Ring O' Roses

by Lucilla Andrews

  Sister had looked ready to hit Mr Palmer, but as Joss had spoken, she smiled weakly. The staff had its first, and only, communal laugh of the morning.

  The red light jerked every head towards me. I shook mine as Mr Jarvis dictated: ‘Male, 21, burns to face, head, arms. Motor mechanic. Minor explosion in garage workshop. No others involved.’

  The red light continued to flash with the monotony of traffic signals. At last: ‘Got ’em out, Staff. Car B. Both on their way ‒’

  ‘Thank God for that, Mr Jarvis.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, Staff. Ready?’

  I braced myself. Mr Jarvis was an experienced and humane man. ‘Sure.’

  The police had discovered the couple’s names and address. They were a Mr and Mrs Yates and in their forties. Mr Yates had visible multiple injuries to his head, chest and both legs. Mrs Yates’s visible injuries were worse.

  ‘Nasty,’ added Mr Jarvis.

  ‘God,’ I muttered, ‘yes.’

  Joss grimaced as he read my notes over Sister’s shoulder. He gave them to the medic students. ‘Take a look so you’ll know what to expect. And remember what I told you earlier. No one’ll mind if you feel queasy, providing you get yourselves out before you pass out. No bloody heroics, please.’ He turned to Sister. ‘We’ll start with four on each.’

  Sister nodded. ‘Nurse Maitland, as I’ll probably be held up, will you see Mrs Gamlin gets a lunch-tray in the S.R. (Shock Room) and make her some fresh tea.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Dolly and Henty exchanged mutinous glances. I was tempted to mutiny with them, but I had to see Sister’s angle, now, if I hadn’t earlier. I had never worked in the present accident team. For any team of any nature to work well takes regular practice together as well as skill. Practice takes time; there was none to spare in the present situation. It was an A.U. maxim that the longer a dangerously injured patient took to reach us, the less time there was to save his or her life. Once the Yateses arrived and Joss decided what had to be done, and done first, for them, the team had to know without more talk, not only their own but everyone else’s job.

  In these cases, the S.A.O. never had more than minutes for his decisions. There was no time for consulting the opinions of pundits, taking X-rays, or pathological tests. In time the last two would be taken probably by the dozen, providing the S.A.O. had correctly judged which was the most serious injury or clinical condition requiring the most immediate treatment. A snap decision would have been difficult enough when examining an unknown patient in a clean nightgown in a ward bed for the first time. Accident victims were generally fully dressed, but no matter how they started out, no one stays clean after being involved in a bad road smash. The diagnosis of visible injuries could be complicated by clotted blood and road dirt, but brain and internal damage did not always show up at once in a patient already in coma from shock. The last Sister Accidents once said that in her view to be a good S.A.O. took experience, skill and guts in equal parts.

  Joss, Sister, Peter, the pathologist on A.U. call for the day, went out to meet the ambulance, and up into it when it arrived. It seemed a long time before the stretcher trolleys were wheeled in. It was less than five minutes.

  The green flashed. ‘S.S.O.,’ announced Mr Roth’s rather harsh voice. ‘Mr Desmond free? Oh ‒ ? Right. I’ll ring back, later. What’s that ‒ message? No. Purely domestic issue. Can wait.’

  The pale green and opaque fibre glass curtains were closed round Cl and on either side of C2. Mrs Yates was in 1. She had been in there about twenty minutes when Miss Dawson came through the curtains and slowly towards me. She was an attractive girl with a naturally high colour and auburn hair. Her face was pale green before she began to sway.

  ‘Here.’ 5 was empty. I switched shut the curtains with one hand, pushed her onto the table with the other. ‘Stretch out, love, or you’ll pass out.’ I pressed the button that raised her feet above her head. ‘Stay put whilst I answer that yellow. I’ll be back.’

  Her face was damp and she closed her eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is the S.A.O. available to take an outside call, Staff? He’s not ‒ oh, don’t tell me!’ The switchboard girl sighed. ‘I’ve got a caller hanging on that’s not going to like this. A Mr Hall. Grandad of a kid called Mark Alan Langley.’

  ‘He doesn’t want us, he wants Charity. We sent him up there over an hour ago.’

  ‘Staff, do you mind? I’d a word with Mr Jarvis soon as Mr Hall was on the line and put him onto Sister Charity. And a right barny they had! I only got the finish ‒ he’s going to be writing his M.P., the Health Minister, the Prime Minister ‒ the lot! Don’t ask me why, nor why he says he insists on getting an official report for his record ‒ don’t ask me what record. Sounds dead spare, he does, and he’s not going to like this wait! Shall I put him on to you?’

  I damned Sister Charity, mentally. Her tactlessness with relatives was only beaten by her excellence at nursing sick children. ‘Sure. See what I can do.’

  ‘And the best of British to you, mate,’ she said in one voice, and in another, ‘The Staff Nurse in the Accident Unit is on the line to you now, sir.’

  Mr Hall had an educated voice and was in a flaming temper that was probably two-thirds delayed-action anxiety. He had had, he said, as much nonsense as he could stand from domineering women and he did not propose to take any more from me. He was not asking for the moon, he was merely asking for the simple courtesy that was incidentally his right as a tax-payer. ‘Whom do you imagine pays your salary, young woman? My fellow tax-paying citizens and myself! Be good enough to ask the surgeon who attended my grandson, Mark Langley, on admission, to spare me three minutes of his time. I’ll wait.’

  I watched the drawn curtains round 1 and 2. He sounded the type to bombard Miss Evans, the Dean, and the Editor of The Times with irate letters, though on what grounds only God and Sister Charity knew. In these circumstances, that should not do Joss and Sister any harm, but as anyone with any experience of hospital life would understand, unfairly, it would not do them any good. Sister Charity was in a different situation, being a long-established law unto herself. Every paediatrician in Martha’s knew she was tactless with relatives, but would go to the stake rather than lose her nursing talents.

  Then I remembered Butler’s remark about different professional standards and an elderly Canadian nurse with whom I had worked. On similar occasions, she’d mutter to herself, ‘You want the truth, huh? Buster, you will surely get a load of it!’ Her technique worked superbly on English-Canadians, Scots-Canadians, French-Canadians, British-British.

  And Mr Hall.

  ‘Is that so? Dear, dear, dear! How most distressing! Naturally, you can’t consider disturbing the surgeon’s concentration ‒ Mr Desmond, did you say? When would you suggest I call him back? Three-thirty? Before the evening rush-hour starts? I quite understand ‒ thank you ‒ if you would tell him to expect my call then? You will? Most obliged ‒ may I ask your name? Ah! Tell me, Staff Nurse Maitland, did you by any chance see my grandson when he was admitted to your department? Very shaken, I’ve no doubt, without his parents ‒ I beg your pardon ‒ oh!’ His voice was now oozing pride. ‘Well, well! I’m delighted to hear he behaved himself. He’s not a bad little fellow, really, but being my only grandchild ‒ yes, I thought you’d understand. Good day to you!’

  Miss Dawson had lowered her feet and was sitting up. ‘Someone giving you his life’s history?’

  I nodded and wrote a note telling Joss to expect the call and why, then pinned it to the baize board above the desk. I took her pulse. ‘Your colour’s better but I shouldn’t go back yet.’

  She shuddered. ‘Must I? At all?’ She read the answer in my expression. ‘Or switch subjects?’

  I nodded again to save our voices disturbing the others and beckoned her to follow me into the Shock Room. The fourth-year student nurse working in there was trying an assortment of slippers on a youth who had cracked his left tibia falling off his scooter and was waiting
for his plaster to dry before going home. Our Shock Room was in actual fact less dramatic than it sounded, being where our patients rested until going home. The only other patient there now was Mrs Gamlin. She was asleep behind drawn curtains.

  Miss Dawson took a look round them, then came and sat on a stool by the standing desk that was a twin with the one in the Receiving Room. ‘I can’t believe they were in the same accident.’

  ‘The Gamlins’ car was much bigger and heavier ‒ and they had on belts.’

  ‘That’s what Mr Desmond said. He’s good, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’ve only worked with him this morning, but I’ve heard he is.’

  ‘He must be or Hoadley East wouldn’t have shoved him in over our own men’s heads ‒ and even the orthopod boys admit Desmond knows his orthopaedics. But that woman ‒’ She was shuddering again. ‘Did you see what she looks like? No hair ‒ no face ‒ she didn’t even look human. I was all right, till I suddenly realized she was a woman ‒ I don’t know why that did it?’

  I said, ‘There but for the Grace of God …’ I got her some tea from the urn. ‘This is a bit stewed. I’ll make fresh soon, if you’d like to wait.’

  ‘This is bliss, thanks.’ She looked at the Martha’s badge on my apron bib. ‘How long’ve you been a staff nurse?’

  I had to think. ‘It’s over two years since I finished midder.’

  ‘That long! Why on earth are you making the tea and answering the ’phone?’

  ‘Someone has to.’ The green was on. ‘Accident Unit. Staff Nurse Maitland speaking.’

  ‘Canteen here, Staff,’ said an aggrieved female voice. ‘That lunch you ordered for a patient. It’s ready, but you’ll have to send someone to fetch it. Lunches have started. We’re much too busy to run your errands.’

  ‘We’ll collect it, thanks.’ I rang off and asked Miss Dawson if she would get the tray. ‘Just take off that gown and mask. I’ll explain to Sister, later.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘thanks a lot.’ Then she said, ‘Staff, does one get used to this?’ I shook my head. ‘That why Sister looks so ill? Being at it all the time?’ She looked upwards as I suddenly reached for the green ’phone. ‘What’s happened to that green? It’s gone red and it’s not flashing.’

  The nurse across the room caught my eye. I said, ‘Yes, Sister,’ rang off, and took Miss Dawson into the corridor. I closed the door, picked up the green receiver on the wall shelf. ‘Lodge, please. Mr Jarvis? Accident Unit, Nurse Maitland. Morgue trolley, please. Yes. Mrs Yates.’

  Miss Dawson leant against the wall. ‘I ‒ I suppose you still want that tray?’

  ‘Please.’

  In the Receiving Room, Joss was washing at the sink by the desk. We exchanged bleak glances. I told him the trolley was coming.

  ‘Thanks, Staff,’ he said mechanically, and went on soaping his hands and arms to above the elbows.

  Chapter Four

  By Thursday in that week the ’flu epidemic in south-east England was making front-page headlines; the London hospitals were only admitting emergencies to medical beds; Florence and Stephen, our sick-staff wards, had overspilled into the Private Wing; our S.M.O., Dr Gray, was daily risking violent injury from his juniors by his reiteration that the worst was yet to come; and I was still on ‘lights and messages’.

  There were some minor changes in the A.U. One of the medics, Mr Eccles, and a fourth-year student nurse had caught ’flu. The latter had been replaced by a girl in Henty’s set who only finished her A.U. time last month. Her name was Rosalind Roberts and the Office appointed her to Henty’s job, and moved Henty and Dolly up to acting third and second staff nurse. This seemed to please Sister, even if it did not stop her brooding over us like a short-tempered if highly efficient ghost, or encourage her to take more than a fraction of her official daily off-duty

  Having worked with a few other sisters equally determined to work themselves into the ground, though I enjoyed the attitude no more than most senior staff nurses, it only worried me now as it looked to me as if that was precisely what Butler was going to do. Neither Dolly nor Peter agreed. Dolly said she couldn’t recall Sister looking anything but ready for a shelf in a morgue fridge. ‘She always hung around when Chalmers and White were on.’

  ‘As much as now?’

  ‘Not quite ‒ but she hadn’t her very own dashing white surgeon running the shop then. Can’t say I blame her.’ She flapped her china-doll eyelashes. ‘I fancy Sister’s D.W.S.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t fancy queues?’

  ‘So where does it say a girl can’t change her mind?’

  Peter was convinced all that ailed Sister could be put right with a few shots of iron. ‘Half the women in England are only over-tired because they’re short of iron.’ He reached out a hand and hitched down my lower eyelids. ‘You could use some, Cath.’

  We were in the canteen just then. My feet were hurting after standing around all morning watching others working under pressure and my temper was unimproved by the chat Joss was having with a pale, willowy brunette physiotherapist in the coffee queue. She was of the same physical type as Miss Butler and I suddenly realized why the latter had struck me as familiar when we first met. All the girls Joss had brought home in the past could also have been painted by Burne-Jones.

  ‘Don’t maul, Pete! I loathe it!’

  He looked ready to burst into tears. He had had a bad morning. Sister had snapped at him for breaking a large glass funnel, his mother had written him a stern postcard for forgetting his father’s birthday and he had had a letter from his bank manager about his overdraft. He insisted he hadn’t meant to maul as he knew no one liked being mauled by him and if I was going to be like that he’d just settle for the fact he hadn’t a friend in the world. He glowered at Joss’s back. ‘Why do some chaps have it made? What’s he got that I haven’t ‒ as if I didn’t know?’

  ‘Well, if you fancy Butler ‒ ?’

  That cheered him. ‘Rather settle for my bank manager. What am I going to say to the sod, Cath?’

  We drafted a placating letter for the rest of our break. When we left, Joss and the physio were at a table by the door. He didn’t turn his head. Nor did I, but I’ve always had excellent sideways vision.

  Had Joss and I only met again in Martha’s, he would have been the obvious, and first, person I’d have asked about Butler’s health. Last Saturday had altered our relationship more than I would have believed possible until it happened. Previously, after some other man and I stopped dating each other, we had always stayed on amicable terms, and I had never known any of those dates as long, and well, as I knew Joss. It took me a couple of days to realize that was the basic problem. Making a fool of oneself to a semi-stranger mattered only as long as one remembered the stranger’s name ‒ if it mattered at all. But who enjoys looking a fool to a life-long friend, or easily forgives that friend for witnessing the folly? Yet oddly, and disturbingly, when watching Joss in the A.U., it never once occurred to me to think of him as Ruth’s brother. I did frequently wonder if I had dreamed up Saturday night.

  Thursday was invariably the quietest day of the A.U. week and that one was typical. I was off from two to five; Sister, officially, from five-thirty. When Miss Mackenzie appeared in the Receiving Room just after eight, Henty and I were alone. Sister was still in her office working on the day’s notes with Joss. It being a hospital rule that all accident notes had to be entered in full in the A.U. log on the day, or night, on which they were made. After any rush of admissions, this could literally take hours and needed the S.A.O.’s co-operation owing to the complicated treatments given and the fact that his signature stood against each entry. If the S.A.O. was taking his rare time off, the J.A.O. acted for him, just as her deputy was permitted to do for Sister. I had not yet been allowed to write even the date in our log.

  Henty was mending gowns and I was tidying the blank forms filing cabinet by the X-ray screens. Miss Mackenzie’s advent made Henty leap off her high stool and I shut the metal
filing drawer so fast it nearly took off my fingers. ‘Good evening, Sister. Can I help you?’

  Miss Mackenzie’s grey eyes X-rayed the room, Henty and myself. ‘Good evening, Staff. Are you on, or is Sister still here?’ And when I explained, ‘I will not disturb Miss Butler as she’s busy. Kindly ask her to step into my office on her way off.’ She had another look round. ‘Very quiet, just now.’

  ‘Yes, Sister. No admissions for an hour.’

  ‘Thursday,’ she said. ‘Low pay packets. And whilst that is regrettable, there’s no doubt in my mind the situation had saved many a life. I’ll see myself out. Thank you, Staff.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  Henty and I stared at each other in silence until the airtight doors sealed themselves.

  ‘Staff, why didn’t she just pick up a ’phone?’

  I did not answer at once. Henty was a quiet, trim, likeable girl and fast worker, but I didn’t yet know her well enough to know if she could keep her mouth shut. ‘Maybe she was just passing.’

  Henty blinked thoughtfully through her steel-rimmed granny glasses. ‘Do you think Sister’s getting the bug?’

  ‘I’ve wondered that, but as the invasion’s so short, I don’t think she can be. She certainly looks very tired.’

  She picked up her sewing. ‘She has for the last month. Could Miss Mackenzie have noticed?’

  ‘Very little Miss Mackenzie doesn’t notice.’

  We exchanged another meaning stare. As she was obviously wondering how much she could trust me, she tested the ice again. ‘I suppose all Sister Accidents do a lot of overtime.’

  ‘Occupational hazard in their job.’ I glanced at the wall clock. Sister objected strongly to being interrupted for non-essential reasons when writing up the log, but if she took Miss Mackenzie’s visitation as that, I didn’t and nor did Henty. I asked her to watch the lights whilst I went along to Sister’s office.