She cleaned and boiled the instruments and put them away and attended to the various drums, refilling them where necessary and putting them out for Jones to take them to the central sterilizing department. She was glad her first operation had been one of John’s cases and that he had been pleased with her. Not all the surgeons, residents or consultants were so courteous and easy to get along with. There was Brady, the urologist, rude to the point of being insulting, flinging instruments across the theater if the one handed to him did not suit him. And many, though not actually rude, treated the nursing staff as though they were either incompetent fools, or at best merely part of the theater equipment.
Christine found she had no time to read the textbook Sister had lent her, after all. No sooner had theater been set to rights after the appendectomy than there was an emergency tracheotomy. Though the actual operation did not take long there was still all the business of clearing up to be done. Theater must always be ready for any emergency. By the time the three nurses had finished it was time to go off duty.
Christine sent the two student nurses off duty, staying herself to lock up and hand over the keys to Night Sister. It was one of the junior night sisters to whom Christine handed over. She was rather talkative and kept Christine all of five minutes. Conscious of John waiting for her, Christine at last hurried down the drive, and not until she was nearing the main gates did she remember Sister Kelly’s textbook.
She almost turned back for it. She had meant to take it home with her, partly to have another dip into it, and partly for safe keeping. But she could see John at the wheel of his car, and if she turned back she would have to keep him waiting another ten or fifteen minutes. The thing worried her a little. She was usually very careful with other people’s property and felt she had slipped up on this occasion.
But she comforted herself by thinking that the book would be perfectly safe on the desk until morning. Unless there was an emergency operation during the night no one would bother to go into the theater office.
John saw her coming and got out of the car to open the door for her.
“This is very nice of you, John,” she said as she settled in beside him. “And I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”
She told him about the other case they had had.
“You’ve been kept pretty busy, then, on your first day, haven’t you? But you seemed to cope all right. Which is no more than I would have expected of you,” he added.
When John drew up in the drive of Christine’s home, she naturally invited him in.
“Come and meet my father. He wasn’t home last time you were here, was he?”
“If you’re sure I won’t be intruding—”
“Nonsense. He’ll be delighted—and I’d like you to meet him.”
John stayed to supper, and as Christine came and went in the business of setting the table and carrying in the food it was easy to tell that he and her father were getting along very well indeed, each taking an interest in the other’s job, asking various questions. It occurred to Christine that they had far more to say to each other than ever Robert and her father had, in spite of the fact that, of the two younger men, John was by far the quieter. Was it that John was the elder? By a few years, at any rate, Christine guessed. It wasn’t that Robert was ever at a loss for a subject of conversation. Far from it. Perhaps John encouraged her father to talk rather than take charge of the conversation as Rob was inclined to do.
“You don’t have many strikes in the mines nowadays, do you, Mr. Townsend?” John was saying as Christine came in with an apple pie and set it down on the sideboard.
“No, thank goodness,” her father answered. “They haven’t a great deal to strike about these days. I was a young under-manager in the prewar years and it used to break my heart to hear some of the things the manager said. The deputies—sort of foremen, you know—were forbidden to join the union. They were considered to be on the side of the “bosses.” Terrible for some of them—for most of them, very likely. They were ex-miners themselves. I remember, one day, the manager calling a meeting of the deputies. “Make ’em sweat blood,” he said—meaning, of course, the colliers. “Make ’em sweat blood.” Unbelievable, isn’t it? I can tell you, I felt sick. And judging from the faces of some of those deputies, they did, too.”
“Was. he under pressure from the owners?”
Ralph Townsend re-lit his pipe, and as she turned, Christine was surprised to see John, too, drawing on a pipe.
“I dare say. But that was no excuse for him, was it? There was nobody there at his elbow forcing him to say such a thing. Most of the time the management were worse than the owners in those days. No, people are largely responsible for their own actions. They can blame their upbringing, blame their employers, their circumstances, the government—even the weather, but in the main they behave according to their own character.”
“I agree with you entirely,” said John.
Mrs. Townsend bustled in. “Now then, enough of this pit talk, as the miners’ wives say. Supper’s ready.”
John stayed until past eleven o’clock and was invited cordially by Christine’s father to visit them again.
“Now that’s a man,” Ralph Townsend commented as they waved goodbye.
Christine felt a pang that he had never said anything like that about Robert. Did her father think John had taken Rob’s place? He didn’t know, of course, that her heart still yearned for Rob.
“I’m glad you like him, Father, of course,” she said. “But he and I are not much more than acquaintances.”
“Acquaintances? That’s an odd word. He didn’t have to take you home, did he? Don’t you know when a man’s attracted to you? If he hasn’t asked you to have dinner or something with him, he very soon will.”
Christine gave a little smile. “Father, really! All right, let’s say we’re friends. He has asked me out, as a matter of fact. But that doesn’t mean to say there’s any attraction. He’s probably lonely, that’s all.”
"So out of over a hundred nurses he picks on you,” her father stated.
“It so happens that I was on a surgical ward when he arrived and now I’m in theater. In any case, for all I know he may have already taken Sister Kelly out.” Suddenly she hated the conversation. “Look, Father, I like John, and so, apparently, do you. But I don’t want anything else, so if you don’t mind...”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother signaling to him to drop the subject, and he said no more.
Christine went to her room. Obviously her father had taken a very great liking to John and was pleased at the thought that she had found someone else, someone who would make her happy, in Robert’s place. But she didn’t want anyone to take his place. She wanted Rob.
She sat in the dark at her window and watched the up-ended half-moon skating across streaky clouds.
There was a tap on the door. “Christine!”
“Come in, Mother.”
“I’ve brought you a drink, dear. And I’ve a book here I got from the library the other day. Thought you might like to have a little read before you go to sleep.”
“Mother, you’re an angel.” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. Her mother looked at her anxiously. “Darling, I know what you’re going through. But it will pass. If you and Rob are meant for each other you’ll come together again, you’ll see. And if there is someone else in store for you—”
Christine smiled weakly. “Marriage isn’t all that important, Mother.”
“No, darling, but love is, especially to someone like you who is so warm-hearted. I know that, at the moment, Robert is filling your thoughts, but there’ll come a time when there’s room for someone else. In the meantime, take what John has to offer, even if it’s only friendship.”
Whatever else, her mother’s words had helped to break up Christine’s thoughts. She got into bed and picked up the book her mother had brought in. It concerned a girl who was admitted to hospital suffering from loss of memory, a story which
so caught at Christine’s imagination she became immediately absorbed and read until her eyes became heavy and she could read no more.
The first thing Christine thought of when she went on duty the following morning was Sister Kelly’s textbook. She went into the office to make sure the book was still on the desk.
When she entered the office, Staff Nurse Larcham was there, an extremely pretty girl with a sweet, oval face that made her appear much younger than she actually was.
“Hello, Townsend. So you’re in theater, are you?”
“That’s right. I was on half-day yesterday—and had a couple of small emergencies.” Her eyes flicked over the desk. “I left a book on here last night. Have you seen it?”
“What sort of book?”
Christine told her and began worriedly to turn over the few papers on the desk.
“Are you sure you didn’t take it home with you?” Nurse Larcham asked. “Or maybe you left in in theater somewhere.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. It belongs to Sister. And I know I didn’t take it home.”
Nurse Larcham shrugged her small shoulders. “I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if you’ve lost it. Anyway, you’d better get cracking in theater. We’ve got a big list this morning. You’d better be on anesthetics unless Sister tells you differently.”
But Christine was beginning to feel really worried about the book now. She looked distractedly around the office and opened a couple of drawers in the desk. Nurse Larcham eyed her impatiently.
“Townsend, you’ll have to leave it now. You should be more careful with other people’s property.”
“I usually am,” Christine told her with quiet emphasis. “I put it down on the desk when I came on duty again at one o’clock. I didn’t get a chance to look at it again.”
“Well, we’ve got work to do. Come on.”
Reluctantly, Christine went about her work. She asked both Nurse Swenwick and Nurse Adcock if they had seen the book.
Nurse Swenwick answered sullenly, “What book? I didn’t see any book.”
Nurse Adcock remembered seeing it, but that’s all As soon as Christine thought Sister would be on duty, she went to the office.
“Good morning, Staff Nurse,” Sister Kelly greeted her. “I believe you had quite a busy day yesterday.”
Christine said yes, she had rather, then told her about the textbook.
“I’m terribly sorry, Sister. I put it down on the desk hoping to get another look at it, but it seems to have vanished. I can’t find it anywhere.”
Sister Kelly eyed her severely. “You mean to say you just left it lying around? Really, Staff Nurse, I’m surprised at you. This is most annoying. I thought I could trust you with it. I can’t think why you didn’t take it home with you.”
Christine felt it would only make matters worse if she said simply that she forgot. Sister was annoyed enough as it was.
“I’m terribly sorry, Sister,” she said again. “I’ll get you another copy, of course.”
“I’m not at all sure that it isn’t out of print, Staff Nurse. It’s my own fault entirely. I should never have loaned it to you. This has taught me a lesson.”
Feeling absolutely wretched, Christine went back into theater. What on earth could have happened to the book? Surely none of the night staff would take it without returning it? How could she have been so careless as to forget to take it home with her? But was it there when she went off duty? Clearly in her mind’s eye she could see it there on the desk when John had first come in the office. But later? Try as she might she couldn’t remember seeing it afterward. Could it have been knocked on the floor, she wondered, or slipped down behind the desk?
But for the next hour or so there was no opportunity to go and look. Her first job was to check over the gas-oxy gen machine. Two oxygen cylinders, black with white tops; one carbon dioxide cylinder, green with a black base, nitrous oxide all black, and a universal spanner for turning on all cylinders and for tightening nuts, on the bottom shelf. The rubber tubing connecting from cylinders to machine were also coloured, red for oxygen, green for carbon dioxide and black for nitrous oxide. On the tray on the top shelf were a pair of sponge-holding forceps and a gauze mop, an air-way, a laryngoscope, tongue forceps, a rubber endotracheal tube, and a large face-piece with an angle mount.
Christine racked her brains for anything else which should be there. Nothing should have been moved, of course, but one could not afford to take chances in theater. It occurred to her that a typewritten list would be a handy thing to have pinned up somewhere—or even a handwritten one. She went to the instrument cupboard and ran her eyes along the shelves. Her eye lighted on a pair of Magill’s forceps for introducing endotracheal tubes. That might be needed. Then, more important still, a Magill pattern paryngoscope.
Quickly she put these with the other instruments on the top shelf of the gas-oxygen machine, then checked the contents of the tray on the bottom shelf. Needles and syringes ready for use in a covered box, a long needle for emergency cardiac puncture adrenaline, coramine, amyl nitrite—all were there.
Next she set a sterile trolley for the giving of intravenous and spinal anesthesia. These were just completed when Sister Kelly came into the anesthetic room. She glanced at the gas-oxygen machine, then asked Christine to lift off the sterile towel of the other trolley so that she could see what was on it.
“I don’t normally do this with my staff nurses, but until I know you’re to be trusted, I must,” she said thinly. “And I need hardly say that, if I do find I can’t trust you, I shall have you moved.”
Christine colored. Sister Kelly certainly pulled no punches. Everything, however, appeared to be in order. Sister nodded.
“Yes, that’s all right, as it happens. But I want to speak to you some time during the day, Staff Nurse. See me in my office before you go off duty—if I don’t send for you before.”
“Very well, Sister.”
Christine was off duty at five o’clock that evening. So was Sister, Nurse Larcham taking split off-duty in the afternoon. The consultant surgeon had finished his operations by two-thirty.
It was during a short break for tea that there was a telephone message for Dr. Taylor. Christine went around to the office where he and Sister would be having a cup of tea. She knocked on the door and Sister called for her to come in.
She felt something in the atmosphere at once. Sister’s lips were tight, her eyes blazing angrily. John was frowning, his face troubled, and as Christine entered the room both he and Sister shifted their gaze from something on the table to Christine herself.
She looked from one to the other. “There’s a message for Dr. Taylor, Sister—” she began.
Then she caught sight of the thing they had both been looking at. It was Sister Kelly’s textbook, dirty and battered, and on the page at which it was opened, an ugly round tea stain.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Sister!”
Christine stared at the book, horrified. Then, as she gradually realized that both Sister and Dr. Taylor would be thinking of her, she felt her cheeks growing warm.
“You may well look shocked, Staff Nurse,” Sister said severely. “I can assure you it’s nothing to the way I’m feeling.”
“But—but, Sister, I don’t understand. Where did you find the book?”
“The cleaning woman found it behind the desk which was bad enough. But this—” She indicated the tea-stain, the turned-down corners of the pages. “There is absolutely no excuse whatever for treating a book in this disgraceful fashion.”
“But, Sister, I—”
But Sister Kelly interrupted her. “We’ll go into the matter later, Staff Nurse. What was the message you had for Dr. Taylor?”
“It was from Sister of Nightingale One. An emergency admission.”
Christine looked at John. What must he be thinking of her? He was still wearing a very puzzled expression. She supposed he wouldn’t willingly believe her capable of such wanton carelessness. But there was no
disputing the fact that it was she who had borrowed the book and was, therefore, responsible for what had happened to it.
“Well, I’ll be going now, Sister,” John said. “And I do hope you’ll be able to clear up the matter of the book. I’m sure Nurse Townsend will be able to explain what happened.”
But I can’t, Christine thought desperately. She only wished she could. Certainly she had not put the tea-stain there or turned up the corners like that. Surely the two nurses ... She couldn’t imagine Nurse Adcock doing such a thing, and would Nurse Swenwick dare?
Sister came back from taking John to the theater unit. “Well, Staff Nurse? And what have you to say for yourself?”
Christine felt utterly wretched. “Sister, I—I’m terribly sorry, but I just don’t know how it happened.”
“Did you make tea yesterday?”
“Well, yes, Sister. I made one for Dr. Taylor after the emergency. I had one myself, too, but I didn’t put my cup down on the book. I just don’t do that sort of thing with books.”
“What about the nurses? Did you give them tea?”
“Yes, I did. I asked them earlier if they’d seen the book, but only Nurse Adcock had. Nurse Swenwick, not at all.”
The theater sister eyed Christine disapprovingly. “Staff Nurse, I thought I had made it perfectly clear that I allowed no slackness in theater? Make tea for the surgeons, by all means. They expect it. You may even have one with them on occasion, but understand this once and for all. I will not have the nurses coming in here drinking tea. And remember, too, what I said to you about the nurses’ conduct with the doctors and surgeons. This applies as much to you as anyone. Perhaps if you had behaved with a little more professional dignity yesterday, this would never had happened. I’m very disappointed in you, Staff Nurse. And not only with regard to the book. As to that, clearly, you lost track of it. I shall be glad if you will replace it as soon as possible—and take this filthy thing out of my sight.”
The Gentle Surgeon Page 6