The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives

by Linda Fairley

  ‘I’ll visit as often as I can,’ Graham said. ‘Will I be able to see your room this time?’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t be daft.’ Men were never permitted inside any nurses’ home, ever. ‘But I’m told there is a communal sitting room where we can welcome visitors.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Graham said. ‘As long as we can see each other.’

  I knew he meant it. Although we had been dating for almost four years we had still never slept together. Graham was a true gent and had never put me under any pressure to do so. We giggled when we sometimes saw other nurses emerging, breathless, from their boyfriends’ Minis and Capris in the most dimly lit corners of the MRI car park, but we could only guess at what they got up to. Graham and I had an unspoken understanding that we would wait until we got married before having sex. Until then I felt flattered and comfortable in the knowledge he would willingly drive all the way across Manchester just to come and hold my hand and give me a cuddle and a goodnight kiss.

  I was very pleasantly surprised when I was shown to my new accommodation. The furniture was dark and old but my bedroom was on the ground floor and had patio windows that filled the room with light and gave me a lovely view over the most beautiful gardens. Pink roses nodded colourfully between lush evergreens and the sun glinted through the trees, projecting what looked like a pretty dappled rug over the grass. It was such a peaceful and idyllic scene that it helped me imagine I might perhaps enjoy my time here after all.

  A taxi took me to Booth Hall each day and I was to wear my own uniform, which was disappointing as the staff nurses had pretty gingham uniforms that I was quite envious of. Not only that, I soon realised they were allowed to swap their white aprons for red, yellow and blue ones when they served food to the children. I thought it was a lovely touch, though it surprised me as it seemed so frivolous compared to the strict and bland uniform regulations I was used to at the MRI.

  ‘I have three special patients I would like you to meet,’ Sister Pattinson told me on my first full day, steering me gently from her office.

  I prepared myself for the unbearable mixture of stifling heat and the overwhelming stench of livid flesh and clammy Vaseline that had become my abiding memory of the burns unit, but again I found myself surprised. The stuffy temperature and sickly smell could not have been described as pleasant by any means, but the ward wasn’t half as bad as I remembered it from my previous, truncated visit.

  As I was taken on a little tour I felt my shoulders relax slightly, and I allowed myself to inhale fully through my nostrils, smiling with relief when the ward air hit my lungs without causing my head or my stomach to react.

  ‘This is Karen,’ Sister Pattinson said, slipping through a yellow curtain decorated with swirls of blue and orange snakes. ‘Karen, this is Nurse Lawton.’

  Karen didn’t turn to look at me, for which I was grateful, as I needed a moment to compose myself. The little girl, who was no more than five years old, was lying face down on a bed that appeared to have been specially made for her from Plaster of Paris, as it was moulded perfectly beneath her little body. The entire back of Karen’s body, from her head to her heels, was covered in dressings and bandages. I registered with some shock that her hands were bound, too, and she was strapped to her bespoke bed by a pair of cloth belts, rendering her immobile. Karen was sucking a drink of orange squash through a straw, held for her by a nurse who sat on a stool by the little girl’s head. In between sucks, Karen writhed and sobbed.

  Sister Pattinson tilted her head towards me and whispered softly that Karen had fallen backwards into a shallow bath of scalding hot water. Her mother had slipped out of the bathroom for a matter of seconds before returning to switch on the cold tap, but it was too late. Karen was so badly burned that she needed a series of complicated and painful skin grafts to the back of her head, trunk and thighs, and would be in here for many months.

  ‘One of your duties will be to help feed Karen, to read to her and generally try to help make her as comfortable as possible,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, looking at the matted mess of hair and flesh and gauze on the back of Karen’s head. I wanted to help her in any way I could. I crouched so I could see Karen’s pretty face. She looked withdrawn, but when I said ‘hello’ she mouthed ‘hello’ back to me.

  The next patient I met was Michael, a little African boy who was three years old and had tightly sprung, jet-black curls and eyes like a couple of Maltesers. He was adorable, and I was very upset to hear that he had been burnt after pulling a pan of hot milk from the stove. He had bandages covering the whole of the left side of his face and eye, but Sister Pattinson assured me that he had been extremely fortunate and his injuries were not too severe.

  ‘Michael likes to play with the farm set and Tonka Trucks,’ Sister said affectionately. ‘Sometimes distraction is the best medicine for the little ones. I’m sure you’ll be very good at that.’

  Finally, I was introduced to Gillian. She was four years old and was described by Sister Pattinson as a Mongol, which back then was the common term used to describe someone with Down’s Syndrome. Gillian had been born to an ‘elderly prima gravida’ – an older first-time mother – who was apparently not coping well with having a child so very late in life.

  After my shift I looked up ‘elderly prima gravida’ in one of my books and discovered the term was given to a first-time mother over the age of thirty-five, which to my young mind did seem extremely old to be having your first baby. I’d never come across a mother who had had a child so late in life before, and I imaged poor Gillian’s mother to be tired and grey.

  ‘She was trying to help her daughter when the accident happened, and is devastated,’ Sister Pattinson explained. ‘Gillian was constipated so her mother decided to warm her potty in an effort to help her empty her bowels. Unfortunately, the metal pot was heated to such a high temperature that it burnt a nasty ring round Gillian’s bottom.’

  Gillian flashed me a smile that belied the pain she must have been feeling beneath the intricate patchwork of dressings swathed around her. In her hand she had a battered old Rupert Bear annual, with Rupert playing in the snow on the front cover. She thrust it towards me expectantly, and bellowed ‘Hello Nurse!’ very loudly.

  Sister Pattinson gave me a little nod of approval. ‘You can start here, Nurse Lawton,’ she smiled. ‘But be warned, that book is well loved and Gillian will have you reading it from cover to cover ten times over if you let her!’

  I phoned my mum later that evening, as I had promised to let her know how I was settling in at Booth Hall. I told her I was enjoying the experience much more than I’d imagined I would.

  ‘Your father and I have always thought you would be very good with little ones, being such a caring girl,’ Mum told me. ‘I know he doesn’t say a lot, but your dad is very proud of you, you know. We both are. You’re a credit to us, Linda.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said, feeling tears well in my eyes. ‘I feel very lucky. When you see what some of these poor children are going through, it breaks your heart and makes you realise that you don’t have any problems at all by comparison, not really.’

  I soon became adept at changing dressings on the burns unit. It wasn’t such a hard job once I got used to it, and the children rewarded me in spades with their little smiles, or by unexpectedly placing their hand in mine.

  I spent a great deal of time reading to both Karen and Gillian. Karen cried a lot, and it broke my heart that I couldn’t tend to her auburn hair, which remained matted and tangled for the entirety of my placement, but her scalp was so badly burned it was impossible to wash or even gently brush her hair. Gillian was eventually allowed to go home after six weeks of treatment to her burnt bottom, and the day before she was due to be discharged I plucked up the courage to confide in Sister Pattinson that I was a little concerned about her ongoing welfare.

  I had met Gillian’s mother several times by now, and had seen that her age was not t
he issue at all. Even though she was probably about forty, she was hardly the wrinkled old woman I’d imagined an ‘elderly prima gravida’ might be. However, she was painfully shy to the point of being awkward, and seemed to have a great deal of trouble communicating with Gillian, let alone coping with her.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself, Linda,’ Sister Pattinson said, rubbing the tops of my arms in a motherly way. ‘They say every cloud has a silver lining, and in actual fact I believe it has been something of a blessing that Gillian has come to our attention. It seems neither of her parents have been coping very well with her and her mother in particular is a slow learner, but now they are going to receive help at home.’

  ‘Oh, that’s really good,’ I said, feeling pleased my instincts had been accurate.

  Of the three of them, it was little Michael who really left his mark on me – but not in a way I’d anticipated. One evening he climbed out of his cot and walked towards me, crying, with his arms outstretched.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, Michael?’ I asked, scooping him onto my hip in the dimly lit ward. He was dressed in nothing but a terry nappy, which was normal as the ward was kept so warm.

  ‘I’ve got doo-doo on my leg,’ he said shyly, at which point I smelled exactly what he was talking about. Looking down, I saw that my white apron was now streaked with brown, and both Michael I and needed to go post-haste to the bathroom.

  ‘So-wry, Nurse,’ he said, hiding his face in my sleeve.

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ I said, which was the truth. I had dealt with worse, and I had clean hands and a fresh apron on in no time. The burns unit had been an experience, and one I did not regret after all.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Unless you ladder your stockings, to my mind you haven’t made a good job of dealing with a cardiac arrest!’

  My next two placements were to be on a cardiac ward, and then in the Casualty department. It was the autumn of 1968 and I was a third year now, which meant I was allowed to wear three white stripes of bias binding on my sleeve. This provided a boost to my growing confidence as well as to my bank balance, as my pay rose automatically from £27 to £31 a month after my accommodation was paid for.

  On my first day on the cardiac ward, I was told to report to Sister Hyde, who I’d heard from Linda and Anne was a ‘right character’.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Nurse Lawton,’ a deep voice bellowed from a side room as I entered the ward.

  I followed the low boom curiously and to my astonishment I discovered Sister Hyde lying prostrate on the floor, chunky legs protruding like logs from beneath her skirt. Once again, I found myself standing and staring, mouth wide open, but this time it was in utter surprise rather than fascination.

  ‘Come in, come in. Don’t just stand there!’ Sister Hyde beckoned, before laying her head back down and starting to thrash her thick arms and jerk her large chest about.

  I realised, to my amusement, that she was pretending to have a heart attack, the purpose of which was to instruct a group of first-and second-year students in resuscitation techniques.

  ‘Put your hand on my chest,’ she was saying to a timid-looking second year. ‘Don’t be afraid to give it a right big push. Get stuck in, girl, go on!’

  Addressing her wide-eyed audience, Sister Hyde shouted dramatically: ‘Unless you ladder your stockings, to my mind you haven’t made a good job of dealing with a cardiac arrest!’

  I warmed instantly to Sister Hyde. She certainly was a real character, and over the next few weeks I loved working with her. I learned that she smoked incessantly in the kitchen off the side of the ward, asking us students to give her the nod if Matron was in the vicinity. Unlike the majority of the other sisters, who were spinsters, Sister Hyde had a husband and a busy life outside the hospital. We all liked her and she would often make us young nurses sandwiches, or ‘butties’ as she called them, so as to keep up our strength up on the ward.

  ‘You won’t have the strength to ladder your stockings, let alone jolt a heart into action, if you don’t put fuel in your belly,’ was one of her favourite mantras.

  ‘Get this butty inside you and then go on and get it sorted out,’ she said to me regularly, thrusting a brown bread sandwich made with Marmite or meat paste in my direction. Bed-making and taking temperatures often had to wait while I did as I was told and wolfed down my butty.

  My confidence grew still further under Sister Hyde’s strong wing, and I found myself holding my head a little bit higher each day. I still would have much preferred to be looking after new mothers and their babies at St Mary’s, but compared to some of my experiences at the MRI, being on the cardiac ward was not bad at all.

  The patients proved a boon to my self-esteem. The way the men flirted outrageously with the young nurses in films like Carry on Nurse was certainly not a true reflection of what went on in real life. Almost without exception, male patients of all ages viewed us nurses like angels and treated us with the utmost respect. They thanked us profusely for every perceived kindness, whether we were giving injections, gathering bedpans or simply handing out mugs of Ovaltine at bedtime.

  I began to really enjoy night shifts. As a first and second year I’d found them a bit scary. The night sister was usually in her office during the shift and there were scarcely any qualified nurses on the ward. I’d often felt out of my depth and vulnerable with just the older students keeping an eye on me, and I’d worn myself out with worry as much as with the work. As a third year, however, I’d sit at the table under the green light and feel competent and capable as I tallied the fluid input and output charts, helped younger students with their queries, wrote up reports or prepared drugs for the patients.

  One night, when the ward was in perfect order and all the patients were sleeping, I was congratulating myself on my efforts when a new arrival was wheeled in by an apologetic porter. The large, middle-aged man had survived a suspected heart attack, but he was reeking of whisky and nothing could be done until he’d sobered up. He was lifted into a bed and I hoped he would just sleep it off, but before long the patient began to stir.

  ‘Where’s the toilet, Nurse?’ he shouted as he threw off his bedclothes and began swaggering along the ward, waking half the other patients in the process.

  ‘I can get you a bottle if you like,’ I said, rushing over, but he brushed me aside and lurched towards the bathroom. I followed him, concerned he might fall and injure himself, but to my surprise he swung round clumsily without warning, grabbed me by my collar and slammed me against a door.

  ‘Oi! Pack it in!’ a male voice ordered.

  ‘Watch it, mate!’ another warned.

  ‘Don’t lay a finger on her!’ a third pitched in.

  Almost before I could register the pain shooting across my shoulderblades, all three of these male patients had leapt to my aid, and my pyjama-clad protectors bundled the protesting drunk back into bed while I slipped away to alert Sister. I was shaken up but thanks to my chivalrous patients I escaped with nothing more than a ruffled collar, a sore back and a little bruised pride. The next day one of the male patients handed me a box of Milk Tray.

  ‘My wife brought these in for you,’ he said. ‘She said I was to give them to “that lovely little nurse”.’

  A few days afterwards I told Graham what had happened and he was naturally concerned.

  ‘It’s not right that you’re put in danger like that,’ he said. ‘Anything could have happened!’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s very unusual,’ I replied, truthfully. ‘The patients are generally absolutely lovely. They treat us like little princesses, honestly. Some of the men even offer to help dish out the cups of tea at 4 p.m., because they can see how hard we work and they want to help us.’

  This conversation reminded me of an incident soon after I started my second year and was doing a night shift on a female medical ward.

  ‘Remember Mrs Thurlow?’ I asked Graham, wanting to ease his concern. ‘Now she’s a typical patient, not this clumsy drunken
man.’

  I reminded Graham of the story, though I was sure he’d heard it before. It happened after I had distributed two sleeping pills to a middle-aged lady called Mrs Thurlow in bed seven, who had nipped to the toilet while I made my round.

  Everyone slept soundly on the ward that night, and before I finished my shift the next morning I filled in my report and remarked that it had been a ‘peaceful night, without incident’. However, flicking through the Kardex file I spotted, to my horror, that alongside Mrs Thurlow’s name in bold red letters was a warning: ‘DO NOT GIVE SEDATION’.

  ‘My heart jumped into my throat and I ran to bed seven as quickly as my legs would carry me,’ I told Graham, laughing now at the memory. I had been mightily relieved to see Mrs Thurlow propped up comfortably with her eyes open, squinting at a crossword.

  ‘Mrs Thurlow!’ I began. ‘Did you … are you …’

  ‘Are you on about the sleeping pills?’ she chuckled.

  ‘Yes!’ I stuttered.

  To my utter relief, Mrs Thurlow leaned towards me conspiratorially and whispered behind her hand, ‘Don’t worry, pet. I never took ’em. I threw ’em down the toilet. Knew I weren’t meant to.’ She gave me a wink and turned her gaze back to her crossword.

  Those were the typical patients, I assured Graham when I’d finished reliving the story. Typical patients were kind and genuinely appreciative of the care they were receiving. I hoped I’d meet many more like Mrs Thurlow during my time in Casualty, which was where I was off to on my next placement.

  I could see immediately that working in Casualty was going to be more like running a conveyor belt than working on a ward, and from the start I missed the rapport I had come to enjoy with the patients. Each hour brought a relentless blare of emergency sirens, breathless paramedics, staggering drunks and victims of all manner of accidents, some unlikely in the extreme.

  ‘My daft husband’s got his sleeve rings caught in ’is hair, Nurse,’ one agitated woman explained on my very first shift. ‘Don’t know what he was playing at; fooling around, no doubt.’