She turned away to help the porters lift the patient on to the trolley which
would take him to the ICLJ "I'll go up with him," she murmured.
"That blood will need an eye on it."
When she got back, the other patient had been warded too, and Ned was dealing
with the other two men who had been in the crash. She started to work
methodically through the waiting patients.
The morning wore on. They snatched their coffee as and when they could get
it; indeed, Georgina had barely tasted hers when she was called away to take
a toddler to X-Ray; its young, distraught mother insisted on going too, very
white-faced and passionately remorseful. She repeated over and over again,
"Oh, if only I
hadn't left those safety pins on the table! "
Georgina was holding the small boy carefully;
they hadn't been able to discover if the pin had been closed when he had
swallowed it--a large one would have stuck, but apparently this one had been
very small, small enough to go down a long way before it would begin to do
any damage.
"Try not to worry," she said kindly.
"Children swallow things all day and every day, you know. There's no reason
to suppose he won't be as right as rain in a day or two. He'll be quite safe
in the children's ward, and you can stay with him if you like."
The young woman cast her a look of gratitude out of all proportion to her
words--perhaps it was the kindness in Georgina's voice. When they parted at
X-Ray she managed a smile and Georgina found herself promising to go and see
how the small boy was doing when she went off duty that evening. She hadn't
really time to do so, she reminded herself ruefully, as she sped back to Cas.
It was her day off the next day, and she had a train to catch at seven that
evening; but the woman had looked so lost. She was very late for dinner, but
the theatre staff were late too, so that there were half a dozen of them
sitting at the table. Two of them had taken their exams with Georgina, and,
like her, had passed, but unlike her they were leaving to get married just as
soon as they could. Listening to their happy chatter, she felt a small
shiver of apprehension; supposing Matron's 'splendid career' was to be her
lot in life? She pulled herself together with an effort, aware of a
discontent quite alien to her nature. She was a very lucky young woman, and
Great-Aunt Polly would be delighted.
Gregg was on duty when she got back, and half an hour later Sister went for
her rather tardy half day. Georgina was putting a collar and cuff bandage on
a small cyclist who had broken a collar-bone and Ned was washing his hands
while she did it. Sister had popped her head round the door as she went and
wished them a quiet day, and when she had gone he said in the most casual of
voices:
"They'll make a wonderful pair."
"Who?" she frowned an enquiry as she tucked in loose ends.
"Good lord, George, do you go around with your head in a bag? Sister and old
Bingham, of course."
Georgina helped the boy on with his coat and tucked the useless sleeve tidily
in the pocket, then sent him outside to the clerk's desk before she replied,
"They're going to be married, you mean? I knew they were friends." Although
now she thought about it, the Registrar did come very often and sometimes
unnecessarily to Cas. She took the towel from Ned and dried her own hands,
and said gloomily, "I'm glad, they're both dears, but Gregg will be Sister."
He gave her a quick look.
"I shouldn't be too sure of that, George."
She had straightened the couch, and now began to refurbish the trolley.
"You know, Ned, this ought to be a marvelous day, and it isn't. I feel at
least forty, with nothing left to live for."
He turned at the door, laughing.
"You need a husband, my girl. Who shall he be? Tall, dark, rich and
handsome; clever of course, and ready to buy you all the tea in China."
She made a face at him.
"That'll do splendidly to go on with."
"Good. In the meanwhile, talking of tea, I'm going to get some--there's sure
to be a cup going in Men's Surgical. That's where I'll be if I'm needed."
Georgina nodded understandingly. Ned had a roving eye, which had settled,
for the time being at least, on the pretty staff nurse on Men's Surgical.
She hoped that there wouldn't be anything much in, so that he could get his
tea in peace.
She went off duty half an hour late and on the way along the corridor to the
Nurses' Home remembered her promise to the mother of the pin swallowing baby,
and had to turn and fly back again and up two flights of worn stone steps to
the children's ward. As she suspected, he had been operated upon that
afternoon in order to preclude perforation. He was lying in his cot, still
drowsy from the anaesthetic, and his mother was sitting with him. Georgina
spent several minutes listening to her troubled little voice, nothing in her
relaxed manner betraying her impatience to be gone.
She caught the train by the skin of her teeth. Great-Aunt Polly lived in a
small village in Essex, some miles from Thaxted. It had been Georgina's
home, since she had gone to live with Aunt Polly;
that had been when she had been a little girl of nine. Her father, a
schoolmaster, had died suddenly and unexpectedly from 'flu, and her mother
had died a week or two after him, leaving a bewildered little daughter, as
frightened as she was unhappy. Great-Aunt Polly had carried her off to live
with her in her small timbered cottage, and had been father and mother to her
ever since. Georgina sat in the train, looking out of the window at the
dreary
London suburbs, thinking about the old lady. She would be able to repay her
now with a hundred and one small comforts. She lost herself in a daydream
which lasted until the train slowed down at Thaxted. She picked up her case
and jumped out, an attractive girl in her well-fitting corduroy coat and high
boots.
The small, rather ramshackle local bus from Thaxted, the last from that town
for the day, took her to within a stone's throw of the cottage. The cottage
stood a little way down a narrow lane leading off the village street. There
was an ancient hornbeam on the corner, and on the opposite side the apple
trees at the end of her aunt's garden, even on a dark November evening,
combined to make a lovely picture in the cold moonlight. She unlatched the
little gate and walked, a great deal faster now, up the brick path and beat a
tattoo on the Georgian brass door-knocker before opening the door and going
in. The passage was brick too, a little worn in places and covered with an
Afghan rug, also worn, but still splendid. The back door faced her and each
wall held two doors, from bne of which a plump elderly woman bustled.
"Miss Georgina! It's nice to see you, that it is. Miss Rodman's had her
supper and I've kept yours hot.. put that bag down, and go and see her. Did
you pass?" She peered at Georgina anxiously and was swept into a violent hug.
"Yes, Moggy, I did. Isn't it wonderful? I'll tell Aunt Polly."
She opened another door and wen
t into the sitting-room where her aunt was
waiting. She sat, as she always did, in a stiff-backed chair, her almost
useless legs on a little Victorian footstool, her sticks on either side of
her, so that she need not ask for help if she should want to get up. She
hated to ask for help--Georgina had been almost sixteen when Great-Aunt Polly
had been stricken with polio, and could still remember very clearly the look
on the old lady's face when her doctor had told her that it was not very
likely that she would walk again. She belonged to a generation who didn't
discuss their ailments; she hadn't discussed them then, but over the
following years she had progressed from wheelchair to crutches, and finally,
to sticks. Georgina and Mrs. Mogg, who had been with them for as long as she
could remember, had watched her struggles and said nothing, knowing that that
was what she would wish, but the day Aunt Polly took her first awkward steps
with her two sticks Georgina had gone down to the Three Bells in the village,
and come back with a bottle of hock under one arm, because she wasn't sure
what buy anyway, but quite obviously the occasion called for celebration.
She crossed the little room now and slid on to her knees beside her aunt's
chair and hugged her, just as she had hugged Moggy, only with a little less
vigour because Aunt Polly was a small dainty person despite her will of iron.
"I've passed," said Georgina, knowing that that was what her aunt wanted to
hear.
Aunt Polly smiled.
"Yes, dear. I knew you would, of course, but congratulations all the
same--I'm very proud of you."
Mrs. Mogg had come in with a tray on which was Georgina's supper--steak and
kidney pudding and a nice assortment of vegetables and a little baked custard
for afters. Georgina got up and took the tray from her, put it on the floor
and sat down beside it, and Miss Rodman said:
"Mrs. Mogg, will you get the glasses and the Madeira? We must drink Miss
Georgina's health--and you eat up your supper, child, you must be hungry."
Georgina fell to. She had an appetite and enjoyed good food. Mrs. Mogg came
back with the wine, and they sat, the three of them, drinking it from very
old, beautiful glasses which she fetched from the corner cupboard.
Presently, when she had disposed of the steak and kidney, Georgina told them
what Matron had said and Aunt Polly nodded and looked happy, then glanced at
her sharply and said, "But is that what you want, dear?"
Georgina polished off the last of the custard.
"Yes, of course. Aunt Polly," she said stoutly, and remembered rather
clearly that Ned had.
said that what she wanted was a husband. She turned her back on the thought.
"Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married," she went
on, anxious to talk about something else.
"That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a
Junior Night Sister's post to start with anyway, and that won't be for quite
while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg."
"You might marry," said Mrs. Mogg chattily, Georgina gave her a wide smile.
"Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they're far too busy and
penniless to marry, and if you're thinking of rich consultants, they're all
married. Besides, it will be nice to earn some real money at last--it's time
I did my share, you know."
Miss Rodman straightened an already straight back.
"That is very good of you, dear Georgina, but Mrs. Mogg and I are old women.
We need very little, and we manage. You've worked hard, the money is yours
to spend. Why don't you go abroad?"
Georgina lied cheerfully, "I really don't want to. Aunt Polly. Perhaps
later on when I've had more experience--I think I'll stay at St. Athel's for
a year or two and get that Sister's post, then see how I feel."
She got up and carried her tray out to the kitchen where she put it on the
scrubbed wood table, then took the dishes to the sink and washed up, singing
cheerfully in a clear voice so the occupants of the sitting-room would hear
how happy she was.
CHAPTER TWO
st athel's looked grim and grey on Monday morning, Georgina walked into the
cold, well polished hall of the Nurses' Home and started to climb the stairs
to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against
homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and
the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of
the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed
her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being
childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be
all right again. But somehow she wasn't despite the fact that Gregg, had a
half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and
was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy--too busy to think
on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o'clock and Ned telephoned
to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would
she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the
receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker--he was on the medical side,
which didn't prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty.
When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper,
what with Mr. Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while
pronouncing on obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles'
fracture a Potts'. She had asked him crossly if he hadn't learned the
difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed
patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his
supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously
fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a
great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.
"Days off," snapped Georgina.
"I'll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back," and had the
satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact
that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr. Baker would serve her purpose as
well as any, she supposed.
He backed to the door.
"I merely wished to know," he stated coldly, 'because I'm not completely
satisfied with your work. "
"I'll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning," she said with
equal coldness.
"I'm sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other
housemen--she wouldn't like to think that our standards aren't up to yours."
She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him
a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.
When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a
large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk
and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a
large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs. Mogg. The cake
disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the
conversation turned, as it always
did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there
but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into
the QAs,
two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting
married or engaged.
A voice said, "George, you haven't told us what you're going to do."
"Well," she began; she wasn't sure if she should mention about getting a
Sister's post, "I thought I'd stay here..."
"Did Matron dangle a Sister's cap before you?" someone wanted to know.
"Later on.. it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I'll do my Midder." She had
only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.
Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning
Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she
turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn't show through, and presented
herself, outwardly composed, at Matron's office. She came out again within a
couple of minutes. Night duty--four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience.
Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too,
several days at home each fortnight.
She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and
brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, "Thank God!
That woman who's on now calls me for the merest scratch--besides, you're
nice to have around."
Georgina chuckled.
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