From the ramp entrance MacDonald heard Catherine’s quiet voice answering the telephone ringing in the office across the corridor from the closed double doors of the darkened theatre proper. The only lights left on in the department were those in the corridor and coming from the open office door. The leaf-green corridor walls were lined with black oxygen and carbon dioxide cylinders, and together with the strong smell of anaesthetic omnipresent in all theatre departments, provided MacDonald with the reassurance of being on his own territory that he hadn’t realized he needed until he stopped in the entrance. He walked slowly and so silently up to the open doorway that Catherine didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him in the doorway as she was staring at a small cut-glass bowl of red roses on the desk whilst listening to the Night Superintendent.
She had changed back into uniform and had been writing her operation report on the still unidentified young man, temporarily officially listed as Unknown Male, (young), Bed 5, Men’s Surgical, when the telephone rang.
‘… still got to relieve Maria senior, Surgical wards seniors, our Henry and have our own. Theatre cleared and re-set?’
‘Yes, Sister. The surgeons and Dr Edgehurst left for Men’s Surgical about twenty minutes ago. Mr MacDonald said he’d ring you ‒’
‘He has. Dr Edgehurst has driven himself home and I’ve discovered his new nibs is MacDonald not Mackenzie. He says Unknown’s coming along nicely ‒ come round enough to spit out airway and gone back to sleep with blood running rightly and he’s to have the one more pint then go onto glucose-saline. I’ve had nowt more on him from police but happen we’ll have name for him by morning. Most likely he’ll give it himself first but if not, if he’s wed, his wife’ll be on phone to police somewhere, and if he’s no wife he’ll have fancy woman doing likewise soon as she’s dried tears thinking he’s stood her up. A well set up young lad like that’ll not be coming down for country weekend on his own and our Henry reckons he’s no local. He’d a good look at lad in Cas. and anaesthetic room. Londoner, Henry reckons ‒ but back to meals, lass. Kitchen staff’s getting shirty. I’ll not risk tying you in surgical wards on a Friday night this warm. Type of night for beach parties and we know where they can end. Could need theatre again. I’m thinking to send Maria senior to take over mealbreak in Women’s Surgical then t’other way round. You reckon that’ll do?’
Catherine closed her eyes and from the doorway MacDonald watched her thoughtfully. Her neat blonde head was framed by the single lace frill of her ‘utility’ sister’s cap, her downcast, genuinely dark lashes, accentuated the fairness of her skin. Her closed, unguarded face looked younger than her age, twenty-nine, very tired and very vulnerable. Oh God, she thought, please, help me keep my temper. The old girl means well and it’s not her fault she spent so many years running convalescent homes at night that she forgot what nursing acutes actually means ‒ if she ever knew.
She said, ‘Of course, the Maria senior is good with surgical women, Sister, but as we seldom have acute surgical men in Maria and she hasn’t nursed many since her first-year, if you’re intending her to keep an overall eye on Men’s Surgical she could have a bit of a problem. Or do you intend sending Nurse Blake to relieve in Men’s?’
‘Can’t spare that lass from Cas. and switchboard till our Henry’s done his boilers and had his meal. But seeing Unknown’s round, I’ll send Mrs Ford down to lend young Geraghty a hand whilst her senior eats.’
Give me strength! Catherine sat straighter and opened her eyes to look at her half-finished report. ‘Mrs Ford is a very sensible woman,’ she agreed gently, ‘but ‒ er ‒ untrained, Sister, and Geraghty’s only a first-year. If the Unknown’s blood stops she won’t know ‒ and can’t be expected to know ‒ how to get it going again soon enough. I do realize that on paper the surgical night seniors are allowed to keep overall charge of each other’s wards during meals, but it does take about three minutes to run from one ward to the other. If you’re lifting a patient or changing a dressing when you’re suddenly needed next door, you can’t always drop things, stat.’ She paused, but there was only a heavy silence. Nothing for it, but a kick under the belt. ‘What’s worrying me, Sister,’ she lied, ‘is what the Management Committee might say to you if something goes wrong with only a junior in charge.’
There was a heavy sigh. ‘Aye. Management Committee’ll not like that but if I’ve not the nurses ‒’
‘We have got Nurse Blake, Sister.’ Catherine didn’t add, though she was quite sure ‒ who is listening to us now. She doubted this would have occurred to the Night Superintendent, because the latter had nursed for thirty years before she encountered her first nurse-acting-operator and was too accustomed to the impersonal voices of lay operators and too set in her ways to adapt her ideas.
‘Like I’ve said, I need her in Cas., Sister!’
In the lodge in Casualty, Nurse Blake, with the headphones carefully poised to avoid crushing her cap, grimaced with irritation. Just as she thought. Not a flaming nurse but a flaming telephonist.
Catherine ignored the rebuke of her official title. ‘I do see your problem, Sister, but Nurse Blake is the best surgical nurse we’ve got on nights and knows Men’s Surgical pretty well. Couldn’t she go there and Mrs Ford to Cas.? She’s so fast on the board and so reliable that if any police or doctors’ calls come in, or anyone just wanders in, she can ring you or me, stat. ‒ and she will.’ She was staring at her report. ‘The Unknown’s guts were in an ugly mess, Sister. Personally, I don’t think anything’ll give or he’ll suddenly collapse as Mr MacDonald did a marvellous repair, but I’ll bet at this early stage even Mr MacDonald wouldn’t rule either out.’
There was another silence but it was heavier than the previous one as it was a triple reaction. In the Matron’s Office the Night Superintendent’s massive bosom heaved nostalgically for the time when all she’d to fret over was what Matron said and any Night Sister with gumption could sort any Matron with one hand tied behind back. In the lodge, Nurse Blake, pink-faced and tight-lipped reminded herself Sister Jason was smarming because she knew she, Nurse Blake, was listening ‒ only ‒ Sister J. wasn’t actually the smarmy type. In the office doorway, MacDonald looked at his feet as if there was something very amiss with the gleaming shine of his shoes.
‘Right then. I’ll send Blake to Men’s Surgical straight off and Mrs Ford to Cas. Get off the line, lass!’ The Night Superintendent jiggled the receiver.
Catherine put down, sat back, reclosed her eyes, and muttered aloud, ‘The things I do for England’.
MacDonald said quietly, ‘If England’s not grateful, Mrs Jason, I am.’
She started in surprise at the sound of his voice but not by what he said or his presence. Mark Jason had been MacDonald’s houseman for ten months and Catherine knew his habit of ruthless honesty and of doing his own dirty work.
She was equally honest. She looked round but didn’t get up. This was purely a social call. ‘Sorry, Mr MacDonald, didn’t hear you come in. How much did you hear?’
He leant against the lintel. ‘Enough to appreciate why Alex Gordon suggested I bring my razor strop as I might have to sharpen my own bloody scalpels.’ He searched himself absently and gave the little office a cursory once over. The office was so crammed with filing cabinets, shelves of surgical textbooks, a large padlocked Dangerous Drug cupboard and smaller padlocked crockery, tea, sugar and biscuits cupboard, that there was only spare room for the one spare hard chair at the end of the small, flat-topped desk set at right angles against the one low, chintz-curtained window. Between the empty chair and doorway was about a foot of floor-space. The window was shut. Catherine hadn’t opened it, to save time and avoid an invasion of insects amongst other reasons. In the confined office the smell of the roses was so strong it almost extinguished the anaesthetic.
‘Any ether in here?’
‘None this side of the theatre and anaesthetic room.’ She pushed forward the clean desk ashtray before he produced a squashed packet of cigarettes.
‘Not in uniform on-duty, thanks.’
She sat back with her hands in her lap, waiting for him to say what they both knew he had come to say and bracing herself inwardly as she suspected he was doing from the time he was taking to get his cigarette going. He had the great sensitivity and great insensitivity that tends to accompany an exceptional talent for surgery, a remarkable talent for making accurate spot diagnoses and a very kind streak. He’s always kind to patients’ relatives, she thought with the part of her mind she normally forced herself to keep locked on-duty. She could feel the lock turning. To postpone the moment when the door must open, she looked him over with a detachment born of chronic anxiety and chronic fatigue.
He looked younger now than when she had first worked with him in ’44, when he’d been thirty-four. He didn’t look, and never had looked physically strong, but as he never seemed to remember the missing kidney that had kept him out of uniform in the war, nor did anyone who worked with him. He had the kind of mental stamina that allows an individual to function efficiently whilst others under the same conditions literally drop. She thought of the war in ’44; of Mark, ten years MacDonald’s junior, dropping into an exhausted sleep the moment he sat down in an armchair in the ward corridor, and of other exhausted sleeping men in white coats on other nights. No one had ever seen MacDonald asleep on duty, but she could remember his face, red-eyed, haggard, blue-chinned, not on some isolated occasion but night after night, after months of seven-day weeks and twenty-odd hour working days. She could remember him walking in and out of the ward like a very old man.
Odd, she thought, odd. He looks now as if he has spent his exalted life in the ivory towers of a great teaching hospital with registrars and housemen running round him in circles and sisters eating out of his hand. And most Martha’s sisters had eaten out of his hand. ‘Dear Mr MacDonald! Not always the easiest of men, of course ‒ but where’s the really good physician or surgeon who is? But so ‒ so ‒ nice.’ And in Martha’s Nurses’ Homes, ‘Mack can be a swine ‒ but, my God, the swine’s loaded with SA …’ Loaded, smooth, successful and untouchable as hell, she thought. That’s how he looks. Odd to think I once saw him with the lid off in his own private hell and that he’s probably been at the receiving end of more bombs than most of the men who spent the war toting guns. No gun in his hands; no gun in Mark’s nor any of the other civvy doctors in London in ’44 and ’45 ‒ or in ’41 and ’40. Only the mangled bodies of thousands of air-raid victims and they saved many more of those bodies than they lost.
‘How’s your husband, Mrs Jason?’
She saw the kindness in his eyes but from old defensive habit her face assumed the expression that in her girlhood had convinced the unimaginative that she was a typically dumb chocolate-box blonde. ‘Getting along, thank you. Bound to take time.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ His eyes watched her kindly, but also, clinically. He saw the shadows under her eyes and the tension beneath the gentle blankness of her face. ‘I must get up to see him over this weekend, but if you see him first, please give him my regards and say I’ll be in.’
‘Sure. Thank you. He’ll like that.’
‘Good.’ He smiled pleasantly and continued pleasantly, ‘I imagine it’ll have to be either tomorrow or Sunday ‒ with luck both ‒ as on Monday I gather I’m due to operate all day in Arumchester General.’ She nodded. It was safer than speech. They had never known each other well, personally, but after seven years they knew too much about each other for pretence ‒ or bearing ‒ unless as now and always, they were encircled by the steel armour of the hospital etiquette with which they had both been engrained during the most impressionable years of their youth. He went on, ‘Alex Gordon hopes to be back late on Tuesday. I think that a wee bit optimistic, though he may make it. Mrs Alex had a call from her mother-in-law tonight. Old Mr Gordon’s condition ‒’ he shrugged like a Latin ‘ “as well as can be expected”. At least that means he’s survived the first thirty-six hours without another, so he may pull out of this coronary. The new anti-coagulants seem to be proving useful.’
‘They do.’ The change of subject relaxed her a little. Not much. Just enough to explain she was just back from nights off and hadn’t heard of Mr Gordon, senior’s, illness until she came on duty tonight.
‘And you were expecting some chap called Mackenzie until I walked into the theatre?’ He smiled at her reaction. ‘My radar ears.’
She smiled with her lips. ‘I’d forgotten them. Mark once told me you could hear the doodles before they left France or Holland or wherever it was they came from.’
‘Not quite, Mrs Jason. They’d to cross the English coast first.’ He averted his gaze to the large bronze star bearing in the centre the arms of Martha’s that she wore pinned to the top right corner of her spotless, starched, strapless apron bib. ‘It’s nice to see the old iron cross around once more on what is, foreseeably, my last weekend in England for ‒’ again his half-Highland blood showed in his shrug, ‘God knows.’
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘In England? You’re leaving Martha’s?’
He moved forward to stub out his cigarette and light another one before answering. The lighter flame accentuated the angles of his face and darkness of his hair and eyes. ‘Left. On paper. I’m still on the strength till my holiday runs out. Five weeks time. I’ve shoved it all together to give me time for the move. I didn’t bother to give Alex these details when he rang. All he wanted to know was if I was free and I am. The fish will wait and thrive.’
‘I guess they will,’ she said vaguely. Her mind was elsewhere. ‘Brain-draining?’
His quick grin transformed his face and shed twenty years from his age. ‘No, Mrs Jason. I couldn’t face the language problem. It was quite tough enough when I first came south.’
‘Back to Scotland?’
‘Yes.’ They looked at each other in silence for a few moments and neither of their faces gave anything away. ‘In many ways I’m sorry to leave Martha’s, but I’ve been offered and accepted a job I’ve always wanted, and I think the time has come for me to go back home.’
‘A Chair?’ He flushed faintly and she was glad for him. ‘Mr MacDonald ‒’ she stood up, smiling properly, ‘or should I say Professor MacDonald ‒’
‘Och, not till August ‒’
‘Never mind. Congratulations. Honestly!’ He was suddenly looking at her oddly. ‘Have I said the wrong thing?’
‘No.’ He glanced back at her badge. ‘It’s just that your reaction is somewhat unique in my experience.’
‘Sackcloth and ashes from Martha’s?’
‘Along those lines.’
‘I’ll bet! “Now nurses, only one hospital in the country to any Martha’s nurse or Martha’s man,” the times we got that in training it’s no wonder we’re all ‒ what’s that new expression ‒ yes ‒ brain-washed into thinking no other hospital exists. But you haven’t told me where you’re going ‒ oh no!’ The telephone was ringing. ‘Sorry.’ She raised the receiver. ‘Theatre. Sister Jason speaking.’
‘Hold the line, please, Sister,’ instructed Mrs Ford’s professional telephonist’s voice. ‘Nurse Blake calling from Men’s Surgical.’ Catherine looked quickly at MacDonald who gestured to show he had heard and would wait. ‘You’re through to Sister now, Nurse Blake!’
Catherine said, ‘Problem with the Unknown Male in Bed 5, Nurse Blake?’
‘No, Sister.’ Nurse Blake was worried so sounded defiant. ‘He’s fine, sleeping, blood running in well, dressing intact, hasn’t been sick ‒’ and she added the latest pulse, respiration and blood-pressure figures. ‘I’m only ringing you because of ‒ well ‒ it’s something Nurse Geraghty’s said.’
MacDonald said softly, ‘I’ll leave you and away. Don’t hesitate to give me a shout if that new chap worries you.’ He raised a hand in farewell and vanished.
Catherine glanced at the empty doorway, shook her head at her thoughts, then concentrated
her attention on her telephone conversation. MacDonald heard her, ‘What’s Nurse Geraghty said that’s worried you, nurse?’ as he walked out onto the ramp. He walked a few yards in the wrong direction, then stepped over a flower-bed onto lawn for a long clearer look at the few lights on the hilltop. He looked at the lights for a couple of minutes before he stepped back over the flowers and walked quickly up the ramp in the right direction. By then Catherine had finished her conversation and was sitting at the desk swiftly turning back the pages of the theatre logbook to the report of an operation performed one afternoon early in the week before last. She read it through twice before she reached for the receiver. ‘Sister Jason, Mrs Ford. Can you find Mr Rolls for me and ask him to meet me in Men’s Surgical soon as he can. Please say I’m going there now soon as I’ve locked the theatre. Take me about a minute. And could you let the Night Superintendent know I’m leaving the theatre for Men’s Surgical. Thanks.’ She was out of the theatre in that minute, but she didn’t only lock up. On her way out, she shot into the stockroom, took a long red rubber metal anchor-headed tourniquet from a drawer and thrust it in one of the pockets of her dress skirt. Nurse Blake would already have one in her dress pocket, and one was enough. But if one was needed, it would be in a hurry, and as always, when under acute emotional or professional strain or both, Catherine was incapable of varying her habitual behaviour. She had been trained since her teens into the habit of expecting to find herself dealing single-handed in emergencies where she could feel the cold breath of death down her neck. Inside of the next thirty minutes that habit saved another life.
A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2) Page 4