister. ‘But if gangrene has set in, there might not be any choice.’
‘I understand, Sister,’ said the man. ‘But at least I can report that I have, at last, been able to take your advice. I’ve stayed off the drink. I went through the shakes really bad, but I had a place to stay in, a boarding house, and I managed to do it without dying. I needed to find somewhere for the dog, you see. I found him on the street about three months ago. He was in a terrible state then – he’d been used for fighting and he’d been shoved in a box and left for dead. I saved him. And once I cleaned up his wounds and got to know him, I couldn’t risk him suffering because I was too drunk to look after him. So me and Stanley, we managed to get a room together.’
‘Very well done, Mr Swain,’ said Sister. ‘And he is a fine fellow, isn’t he? He’s been through the wars, though, you can see that. What’s that new wound on his nose?’
‘When the leg got worse again and I started to feel sick with it, I fell over in the street, I couldn’t get up. Some wild dogs came at me that night, and Stanley fought them off.’
Alice could see that Sister was almost in tears as the man told his story, and Michael, who was still holding the dog at the bottom of the bed, gave him an extra stroke. ‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘Good boy.’
‘Let’s get you well again, Mr Swain, so that you can continue to look after your dog,’ said Sister. Then, seeing that the patient had started to close his eyes, she glanced at Mr Jones and laid her hand on his forehead. ‘He’s hot, Mr Jones. No need for the new-fangled thermometer this time – the man clearly has a fever.’
Mr Jones smiled at her. ‘Let’s get him to theatre then, Sister, as soon as we can.’
‘You’d best take the dog now, Mr Delaney,’ said Sister. ‘Keep him in that room of yours until you’re ready to go home, find him some food from the kitchen and a bowl of clean water. Oh, and clean up his nose, will you?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said Michael, bundling the dog up into his arms. As he walked away down the ward, Alice heard the dog give a sorrowful whine and she saw him looking back at Mr Swain as he lay, insensible, on the bed, never taking his eyes off the man. Poor Stanley, she thought, I hope it won’t be long before he can be reunited with his master.
Alice wasn’t sure if she wanted the opportunity to go back into theatre again, not after last time, but she was prepared to get the experience if that’s what she was required to do. However, the decision was taken out of her hands. Nurse Langtry had been promised the next stint, and given that Alice had already done the ward round it seemed only fair.
‘Go and fix Mr Knox’s dressing, Nurse Sampson,’ said Sister, as she strode away up the ward with Mr Jones in tow.
Alice glanced across and she could see the Reverend Seed was sitting by Tommy’s bed. It looked as though they were deep in conversation, and then they were both laughing. He can’t be reading prayers, thought Alice, anxious to get on and follow Sister’s instruction. She hadn’t encountered the Reverend since her night shift, but seeing him now, looking relaxed, his dark hair flopping forward on to his brow, she got a different impression from the one she had in her head. He liked to talk, he could smile, and there was an air of gentleness about him that struck Alice as very kindly.
Very kindly or not, Alice knew that she would have to interrupt them: the dressing needed to be done.
‘Sorry to disturb,’ she said to them both, ‘but I still need to rebandage your dressing, Mr Knox.’ She saw the Reverend’s face flush red and he shot up from his seat.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he mumbled, and then turning to Tommy, ‘I’ll call by and see you next time, Mr Knox, if that’s all right?’
‘Yes, any time, Reverend,’ said Tommy, and then when Alice got to the side of the bed, he whispered, ‘I think the Reverend might have a soft spot for you, Nurse Sampson.’
‘Nonsense, Mr Knox,’ she said firmly. ‘He’s just a shy man, that’s all.’
‘He didn’t seem shy when he was sitting chatting to me …’
‘Right, Mr Knox, let me have a look at this dressing,’ Alice insisted, determined to shift focus back to the work in hand.
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ said Tommy, grinning. ‘There’s a fella I’ve seen out and about in the city,’ he said, nodding in the direction of Mr Swain as he was loaded on to the stretcher. ‘He’s been a regular round the docks and in the pubs for many a year.’
Alice wasn’t surprised to hear that. ‘Now let me just check that the dressing pad is in the right position. If you could just relax back on your pillows.’
The dressing had slipped, exposing the wound. The area looked angry, the skin bright red and puckered with black stitches.
‘He was in the Crimea, he’s a veteran. Some say he got medals for what he did out there.’
‘Really,’ said Alice, only half listening as she continued her inspection of Tommy’s wound. ‘You’ve lost a good chunk of your tattoo when they removed that lump, Mr Knox.’
Tommy looked down. ‘I have that,’ he said, laughing. ‘That was my first ship, the Beaufort Castle. I was an apprentice, only a nipper, when I worked on her.’
‘It looks like a very impressive ship, Mr Knox, from the bit that’s left,’ said Alice.
‘Aye, she was a fine ship, a three-masted barque. But I didn’t know what’d hit me on that first voyage. As soon as we were out to the ocean, I was sick as a dog for weeks. I cried me eyes out for three nights in a row. Then it dawned on me: we weren’t going back, I’d made me choice, I needed to go with the ship. I wish you could have seen her in full sail, Nurse Sampson … but she was wrecked in a violent storm off the coast of West Africa in 1828. Most of the crew drowned, and those that survived, they found ’em days later,
lashed to the shrouds of the mizzenmast.’
Alice had stopped now, so taken with the story, she’d forgotten to position the dressing.
‘But what about you, were you …?’
‘Nah, I’d already moved on by then, to work the clipper route to Australia … I was sorry to hear about the ship, but some of the crew, well, maybe they got what was coming to them. Maybe they did.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Now, if you could sit up for me, that’s it, so I can get the bandage round. That’s it.’
‘I had a hard time on there, a hard time. Some of the crew, they’d worked the slave ships. They were hard-bitten, violent men … They were still working the same routes to West Africa, but they’d switched the trade to palm oil – there was good money to be made from it, back then. I learned a lot on that first voyage, Nurse Sampson: who to trust, who to keep out the way of, and, most of all, when to keep quiet …’
‘If you could just hold the end of that bandage for me, till I get the next one … that’s it,’ said Alice, appalled to hear that her patient had shared a ship with men like that. ‘It sounds like you must have had a terrible time on there. Why did you get the tattoo, then? Surely it just reminded you?’
‘It did, yes, that’s the whole point, Nurse Sampson. I wanted to be reminded to take great care in choosing a ship and her crew. From then on I always looked for the good in everything … That’s why when the opportunity came to help with the war effort, I took it. I worked the ships that took that lot, the British soldiers, out to Turkey and the Crimea, during the war,’ said Tommy, gazing over at Mr Swain as the orderlies took him through to theatre.
‘They were busy years, the 1850s, busy years. Backwards and forwards to Scutari and Balaklava with soldiers and horses and ammunition. We lost too many of those horses, even before they got near to the other side. And I can tell you, Nurse Sampson, once you’ve buried a horse at sea, sliding it down into the water off a big plank, once you’ve done that, you never forget it. We used to cry our eyes out each and every time. Even more than we would if it’d been a soldier or a seaman. Strange, that. I suppose those creatures didn’t ask to be out there, they just seemed so big and helpless …’
‘That must have been terrible,’ said Alice, fascinated and moved by what he was saying. ‘Now if you could just lean forward for me, I’ll tuck the end of the bandage in and then you’re done.’
‘Aaargh,’ groaned Tommy as he sat forward. ‘That’s giving me a bit of jip.’
‘Just for a moment longer, while I get this bandage secure,’ said Alice, working as quickly as she could. ‘Then I’ll get you some more laudanum.’
Tommy nodded grimly.
‘One of the superintendents here at the hospital, Miss Houston, she was out there as a nurse,’ said Alice, trying to distract him.
‘Was she?’ gasped Tommy.
‘Almost there now, Mr Knox,’ she soothed.
‘Well, she’ll know about it,’ said Tommy, at last able to lean back on his pillow and get some relief. ‘I bet she still has the nightmares, sometimes, I bet she still hears the sound of the men and horses screaming … Those men that we brought back from there, they weren’t the same men as we took out. They weren’t just maimed from shells, they were different; some of them were silent shadows of the men we’d taken out. They had a haunted look in their eyes.’
‘It must have been awful,’ said Alice.
‘It was for them. Not for us – we had plenty of regular work at that time, the ships did well. But what it taught me was this: war is a terrible thing, Nurse Sampson. I hope that you never have to live through another, not in your lifetime.’
‘I hope so too, Mr Knox,’ said Alice, as she checked that the bandage was secure.
‘That’s a fine job you’ve done there, Nurse Sampson,’ said Tommy, glancing down to his chest. ‘A woman like you would soon take to a life at sea, you’d be a real asset. I once had the pleasure of working with a sailor who turned out to be a woman …’
Fascinated as Alice was by the story that Tommy was about to tell, she knew that she had to move on to the next patient. Sister Law would be back down the ward in no time.
‘Tell me later, Tommy,’ she grinned, adjusting his pillows to make sure that he was as comfortable as he possibly could be. ‘Now you get some rest, Nurse’s orders.’
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ he said, giving her a mock salute.
By the end of the shift, Alice was exhausted, but satisfied. In particular, she’d taken a great deal of pleasure from ensuring that Tommy had been well looked after: she’d not only re-dressed his wound, she’d spoken up when he needed pain relief, and helped him get out of bed for the first time since he’d come back from theatre. It felt like a privilege, to be trusted with looking after Tommy. She only hoped that he’d be fit to go back to sea when the time came. The way he’d spoken to her, she knew that he was only truly alive when he was out on the ship with the crew. He’d not spoken of any family, just the men on the ships.
As she made her way off the ward, Alice was just out through the door and walking down the corridor when she heard a voice calling her from behind.
She knew who it was instantly: the Reverend Seed. Turning to face him she saw the man stop abruptly, his eyes wide, and then walk slowly towards her, holding out a piece of paper.
As he started to speak again, Alice could see his cheeks were flushed pink. He is shy, she thought, and she felt that she wanted to reach out to help him.
‘Nurse Sampson, this is for you,’ he said, thrusting the piece of paper in her direction. ‘I’m hosting a tea for any probationer nurses who are able to attend. You can have tea or your measure of beer or brandy, whatever you want. And there will be cake. I’m still trying to get to know all the people here at the hospital. And Miss Merryweather thought it would be a nice idea to get all the probationers together, especially someone like you, who doesn’t really know the rest of the set. So if you can come …’
‘Thank you, Reverend,’ said Alice gently, taking the piece of paper from his trembling hand.
‘It’s next week, on Thursday, the details are all in there …’ he muttered, glancing up to meet her gaze at last.
‘I will have a look and come along if I can.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said, almost bowing, as Alice turned to leave.
I don’t think there’s anything in what Tommy said, she thought, as she continued down the corridor. He’s just a young man who’s led a very sheltered life. He’s shy with women, that’s all.
As Alice made her way to the Nurses’ Home she was looking forward to meeting Eddy, as she often did after work, so that they could walk through the city together. But there was no sign of her friend and Alice couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She knew that sometimes Eddy got delayed with one of her cases, but Alice was still alive with the day’s work and it would have been nice to talk it through as they walked home.
What a good day she’d had; what a relief to be going off the ward without the worry of some incident with a superintendent. It seemed like a whole different world.
After removing her starched cap and apron and placing them on the shelf, Alice went to check the pigeonholes. Maud had told her she would write to her, addressing it to the Training School. She had been checking regularly, anxious to hear the news and to have a forwarding address, but still there’d been no word. She was more than ready for a letter from Maud, so when she saw an envelope with her name on it, just for a moment, she thought that it had come. Then she saw the handwriting, the unmistakeable hand of her mother.
Alice wasn’t sure she wanted to open it. There was never any change in the news, and simply reading her mother’s words and seeing her writing made her feel anxious, as though Jemima Sampson was breathing down her neck. Her mother wrote every month without fail, and each time that Alice received a letter, she was careful to always send a reply, assuring her family that she was working hard, busy on the wards, doing well. Even
when she was heavily pregnant and had just given birth, she still sent the letters, anxious not to give any cause for suspicion.
‘You’d better open it,’ she muttered to herself, ripping open the envelope before she could change her mind. She quickly read through all the usual information – the weather, the numbers of loaves, how many cows had calved, what the neighbours had been doing. Then, something new jumped out at her. Jamie. Jemima had seen his mother last market day. She’d said that they’d had another letter, he was still doing very well. He was working on a cattle station in Queensland, Australia. He had his own horse and he was earning very good money … Why is she telling me this? thought Alice, knowing straight away that the only reason her mother would be doing so was that she still hoped Jamie would come back. She still wanted him as part of the family, as Alice’s husband.
‘Too late for that, Mother, too late for all that,’ she muttered to herself, feeling irritated now, crumpling the letter and stuffing it in her pocket. She reached for her cape and hat and made her way to the door. She’d only just got to the bottom of the steps – she wasn’t even properly on the street – when she saw a broad-shouldered figure, standing with his hat in his hand, looking straight at her.
She looked at him, and her heart jumped.
It was Roderick Morgan. What’s he doing here? thought Alice, her heart starting to race. Surely he isn’t here to see me? But even as she had that thought, the man was striding towards her, smiling.
‘Nurse Alice,’ he said, looking, as always, as though he owned the very ground that he walked on.
‘Hello,’ said Alice tentatively.
‘Sorry, I didn’t want to worry you,’ he said, coming close enough now for Alice to see the gold watch chain across his brocade waistcoat. Her knees were beginning to feel a bit weak.
‘It’s just that I wanted to thank you for looking after my friend, Ray Lloyd. We had the funeral today, and I couldn’t help but think of you and the night we spent together in the hospital.’