A Nightingale Christmas Wish

by Donna Douglas

  But was the absence of pain the same as happiness? Helen wasn’t sure. For the past two years it was as if the world had been shrouded in a fine grey mist. Through it, she could see the rest of the world, laughing and loving and going about its business, while she stood apart, detached from everything going on around her.

  Nellie was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Have you thought about courting again?’

  Helen whipped round to look at her, shocked. ‘What? No!’

  ‘Why not? You can’t be alone for ever, can you? How old are you? Twenty-four? You’re still a young woman—’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else,’ Helen cut her off firmly.

  ‘You might say that now, but sooner or later someone’s going to come along and catch your eye. And I know my Charlie wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone. He’d want you to be happy.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else,’ Helen repeated, more firmly.

  ‘Whatever you say, love. I just wanted you to know that if you did want to start courting again, it would be all right with me.’

  Helen was silent, lost in her thoughts. Until Nellie mentioned it, it hadn’t even occurred to her that she might fall in love again. Not just out of respect for Charlie, but because she genuinely couldn’t imagine any other man stirring her heart the way he had.

  The silence stretched between them, and Helen was relieved when they reached the hospital gates.

  ‘Well, I’ll be seeing you, love.’ Nellie planted a warm kiss on her frozen cheek. ‘Good luck with the new job tomorrow. And you won’t forget what I said, will you? We’d love to see you at Christmas.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Helen said. Although deep down she knew she wouldn’t. Even after two years, it hurt too much to go to Charlie’s home, knowing he wouldn’t be there.

  Chapter Four

  AFTER A SLEEPLESS night, Helen was up, bathed and dressed well before the maid brought her tea in bed at half-past six on Monday morning.

  ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, Sister, I didn’t know you were up and about,’ she said, as she placed the cup and saucer on the bedside table. ‘Most of the sisters don’t like to be woken before half-past, what with them not being on duty until eight.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Helen confessed. ‘It’s my first day today.’

  ‘Ah.’ The maid gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Will you be wanting your breakfast now? A nice poached egg, or a piece of toast, just to settle you?’

  ‘Thank you, but I really couldn’t eat a thing.’ Helen put her hand over her stomach. It felt like a tight knot.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, Sister? We don’t want you going hungry, do we?’

  After the maid had gone, Helen sat down at her dressing table to finish pinning up her hair. From the collar down, she was all bristling authority in her severe grey uniform. But from the neck up, all she could see was a pair of frightened brown eyes staring back at her from a pale, oval face. How on earth was she going to convince the other nurses in Casualty that she was a worthy sister, when she didn’t quite believe it herself?

  She had hardly slept all night. Not just from fear, but because the Sisters’ quarters were so quiet compared to the nurses’ home. Helen was used to voices and laughter in the passageways, but the ward sisters seemed to live in sombre silence.

  After drinking her tea, pacing around her room, checking her dress several times and tying and retying the stiff bow of her headdress under her chin, it still wasn’t seven o’clock. Helen decided to walk down to Casualty early, to look around and meet the nurses when they came on duty at seven. Surely setting foot inside her new department couldn’t be as bad as sitting in her room with a churning stomach, worrying about it.

  The Casualty department was open throughout the night for the ambulances to bring in emergencies. Light spilled from the high arched window above the double doors, piercing the wintry darkness as Helen made her way across the courtyard.

  The main Casualty hall was a large, vaulted room as big as a tennis court, filled with rows of empty wooden benches. At the far end of the hall, a weary-looking night nurse had nodded off behind the booking-in desk, which sat on top of a raised dais.

  She jolted awake when Helen walked in.

  ‘Sister!’ She stood up and glanced at the clock. ‘I wasn’t expecting you so early.’

  ‘It’s all right, I just wanted to have a look around and get my bearings.’ Helen smiled at her. ‘Busy night?’ she asked.

  ‘Very quiet, Sister.’ The girl recovered herself. ‘Dr McKay and Dr Adler came on duty ten minutes ago and sent Dr Ross home.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  The student pointed down the short stump of corridor beyond the booking-in desk. ‘Consulting Room Three, Sister.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better go and introduce myself.’ Helen turned back to the student. ‘Thank you, Nurse. You may go off duty now.’

  ‘Oh! Thank you, Sister.’ The girl glanced at the clock again, her face lighting up. Helen remembered her own student days, and how grateful she’d always been to be sent off even five minutes early from night duty.

  When the nurse had gone, Helen took off her cloak and hung it up in the nurses’ cloakroom, then made her way to the consulting room. Her hand was raised to knock when she heard voices drifting from the other side of the door.

  ‘All I’m saying is give her a chance, David,’ she heard a man saying. ‘We don’t know what she’s like yet, do we?’

  ‘Oh, we all know exactly what she’s going to be like. She’s Mrs Tremayne’s daughter, isn’t she?’ The other man’s well-educated Scottish voice was full of disgust.

  Helen froze, her hand still poised to knock.

  ‘She might not be that bad. They think very highly of her in Theatre, so I understand,’ the first voice said.

  ‘It’s a pity they didn’t keep her, in that case.’

  The man gave a rumbling laugh. ‘David! I’m shocked at you. It’s not like you to be so intolerant.’

  ‘I have nothing against the girl, I promise you. But that’s what she is – a girl. For heaven’s sake, Jonathan, she’s barely older than a student. We need someone with experience to run this department.’

  Hot shame washed over Helen. She knew she should walk away, but her legs wouldn’t move.

  ‘You’re only sulking because you weren’t consulted.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. But do you blame me? I take our work very seriously, and I resent having this – child foisted on us, just because she happens to be a Trustee’s daughter who fancies a change of scene.’

  Helen tiptoed away, hating herself for her own lack of courage. If she truly were her mother’s daughter she would have barged straight in and confronted them, instead of creeping off to hide in a corner.

  She returned to the Casualty hall just as the other nurses were coming on duty. There were four of them, three students and a tall blonde in the royal-blue uniform of a staff nurse. They were all talking among themselves, but stopped dead when they saw Helen.

  ‘Oh, hello. You must be our new Sister Cas?’ The blonde nurse greeted her with a broad smile. She was a couple of years older than Helen, long-limbed and languid, with thickly lashed aquamarine eyes. ‘I’m Staff Nurse Willard, and these are Perkins, Kowalski and French.’ She nodded towards the three students who stood, still in their heavy cloaks, watching Helen warily.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Sister?’ Nurse Willard offered. ‘We usually put the kettle on as soon as we get in.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Helen looked around her, completely wrong-footed. She had expected to walk into her department and immediately take charge, but instead she felt like a guest at a very jolly tea party. ‘I would rather you showed me around, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘As you wish,’ Nurse Willard said cheerfully, slipping her cloak off her shoulders. ‘I’ll give you a tour while Perkins puts the kettle on, how about that?’

  Nurse Willard talked a great deal faster than she moved, Helen
discovered.

  ‘The Outpatients’ clinics start at nine o’clock,’ she said. ‘On Mondays it’s General Medical, Tuesdays is Orthopaedic, Wednesdays is General Surgical, Thursdays is Gynae and Fridays ENT. The consultants are all monsters, of course, apart from Mr Cooper, who looks like Tyrone Power. Mr Prentiss the ENT pundit is the worst. Do you know, he threw a basinful of water at poor little Nurse Kowalski last week, just for putting the wrong antiseptic in it? No wonder no one wants to assist in his clinic. Over there is the Plaster Room, and this is the Accident Treatment Room, where we deal with minor emergencies. The Cleansing Room is through that door there. Excuse me for asking, but you’re Dr Tremayne’s sister, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Helen opened the door to the operating theatre and looked inside. Just seeing the white-tiled walls of the theatre, with its glass-fronted cabinets full of gleaming instruments, made her feel at ease. This was what she was used to, everything shining, clean and orderly.

  ‘I thought so. You look a lot like him. I went out with him once or twice, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Helen inspected the instruments. Someone had done a good job of cleaning them, although they hadn’t been put away quite as she would have liked.

  ‘That was long before I met my Joe, of course. I mean, my fiancé,’ Penny Willard said. ‘He’s a policeman,’ she added importantly.

  By the time they’d finished the tour of Casualty, Helen knew next to nothing about the running of the department, and everything she could possibly want to know about Penny’s wedding plans, and her personal opinion of all the student nurses.

  Penny spoke rapidly, her words tumbling out faster than Helen’s brain could take them in. By the time they returned to the main Casualty hall, her head was reeling.

  ‘You know, I was so pleased when we found out you were going to be taking over from Sister Percival,’ Penny confided, settling herself comfortably behind the booking-in desk. ‘She was all right in her way, I suppose, but it will be so much more fun to have someone my age running the place.’

  ‘Fun?’ Helen said.

  ‘You know . . . someone I can chat to, have a laugh with. Ah, here’s the tea.’ She beamed as Perkins came in with a tray. ‘I think you’ll like it here, Sister. We’re one big, happy family.’

  Helen thought of the comments she’d overheard, and said nothing.

  She knew she should set Penny Willard straight, make it clear right from the start that she was in charge and not there to have fun. But she was already so disheartened by what the doctor had said, she didn’t want to make another enemy in the department.

  Perhaps he was right, she thought miserably. Perhaps she was too young and inexperienced to take charge?

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ Penny asked.

  Helen stared at her, dumbstruck by the question. ‘I’m a widow,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, gosh, yes, of course. I remember now. That was terribly sad.’ Penny’s lips pursed in the kind of sympathetic grimace Helen had grown to dread over the past two years.

  Fortunately Penny changed the subject back to gossiping about the rest of the department. ‘You won’t have met the doctors yet, will you? There’s Dr McKay – Scottish, terribly clever. And then there’s Dr Adler. He’s a great big bear, utterly adorable . . .’

  ‘How very kind of you, Nurse Willard.’

  Helen swung round. Two men stood behind them. One was a giant of a man, with a thick black beard and shaggy dark curls. The other was tall but of slighter build, with a sharp-featured face and keen brown eyes.

  ‘You’ll notice, Dr McKay, that Nurse Willard referred to me as utterly adorable, but the best she could come up for you was “clever”?’ the big man went on, his black eyes twinkling. ‘What does that say about you, do you think?’

  ‘I think it probably says more about you than it does about me,’ Dr McKay replied dryly. Hearing that well-spoken Scottish voice again filled Helen with fresh mortification.

  She was even more mortified that she’d been caught drinking tea and gossiping with the other nurses. Another black mark against her, she thought.

  But Nurse Willard seemed oblivious to any undercurrents. ‘Oh, you!’ She batted Dr Adler playfully on the arm. ‘Have you met our new Sister Cas? Sister, these are the two I was telling you about, Dr Adler and Dr McKay.’

  ‘How do you do, Sister?’ Dr McKay’s professional smile and firm handshake gave away none of his true feelings.

  ‘I suppose Nurse Willard has been telling you all our secrets?’ Dr Adler grinned. ‘How will we ever gain your respect, I wonder?’

  ‘I think it’s your respect I have to gain,’ Helen said, shooting a sideways look at Dr McKay.

  If he noticed her barb he didn’t react. ‘Should we get these doors open, so we can start seeing some patients?’ he said. ‘That is what we’re here for, after all.’

  Chapter Five

  NO SOONER HAD he said it than the telephone rang, shattering the silence. Nurse Willard pounced on it.

  ‘That’s the emergency telephone,’ Dr Adler explained to Helen in a low voice. ‘It rings when there’s an ambulance on its way.’

  Helen listened carefully, trying to piece together what Willard was saying.

  ‘Right, yes. A car and a motorcycle, you say? Three casualties, I see. And how bad is the head injury?’ She scribbled notes on the pad in front of her.

  ‘What do we have?’ Dr McKay asked, when she’d put the receiver down.

  ‘Traffic accident. A car went into a motorcycle on Mile End Road. The motorcyclist got away with cuts and bruises and possible concussion, but the car driver is unconscious with possible spinal injury, and the passenger has a deep cut to his thigh and an injury to his wrist.’

  All eyes turned to Dr McKay. ‘We’ll send the spinal injury straight to Theatre,’ he said. ‘Dr Adler, you can look after the motorcyclist, and I’ll take care of the leg.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Dr Adler said. ‘Sister, perhaps you could assist me?’

  ‘No, she’ll be assisting me,’ Dr McKay interrupted him.

  Helen caught his sharp brown-eyed stare and realised this was a test for her. The first of many, she was sure.

  ‘As you wish, sir.’ She turned to the student nurses, who were waiting keenly for their instructions. ‘Perkins, telephone Theatre and let them know there is a head and possible spinal injury on the way down. Organise a dresser to be sent up here, too. French, get some blood ordered – Type O, since we don’t know what group our patient might be.’

  ‘Forget the blood,’ Dr McKay snapped. ‘We won’t need it.’

  ‘But with a deep cut . . .’

  ‘The ambulance men didn’t say he was bleeding to death, did they?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then we won’t be needing the blood.’

  He strutted off before she could reply. A shocked, embarrassed silence followed. Even Dr Adler looked a little shaken as he hurried off to his consulting room to prepare for his patient.

  Helen pulled herself together quickly and turned to the students. ‘I will be acting as scrub nurse for Dr McKay,’ she told them briskly. ‘Kowalski, I want you to help me. And French, please order that blood,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘But Dr McKay said—’

  ‘Please,’ Helen interrupted her. ‘To be on the safe side,’ she added.

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  She had just finished scrubbing up when the patient arrived. Helen could hear his screams of agony from the other end of the passage.

  She shouldered open the door to the operating theatre as the ambulance men were bringing him in.

  ‘Got a right one here!’ the driver said, rolling his eyes at Helen. ‘Been cursing like a good ‘un all the way from the Mile End Road, he has. Honest to God, you’d think he was dying!’

  Helen looked down at the patient. He was young, in his early twenties. His face was the pale, translucent colour of candle wax, slick with sweat.

  ‘My leg
!’ he screamed. ‘Jesus, my leg!’

  ‘Oi, stop the language! There are young ladies present.’ The driver shot Helen an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, Sister.’

  ‘It’s quite all right.’ Helen fixed her attention on the young man. ‘Get him on to the table, as quickly as you can, please.’

  He screamed as Helen carefully removed the makeshift splint. His dressing was soaked in blood, and as she peeled it off she caught a sickening glimpse of raw, glistening muscle.

  ‘Making a hell of a fuss, isn’t he?’ The ambulance man grinned at her.

  ‘So would you, if you’d gashed your leg open like that.’ Helen peered into the wound. It was deep, and there seemed to be fragments of broken glass embedded inside, but she had seen worse. The ambulance man was right, he did seem to be in a great deal more pain than he should have been. Unless there was something else going on, something she couldn’t see . . .

  She was aware of the man watching her, and smiled down at him reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you something for the pain and then we’ll get you cleaned up.’

  She gave him an injection of morphia and was carefully swabbing his wound when Dr McKay swept through the doors, his gloved hands raised.

  His eyes looked so forbidding above his surgical mask, Helen’s nerve started to fail her. She was probably mistaken anyway. But if she wasn’t . . . She took a deep breath. ‘Doctor, I think this patient might have a femoral fracture,’ she said.

  Dr McKay’s brows puckered in a frown. ‘The ambulance men didn’t mention it,’ he said shortly.

  ‘The ambulance men don’t have access to X-rays,’ Helen replied.

  ‘Neither do you, Sister.’

  ‘No, but I know when a patient is in more pain than he should be.’