The First Year

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Well, Nurse Standing?’ Sister Margaret bore down on me from the sterilizing corner on the right of the ward door. ‘Do you propose to favour us with your presence to-night, or

  have you taken root in that doorway? Hurry along, child! What’s the matter? Have you never seen a star before?’

  ‘Not in a ward, Sister.’

  ‘You haven’t, eh?’ She stood squarely in front of me buttoning her sleeves. ‘Well, you should have! There are plenty of stars in the wards, and not only on Christmas Eve. In our profession, Nurse, you have got to make up your mind which you are going to see. The mud or the stars. Both are there. It’s up to you to make your choice. Now, take off that corridor cape and come along to my report. I have work to do if you have not!’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ I retired to the changing-room swiftly, hung up my cape, and joined Nurse Jones, who was waiting by the red screen on the near side of the centre table.

  The women were enthusiastic when I took round their nightly milk. ‘It’s been ever such a day, Nurse! You never saw such a carry-on! That Dr Ross was on top of a step-ladder all evening. And him and that Dr Linton! The things they’d say with ever such serious faces! I declare, Nurse, it was as good as a turn on the telly! And the nurses have been busy all day hanging up them lovely stars ‒ made them all themselves they did ‒ aren’t they sweet?’

  Jones helped me collect the empty cups. ‘We’ll settle but not tuck down our ladies. The P.T.S. are going to do this ward early, as we’ve so many ill women. I do hope they are all able to enjoy it.’

  ‘Enjoy what, Nurse? And why do the P.T.S. come here?’

  She said she had forgotten it was my first Christmas here. ‘I won’t tell you, and then it can be a surprise for you as well as for the women. Just make sure the ward is ready by nine-thirty; leave all the outside routine until later. To-night is the one night in the year when it is permissible for your routine to go haywire. But one thing I must tell you; get on with things as fast as you can, because in the small, dark hours you and I are Father Christmas in Margaret. Let’s get going.’

  The women were settled by 9.25. One of them, a lady named Mrs Yates, called to me; ‘Nurse, what is going to happen? Sister said we were going to have a nice surprise this evening. What is ‒’ She broke off and held up her hand. ‘Oh ‒ listen.’

  Very softly, from a long way off, we heard the girls singing. In a few minutes, still singing quietly, they walked in pairs into the ward. They walked slowly, they wore their capes reversed with the scarlet lining uppermost, and they carried small lighted lanterns. They stopped when they reached the tree, grouped themselves round it, then sang three of the quieter carols. I guessed they had been asked to sing those particular carols, because so many of our women were very ill. The soft light from the electric candles on the tree mingled with the rose-coloured night lighting, and illuminated the young, serious faces of the P.T.S. pros., and the thin, plump, broad, and narrow faces of our patients, who turned their heads towards the tree and watched the girls with eyes from which the dullness of illness had momentarily faded. I noticed that even Mrs Simmonds, our most ill patient among so much illness, was smiling. Jones had told me last night that Mrs Simmonds would not only not see another Christmas, but it was doubtful that she would see the New Year. She was very young to die ‒ only twenty-eight; but her heart was old, very old. She had looked old this morning; somehow she did not look old now. She caught my eye; I was standing near her. She said, ‘This is lovely, isn’t it, duck?’

  The P.T.S. girls cast sidelong and respectful glances at Jones and myself; I felt very much an experienced old hand at nursing. To increase this novel sensation, when the singing was over, Sister P.T.S., who had been standing with Sister Margaret in the ward doorway, came forward to wish Jones and me a Happy Christmas. She smiled at me. ‘Night-duty already, Nurse Standing? Really, how time passes! Your first year will be over quite soon.’

  When they all left Jones and I tucked down the women. ‘It was ever such a nice treat, Nurses,’ they told us; ‘and they sang real pretty. Soothing it was. Nice to hear a carol or two even if you are in hospital. Expect we’ll all sleep ever so well to-night.’

  At midnight Jones’s head appeared round the kitchen door. ‘Come into the duty-room, Standing. There’s something I want to show you.’

  I dried my hands and followed her across the corridor. On the duty-room table was a stack of bulging operation stockings.

  ‘If I get held up over anyone will you take these round? They are all labelled with names and bed-numbers, so you can’t go wrong. And try not to let them see what you are doing, or it’ll spoil their pleasure when they wake in the morning. They have to be round before we put the lights on.’ She yawned. ‘Sorry.’ Then she smiled. ‘You may have missed a lot of fun leaving Cas., but you’ll get quite a kick in the morning. We’ve no one in who’s been in before for Christmas, and they aren’t expecting this. You’ll be surprised at how thrilled they get.’

  ‘Do all the patients in the wards get stockings? And do the P.T.S. go round everywhere?’

  ‘Yes. Both are traditional customs. I thought the pros. sang very well this year. How about you?’

  ‘Like the women, I thought they sung real lovely. Nearly made me want to cry.’

  She smiled again. ‘You’re one up on me. I did weep ‒ always do, like a tap.’ The telephone that was buried under all the stockings on the table jangled with the urgency that telephone-bells have at night. Jones reached for it, murmuring, ‘Now what?’ In a different tone she said, ‘Margaret Ward. Nurse Jones speaking,’ and listened. I was going to leave her when she beckoned to me to stay where I was. She said, ‘Yes, Sister … Yes … No, we haven’t a spare bed … Yes’ ‒ she looked at me ‒ ‘we can put up a spare. There is room between Eighteen and Nineteen.’ She listened again. ‘Acute lobar pneumonia. Do you know her age, Sister? Thank you.’ Pause. ‘Yes. I see … Thank you, we can manage.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘Get all that, Standing?’

  ‘Most of it, Nurse. Where do we find the spare bed?’

  ‘Back of the linen cupboard. I’ll help you put it up straight away. She’ll be up in about ten minutes. Then will you set for a straight pneumonia, stat. You know what to get? Oxygen, mask, extra pillows, fracture boards, cradle, electric blanket, personal blanket, bed blocks, hottie bottles. Got that? Good. Oh, just one thing more’ ‒ she glanced at the stockings ‒ ‘this girl is twenty-five. Do a stocking for her sometime, will you? There are some spare boxes of toilet soap and talcum powder in that lower drawer; give her one of each and one of the charm bracelets that you’ll find in the blue box behind the soap. See what she looks like and give her the kind of thing you think she’ll like; if in any doubt give her the sort you’d like to get yourself. We can’t leave the poor girl out. She must be feeling miserable, apart from springing acute pneumonia to-night. Got that too? Good. Then let’s,’ she ended inevitably, ‘get going.’

  We did so, quickly and silently. We were just ready when the porters appeared with the long, rubber-wheeled stretcher-trolley. One of the porters gave Jones a sheaf of notes. ‘S.M.O. said to tell you he’ll be back to see her in half an hour, Nurse.’

  The young woman with pneumonia was called Jean Mason. She had pale-brown hair, a thin, pinched face, and very frightened blue eyes. Her breathing was obviously painful, much too rapid and shallow. The porters helped us lift her into bed, then disappeared with their trolley as quietly as they had arrived.

  Jones took Jean’s temperature, then showed her the oxygen-mask, and explained its purpose. You will feel much more comfortable if you wear this, my dear. It will help your breathing a lot. May I slip it over your head?’

  The girl licked her dry, cracked lips and gave a tiny nod. ‘If you say so, Nurse,’ she gasped flatly.

  Jones gave her a shrewd look, but said nothing. When the mask was in position she checked the rising bubbles of oxygen in the flow-metre attached to the oxygen cylinder, then beckoned me to her side of th
e bed. ‘It must go at that speed, pro tem. Keep an eye on it.’ She touched one of the figures marking the metre. ‘There.’

  ‘Nurse!’ Mrs Yates’s voice called urgently from the other end of the ward. ‘Nurse, can you come?’

  Jones replied instantly, ‘Coming, Mrs Yates.’ She looked at me again, ‘You stay here, Standing.’ And she shot down the dim ward.

  I watched the oxygen; the girl in the bed watched me. ‘You ‒ busy ‒ in ‒ here, Nurse?’

  ‘A little,’ I smiled at her. ‘Is that stuff easing your breathing?’

  ‘Think so.’ She touched her chest experimentally. ‘I got a pain ‒ here. It was bad, but they give me something for it downstairs, and it don’t feel so bad now.’

  ‘That’s good.’ I smiled once more and checked her pulse. Her pulse was racing, her skin burning with her high fever. I was not sure what to do. As far as I knew, Jones had done all we could do for the moment for Jean; no treatment could be given until Dr Spence arrived to order it. I could hear Jones moving round the ward; two other women besides Mrs Yates had called to her, and I wondered if I should go and help her. But she had said, ‘Stay here’ so I waited. Jean had not taken her eyes off me. ‘Expect you get used to people coming in all night?’

  I sensed the appeal behind her question. ‘Oh, yes. Lots of people come in at night.’

  Her blue eyes widened. ‘Don’t it frighten you, duck? It would frighten me. It ‒ does’ ‒ her voice was nearly inaudible ‒ ‘frighten me.’

  Instinctively I held her hand. ‘Your first time in hospital, is this? Don’t be frightened. There’s nothing to be frightened of here. Honestly.’

  Her hand gripped mine. ‘Nurse,’ she said quite clearly, ‘am I going to die? That doctor at home to-night, I heard him tell my mum that I had to come straight in ‒ and Mum, she didn’t want me to come, what with it being Christmas tomorrow ‒ and she said, did I have to? They didn’t think I could hear, but I could, and I heard him say, “She’s got to go into Martin’s or …” ’ She left her sentence unfinished, but the expression in her eyes showed what had been left unsaid.

  I did not stop to wonder what I should say ‒ I just said it. ‘You aren’t going to die, Jean; you aren’t, truly. I expect your own doctor had to make your mother grasp how important it was that you should come in, and so perhaps he put it very strongly. But you aren’t’ ‒ I was perfectly definite ‒ ‘going to die.’

  She asked simply, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because no one here is going to let you die. That’s why you are here. To get well.’

  She looked up at me. ‘You look ever such a kid ‒ but you talk ‒ as if you know.’ She put up her free hand and fingered my apron skirt. ‘Course, you’re a Martin’s nurse, so you must know. You nurses here are good. Everyone knows that.’ Then, to my astonishment and sheer wonder, some of the fear faded from her expression. ‘I’m glad that other nurse told you to stop with me. I feel better with you here. I don’t feel so ‒ alone.’

  And I felt filled with admiration for Jones’s shrewdness. ‘I’m glad about that, Jean. The doctor will be up to see you soon; he’ll probably give you something else for your chest, and then you may be able to have a sleep.’

  She said she would like that. ‘I didn’t get no sleep last night. I got that pain in my chest, see ‒ and it hurt every time I coughed and I kept on coughing. I haven’t coughed much since I had that stuff they gave me downstairs, and that little fat doctor, he said as the pain would go right away soon.’

  ‘That was Dr Spence. He’s the Senior Medical Officer here and the man who’s coming up to see you. So you can be quite sure that you needn’t worry any more. Dr Spence is a very clever doctor and he never pretends; if he says the pain’ll go right away it will.’

  ‘I thought as he said it just to cheer me up. I didn’t believe him ‒ till you told me just now as I’d be all right.’ She glanced up at the ceiling, then stared. ‘What are all those things, duck? They look like stars.’

  ‘They are stars. Which reminds me, it’s after midnight. Happy Christmas, Jean, and may you get well very soon.’ She turned to me.

  ‘It’s not Christmas yet, dear. It’s still dark ‒ the night.’

  I said, ‘But Christmas Day is like all other days in one thing: it begins in the dark.’

  A faint smile flickered through her eyes. ‘Well, I never. So it does.’ Her hand tightened in mine. ‘Ta, duck. And a Happy Christmas to you, I’m sure.’

  Jean and I became friends that night, and our friendship increased in the nights that followed. After a couple of weeks on night-duty I forgot that I had ever had any other existence and in many ways felt as if I had begun nursing again in a new hospital. I saw nothing of the girls in my set, as I was the only one of our number on nights. We night-nurses slept in a different building, ate meals at different times, and made different friends in our own small circle, that seemed so alien and removed from the normal world of people who went to bed at night. I discovered that I enjoyed being an alien; I liked getting up when the world was going to bed; and, above all, I adored packing myself into bed between three hot-water bottles on those cold January mornings and drinking hot cocoa and reading until I was too sleepy to see the print clearly and could then drop the book and turn over and go to sleep without even having the bother of turning off a light.

  Another pleasure I discovered was that of finding that Margaret belonged to Jones and me, and we belonged to Margaret, not just for an odd half-hour, but for eleven hours every night. I had been fond of the men in Francis, but I never felt as at home in Francis as I did in Margaret; nor was I allowed to do so much nursing of the men as became part of my work for the women. Very little cleaning is done in the wards at night; the nursing of the patients was our sole concern. Jones was a good nurse and a patient senior; she enjoyed teaching, and while she taught me she had the gift of making me feel that I was not just a useless, ham-handed pro., but another young woman, who did not yet know as much as she did, but would as soon as I had had her experience. She never talked down, and she never lectured unnecessarily. Very soon I looked forward to going on duty at night and was quite disappointed when my nights off arrived and I had to hand over my beloved Margaret to a relief pro.

  Not even Sister Margaret was able to shake my pleasure in working in her ward. I began to agree with Jones about Sister. I did not go all the way and consider Sister restful; but, although she might ‒ and generally did ‒ bark at me, her bark was fair; Sister never found fault for the sake of finding fault. If you made a mistake she was on to it ‒ and you ‒ immediately; but she had no ‘things’ and no ‘little ways’. After a week I decided I preferred working under Sister Margaret to working under either Sister Francis or Sister Casualty. Sister Francis’s gentle personality in retrospect struck me as ineffectual, and she was quite overshadowed by her highly efficient and dominant staff nurse. Sister Casualty, even when pleasant, had always been something of an enigma to me; I never knew where I was with her. No staff nurse would ever be permitted to overshadow Sister Margaret, and she was no enigmatical young woman. She was a strong-minded, capable ward sister, who kept a tight hold on every corner of her ward, and who left you in no doubt of what she thought of your work. She either greeted me with a stern, ‘Never make your bed-corners ‒ set your trolleys ‒ rule up the admission book ‒ in this way again, Nurse Standing. I like it done ‒ so, and will allow no variation,’ or she gave me a silent nod. I started looking forward to those nods at the end of my night; they meant that Sister Margaret was satisfied with my work.

  If it had not been for Jake Waring I should have been extremely happy at that time. I was not happy, because I missed his presence and thought about him in all my free waking moments. Sometimes, when I had to sit at the centre table alone at night while Jones was occupied out of the ward, I used to play games with myself. I used to pretend that I was a senior, that this was a surgical ward, and that I was waiting for Jake to come and do his night-round. I could imag
ine his formal ‘Good evening’ and the quiet walk round the patients, and then we would come back to the table and I would watch him while he wrote up notes. Then, as a senior, I could offer him coffee. Jones often gave Dr Spence coffee in the kitchen while I sat at the table. And after we had had coffee, just as we left the ward and were well away from the patients, he would say, ‘When are your next nights off, Rose? Thursday and Friday? Right. I’ll try and be free for a couple of hours at least. Can I call for you at the usual time?’

  I lived through that little scene so many times that I half came to believe that it was true; it is easy to believe fantasies when all the world is asleep, and the only sounds are the different rhythms of breathing and the hiss of the various oxygen cylinders that were in constant use in Margaret. Sometimes, just before dawn, I would go out on the balcony at the end of the ward for the quite legitimate purpose of putting something into the wet-linen bin. Despite the cold on my bare arms, I often lingered out there for a few minutes, looking down on the street-lights that were strung like ropes of diamonds over darkened London, and watching the skyline on the far bank of the river standing against the night sky like black lace. Dawn seems to come slowly when you wait for it, but when you watch it it happens in front of your eyes. Those January dawns were seldom pink or red, they were grey ‒ all shades of grey from gun metal to off-white, and often when the morning came and before the smoke and dirt rose to cloud the sky with smog the sky was the colour of pale parchment, the air clear and clean and smelling slightly of salt, and the buildings all around grey and white and etched with the dirt of generations or centuries, merged into the soft parchment background, and looked like those old prints of London you find stacked in the dust behind the shelves in an old bookseller’s shop.

  Then I would go back into the ward that seemed hot and stuffy, and I would wonder how anyone could sleep in that heat, until Jones rushed at me, ‘Shut that door, Standing. It’s freezing in here. Don’t let any more cold air in, please.’