A Nightingale Christmas Wish

by Donna Douglas

  ‘And is it?’ John said.

  ‘At the moment, I don’t think I really care.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, dear, is it that bad?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said ruefully. ‘I think I’ve just been through it all too many times. I stopped laughing at the medical students’ comedy sketch about a week ago.’ She looked up at him. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me going on. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I wanted to thank you.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Persuading Adam to talk to me. We actually exchanged a few words this afternoon.’

  ‘Really?’

  John nodded. ‘It might not have seemed like much to anyone else, but it’s the closest we’ve come to a conversation in years.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘Although I can’t imagine why you’re thanking me.’

  ‘My son has barely spoken to me in five years, and suddenly he’s making small talk. You must have had something to do with it.’

  ‘Or perhaps he’s finally come to his senses?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ John said. ‘Either that or someone blackmailed him with the promise of a letter?’

  Frannie looked up at him sharply. ‘He told you that?’

  ‘He was most put out about it. But I’m very grateful.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Their eyes met and held for a moment. He didn’t seem to want to leave, and Frannie realised she was in no hurry for him to go either.

  ‘So this is your Christmas Show?’ he asked, looking at the stage. ‘I didn’t realise it was such a big production.’

  ‘It isn’t, really. Everyone puts a little act together to entertain the staff, patients and their families on Christmas Day. It’s all rather amateur, but people seem to enjoy it.’ A thought suddenly struck her. ‘You should come and see it,’ she said, ‘if you’re not doing anything else, that is?’

  He smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, warming his green eyes. ‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of spending Christmas Day alone at my club. It would be nice to have something to look forward to.’

  ‘Then we’d love to see you,’ Frannie said. She looked into his face and realised that she meant it, too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THEY WERE COMING to the end of the Christmas Eve shift when the news came in.

  It had been a busy day. Saturdays always brought their fair share of accidents and brawls, but it was much worse on Christmas Eve. Helen felt as if she’d spent the whole day patching up black eyes and broken ribs, tending to cuts and bruises, cleaning up vomit and even breaking up a fight between two drunks in the Casualty hall.

  As nine o’clock approached, she was dead on her feet. She could see her own exhaustion reflected in the grey faces of the student nurses as they trudged around, cleaning and tidying and readying the department for the arrival of the night staff.

  Dr McKay seemed just as worn out. Dr Adler had taken the day off, so his colleague had been coping alone with the steady stream of casualties.

  Dr Ross the night relief doctor turned up while Helen was giving report to the student nurses on night duty. He was still in evening dress and in a bad mood.

  ‘I had to leave an excellent party,’ he grumbled, pulling off his bow tie. ‘I hope tonight is worth it.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to pray for a catastrophe for you,’ Dr McKay said drily. Helen smiled before she remembered herself and pressed her lips together. It wouldn’t do to show any emotion in front of Dr McKay.

  No sooner had he said the words than the telephone rang.

  Dr Ross burst out laughing. ‘How bizarre! Looks as if your prayers have been answered.’

  ‘You answer it,’ Penny Willard told the night student. ‘I’m not getting involved, I’ve got a date. It’s probably just another silly, drunken fight anyway.’

  The student answered the telephone. As Helen fiddled with the fastening on her cloak, she saw the girl’s expression change, her face draining of colour. Helen glanced at Dr McKay. He was watching the student keenly too.

  Moving as one, they both crossed to the desk just as the student put down the receiver.

  ‘Well?’ Helen said.

  ‘There’s a fire at the Mission Hall on Hetton Road.’ The girl spoke quietly and calmly, but shock was written all over her face. ‘They were having a party for the local children.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Dr Ross muttered under his breath.

  ‘Casualties?’ Dr McKay asked.

  The student nodded her head. ‘They don’t know how many. They’re still trying to bring the fire under control. But the ambulances are bringing in the ones who’ve managed to get out, and then they’ll start looking for the others . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  Without thinking, Helen started to unfasten her cloak, then realised Dr McKay was taking off his coat too.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dr Ross looked from one to the other of them.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Dr McKay said. ‘I’m not going to abandon you with all this happening.’

  ‘I’m sure I can manage.’ Dr Ross said defensively. ‘I don’t need—’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ Dr McKay snapped, shrugging on his white coat. ‘Any minute now, dozens of wounded and dying could be coming through those doors, and you’re going to need all the help you can get. So swallow that pride of yours and let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  Helen turned to her nurses. They were already taking off their cloaks, looks of grim resignation on their ashen faces. Only Penny Willard stood defiant, her navy cloak still wrapped around her shoulders.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ she insisted. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Joe.’

  ‘You heard what Dr McKay said. We could have dozens of casualties coming in.’

  ‘But this is important!’

  ‘More important than saving lives?’

  Penny’s voice was choked. ‘You don’t understand. Joe will be so upset. I can’t disappoint him—’

  But Helen wasn’t listening. She had already picked up the telephone to ring Theatre for extra help.

  ‘When the casualties come in, they’ll need to be processed and assessed as soon as possible,’ she told the students. ‘There’s a risk of shock, so they must be kept warm. Kowalski and French, go and round up as many blankets as you can from the wards, and start to prepare hot-water bottles.’

  ‘What about me? What do you want me to do?’ Helen turned to see Penny Willard had taken off her cloak and was now standing with the other nurses.

  Helen acknowledged her with a grateful nod. ‘Thank you, Nurse Willard,’ she said. ‘You can start to prepare the tannic-acid compresses, and make sure we have enough saline drips set up.’ Helen looked around. ‘The consulting rooms might not be enough to cope with all the injuries, so we’ll need to set up extra beds in here,’ she said. ‘Perkins, you can make a start on that.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Good Lord, you make it sound like the field hospital at Scutari!’ Dr Ross laughed nervously. ‘Honestly, Sister, there’s no need to frighten the poor girls. How many casualties do you think there’ll be?’

  As if in answer to his question, the stillness of the night was suddenly shattered by the harsh clamour of alarm bells, as three ambulances screeched to a halt outside the double doors.

  Helen looked at Dr Ross. ‘I think we’re about to find out.’

  The next hour was a blur. Flanked by a string of porters with stretchers and trolleys, Helen waited, shivering with cold and apprehension, as the ambulance men flung open the doors.

  At first the injuries were minor. Smelling of smoke, their eyes terrified white orbs in blackened faces, they coughed and choked and clutched burned hands and wrists.

  But then the more serious casualties started to arrive, screaming in agony, reeking of burned flesh. Men, women, children, clothes stuck to them like blackened skin, hair, lips and eyelids missing
, seared, blistering skin stretched over bone. Beside her, Penny retched and swayed on her feet and Helen put out a hand to steady her.

  There were over fifty casualties that night. Helen hurried to and fro, assessing them as they came off the ambulance, sending them for treatment by nurses or doctors depending on the extent of their injuries. Others, who had already died in the ambulance, were sent to the mortuary. At some point the Night Sister Miss Tanner appeared and Helen left her in charge of the ambulances while she went to help the nurses in the Casualty hall.

  As she’d predicted, there were not enough consulting rooms to cope with the demand, so she and the nurses moved between makeshift beds, keeping patients warm with blankets and hot-water bottles, setting up drips, giving morphia injections, cutting and soaking off clothing where they could, splinting limbs and applying tannic-acid compresses to raw, blistered flesh.

  Matron arrived and Helen was so preoccupied she didn’t even notice her at first, almost pushing past her in her rush to get to the next stretcher.

  ‘I came to see if I could help, but you seem to be coping, Sister,’ she said.

  Helen wanted to laugh. She might seem as if she was coping, but inside she was teetering on the verge of hysterical terror. Couldn’t Matron see the chaos that surrounded her, stretchers and trolleys flying here and there, nurses hurrying past, patients’ screams filling the air?

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Matron asked.

  ‘You could make tea for the families?’ Helen said without thinking. ‘We’ve left them out in the courtyard because there’s no room for them in here, and I’m worried they’ll freeze.’

  For a brief moment Matron stared at her, and Helen realised what she’d done. Then Miss Fox nodded and said, ‘I’ll have them moved to the dining room straight away.’

  ‘Thank you, Matron.’

  ‘Not at all, Sister Dawson. Keep up the good work.’

  And then she was gone. Helen paused for a moment, wondering if she had really just ordered Matron to put the kettle on. But before she could think about it, one of the students called out,

  ‘Sister! Sister, come quickly, I don’t know what to do!’

  Helen rushed over to where French, one of the students, was kneeling beside a little girl.

  ‘I thought she was doing all right, but her breathing is erratic,’ she said.

  ‘Let me see.’ The child, a tiny thing of about six, didn’t seem badly injured, just a slight burn across her hands. But Helen could hear the fearful croaking whoop as she fought for breath, her little ribcage rising and falling under her scorched pink party dress. Beneath the black smoke smuts, her translucent skin had taken on a bluish tinge.

  Helen looked up just as Dr Ross swept past, on his way back to the consulting rooms. ‘Doctor?’ she called after him. ‘Doctor, this child needs to be seen.’

  Dr Ross retraced his steps and stood over them. ‘She seems all right to me. No obvious sign of injury.’

  ‘She’s having trouble breathing. I think the smoke has got into her lungs.’

  ‘I’ll see her in a moment,’ he said. ‘When I’ve dealt with my other patients.’

  ‘Doctor, please, she’s suffocating!’ Helen called out, but Dr Ross was already walking away.

  ‘Not now, Sister,’ he threw over his shoulder.

  Helen looked at Nurse French. Then she gathered the child up and carried her across the Casualty hall to Dr Ross’s consulting room. The child lay in her arms, as light and limp as a rag doll.

  She pushed open the door to the consulting room. Dr Ross looked up with a frown as he stood poised to give an injection to a man with a burn the length of his arm.

  ‘Doctor, you’ve got to see to this child,’ demanded Helen.

  ‘I told you, I will when I’ve finished with this patient.’

  ‘Now, Doctor!’

  Dr Ross pulled himself up to his full height and looked as if he was about to let fly, but the patient sitting in front of him broke in quickly.

  ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You see to the kiddie, I can wait.’

  ‘Very well. Put her on the bed.’ Dr Ross didn’t hide his annoyance as he gestured to Helen. But she didn’t care. She didn’t care if she spent the whole of Christmas Day explaining herself to Matron, so long as he saved the little girl.

  But as soon as she laid the child down on the bed she realised it was too late. The little chest was still, and her breath no longer rattled in her throat.

  Dr Ross gave her a cursory glance. ‘She’s dead,’ he said flatly.

  ‘No!’ Helen heard the patient he was treating cry out. But she couldn’t react. All she could do was stare at Dr Ross.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Sister. Take her away.’

  Helen didn’t move. She stood, rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but stare at him.

  Something in her eyes must have unnerved Dr Ross, because when he spoke again his tone was gentler.

  ‘I’ll fetch a porter,’ he said, moving towards the door. ‘I suggest you go outside and get some air, Sister. You look quite pale.’

  But Helen didn’t take his advice. She straightened her cap and smoothed down her apron and went back to work, calming and soothing and applying compresses and hot-water bottles and blankets, moving like an automaton until the porters took the last of the patients up to the ward.

  Only then did she go outside and sit on the bench in the middle of the courtyard. It was a beautiful, sharp winter’s night and the bare black branches of the plane trees sparkled with frost. She’d left her cloak behind but hardly noticed the cold as she sat there, trying to make sense of the terrible events she had witnessed.

  The courtyard was silent, but Helen could still hear the screams of the afflicted echoing around her head, and the painful rasping of the poor little girl’s chest as she’d desperately sucked air into her smoke-clogged lungs.

  On the other side of the courtyard, through the lighted windows of the dining room, she could see families huddled around tables, anxiously waiting for news. Somewhere among them was the child’s family. Someone would have to tell them, to break the news that their little girl had died on Christmas Eve.

  A tremor of emotion went through her, and she shuddered violently. A second later she felt the warm weight of a jacket being placed gently around her shoulders.

  Helen looked up and found herself staring into Dr McKay’s surprisingly kind brown eyes.

  ‘I thought you might be cold,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She started to her feet, steeling herself for the inevitable criticism. ‘I must get back, everyone will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘I’m sure they can spare you for a few minutes.’

  ‘But I need to make sure everything is all right—’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sister Dawson, sit down before you fall down. You haven’t stopped for hours.’

  Helen hesitated, then sank back down on the bench.

  Dr McKay pointed to the seat next to her. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He sat down heavily beside her and stared up at the sky. ‘It’s been a hellish evening,’ he commented.

  ‘Yes, it has.’

  They sat in silence for a moment. ‘Ross told me what happened,’ Dr McKay said. ‘He couldn’t have saved her, you know.’

  ‘But she wasn’t even hurt. Hardly a burn on her.’

  ‘That’s the awful thing about fire. It can kill in ways we can’t see. The smoke would have badly damaged her lungs.’ He paused. ‘I know young Ross has his faults, and he can be arrogant, but he feels wretched about this.’

  ‘I know he’s not to blame really,’ Helen said. ‘But I just wanted it to be someone’s fault. Otherwise it seems so cruel and unfair . . .’

  ‘Life is cruel and unfair sometimes.’

  Helen turned her gaze back to the dining room. Light streamed from the windows, and she could see the outline of people sitting, standing and pacing, waiting anxiously for ne
ws of their loved ones.

  Dr McKay was right, life could be cruel. She knew what it was like to lose someone she loved. And tonight someone else would know it too. This would be a Christmas they would never forget, and for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘Those poor people,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ Dr McKay agreed heavily. ‘But don’t forget, we saved some lives tonight, too.’

  ‘I suppose so. But I can’t really think about them at the moment. It all just seems so horrible and sad . . .’

  She broke off, turning her face towards a curious sound. The sound of singing. At that moment the doors to the ward block swung open and a group of nurses came out, their dark cloaks turned inside out to reveal the scarlet lining. They held jam-jar lanterns, and the dim light bathed their faces as they sang in the frosty moonlight.

  ‘Silent night, Holy Night . . . All is calm, all is bright . . .’

  It was all too much for Helen. The sweet poignancy of their song, their clear, beautiful voices, was too much of a contrast with the awful sights she’d witnessed that night. The smell of smoke, the charred skin, the screams of agony. A little girl in a scorched pink party dress, struggling to breathe . . .

  Helen started to cry, and suddenly she couldn’t stop. Juddering sobs shook her whole body and she doubled over, roaring with pain.

  ‘Sister Dawson . . . Helen . . .’ She felt Dr McKay’s arms around her, pulling her close to him. She allowed herself to rest her head on his shoulder, feeling the smooth warmth of his cotton shirt against her cheek. He smelled faintly of smoke and cologne.

  ‘There . . . it’s all right . . .’ he whispered, stroking her back. She felt the tension melt from her body as she was drawn against him, reassured and protected. Their faces were only inches apart. If she turned towards him just a fraction, their lips would almost touch.

  And suddenly she badly wanted to kiss him.

  But as she shifted towards him he stiffened and pulled away, and the spell was broken.

  Dr McKay shot to his feet as if he needed to put as much distance between them as possible. ‘I’d better go back inside,’ he said.