“You must get used to it. How will you succeed as a nurse in the real world if you shudder at a bit of blood?
“I have no objection to blood or feces or saliva or any of it. I just don’t like seeing people cut open. And that’s just the scheduled operations. The emergencies are worse. This won’t affect my career because I plan to specialize as a midwife.”
“In six weeks time you will be a qualified RN, and you can choose whatever path you feel is right for you. However, right now you’re in training and you must be able to cope with any situation. I am switching you to Casualty tomorrow.”
Anne spoke with barely contained passion. “Why must I do something I hate for the last six weeks of training — something that will be useless to me afterwards?”
“Nothing is useless. Not the math or history you learned at school, though you may not use it today, nor the knowledge that you will acquire in Casualty. This meeting is over.”
“I beg you to reconsider.”
“That’s enough, Nurse Anne,” Matron said in a warning voice.
Anne rushed to her room in a passion of anger and threw herself beside Louise, who was lying on her bed reading a book. “I’ve been put in Casualty,” Anne sobbed.
There was a brief silence; Anne remembered the red jumper.
Louise sighed and put down the book.
“That won’t be so bad. You’ve only got a few weeks left. Maybe you won’t have to deal with anything too unpleasant.”
Anne sat up and hugged Louise, delirious with joy that she was speaking to her again.
“I’m sorry about your jumper. You can borrow my clothes whenever you like.”
“It’s OK. I washed it and it doesn’t look so bad.” Louise smiled at her, this impulsive friend with her violent feelings of happiness and despair, her capacity for deviousness.
Nobody took her under their wing in Casualty. Anne hung about all morning, hating the feeling of incompetence. Whenever anybody asked her to do something, she would jump to do it, then stand around again. Everybody else seemed busy. Finally she spotted a nurse folding some bandages; a nice, stationary job that she could help with. As she approached, recognition brought relief. Nurse Jane also frequented Dorothy’s.
“Are you folding bandages? Can I help?”
“Hello Smithie. I don’t need any help, thanks.”
“Just let me bloody help,” Anne hissed, picking up a bandage. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Well, you haven’t been here long. Just keep your eyes and ears open and you’ll learn.”
“There’s nothing I need to learn from here. I just feel uncomfortable. I’ll be training for midwifery in a few weeks. Matron is ruining the end of my training for no reason. Just … because she can.”
“That’s a shame. Matron is a right bitch, and once she’s got it in for you…”
Anne shot a look at Jane. She sometimes had the feeling that the other nurses tried to rile her up to see how she would react. “I don’t think she has it in for me. As a matter of fact she gave me some compliments.”
“Oh, just like her, buttering you up with one hand and stabbing you in the back with the other. I know you have guts, Smithie, why don’t you refuse to work here?”
A doctor appeared and motioned for Jane to follow him.
“The bandages are all folded. Can’t he use my help as well?” pleaded Anne.
“Stop worrying about not doing anything. Just enjoy it, you lucky thing!”
Anne pretended to fold, anger mounting at this wasted morning. She began concocting conversations in her head. ‘I am learning a lot in Casualty, Matron. They could do with some training on how to train student nurses.’ Anne glanced at the clock. Time wasn’t moving. ‘I can’t bear six weeks of this. Even if they did need my help, I am useless here. It’s like giving somebody who is scared of cats a job as a lion trainer. I could even do harm, and if I agree to that without voicing the truth then I am as bad as Matron. Maybe Jane is right. Matron has made a mistake, and I should tell her. It’s the principle of the thing. How can wrongs be righted if we are all cowards?’
“What on earth are you doing?” A nurse looked at her hands, unfolding and refolding the bandages.
“I’m sorry. I’m new here, and I’m not sure what I should be doing.”
“So you’re standing there wasting time while we rush about over-worked? My God, the people training to be nurses these days! Have you heard of opening your eyes and trying to be useful?”
“Excuse me…”
“I don’t have time to listen to your excuses. See that long line of women with babies? They are here to circumcise their boys. Look after them.”
For a minute Anne couldn’t breathe. Anger beat so strong she felt as though she was going to be sick. The injustice. She fought down the urge to cry, taking deep breaths. The huge line of women and babies were waiting. She approached the first woman, smiling with trepidation.
“How much longer do we have to wait?” the woman asked in a petulant voice.
“Not much longer now.” Anne wanted to scream ‘I have no idea. Nothing is explained in this dreadful ward, everything is confusion and turmoil. Far from adding to my experience, it’s an exercise in bloody futility.’
“How much longer?” whined a chorus of voices. “Tell us what’s going on!”
Anne turned and walked straight to Matron’s office. She knocked on the open door, the peremptory knock of someone who has justice on her side.
Matron looked up. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”
“I am, but nobody at Casualty seems to know what I should be doing. It is the most badly run, disorganized department I have ever worked in. They sent me to look after a line of women waiting to circumcise their babies, without any explanation of what I might do for them. They are…” Anne’s flow of anxious talk faltered under the disapproving eyes of Matron.
“Get back to work. How dare you leave in the middle of the day?”
“You don’t understand…”
“I beg your pardon. You are a student nurse, you are there to learn. The fact that you don’t know how to look after waiting patients just proves how much you have to learn. Return to work immediately or this will be your last day of training.”
“What?” Anne couldn’t believe it. Matron had told her she was bright!
“You heard me,” said Matron, and shut the door in Anne’s face.
Tears erupted. Anne clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs and ran out the door of the hospital down to the river. She lay on the bank and cried until her stomach hurt, imagining Matron finding her and feeling remorse. Begging her forgiveness. Then she imagined Sam gathering her up, horrified at her pain and swearing vengeance.
Then anger came. Anne scrambled to her feet and began to march along the river defiantly.
‘So she can chuck me out like that after years of excellent work, can she? One rotten morning, one small disagreement, and my dedication and qualities are thrown away. It’s unbelievable — she shouldn’t be Matron. If I can’t speak out when I see injustice then what type of establishment is it? “How dare you leave in the middle of the day?” Anne mimicked Matron’s voice, “Obey me or this will be your last day of training.” The train station loomed ahead, and Anne was overwhelmed with a desire to see her mother. It took exactly ten minutes to slip into her room and change, shoving a few things into a bag quietly, so as not to wake Louise.
‘You’ll be sorry you kicked me out,’ she thought as she boarded the train for Newcastle.
Anne’s parents lived in a row house, in a long line of identical houses. Upon entering, one faced a flight of steps flanked by a long dark corridor. Doors off this corridor led to the drawing room and the dining room, with the kitchen at the end. The interior always smelled of cabbage and potatoes.
Anne’s father, Eddie,
bellowed out in joy when he saw her, bounding down the steps, followed by their black spaniel Pippa. He enveloped her in a warm embrace while Pippa leapt up and down in an excess of passion. Her mother came out from the kitchen, lifting her cheek up for a kiss, undemonstrative and contained as usual. Looking so tired, always so tired.
A plate of bread and butter and the inevitable pot of tea were brought into the drawing room, where special guests were served. Anne wanted to get the main issue off her chest, so she could begin to enjoy such indulgences.
“I walked out of Casualty this morning. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and it was unbearable standing around, waiting to see if anything awful would come through the door. There are often terrible accidents in Casualty!”
“Oh it must be hard, you poor lass,” said her dad, who sympathized with any human weakness. “I couldn’t do a job like that myself.”
“What do you mean you ‘walked out’?” asked her mother.
“I mean I walked out,” said Anne irritably. “I just left.”
“What will happen now?”
“I’ll probably be booted out. I don’t know!”
“Oh come on, Mary,” said her dad, watching the clouds cross his daughter’s smooth brow. “She’s just come home. Let her get a bit of tea into her.”
After they had finished Eddie went to the pub, as he did every evening, slinking out of the house with a guilty expression. Sometimes he came back after a drink or two, looking pleased with himself and strutting around the house in an ‘aren’t-I-a-good-boy’ fashion. Sometimes he wouldn’t come back for hours. Today was a ‘good boy’ day, in honour of Anne’s return.
Mary did not refer to the subject of Anne’s walk-out again, but Anne was aware of her worried expression. She went to bed early that night, dashing off a quick note of explanation to Louise, and then settling down with a notebook, which would have to suffice till she returned to the hospital for her diary.
I have left the hospital due to the intolerable treatment of Matron. Am I a dog, to crawl back for another kick? Am I a coward? There was just one course of action open to me, unless I am to bow my head and say:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
People do not speak out enough in our world. They are too frightened. Mummy does not see it this way, and she is suffering on my behalf. I must remember that Mummy’s life is hard and she cannot escape, as I have. Daddy seems to be drinking as much as ever, same old tension in the house. I should be brimming with sympathy and love for my mother, instead of irritation. Yet, yet … there is something cold and repellent in the way she deals with life. I am impulsive and generous like Daddy. Does he find her cold? Does her coldness drive him to drink? I mustn’t even think that. I am selfishly angry because Mummy is unselfishly worried about my future. Daddy has terrible failings. I will not screw up my life the way he has ruined his. And that begs the question — am I screwing up my life already? Is it selfish and stupid to throw away three years of training? It is not too late yet to change my mind. I have already spoken out in any case.
Sundays were always the same. Church in the mornings, then Eddie would pop into the pub for a pint while the women prepared the traditional Sunday dinner — roast beef, mashed potatoes and watery cabbage, rounded off with rice pudding. When it was ready, Anne and her mother sat and waited in the small, dark dining room, while Pippa lay at their feet, twisting her head to gaze mournfully at each of them in turn. They sat in silence, ears strained for any sound. They didn’t look at one another, instead perusing the table cloth or the furniture. When Anne was younger, she would feel hatred and resentment against her father billowing in her chest. She would steal glances at her mother’s tense face, and the resentment would gradually transfer to her. If she were married to a man like Eddie she could cure him, or at least control him a little better! If only her mother would talk to her husband about how his drinking affected her life, then he would make an effort. Instead, Mary never discussed the drinking at all, treating it as if it didn’t exist. If anyone else mentioned it, a suffering look came over her face, as though the subject was too shameful to talk about. How could a man get better under such circumstances, living under a cloud of disapproval, a pariah in his own home? Even now, waiting while the Sunday meal over-cooked in the oven, Mary’s face was expressionless. She might have been looking at a dress in a shop window.
Living away from home had plucked Anne from the nucleus of the wound, allowing her to feel triumphantly indifferent. She looked around the dining room with new eyes, as though she had never seen the familiar objects before. A mirror hung above the massive Victorian sideboard with its brass gong and heavy fruit bowl. The bowl rarely contained fruit. Instead it was filled with an assortment of buttons, bits of string, coins, and bills that had to be paid at some time, but not yet. A large framed photograph hung on another wall: a young woman in a wedding dress smiling shyly at the handsome naval officer by her side. The veil was low on her forehead and she held a lavish beribboned bouquet. They looked so hopeful and happy. Anne regarded the picture with contempt. How people allowed their dreams to shatter. So much hope in those young, handsome faces — now one was frozen in a perpetual frown of displeasure and the other wore a mask of sheepish humiliation, all pride driven out by weakness and the implacable contempt of his wife. This would never happen to her. She was beautiful and young, the world was her oyster.
Outside, rain lashed the windows and the wind tossed the lilac trees at the bottom of the garden. The table was laid carelessly with knives and forks, and even serviettes and serviette rings. But a general weariness pervaded the effort. The table cloth was stained and one of the serviettes had lost its ring and lay folded unevenly beside the plate.
Anne’s feeling of detachment began to fade as the minutes ticked by. She felt herself returning to her old habit of listening to the silence with her mother. Listening for the sound of the key in the lock.
At 1:30 Mary got up to put the dinner on the table.
“Lest it be completely spoiled,” she explained.
“It’s still like this every Sunday?”
“Most Sundays. Did you think it would change, now you’ve left?”
In truth she had forgotten. Her Sundays were so different now. The unbearableness of her mother’s life hit her.
“Leave him, Mummy. Why don’t you leave him?”
“It’s an illness. If I left him, he would end up in the gutter.”
They sat down to their Sunday meal and ate in silence, still listening, listening. Pippa sat with her head in Anne’s lap. Whenever Anne glanced down Pippa would remove her intense gaze from the fork’s movement between plate and mouth and fix it on Anne’s left shoulder. In no way am I begging for treats, her aloof expression declared, I am much too dignified for that. However, if a morsel should fall perchance onto your knee...
A morsel sometimes did, and Pippa snapped up such offerings with alacrity, instantly resuming her en garde position.
Eventually they heard it, the key in the lock. All senses froze, hearts beating. The sound of the key indicated the state he was in. A great deal of fumbling, accompanied by soft swearing at the impossible smallness of the keyhole and the slipperiness of the key, meant he was quite far along. These efforts inevitably ended in failure, whereupon he would bang at the door and shout for them to open the door and fix this damn lock. Today the fumbling phase was short, though he stumbled against the step whi
ch had always been there. Anne and her mother emitted a simultaneous sigh of relief. Not too drunk today.
Eddie came into the silence with a bright, painful smile. Pippa rushed to greet him, another indication of his state. When he was very drunk, she hid underneath the table.
In silence, Mary carried a plate of congealing meat and gravy from the oven. No one spoke as he poured Yorkshire relish over his dinner, bent his head low over his plate and began to shovel the food into his mouth.
The air was heavy with the smell of whisky, beer and stale cabbage. Anne opened the window to let the rain and a welcome smell of damp earth blow in. Eddie sat with his defeated, bowed head.
“Go and have your rest” Mary said, and he climbed the stairs, leaning on the banister.
In the evening they played bridge, game after game. Before she left home, Anne thought the endless bridge evenings were a bore, instigated by her mother to entice Eddie, who loved a gamble, to stay put for the evening. She realized now, leaning forward in her chair and trying to memorize which trumps had been played, that she adored the game. Wildly competitive, she could just about manage to be a good winner — withholding her screams of glee with difficulty — but was a terrible loser.
“I’ve had rotten hands all evening. It’s hard to believe the cards haven’t been tampered with,” she would announce. Or, “You always bet way too high, Daddy, even when you have awful hands. He’s misleading us, isn’t he Mummy?”
And Mary, who wanted them both to win equally (and herself never), would smile and underbid her own hand. Each round became an ordeal, as trump card after trump card fell from her fingers.
“Oh for God’s sake, Mummy! Why did you pass with five trumps in your hand?”
“Tsk tsk tsk, Mary. What a shame. What a shame.”
She was never spared. Her hands were always wonderful.
Standing side by side washing the dishes a couple of days later, Mary turned to Anne: “I don’t have a profession, and this means I am dependent on my husband. You have the opportunity to have a respectable profession, and must not throw it away.” It was almost as though she was challenging Anne’s complacent surety about how much better her own life was going to be.
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