Mr Parsons’ martyred sighs floated across the ward and the men in 14 and 15, the beds directly opposite 5 and 6, exchanged amused, resigned, glances. They had both been woken by the return of Bed 5 from the theatre and the clinking of the bed’s curtains being closed, and too interested in the shadows on the ceiling directly above 5, to go back to sleep. They had listened to the soft swish-swish of the quickly connected oxygen; the murmur of male voices when young Ginger, the Old Doctor, and the new dark bloke standing in for Mr Gordon had been behind the curtains. They had heard 5 splutter a bit when he spat out his throat tube and the night nurse’s cooing ‘That’s right, dear, spit it out ‒ goody!’ Then the curtains had been drawn open, the Old Doctor had taken himself off and young Ginger and the new bloke had walked quietly all round the ward before the new bloke left and young Ginger rushed back to the table to his writing and hadn’t been there the three minutes before the phone out in the corridor rung to fetch him off. He’d not been gone more than another three, it seemed, before that pretty young Nurse Blake with the quick tongue and gentle hands came in quick and quiet to stand-in for the senior night nurse’s dinner break. By then the little Irish dumpling with dimples had fetched them and old Harry Parsons mugs of tea, and they’d been thinking of getting back to kip when they noticed her say something to Nurse Blake that made her go straight to old Harry’s bed and have a good look at his face and plaster in her torchlight. She stood chatting to old Harry the minute or two whilst she took his pulse, then gone for another look at 5 before going casual-like down to the telephone. After she finished her call she’d gone into the Sister’s dutyroom opposite the pantry like it was on fire, then come out again, walked casual back up the ward, and stopped at the foot of 5’s bed with her back to them. From the turning of her head she was watching old Harry as much as the new bloke. Then the pretty young Night Sister with the eyes and the waist that looked small enough to get your hands round, come in quiet. She’d gone first to 5 and then the two of them moved for another word with old Harry. And there he was sighing and moaning with a pretty girl each side of his bed.
Mr Ellis in 15 reached for the lifting strap suspended from the wooden Balkan beam across his high fracture bed and eased himself closer to 14. He was a tractor driver and had managed to jump off but not quite clear when his tractor went into a skid and overturned. Had he not jumped he would have been killed, but he had been driving a tractor for six years and knew he had only one option on his exposed bucket-seat. His right leg was in an above knee plaster and his body encased from neck to waist. ‘No pleasing some,’ he whispered.
‘Too right, Chesty.’ Mr Tanner in 15 grinned toothlessly. His teeth were in a mug on his locker. He was a middle-aged man with magnificent arm and shoulder muscles. He was the blacksmith in Appleden, a village six miles south of Oakden and a five-day post appendicectomy.
‘Oh well,’ groaned Mr Parsons, ‘I suppose I’ll have to take the easy way out tonight, Sister. Fetch us a couple of aspirins, though what good they’ll do, I dunno.’
Catherine smiled. Her hand was on Mr Parsons’ wrist. ‘They won’t put you to sleep, Mr Parsons, but by easing the pain in your leg they may help you to sleep.’ She looked closely, clinically at his face. ‘It’s a pain not just an ache, isn’t it?’
Mr Parsons set his trap of a mouth. ‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She moved a little away and as always on her rounds, examined his plaster in her torchlight. Only Nurse Blake noticed the particular length of time the narrow beam lingered on the old blood, pus and sweat stains on the underside. I bet she’s thinking I’m round the bend to pay any attention to that moron Geraghty, thought Nurse Blake. He does look a bit peaky to me but as I was off last night, how can I say when those dried spots appeared? Geraghty swears blind the ones under on the right weren’t there last night, but she’s so dumb she hasn’t a clue. Only ‒ it is his tenth night and if anything’s going to give it’ll probably be tonight and those spots could probably be the warning. You generally get a few spots warning before a big one, Mr Gordon said in his lectures.
Catherine switched off, pocketed her throat torch, as simultaneously the corridor telephone started ringing and the man in Bed 11, the corner bed at the far end from the door, turned in sleep and knocked from his bed to the floor the enamel urinal he had earlier taken from his locker seat then gone to sleep before he remembered to use it. Nurse Geraghty had been sitting at the table ostensibly ruling red lines on the back of an old temperature chart to hang in the sluice room for use as tomorrow’s Screen Sheet. (The daily record of patients’ bowel movement.) In fact, she had been watching Sister Jason with a mixture of interest and anxiety. It was no use at all to say she’d too much imagination as hadn’t she always had it, but it was different he looked, she’d said, and the new old spots had not been there last night and she didn’t know at all why they were there so she’d told Nurse Blake. She’d not have said the one word to her own senior as there was no talking to her at all seeing she was too snooty to talk to juniors but hadn’t Nurse Blake asked if she’d anything to tell her and indeed she had ‒ it was different he looked and it was different he was.
The clatter of the urinal jerked Nurse Geraghty from her chair. She rushed to retrieve it. Nurse Blake caught Catherine’s eye and hurried far more silently to silence the ringing telephone.
‘You see what it’s like, Sister!’ snapped Mr Parsons. ‘I can tell you ‒’ but he couldn’t tell her anything as he was too shocked for speech, or for a few moments, breath. Before he had time to realize his injured leg suddenly felt wet, a scarlet stream spouted from the mid-thigh end of his plaster with the terrifying force of blood shooting from a major artery. In those first breathless moments the top of his sheet, his blue-and-white pyjama jacket and his neck were drenched in arterial blood.
Catherine had no time for shock. She reacted like an automaton; a very calm-faced, fast-moving automaton. She had the tourniquet out of her pocket and round his blood-soaked thigh before the two men opposite hauled themselves forward. She said calmly, ‘It’s all right, Mr Parsons ‒ this’ll stop it but I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you. Sorry.’ She tightened the rubber round the metal anchor-head and pulled with all her strength. The scarlet spouting stream stopped like a tap being turned off.
Five minutes later, with her blood-stained apron and cuffs under one arm, and the delayed-action shock showing in her white, damp face she kept averted from the ward, she was talking to Mr Rolls over the corridor telephone.
‘No, he didn’t lose very much, though naturally, shocked, plus. We’ve got him on oxygen with the foot of his bed up and we’ve given him that quarter of morphia Mr Evans always leaves in hand for the messy ones. If you like, to save you time, I’ll ask the Super to ring Mr MacDonald and the old Doc. I doubt we’ll need the pathologist. He’s Group O. We’ve enough in our bank. I don’t think we’ll need the radiographer ‒ I suggest we leave that one to Mr MacDonald. I think it was only his popliteal that gave.’
In Maria Ward duty-room, Mr Rolls sat on the edge of the desk and pushed a hand through his sandy hair. ‘You’ll stay there till I get down?’
‘Sure. Then back to the theatre.’
‘Thanks. Yes. Ask the Super to give the general shout. Only the popliteal, you said?’
‘Yes.’
Joe Rolls grinned wearily. ‘No wonder, Mrs J., they call you Sister Sunshine. Remind me not to be around when you’ve got bad news. On my way.’ He rang off.
Catherine dried her hand on her skirt to re-jiggle the receiver, but already Mrs Ford’s voice announced, ‘You’re through to the Night Superintendent now, Sister!’
‘Thanks, Mrs Ford. Very much.’
Mrs Ford smiled to herself and swiftly pulled out another plug. She liked working nights in The Garden. Friendly, it was, like she told her married daughter, and never the dull moment so she never had no trouble keeping awake.
Chapter Three
‘I’ll see you out, George!’ Young Mrs G
ordon bounded down her front steps in the ‘dirty pink’ cotton with the V-neck that enhanced the curves of her plump bosom and concealed those of her hips. She had confided to Mummy over the telephone that Alex’s old chum was actually r-a-a-ather glam in the dark, silent way, but not that she was wearing her most flattering cotton frock. Mummy was an absolute sweetie but just a teensy-weensy bit olde worlde. ‘Backing out into the high street on ordinary Saturday mornings is asking for a prang. On Oakden Fair Saturday, it’s dicing with death!’
MacDonald had backed his black Rover out of the new garage tucked to one side of the pinkish-brick Georgian house. The garage didn’t quarrel with the house as it had been built of bricks that Mr Parsons’ firm had salvaged from the rubble of a similar house further down the High Street, destroyed in the war. Oakden had never been a direct target of enemy air attacks, but from the Battle of Britain in ’40, to the last V1 attacks in March ’45, its position had made it a repository for the stray bombs of enemy pilots emptying their bomb-bays over the last strip of land before the Channel, shot-down aircraft, and shot-down flying bombs. At varying times gaps of varying sizes had appeared amongst the medieval, Queen Anne, Georgian and Victorian houses on either side of the High Street; most had now disappeared; the few that remained were thick with wild grasses, wild flowers, and overspread with the white lace of the cow parsley that on that glorious June morning was as omnipresent in meadows, banks and ditches, as the red and white candles of the chestnuts, the pink and white blossom in the orchards and the may blossom lying like snow over hedges with thousands of tiny flakes floating off onto roads and lanes.
The one hideous building in the high street was The Garden Hospital. It had been built in the mid-nineteenth century to suit the taste of the late Samuel Garden, Esq., an Oakden man and successful lawyer who had inherited a fortune from his wool-merchant ancestors. Samuel Garden’s taste ran to gothic turrets, solid red brick, a Palladian front porch embellished with black marble steps, an Elizabethan mounting block, sharply curved front carriageway and vast, gilded, wrought-iron front gates. In his mansion, Samuel Garden survived his wife and all their eleven children. At the turn of the century when in his eighties, he decided that his home, garden and half his fortune should be used to provide a work-house hospital for ‘the sick and needy of the deserving poor of the town of Oakden in the County of Kent and the surrounding Farmlands and Marshlands’. He moved across the street to the Gordons’ present house and after his death left the remainder of his money to his hospital. By the first world war The Garden had ceased to be a ‘work-house’ and became a ‘cottage hospital’.
In early 1948 a dreadful rumour disturbed Oakden. THEY were taking The Garden into the coming Health Service, and planning to call it Oakden Hospital and make a proper front entrance instead of using the old side lane to the old tradesmen’s entrance in the old stables yard as for the last near-half-century. Oakden temporarily overlooked the fact that the late Samuel Garden had been a good lawyer whose mind had remained clear until he died in his sleep at ninety-four. He had drawn up his own deeds and so stipulated that the name of his hospital, front elevation of his mansion and front entrance must never be altered, that not even the National Health Act had yet been able to remove the mounting block that cost the consultants constant garage bills. Only consultants were permitted to use and park in the front carriageway. Pre-1948, despite Oakden’s gratitude to Samuel Garden, the ugliness of his mansion had been a continuous cause of civic sorrow. The new order endeared every gothic turret and black marble step. ‘Got to get up early to put one over on old Sam. They say it’ll take a special Act of Parliament to break the deeds. No call for THEM to do that. Plenty of room left beyond the new buildings out back, and for ambulances turning, parking and visitors’ cars in the stables yard. All THEY’ve got to do is widen the side lane. (THEY had.) Old Sam’ll still be turning in his grave at his front gates going with the rest for scrap metal in the war, but war’s war and it’s over now.’
MacDonald had his first good, and appalled, look at the front of the hospital when he walked over before breakfast to see his two post-operative patients in Men’s Surgical. He hadn’t been called over, but his unexpected appearance surprised neither staff nor patients. The Garden was accustomed to the consultants’, and specifically Mr Gordon’s, habits of drifting in and out at all hours of the day and night without white coats or the invariable escort of the houseman. This last would have been unusual in most larger hospitals and unthinkable in great teaching hospitals. But until the NHS The Garden had been medically staffed by the local GPs who sent in and treated throughout, their own patients, and as they had to combine their hospital and domiciliary work, the demands of the latter made it difficult, if not impossible, to keep to fixed times in the former. A period of just under three years was not long enough to extinguish old traditions in a small rural town whose parish church had written records of the last thousand years.
The men in Men’s Surgical now recognized MacDonald by name and greeted him with the cheerful nods of those enjoying the prospective pleasure of enthralling their Saturday afternoon visitors with poor old Harry Parsons’ spot of bother. When Henry had whisked in the theatre trolley to take Mr Parsons to the theatre, nearly every man in the ward had been awake and Messrs Ellis’ and Tanner’s eye-witnesses’ accounts had been whispered from bed to bed and underlined by Nurse Geraghty’s shocked, ‘It’s bleeding like a stuck pig he was but not squealing at all with the blood all over himself and Sister Jason …’
The patients approved of MacDonald’s sartorial appearance.
He had on a lightweight, waistcoatless tweed suit, a clean white shirt, and dark blue tie. Foreigner he might be, noted the patients, but he knew what was what. Dark suits Monday to Friday; tweeds over the weekend, for proper doctors ‒ their name for the consultants. The houseman was ‘the young doctor’, youth being equated with inexperience. If the houseman was popular (like Joe Rolls), he generally had an unofficial nickname. The houseman was invariably a man. Neither the Arumchester group of Hospitals, nor St Martha’s had yet appointed a woman house-surgeon for the expressed reason of both establishments that it would be unfair to subject a woman to the physical strain of the hours of standing required during operations.
MacDonald exchanged nods with the men sitting up shaving and washing themselves in beds pulled away from both walls and concealed his reaction to the clouds of dust and fluff raised by the broom of the wardmaid sweeping behind the beds. Martha’s wardmaids now had vacuum cleaners. He thanked whatever gods there be for penicillin and the new antibiotics.
The night senior had her back to the screened off entrance and was making Mr Tanner’s bed with Nurse Geraghty. The junior hissed, ‘It’s himself, nurse ‒ the new pundit!’
The night senior was too tired and too peeved at having missed ‒ as she later put it to her boyfriend ‒ all the fun. She wouldn’t have cared if the entire Management Committee had just come in, but she had to turn to greet the incomer. She was glad when she saw MacDonald in daylight, that she had redone her hair and powdered her face when she changed into a clean apron at 7 a.m. only because Sister Jason had been in and out of the ward ever since Mr Parsons came back from the theatre and Sister Jason was such a pain in the neck about clean aprons. Thank goodness she was now finishing off her final round in Maria and the old Gasworks writing her hospital report in Matron’s Office. She was up to the back teeth with both this morning. How could she tell which spots had appeared when on such a mucky plaster?
‘Good morning, sir.’ Her martyred air rivalled Mr Parsons’ in the night. ‘5 and 6 have both slept well, are comfortable and satisfactory and we’ve identified 5.’
‘Good morning and thank you, nurse. Yes. I’ve just seen the Night Superintendent. David John Hartley, aged 24, London address. I can see you’re very busy. Please carry on. I’ll just take a look at both ‒ I know you’ve had a heavy night.’
At least someone appreciated. ‘It has been a bit hectic,�
� she admitted bravely, ‘but settled down once Mr Parsons was back from the theatre. He’s had a very good sleep since. Barely woke when we washed him and when we washed Mr Hartley he said he wasn’t in any pain ‒ of course he’d had an injection before his wash ‒ but he just said he felt as if he’d been mixing his drinks. Oh yes ‒ he did say he’s not married and his parents are on holiday in South Africa ‒ he couldn’t remember where ‒ but he did remember he’d come down to stay with some friends in Arumchester, though he couldn’t remember their address. I didn’t like to press him. I didn’t want him to be worried thinking I wanted his next of kin.’
‘We can easily sort that once we’ve his name and address.’ He smiled politely at her tired young face. ‘Thank you, nurse. I’ll ask you if there’s anything more I wish to know.’
Momentarily she forgot her aching back and feet and smiled back. ‘Thank you, sir.’
MacDonald walked on to Bed 5 and stood for over two minutes just looking down at the sleeping young man. The blood transfusion had been discontinued and replaced by a glucose-saline drip. The oxygen was off, the green rubber mask and tubing were draped round the neck of the tall black cylinder at the bedhead and the exposed sleeping face was pale, and now the swelling had subsided, only slightly bruised and remarkably pleasant. It was the face of a boy rather than a man, and the light brown curly hair added to the impression of immaturity. Impression? Or did it run in the family? MacDonald’s black eyebrows met as he laid a hand on the young forehead and felt the temporal pulse. Good pulse. He peered under the huge bedcradle to check the top layers of the abdominal dressings and gently palpate the surrounding skin areas. Good, he thought, but that didn’t remove his frown till he moved on to the next bed.
A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2) Page 5