The New Sister Theatre

by Lucilla Andrews

  She organized me so well I even had time for a bath, to write to my father, and then rest on my bed. I tried ringing Mark. He was out. Wendy promised to deal with him in the morning. ‘Not that he’ll need telling. Barny’s is already buzzing over Robbie’s flying you off into the night. I hope Lady Stanger isn’t spoiling the story by going along as chaperon?’

  A quality of total unreality settled round me like a cloak. I said good-bye to Matron and Home Sister, talked to Lady Stanger, who drove with her husband and myself to the airport, felt my habitual wave of nausea as the engines throbbed life into the grounded plane, swallowed the tablet Robbie produced when he saw my colour. I seemed to be sitting on my own shoulder watching someone who looked like me doing all those things, but could not possibly be myself.

  The tablet dried my mouth, stopped the nausea, and made me more detached than ever. I asked what it was, since no other travel pill had had such an immediate effect on me.

  ‘That was a Stanger’s Stomach Special, m’dear. I worked them out and first had them made up when I was in the Navy. Shocking sailor. No stomach for the sea. Never travel without ’em now. Remind me to write you a script some time. Now, down to business.’ He settled himself into a more comfortable position in the seat next to mine and began to discuss in great detail the medical and surgical problems we might have to face. ‘Won’t be the first time I’ve operated on a kitchen table, and I doubt it’ll be the last. Not an experience I enjoy.’ There was a light in his eyes that belied his words, and reminded me of the stories of Robbie in the last war operating on a ward table in Barny’s basement with the hospital literally dropping round his head, before he went into the Navy and won himself a D.S.O. for operating for fifteen hours in a makeshift tent on some beach after his ship had been sunk, and finishing up by giving the last patient a pint of his own blood, because they happened to have matching groups.

  He had brought with us sufficient instruments, drugs, and emergency anaesthetics to cover most eventualities. I asked about an anaesthetist. ‘That local doctor you mentioned before?’

  ‘If he’s been contacted. He’s the only man in a wide area. That is to say’ ‒ he frowned for no reason I could follow ‒ ‘the only local general practitioner. We’ll have to sort that out when we get there. May be tricky. We must expect shocks. To be honest with you, m’dear’ ‒ he considered me thoughtfully ‒ ‘that is precisely why I asked you to accompany me. You’ll not object to my saying you’re a very young woman, Sister. You’ve been well trained. And I have observed that you have the calm temperament necessary for dealing efficiently with the unexpected. I’ve a great respect for your excellent profession, but I’ve had too much experience of the type of trained nurse who would regard a request to use a scrubbing-brush on a kitchen table as a downright insult ‒ not to mention the mere suggestion that she might have to cook a meal for others as well as herself ‒ that has the species in a real tiz, believe you me! I can tolerate that nonsense in a hospital, not on an unorthodox expedition such as this. For this, I want someone with the essential skill and equally essential adaptability of the young. I’ll tell you frankly I’ve no idea what domestic arrangements we may expect to find. You may have to assist me surgically, turn midwife, nurse, comforter of a frantic husband ‒ because God alone knows how that young fool David will react, if he reacts at all. These artist fellows! I dunno!’ He smiled wryly. ‘It was my good fortune that you should happen to be due for a holiday at this juncture. I hope ye’ll have no cause to regret all your generous action may involve.’

  ‘I’m sure I won’t, Sir Robert. I’ve never done anything like this, or worked anywhere outside Barny’s. I think I’ll find it all quite fascinating. Thank you for bringing me.’

  He looked about to comment on that, then fell silent. When he spoke again it was about air travel. ‘I’m always crossing the world at odd week-ends to see patients. I never have time to see the countries I visit. Just the airports, and they are all identical. As indeed are the clouds.’

  ‘My father said that once.’

  ‘Indeed? He live in London, Sister?’

  As we talked about my father and then my childhood it suddenly struck me how little we knew of each other’s backgrounds, even though we had worked together constantly for so long. But at least we belonged to different generations, and until very recently had moved on different planes in the hospital world. I thought of my fellow-sisters and my theatre girls. The only people I knew very much about off duty were Wendy now, and before that Ellen and Sandra ‒ the last two really only because we had been closer in our original set. Apart from these three, there was that gay little extrovert Dolly Bachelor. My predecessor had said I would find her job lonely. Not till then did I really discover how right she was.

  Sir Robert discussed his now grown-up children. ‘M’daughters manage me. And I enjoy it! Sons are more difficult. They take so much longer to grow up. The youngest lad is for ever sitting in Trafalgar Square. Worries his mother. Convinced he’ll ruin his kidneys on those damp pavements. But there it is. And it shows the boy uses his mind, which is more than can be said for his brother! He’s either chasing a ball or a gel! Reminds me of meself! Ah, well!’ He stifled a yawn. ‘I think, if ye’ll forgive me, I’ll have a little nap. We may find ourselves very busy once we are down.’

  I watched him drop off, thought how impossible it was to think of sleep myself, and then the next thing I knew was our attractive young air-hostess shaking me gently, as it was time to refasten our safety-belts.

  Sir Robert rubbed his eyes. ‘Does going down worry you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He patted my hand. ‘And me. Know what our trouble is?’ I shook my head. ‘Just a pair of cowards, m’dear.’ We smiled at each other, and I felt much better. Then, because the old habit was still there, I caught myself thinking, I must tell Joe how sweet the old man’s being.

  I cut the thought short, and looked out of the window by my seat. The sky was very pale. Below, the mountains of North Africa framed the southern sea-line like great black Bedouin tents. Then a grey-green dot ballooned hugely. I glimpsed a white sand beach, a row of fishing-boats with yellow sails on the oily dawn sea, and then we were down.

  The car Sir Robert expected had not arrived. After we had been seen by the various officials, he left me drinking coffee in a small, empty reception lounge while he made inquiries about the absent car.

  ‘Miss Armstrong cabled that young fool David last evening. He sent a car here for de Winter. We’ll give him a little longer, then hire one this end and drive out.’ He went out, leaving the door ajar, and I heard him talking about hired cars with someone outside.

  We had left London freezing in a mid-winter night and flown into a golden early spring morning. There was a great vase of yellow mimosa on the table by my chair, and the ‒ to me ‒ mild morning air held a mixture of the sea, petrol, and the scent of wild geraniums. I looked round, remembered telling Robbie I expected to find all this quite fascinating. Fascinating. The irony of my being here alone at this very time hurt like an operation without an anaesthetic.

  I wondered what Joe had thought about that honeymoon we never had when he flew out to see Robin Easton, or if he had even thought about it at all. Now we were away from Barny’s and Sir Robert was being so human, I should be able to get some real news about Joe out of him. All these last few months in London, apart from that Robin Easton business, he had avoided mentioning Joe quite as constantly as his juniors. In his case, there was nothing odd about that, since he was not given to gossiping with the nursing staff ‒ and that included theatre sisters. His conversation on the way out showed he had left a good many of the barriers that traditionally hedged a hospital pundit back in London. It should not be too difficult to get him to talk, but what good that talk would do me was another problem.

  I realized the subject had become an obsession with me, particularly since New Year’s morning, and as ever I tried to rationalize myself out of it, without success. I w
as like a patient I once nursed ‒ an old lady admitted with an apparently mild gastric disorder that on investigation proved to be advanced carcinoma. ‘I know as I got nothing to fret me, duck,’ she said. ‘Me stomach’s settled real lovely after them powders, and I feel much better in meself. But me bones got the wind up something cruel, duck, so I reckoned as I best bring meself up for the doctor to have a look-see for hisself. Reckon me bones’ll heed the doctor. I can’t be doing nothing with them.’

  Sir Robert’s voice outside brought me back to the present. ‘Capital! Capital! Best news I’ve had in years! Now, be a good fellow and go along to that room there and wait for me. You’ll find my young assistant there. I shall be with you directly.’

  I gathered together my gloves and handbag as slow, rather heavy footsteps came towards the lounge door. The steps surprised me. From Sir Robert’s remarks I had assumed they belonged to David Easton. They did not sound the steps of a young man.

  They belonged to a young man. He pushed open the door with a stick, then stopped dead, leaning one hand on the doorknob, the other on the stick.

  My bag and gloves slid to the floor. I was too transfixed with astonishment to remember them or get up. ‘Joe! Robbie never told me you were out here!’ I looked from his face to his stick, then back to his face again. He went on staring at me as if he refused to believe his eyes. He was much thinner and very tanned. Beneath the tan his colour had drained away. I stood up slowly, went closer. ‘What was that about good news? Aren’t we going to have to do a nephrectomy plus a caesar on a kitchen table after all?’

  My voice had spoken for me. It was a voice I now recognized as my ‘Sister Theatre’ voice. It would have sounded strange to him. I had only begun using it after he left Barny’s.

  He looked surprised, but less shocked. He still breathed as if he had been running. ‘The Caesar’s off the list. She had her baby before I left.’

  ‘She did?’ My profession was now my armour. ‘I thought it wasn’t due for three weeks? A live baby?’

  ‘Fine. Not even visibly prem. She must have had her dates wrong.’ His voice was almost normal. Then, ‘Maggie, what the devil are you doing here?’

  ‘Robbie asked me to come.’

  ‘And what does he think he’s doing dragging a Barny’s theatre sister out here on a private case?’

  ‘We haven’t broken any rules.’ I went back to my chair, as my legs were feeling most peculiar. ‘I’m on holiday. He’s not employing me. I’m his guest. How about you?’ And as there was something that had to be said I said it at once. ‘I see you’ve been ill. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Robbie didn’t tell you?’ he demanded.

  ‘No one’s told me anything.’ I folded my cold, cold hands in my lap. ‘But you can tell me something, Joe?’ I saw a muscle twitch in his taut cheek. ‘What make is this baby? And how has its arrival affected the mother’s blood-pressure? Robbie had the idea she was heading for uraemic coma, or eclampsia, or both.’

  He did not answer immediately. He looked at me in silence for several seconds, then moved over to a hard chair against the wall and lowered himself on to it stiffly. ‘The old man wasn’t far wrong. I spent most of yesterday having dark thoughts along those lines. She hadn’t been at all well these last few days. Early yesterday morning her pressure rocketed.’ He sketched the upward curve of a graph in the air with a flattened hand. ‘Just like that. It had me checking the size of their kitchen table, made me stop acting like a guest and chuck my weight about like a Big Doctor. I had been trying to warn David what might happen. He’s a good man, but it just didn’t sink in.’

  ‘Robbie’s given me a general picture of that marriage.’ I managed to smile. ‘He doesn’t dig these artist fellows.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said they were his cup of tea, though I like them a lot. Snag over this business has been their leave-Nature-to-Mother-Nature routine. Childbirth is a natural process, and so on. A couple of weeks in any Mat Unit knocks that one out. Still, as Geraldine had no trouble with her first baby and no medical attention beyond the nearest handywoman, they were convinced they had a point and I was just making the usual medical song-and-dance. I did tell David the damage to her right kidney obviously started then, but as she was only eighteen at the time and that’s an ideal age for having a baby, she got away with it.’

  ‘He didn’t believe you?’

  ‘Doubt he even heard. He’s devoted to his wife, but he started a new picture this week, and when he’s working he just switches off from all other contacts. So yesterday morning I took things into my own hands. I got David out of his studio more or less bodily and told him his wife would probably die if he didn’t drop this back-to-nature lark. Enough got through to make him borrow Pilar’s bike ‒ she helps in the house ‒ and cycle the seven miles to the nearest village for the local doc. Man called Alvaro. He qualified in Madrid. Good. But he wasn’t home. His wife said he was delivering breech twins twenty miles off. The nearest hospital to the Eastons’ house is over fifty, and anyway I didn’t think it would be safe to move her. So David cabled Robbie for me. When he got back I asked Pilar to scrub the kitchen, and got busy boiling up everything I had in the way of instruments in a fish-kettle on an oil stove. Real Sunday-paper stuff.’

  ‘You had instruments?’

  ‘Enough for an emergency caesar. Robbie fitted me out with a little black bag when he sent me out the first time. The anaesthetic was the big problem. I only had a little chloroform and largish bottle of ether. I didn’t fancy the prospect of a caesar under open ether, quite apart from having no one but David around to give it.’

  ‘How about standing? Can you do that without a stick?’

  He hesitated visibly, then, as I was hoping as I had never hoped before, the force of the old habit that had let him talk the way he had was too strong. Doctors and nurses together talk shop as instinctively as they breathe. Because we were only talking shop, we were both breathing more easily.

  He said, ‘I can’t stand without a stick for more than a couple of minutes. I should have had to prop myself up. A bit tricky.’

  ‘Very.’ The atmosphere between us was still tense, but somewhere the bells were ringing. I did not yet know exactly what was wrong with him, but there was now no doubt about my getting all that out of Sir Robert at the first possible opportunity. That the condition was serious was obvious; whether it was also dangerous was still an open question. The bells were ringing because that remark he had just made showed he had realized his ill-health was not a dirty word to be avoided. I was not going to force him to talk about it, but if it came up in the conversation it came up. I asked about the baby. ‘Normal delivery?’

  ‘Couldn’t have been more classic.’ His face was transformed by his old smile. ‘God, Maggie! Talk about a lucky break! I disremember being so relieved to see an infant. He only gave about twenty minutes’ warning. Directly he was born her pressure began to sail down, the way it does. I was just wondering if there would be any hope of getting a hold-everything cable off to Robbie, when Miguel ‒ he runs the only local taxi ‒ came out with the cable telling us Robbie had decided to come out. As I’d sent the false alarm, I thought I had better come and break the news. Miguel brought me in. We’d have got here sooner if we hadn’t had a puncture.’ He folded one arm on the other, and, as on that night in his room, the knuckles of his exposed hand were white. ‘She must get rid of that kidney. If you two take her back with you I’d be a lot happier.’

  ‘When’ll she be fit to move?’

  ‘A day or so. There’s nothing like a successful childbirth for giving a woman a new lease of life. According to the books, she should now be dead, and junior, if alive, a sickly prem. I left her drinking tea, making plans for the next one, and junior bawling his head off.’

  ‘Who’s looking after things? David?’

  ‘In theory. In fact, Pilar’s mother and posse of sisters. She’s got six. I think they were all there this evening with a few aunts and female cousin
s thrown in. Pilar’s a good, sensible kid. She’s only sixteen, but no teenager. They haven’t been invented in her village yet. Too far off the map.’ He looked round. ‘Oh, there you are, sir.’ He got on his feet by pushing on the back of that hard chair and his stick simultaneously.

  ‘I’ve put Miss Lindsay in the picture. Quite a surprise,’ he added drily, ‘finding you had brought her along.’

  ‘Good God, boy!’ retorted Sir Robert sternly. ‘What’s surprising about my bringing an experienced theatre nurse when y’cable warned me I might have to perform a pair of major operations! How many pairs of hands am I supposed to have, eh?’ He looked Joe over openly and clinically. ‘Y’stance has improved considerably since I last saw ye! Turn round, boy. Let’s have y’stick.’ He removed this as he spoke, handed it to me as if we had been in a ward, flattened his hands against Joe’s shoulders. ‘Get ’em as far back as ye can. Good. Not bad at all. Buckwell should be pleased with ye. Get much pain now?’

  As Joe’s back was to us I could not see his expression. There was none in his voice. ‘Not much more than an ache.’

  Sir Robert held out a hand for the stick. ‘Here y’are, boy.’ He waited while Joe turned round. ‘When does Buckwell want you back in Martha’s for the second stage?’

  Joe glanced at me. I met his glance as I would have done had we really been in a ward and he one of the patients. ‘He hasn’t told me.’ He smiled rather grimly. ‘You know what surgeons are like when it comes to telling patients about themselves.’

  Sir Robert was in fighting form. Knowing him, and Joe, I was convinced that was intentional. ‘Ye don’t have to grumble about that. What can he tell ye that ye don’t know for yeself? Eh?’ He turned to me for sympathy. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t abide, m’dear, it’s operating on a fellow-surgeon! Impossible patients! Everything always goes wrong!’ He glared at Joe. ‘Not that much seems to have gone wrong with the job Basil Buckwell’s doing on you, m’boy! Sound man, Basil. That’s why I sent ye over to him. No man, in my opinion, to touch him when it comes to spinal tumours. Mind ye, his technique is unorthodox ‒ but pays off. If ye’d been born a few years earlier, Joe, you’d have been on y’way out now. As it is, you’ve a very good chance of getting away with it. But there it is. There it is. Well?’ he demanded, having let in not just some fresh air but a veritable hurricane. ‘What are we waiting for? This gel’s had a long night! She needs some breakfast!’ He held the door for me. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do next.’ We had breakfast in a hotel dining-room that overlooked a steeply-terraced garden. There were scarlet, pink, and white geraniums scrambling like weeds over the narrow terraces, banks of rose-coloured azaleas, and a languid fig-tree sprawled against a lower wall, its leaves already powdered with a fine white dust.