By Madelyn Golden
She dreamed she was walking down the long rows of patients, pushing the trolley of pills before her. The ward stretched as far as she could see, with beds lining each side and a huge fireplace in the middle. It was hard to read the writing on the list detailing the medication for each person. The patients began to voice their irritation. The noise got louder and louder, and she screamed at them to be quiet, she was coming.
Anne Smith snapped to consciousness and then froze, her body stiff with anxiety as she anticipated the wake-up call. She peered at the clock on her bedside table: ten to five. Every morning she woke up too early and lay there rigid, dreading the night nurse’s knock, furious with herself for waking up before she had to. She willed her body to relax. It was ridiculous, this tension. Never enough sleep. Exhausted.
The pounding at the door made her jump, even though she had been expecting it.
“Rise and shine nurses! Your shift starts in half an hour!”
The night nurse passed and Anne relaxed. She would just keep her eyes closed for a few more minutes. Instantly, she was back on the ward, pushing the pill trolley before her.
A poke in her leg, then another in her ribs. She opened one eye and the dark face of her roommate pushed the endless ward back into the unconscious.
“Get up, you lazy sod. Why do I always have to shake you awake?”
Anne extended one toe and withdrew it hastily. Freezing cold, as usual. Gloom enveloped her. It was impossible to live this way. The misery of getting up at the crack of dawn was unbearable.
Her uniform lay on a chair by the bed. She grabbed it and slipped it on under the covers, shivering, while her roommate enacted the opposite feat in the next bed.
“You lucky thing, going to bed while I have to slog for twelve hours.”
“Didn’t I just work twelve hours while you were in bed? You know the night shift is harder. We’re deprived of natural light.”
“Well, you can pop outside now and absorb some of that charming grey,” smiled Anne, burrowing under her covers to scribble in her diary. It was important to jot down one’s thoughts, in case any of them turned out to be clever. One day, perhaps, she would be a famous writer, and she’d get up whenever she bloody well wanted. Then the world would clamour for snippets of her diary.
November 1948
Barely dawn and I must work again; cannot bear these dreadful long days. At least I manage to enjoy myself a bit in the evenings — had a lovely time last night. Drank tea with Dave and smoked his entire pack of cigarettes. Washed my face and ears (never seem to get any further these days!) and took my “leetle pill.” Actually I have trepidations about my intestines, which have given me no sign or feeling for days, and has there been a peculiar taste in my mouth? So now eating nothing but fruit, fruit and drinks for as long as I can manage. Yesterday I had a bowl of plums and custard (custard is excepted), also a bowl of damsons and cream (also excepted) and two sweet biscuits (ditto). I am allowed a piece of toast for breakfast. I went to the pub later on and sat drinking draft cider, smoking stubs and reading Walt Whitman. I wanted to embrace everything. John appeared and we talked of Italy in the summer and the places we will visit. Another idle dream perhaps. John never rests — his eyes are bloodshot and straining. I wonder if he sleeps in armchairs fully clad? He tells me he cannot live without me. There was a couple next to us who sat silently, and it made him feel ill at ease because we were talking and laughing. I would have been ill at ease had it been vice versa. There is a coarseness in me.
Once she was on her feet drinking her first cup of tea and inhaling her first cigarette in the kitchen reserved for hospital staff, Anne felt better. She popped a couple of aspirin and surveyed the silent, huddled mass of nurses.
“Sandra, your skin looks so fresh this morning. How do you do it?”
Sandra, who had been staring morosely into her cup of tea, couldn’t help feeling rather pleased.
Anne continued without a break. “I do believe Doctor Moore is the assistant doctor in the operating room with us this afternoon, Judy. I’ve noticed him looking at you out of the corner of his eye.”
“Really?” Judy asked in delight, “You think he looks at me?”
“Absolutely. That’s why he always makes you work opposite him, so he can ogle you across the operating table.”
“Or so he can rub elbows with you, Smithie,” snorted another nurse.
“I don’t know what you mean, Greta. Doctor Moore has never rubbed so much as a hair against me, unless it was through inattention because he was looking over the table so hard.” Judy’s pleasure filled Anne with such affection that she felt quite irritated with poor Doctor Moore for his superficial attraction to herself.
Greta shot Anne a malicious look, as though she had caught her out in a lie, and Anne’s bubble of contentment vanished.
‘These people exhaust me,’ she thought.
Once tea was finished, the nurses rose to begin the long day of duties. They were assigned various tasks in different areas of the hospital, in order to get as much experience as possible during training. Anne had moved into the men’s cancer ward a few weeks ago, and it seemed like paradise in comparison to the months she had spent in the women’s medical ward, where her duties consisted of gathering bedpans to test the urine for each patient. She already had the new routine down pat: first, hand out the breakfast trays, making jokes about the awfulness of the food. Some very sick patients had to be fed like babies, encouraged to open wide for one more bite as they wrung their hands petulantly, while others stealthily tried to secure a second tray, undaunted by daily failure.
Next, set out bowls of water for those who could manage by themselves, and wash the ones who could not, maintaining a pleasant stream of conversation as she wiped the crease under their necks where sweat accumulated, lifted their arms to clean the armpits. She would hand them the soapy flannel so they could wash between their legs if they were able. If not, the lilt of her voice did not falter as she wiped away traces of urine and feces.
Then, march down the ward with the mouth tray, gathering up false teeth for cleaning. At 9:00 a.m., medications and back rubs.
Anne pushed her trolley down the long row of patients, dispensing pills. The incompetence that had dogged her dream was replaced by confident professionalism: she knew the medications for each patient by heart, and she had a kind word for everybody. The ill and infirm would sit up in their beds in anticipation of her arrival. She instinctively understood the type of interaction each patient wanted — cracking jokes with some and inquiring with great sympathy about the health of others.
“And how was your night, Mr. Gander?”
“Awful,” croaked the little old man, “I didn’t sleep a wink.”
Anne took his hand and stroked it. “Did you have a pain?”
“My entire body was on fire.”
“Poor Mr. Gander. As soon as I’ve finished with these pills, I’ll try and find time for a little chat.”
“Come here and give us a kiss, sweetheart,” a voice bellowed from the next bed.
“Only if you eat a little more breakfast!” Anne smiled at the handsome, middle-aged man grinning at her. “You’ve not touched it!”
“I don’t have enough time left to waste it doing things I don’t like. And I don’t like that foul mess.”
Anne stood by the side of his bed. “I would give you steak if I could, but this foul mess is all there is. You have to eat to keep strong.”
The man barked with laughter. “Strong? I’m dying. My strong days are over. I’m into enjoying life now.” He leaned forward, “I enjoy looking at your pretty face, Nurse Anne.”
“If only pretty faces could cure.”
“They help. You’re descended straight from the Vikings, with those slanting blue eyes…”
“All right, enough nonsense out of you. I have
other people to tend to,” replied Anne.
The patient leaned forward and grasped Anne’s hand. “How about I give you money for a nice bottle of whisky? That’ll make me very strong.”
Anne laughed, placing his hand on the bedspread and patting it, “I might get fired for doing something like that.”
“And I’m going to die tomorrow. Come on, sweetie. Even convicted criminals are granted dying wishes.” And the hand clutched hers again, concealing a five-pound note.
Anne stopped at every bed to dispense smiles, winks and jokes along with the pills. Her heart was filled with love and compassion for these bed-ridden human beings.
The surgeons that came sweeping into the ward with their gaggle of students at 11 a.m. infuriated her. They paraded from bed to bed, discussing various ailments and treatments, avoiding eye contact. To them the patient was not a person but a set of disorders. They scrutinized the report at the foot of the patient’s bed and sometimes asked Anne for clarification.
“Did the dose of morphia cause vomiting?”
“Yes. Poor Mr. Jones felt quite uncomfortable for a while, didn’t you Mr. Jones?”
“Did you notice any other symptoms?”
“No.”
And the doctor would turn to his students to see if they had any suggestions or ideas.
Her favourite patient was an itinerant Irish tramp with cancer of the larynx, who had been placed on a side ward because he was so ill. After the doctors had swept out of the cancer ward, she went to stand close by his bed, holding his hand.
“How’s my little girl?’ he whispered, then lapsed into silence.
“I’m wonderful, dear sir,” said Anne. “How are you feeling? Do you have the energy for another chapter in the ongoing saga of a Cambridge nurse’s life?”
The tramp nodded and tried to smile. He loved hearing about the parties, the flirtations, the excesses, the troop of interested young men falling like dominos in Anne’s energetic wake.
“I had a quiet drink with John last night, and if I can get through eight more hours of work I shall dance at Dorothy’s tonight. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
The pressure of his hand told her he was listening.
The nurses got an hour off for lunch, which they took in shifts. Anne bolted down her food and rushed back to her room to have a sleep. Louise opened a sleepy eye and looked at her.
“You have feet like an elephant, Smithie.”
Anne laughed, “You sleep like a baby.”
“You mean ‘well’?”
“Do you know any babies who sleep well? That’s such a misleading expression.”
Louise plumped up her pillow and leaned back resignedly.
“How was the morning?”
“Those bloody doctors, swanking in and talking about the patients as though they weren’t there.”
“Oh Smithie, who cares? The patients aren’t complaining. Why do you have to take on other people’s issues all the time?”
Anne picked up her sugar jar, which she kept in a cupboard in the bedroom.
“I’m so sick of drinking tea without enough sugar. It’s been three years since the end of the war. When are they going to stop rationing food? I can’t survive on such minute quantities. Your name is coming off your jar, by the way. You’d better fix it, or I might help myself to your sugar by mistake.”
“You should be pleasant with the doctors instead of getting angry. Your opinion would have more impact that way,” said Louise.
“I can’t help feeling strongly about things.” Anne sat down on her bed and blew on her tea. “Certain images make me want to weep, like my mother waving goodbye on the train platform in her little pill-box hat, her unhappy eyes above her smile. But I could have died laughing when John Drake told me that he couldn’t live without me last night, despite his misery. That reminds me, are you coming to Dorothy’s tonight?”
“God no. How do you do it, night after night, after working twelve hours?”
“Don’t be so pathetic. Don’t you have the next couple of days off?”
“And I need them to recuperate. In bed with a good book. It’s madness, the way you live.”
Anne snuggled into bed and looked at Louise through lowered lashes. Louise is rather exotic-looking, she thought to herself. There’d been no blacks in the middle-class district in the north of England, where Anne had grown up. A few Jewish girls minced on the outskirts of her ballet lessons, forming a little clique on the sidelines. They would gather together and talk loudly and seemed to possess a superiority complex which made them look down their noses at the others. As a result Anne disliked them and tried to ingratiate herself with them at the same time. Not that she had made much effort — she was popular, they were just Jews.
But she had never even seen a black person, let alone known one well enough to form an opinion. Yet apparently, opinions had been formed. How else could she explain her original astonishment with Louise’s English accent and behaviour, as though they clashed with her African features? In fact, Louise had been brought up in England and was as conventionally middle-class as any girl Anne knew. Because of this, Anne could never forgive herself for what had happened at their first meeting. There had been four nurses moving into the hospital dorms on the same day. Anne had been chatting with all of them, assuming they would all want to room with her. She thought she would choose the Irish girl, who seemed cheery and might be game for all-night dancing. But when the decision-making moment came, the Irish girl said,
“Right, I’ll room with you Connie, and Louise and Anne can room together.”
Anne froze in surprise. For a fraction of a second, she couldn’t speak. Then she came to herself and focused on Louise, who was looking at her without expression.
“Of course,” she said. But she knew that Louise had registered her hesitation.
Now, months later, they were firm friends, yet neither had forgotten their first meeting, that slightest glitch in British politeness.
“Well, nighty night,” Anne said.
“There’s no point going to sleep now, you don’t have time.”
“I read that twenty minutes is enough to revitalize your mind. I’ll be as good as new.”
“If you want twenty you’ll have to fall asleep within the next minute.”
“Shh.”
Anne was glad Louise wasn’t in the room when she began to prepare for the evening. It was boring to be judged for enjoying oneself. Where was the joy in a life of work and sleep? Live in the moment, milk pleasure from every opportunity!
It was all fairly innocent. Anne’s naiveté was held intact by the traditional, close-knit family she had left so recently, who still ate high tea with the grandparents every Sunday. Bread and butter, little cakes, maybe a rice pudding or a treacle tart. The grandmothers were formidable in their starched gowns and severe hairstyles, the little heads of their fox stoles bumping against their bosoms. Edwardians emerging from the Victorian era, they still ruled with Victorian principles, one step removed from covering indecently exposed chair legs. Instilling an absolute idea of modesty into their female descendants, they asserted that sex was to be endured in order to procreate and because it was part of the marriage contract, in exchange for life-long food and lodging. Sex before marriage was condemned. Foolish women might imagine food and lodging would be obtained by such an act, but they were mistaken and ended up badly, just as they ought. Pregnancy before marriage destroyed the family. There were no words to express such a calamity. Sex for pleasure was unimaginable.
Anne rebelled against this upbringing by flirting with a variety of admirers, but she had no intention or desire to sleep with any of them. Some adventures culminated in a kiss, but nothing in that experience tempted her to go further. Ultimately she dreamed of marriage, like most women of her age, but she didn’t really think about what marriage meant. She f
elt only that fun and pleasure must be grasped with both hands now.
Anne sorted through her meagre wardrobe in disgust. There were two good blouses, a couple of nice skirts, and her best woolen dress. By mixing and matching, she could achieve a different look for several days, but as weeks marched into months Anne grew desperate. Louise’s situation wasn’t much better, but she had just received a parcel from her family for her birthday, containing a new red jumper. This jumper would go admirably with Anne’s black skirt.
‘How annoying that Louise isn’t here,’ thought Anne. ‘I would love to borrow the jumper. She would certainly say yes if I asked — Louise is generous about things like that. I’m sure she won’t mind if I wear it, and I will take very good care of it. It really doesn’t make any difference, after all.’
John Drake appeared in time to escort her to Dorothy’s and waxed appreciative over the red top. The night was drizzly and Anne hung on his arm so they could share his umbrella. A huge man with a big shaggy head loomed up in front of them, wishing them both good evening, but looking at Anne. She had seen him before, another student pacing the streets of Cambridge, and had remarked on the largeness of his head and the intensity of his gaze.
Dorothy’s was a huge place, boasting a dance floor surrounded by closely packed tables. The atmosphere was heavy with smoke overlaid with the smell of stale beer. But the chairs were comfortable and the size of the room allowed the guests to find places to talk without having to shout over the music.
“Shall we dance John? This is a great song!”
Several men called out to her as she pulled John onto the floor. “Hey Annie, save one for me!”
“Promise me the next dance, my pretty one!”
Anne laughed and waved. “Oh John, I wish I had a little card, so I could write each man’s name down beside the dance they requested, like they used to in the old days.”
When he didn’t reply she squeezed his arm. “Don’t be crotchety. It’s not like you want to dance more than one or two anyway.”
Anne danced well, losing herself in the rhythm, moving with a vitality that drew every eye. Each partner bought a round of drinks at the end of the dance, and Anne knocked back half pint after half pint of lethal draft cider, choosing her cigarettes from the open packs extended in her direction, the middle cigarette half pulled out so she could take it with ease. Conversation flowed around the table.
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