Chapter Six
The next two weeks slid by quickly for Barbara. She liked her shabby little bed-sitting-room on the second floor of the hospital. It wasn’t as pretty as her room at Mary’s house had been, admittedly. The wardrobe was scratched and old, the drawers of the dressing table stuck each time she tried to open one, the bed creaked a little, the carpet was thin and dingy. But it was what she was used to, she told herself – it felt homely and comfortable. If she sometimes did miss the organised rich comfort of Mary’s house, sometimes regretted the good food that appeared on Mary’s table when she faced hospital stew and prunes for lunch, she managed to stifle her yearnings after comfort.
But even when she busied herself about her work in the little hospital, she couldn’t help wondering about the family she had left behind. What had Jamie thought when he found his aunt had gone? Try as she might, she couldn’t possibly imagine what his reaction had been. He was such a self-contained boy, so silent, living his life in a sort of cocoon of preoccupation with his own affairs. And Josie? What of her?
“Surely she must miss me?” Barbara thought a little unhappily. The child had spent so much time with her aunt, had shown her affection so nakedly. Barbara half expected to see her at any time, half hoped that she would come to the hospital one afternoon on her way home after school to have the tea Barbara had promised. But she didn’t, and Barbara decided to wait a little while before seeking her niece out, and trying to re-establish the old relationship. She felt obscurely that the frightened, shy Josie needed her, that she had almost a duty to look after her. “But I mustn’t try to rush her,” she told herself. “Children need time –”
As for Geoffrey – she thought of him as little as possible. But sometimes, almost against her will, she found his face appearing in her mind’s eye, the face that was usually so closed and expressionless. But when she did think of him, she saw him not as he usually was, but as he had looked the night of the party, his eyes glittering with amusement, his usually pale face flushed. Often, as she fell asleep at night she would find herself remembering the way he had held her, had kissed her with such rough passion, the passion that she knew he had meant for her, even though he had said he had kissed her because she reminded him of the young Mary.
Barbara was not a stupid woman. Had the episode really been the result of too much drink and her resemblance to Mary, she knew quite well that she would have been able to ignore it – to treat it as a rather foolish piece of bad behaviour that didn’t matter. She knew, too, that Geoffrey realised there was more to the matter than that. She could hear his voice again as he had said in reply to her announcement that she would leave the house, “I think perhaps you are right. It would be better all round –” Geoffrey too recognised the attraction he felt for her for what it was. A real and potentially powerful thing that could, if unchecked, develop into something much stronger than it had any right to be.
Barbara would stir restlessly as she tried to ignore the thoughts that rose, unbidden, to her mind. The whole situation was so explosive. The dislike she felt for her sister meant that propinquity had turned into real hate – the way Josie had said she preferred her aunt to her mother, the way Barbara, try as she might to deny it to herself, liked – indeed revelled in – the comfort and richness of Mary’s home. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to make use of Geoffrey’s attraction for her.
Sometimes her thoughts would develop into actual fantasy. She found herself imagining life married to Geoffrey, mothering the two children, running the house –
When this happened Barbara would rouse herself from her half-sleep and thump her pillow in anger at herself.
“If I had fallen in love with Geoffrey it wouldn’t be so wicked, somehow,” she told herself honestly. “But I don’t care for him like that. I’m sorry for him – I like him – he’s a comfortable person to be with, but that’s all –” and she would take a sleeping pill in an effort to sleep quickly, so that her mind couldn’t play these tricks on her, making her imagine things she had no right to imagine.
Matron Elliott, with unexpected tact, said nothing at all about Barbara’s decision to live at the hospital. She just went on her usual garrulous way, running her hospital with a casual efficiency that kept staff and patients happy. And Barbara threw herself into learning all she could about the running of the place, burying herself in the best therapy she knew – work.
Her days were so full and happy that she found herself loth to go off duty at night. She would almost make work for herself, going round the little wards, teaching the assistant nurses and cadets all she could. She would spend long hours in the little operating theatre, polishing the instruments that were so rarely needed, cleaning the tiled walls and re-arranging the cupboards of equipment.
She came to know the patients very well, too. There was a delightful old man in the corner bed of the tiny men’s ward who was almost a fixture of the place, he had been there so long. He had diabetes, and both his legs had been amputated years before.
He would sit up in his bed, watching all that happened about him with beady eyes, telling all the nurses exactly what to do and how to do it, bossing the other patients about so cheerfully that they loved him for it.
Barbara would find the old man surrounded by half the other patients in the ward as they played noisy games of pontoon, and learned to smile sympathetically and ignore the coins scattered on the counterpane, even though in her own Royal Hospital patients had never been allowed to gamble. She accepted that this Cottage Hospital was nothing like the Royal – that patients behaved more like privileged guests than ill people who were there to be treated and discharged as soon as possible.
In the women’s ward the patients would congregate in the little kitchen in the evenings, even the ones in wheelchairs crushing themselves in, to gossip and giggle over strong sweet tea. And Barbara would remember the way she had been trained never to give patients stimulating drinks at night, yet still would join them in their sessions most evenings.
She remembered, too, the way the Matron of the Royal had said that she had learned more about people during her days in a cottage hospital than she had learned in all her years at the Royal, and smiled a little at the memory. Matron had been quite right, Barbara would think, sitting perched on the kitchen table among the patients, listening to them talk. There had never been time for this at the Royal – and what a pity it was. On those evenings Barbara really heard what it was like to live the life of a woman in a small cottage, heard how they had struggled to bring up broods of children in cramped homes, with husbands often out of work, with hungry mouths to be fed on a few pence a meal. She would watch their worn fingers working on knitting for grandchildren, listen to their sometimes ribald comments on the people they knew, and marvel at their calm good humour in the face of fear and danger.
Like Mrs. Innes, who had a cancer that she knew would kill her – that would kill her soon. But she would grin cheerfully at Barbara when the breathlessness that was the result of her disease attacked her, saying “Gawd ’elp us, Sister – you’d think there was enough air to go round, wouldn’t you? Must be all these others breathing too much what does it. They don’t leave enough for me –” and the other women would tease her, and with rough sympathy push her back to her bed, helping her out of her wheelchair while Barbara and the little nurse on duty went to prepare an injection and inhalation to give the temporary relief that was all that could be offered the dying woman.
It was a week after Barbara had come to live in the hospital that she was called out late one night to Mrs. Innes. Matron was away for the weekend so Barbara was on call, and she scrambled into her uniform and hurried down to the ward, a little frightened as she always was at the thought of having to see a very ill patient. Even after ten years of nursing, the sight of pain and fear in a patient upset her. That had been why she had preferred to work in the operating theatres.
The ward was dim and silent as she came into it that night. None of th
e other women moved, but Barbara knew they were awake. Somehow, it is always possible to know whether the patients in the ward are waking or sleeping, even if they lie still with their eyes closed. Tonight, they were all awake, the ward full of that somehow electric atmosphere that seemed to come by itself whenever a patient was dying.
Behind the screens in the corner a light burned dimly, and Barbara could hear the rough breathing of the woman behind it. She slipped round the screens and stood there for a second, watching. Doctor Foreman was leaning over the bed, his eyes blank as he concentrated on listening to the rattle that filled his ears from the stethoscope pressed against Mrs. Innes’ bulky chest. The little assistant nurse stood beside him, frightened and looking as though she felt sick.
Mike Foreman looked up after a moment, and grimaced at Barbara, turning his mouth down in a gesture of finality as he looked back at Mrs. Innes’ closed eyes and pale face.
“I doubt if she’ll last till morning,” he whispered. “I’ve looked at the notes, and her only relative is a son in New Zealand – nothing more we can do.”
Barbara nodded, and moved over to stand beside the high white bed. Doctor Foreman scribbled something on the chart that hung at the foot of the bed, and then, with a nod at Barbara, slipped out of the little pool of light the screens enclosed.
“No point in my staying, I’m afraid,” he murmured. “I’ll be upstairs if you want me,” and he was gone. Barbara didn’t blame him. No one wanted to stay with a dying patient if they could help it.
The little assistant nurse stirred uneasily. Barbara smiled at her. ‘Go and make tea for the patients who are awake,” she said softly. “Most of them are, I think. Have some yourself.”
The nurse smiled gratefully, and hurried silently away. The tea, Barbara thought, looking down on the patient beside her, wouldn’t hurt the patients and would give the nurse something to do – and that was what she needed most right now.
She pulled a chair over, and sat down, smoothing her apron over her knees. Then she put her hand on to the white worn one lying on the counterpane, and just sat and watched the face on the pillow.
The ward rustled with soft movement as patients sat up and gratefully accepted the cups of tea the nurse brought. There was a faint tinkle of spoon on cup, the sounds of women rummaging in their lockers for the private stores of sweet biscuits. The sounds seemed to penetrate Mrs. Innes’ consciousness, for she stirred a little, and then opened her eyes to stare at Barbara in puzzlement. The pale blue eyes, the irises ringed with white, considered her thoughtfully, and then Mrs. Innes smiled.
“Sister –” she murmured. Barbara leaned over her and touched the worn cheek. “Yes,” she said gently. “It’s me. Do you want anything?”
Mrs. Innes frowned for a moment.
“Billy –” she whispered. “I’d like to see our Billy –”
“Who is Billy?” Barbara’s voice was gentle.
The eyes opened again. “Billy? My boy. Such a boy he was – such a pretty boy –” She turned her head uneasily on the pillow.
“I keep tellin’ ’im to keep away from there –” her voice dropped to an uneasy mutter, and for a while she seemed to ramble, her words coming in disjointed bursts, before sinking back into an incomprehensible murmur.
Barbara said nothing. She just held the hand on the counterpane more firmly, her finger on the fluttering uneven pulse, and watched the face in front of her.
Twenty minutes slid by, and Mrs. Innes seemed to have slipped back into her semi-comatose state. Then, suddenly, she opened her eyes and looked straight at Barbara.
“I’d like to see our Billy,” she said clearly. “But it’s too late now – all those years ago he went – and I daresay she’s made a good enough wife for him after all. It wasn’t worth a row, was it?”
“I daresay you’re right,” Barbara said, not quite sure what she could say. Clearly Mrs. Innes was remembering something that had happened years ago, but without knowing just what, there was little she could offer in the way of comfort. Mrs. Innes stared at her again, and repeated, “Not worth a row –” and then closed her eyes again.
Around her, Barbara felt rather than heard the ward settle down again after the tea. Mrs. Innes didn’t speak again, and Barbara, watching her, realised that she had slipped now into a deep coma. As far as Mrs. Innes was concerned, the fears and the breathlessness were over. She wouldn’t wake again. But Barbara sat on, listening to the stertorous breathing, checking the fragile pulse, automatically noting observations on the chart at the foot of the bed.
It must have been about one in the morning when the little assistant nurse appeared from behind the screens at Barbara’s back.
“Sister –”
Barbara looked up, almost startled. She had somehow been alone in the world with this tired old woman she was watching.
“Yes, Nurse?”
The other looked frightened again, “Please, Sister, Doctor Foreman says you’re to come at once. There’s been some accident – the police have brought a lady in – casualty, he says. Can you come?”
Barbara looked down at Mrs. Innes. “Yes,” she said. “Look, my dear. There’s nothing to worry about here. You can’t do anything to help Mrs. Innes, I’m afraid, and she’s quite comfortable. You needn’t sit with her any more, I don’t think. Just check her pulse for me every half hour, and watch her. I doubt if she’ll wake up again – she’s very deeply unconscious – but I doubt if she’ll die before morning. If you get at all worried, ask nurse from the babies’ ward to come and fetch me, will you?”
The little nurse nodded, still frightened, but clearly relieved that she wouldn’t have to sit and watch Mrs. Innes.
Barbara hurried silently to the babies’ ward. The night nurse in there was an older woman, she remembered with relief. As Barbara put her head round the door, she couldn’t help liking what she saw, even in the course of her hurry.
The night nurse was sitting in an armchair before the fire, sewing tapes on a pile of babies’ bibs. The firelight leaped and glinted on the nursery pictures on the walls, glancing off the shining row of feeding bottles on the trolley, illuminating the flushed sleeping faces of the four children, on the starfish hands sprawled on pillows in the touching helplessness of sleep.
“Nurse,” Barbara whispered hurriedly. “I must go to Casualty – some sort of accident, I gather – and Mrs. Innes is dying, I’m afraid. Could you help Nurse Foster, do you think, if you aren’t too busy? She’d be glad of company.”
“Of course, Sister.” She glanced round at her four sleeping babies. ‘These monkeys are out for the count. I’ll prop the door open and stay with Foster – don’t you fret.”
Barbara hurried on her way down the darkened corridor towards the Casualty Department, marvelling again at the difference between this cottage hospital and the Royal. She couldn’t imagine a Royal nurse being able to leave her ward to help another nurse – but then, she reminded herself, we had lots of nurses at the Royal.
She pushed the door of the Casualty room open, and stood blinking owlishly for a moment in the glare that assaulted her eyes after the dimness of the ward. Doctor Foreman and a policeman were standing in one corner in quiet talk, and the nurse from the private rooms was standing beside the high table in the middle of the room. There was a patient lying there, humped under a blanket that was stained ominously with blood. Barbara couldn’t quite see the patient’s face, so she moved silently round to stand beside the table.
Doctor Foreman looked up and saw her at the same moment and started forward, the policeman, too, looking up sharply. The nurse tried clumsily to hide the patient’s face with her body, but it was too late.
For a moment they all stood frozen and stared at Barbara as she looked down at the face on the green mackintosh pillow. She could hear the loud ticking of the clock, the faint hiss of steam from the steriliser, the chugging of an ambulance engine in the yard outside, and as she stood there she felt a cold wave of horror spread over her body.
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The face on the pillow was white, smeared with dirt and blood, blood that was running from a hideous wound in the forehead. And under the dirt and the blood Barbara recognised Mary’s face.
Chapter Seven
For a long moment there was silence in the brilliantly lit Casualty room. Then Mike Foreman spoke, his voice unnaturally high and strained.
“My God – I’m sorry, Sister. We – we’d only just realised who she was – I didn’t know when I sent for you – I was going to send nurse to stop you –”
Barbara stood still and silent, staring at Mary’s face, the face that was so familiar, yet so strange in its still emptiness. Then she raised her head and looked at Mike.
“Stop me?” she said stupidly.
He came and stood beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder with clumsy sympathy.
“I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world,” he said miserably. “I’m – sorry.”
She nodded dumbly, and looked again at Mary’s face. Then, with an almost visible effort, she said, “What are you going to do? How – how bad is she?”
“I’m waiting for a radiologist to come from Dover with a portable machine – our’s is on the blink. But I think she’s got a fracture, I’m afraid. She’s deeply unconscious – I’ve asked Josephs to come from Dover in case she needs a decompression – more than that, at the moment, we can’t do –”
Barbara nodded again. Mary, with a fractured skull? Mary needing an operation?
“It’s impossible!” she thought wildly. “Mary’s much too efficient to let a thing like this happen –”
At the back of the room the policeman moved slightly, and Barbara looked up at him. “What happened?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
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