by Betty Neels
She went on duty the morning after her return, to find a ward whose inmates had changed very little during her week’s absence. Sister Crow welcomed her back with the mixture of fussy grumbling and gossip to which Victoria had become accustomed. The staff nurse who had replaced Victoria had been most unsatisfactory—she had overslept; she had insisted on having a free evening on the very day Sister Crow hadn’t wanted her to; she was, said Sister Crow crossly, far too modern.
Victoria, pouring out their morning coffee in Sister’s office, said gently: ‘Staff Nurse Morgan’s sweet with the patients, Sister, and so kind.’
Sister Crow bridled. ‘That’s as may be, Staff Nurse Parsons, but I for one am unable to understand the half of what she says—she is not good Ward Sister material.’
Victoria suppressed a strong desire to observe that perhaps Morgan didn’t want to be a Ward Sister anyway; she was pretty and gay, and Victoria happened to know that her life was both full and lively, which probably accounted for her kindness and understanding of the patients under her care. But to say that to the Old Crow was merely to annoy her further and would do no one any good at all. She contented herself by saying:
‘The patients liked her, Sister.’
Sister Crow stirred her coffee and remarked snappishly: ‘They like you too, Staff Nurse, and you are a far better nurse. Much as I regret retiring from this ward I am at least satisfied that you, if given the opportunity, will carry on in a way worthy of the training I have given you.’
To which highminded speech Victoria could think of nothing to say, although the thought, completely unbidden, that perhaps she didn’t want to be a Ward Sister after all did cross her mind, to be rejected as there was a knock on the door and Johnny Dawes, the medical houseman, came in followed by a tallish young man, good-looking and fair.
Johnny said politely: ‘Good morning, Sister Crow, here’s Doctor Blake, you met yesterday, didn’t you?’ He looked at Victoria. ‘But I don’t think that Staff and he have met yet?’ He had half turned his back on the Old Crow as he spoke and gave Victoria a wink, for when that lady wasn’t about he was apt to treat her staff nurse like one of his sisters—an attitude which Victoria found quite natural, but now, as Sister Crow was present, she replied formally: ‘Good morning, Doctor Dawes. No, we haven’t met.’
‘The new RMO,’ said Johnny, ‘Doctor Jeremy Blake— Staff Nurse Parsons.’
She offered a hand and said, How do you do? and gave the new member of the staff a frank, friendly look. He seemed at first glance rather nice and very good-looking, although his mouth was a little too full for her taste and his eyes too pale a blue. Probably, she thought goodhumouredly, he was weighing her up too and finding her not quite to his taste either. She got up and fetched two more cups; Sister Crow poured coffee and settled down to a ten-minute lecture on how to run a ward and, what was more important, how the members of the medical staff should behave on it. Victoria and Johnny had heard it all a great many times before, but Doctor Blake hadn’t; he listened with polite attention and drank his coffee and when she paused for breath, suggested that a ward round might be a good idea. He looked at Victoria as he spoke and added: ‘If you’re busy, Sister, I’m sure Staff Nurse…’
‘Staff Nurse has a great deal to do,’ interrupted Sister Crow. ‘I shall go with you myself, and you,’ she finished, addressing Johnny, ‘may come with me.’
That left Victoria to collect the coffee cups on to the tray, ready for Dora the ward maid, and then go along to the treatment room to make sure that the various injections had been drawn up correctly and then supervise their giving, before disappearing into the linen cupboard to check the clean linen, a task she loathed and considered a fearful waste of time. She preferred to be with the patients, but Sister Crow considered that the ward staff nurse should do all the duller administrative jobs. ‘And that’s something I’ll change,’ Victoria promised herself crossly as she counted sheets. But some of the crossness, although she wouldn’t admit it, was disappointment at not doing a round with the new doctor, even though, upon reflection, she wasn’t quite sure if she was going to like him.
She had a split duty that afternoon because the Old Crow wanted an evening. She hated splits; there was no time to do more than rush out for any necessary shopping, or if the weather was bad, sit for an hour or so in the sitting room, reading or writing letters. Splits weren’t actually allowed, but they were sometimes inevitable and she seemed to collect more than her fair share—another thing she would put right when she had a ward of her own. She sat in front of the electric fire, writing home; she told them all about the new doctor, and all the while she was writing another image, quite a different one from that of Doctor Blake, kept dancing before her eyes. It was a relief when two of her friends came to join her, full of questions as to what she thought of the new RMO and what she had done on her holiday, a topic which naturally enough led to the more interesting one of clothes. They were all deep in this vital conversation when Victoria looked at her watch and exclaimed:
‘Lord, look at the time—I’m on in half an hour! Come up to my room and I’ll make some tea—I brought a cake back with me.’
The three of them repaired up the bare, clean staircase to the floor above where her room was, and being healthy and young and perpetually hungry, they demolished the cake between them.
Doctor Blake came again that evening as Victoria was sitting in the office writing up the Kardex. She looked up with faint surprise and some impatience as he came in, because she had got a little behind with her work and she wouldn’t be ready for the night staff unless she kept at it. He must have seen the look, though, for he said reassuringly:
‘Don’t stop, I only came to read up some notes—it’s the ward round tomorrow, isn’t it, and I want to be quite sure of things.’
Victoria made a small sympathetic sound. ‘Of course—behind you on the shelf, they’re in alphabetical order,’ and bent her bright head over her writing. She had turned over perhaps three cards when she became aware that he was staring at her. She finished writing ‘Paracetamol’ because it was a word she had to concentrate upon to get the spelling right and looked up.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, ‘Do you want something, or is my cap crooked?’
He smiled, his eyes like colourless glass. ‘I can’t help staring,’ he said, ‘you’re so utterly lovely.’
She had been called lovely before by various young men; usually she accepted the compliment gracefully and without conceit, for it would have been foolish to pretend she wasn’t pretty when she so obviously was. She had learnt at an early age to take her good looks as a matter of course—nice to have, but not vital to her happiness. But now for some reason she felt embarrassed and annoyed as well. He was almost a stranger and she hadn’t liked the way he had said it; as though he had expected her to be pleased and flattered at his admiration. She said with a composure which quite hid her distaste:
‘Thank you. Perhaps you would like to take the notes away with you? I have quite a lot of work to do still, and I daresay you have too.’
The annoyance on his face was so fleeting that she wasn’t sure if she had imagined it. It was replaced at once by a smile. ‘I’ve annoyed you, I’m sorry.’ He got up and put the notes away. ‘I’ll come back later if I may.’ His smile became apologetic. ‘Don’t hold it against me, will you?’
Victoria smiled too. Perhaps she had been too hasty in her judgement of him. ‘No, of course not. Goodnight.’
Sir Keith Plummer’s bi-weekly ward rounds were always a sore trial to Victoria, and she knew, the moment she set foot on the ward the next morning, that that day’s was to prove no exception to the rule. Not only had one of the diabetics thrown away a valuable specimen and been unable to produce another in the short time left to him before the great man appeared, but Mr Bates, that most docile of patients, had decided to feel sick, so that instead of lying neatly in his bed he was sitting up apprehensively over a basin, and to add to all these tr
ials two sets of notes had disappeared into thin air. Victoria had sent two of the nurses to look for them and dared them to return without these vital papers. ‘Try Physio,’ she whispered urgently so that Sister Crow shouldn’t hear, ‘and OPD; the Appointments Office, X-ray, anywhere—and for mercy’s sake, be quick!’
They sidled in, a few yards ahead of Sir Keith and his retinue, and behind Sister Crow’s back, shook their heads and rolled their eyes heavenwards, then melted away into the sluice as the ward doors opened and Sir Keith walked in. Victoria, from her station by bed number one, watched a routine which she knew by heart. Sir Keith stopped short just inside the doors and Sister Crow, who had been lurking in wait for him, advanced to his side so that they could exchange civil greetings before forming the procession which would presently wend its way up one side of the ward and down the other. It was a pity, thought Victoria, that the Old Crow had been trained so long ago that she regarded all consultants as gods and had made no move to change her views and treat them like anyone else. Victoria watched her standing with her head reverently bowed, listening to Sir Keith’s pleasant voice rambling on, but the head came up with a jerk as the wretched student nurse Black, whose shoes squeaked, came out of the sluice, to retreat immediately under Sister Crow’s threatening gaze. The same gaze hovered over Mr Payne, who had bronchitis, and Mr Church, who had asthma, daring either of them to allow a cough to disturb the utter quiet of the ward, and both gentlemen, anxious to please, lay rigid, their slowly empurpling faces bearing testimony to this fact. When at last human nature could stand no more, they coughed in such good earnest that Victoria was forced to leave her position with the exalted group around the consultant and fly to their aid. She had only just succeeded in quieting them both when there was a fresh disturbance, this time at the ward doors, and obedient to the indignant jerk of Sister Crow’s head, Victoria sped silently down the ward. Some poor soul who had mistaken the visiting hours, she supposed, and saw at once how wrong she was. He looked different, of course, for he had exchanged his guernsey for a suit of clerical grey; her eyes took in its well-cut elegance and the exquisiteness of his tie as he advanced, with no sign of unease, to meet her.
She would have liked to have said hullo, but bearing in mind the Old Crow’s dislike of any sound at all during the round she merely raised a cautionary finger to her lips and then pointed to the doors—a gesture to which he appeared to take exception, for he said without any effort at all to lower his voice: ‘My dear girl, don’t you try and send me away. I’ve had the devil’s own job getting here in the first place.’
Victoria just stopped herself from wringing her hands. ‘It’s the round,’ she hissed. ‘Please wait outside, there’s a chair on the landing.’
‘Do I look as though I need to sit down?’ he enquired with interest.
She conquered a strong desire to giggle, shook her head and said coldly: ‘I must ask you to wait.’
He beamed at her. ‘But I will, dear girl, I’ll wait as long as you like.’ He went on; ‘You know, I liked you better with your hair down your back, even if you did look a bit of a fright.’ She was still struggling to think of a dignified but quelling reply to this piece of impertinence when Sir Keith’s voice, smooth and resonant, floated down the ward.
‘There you are, dear fellow. Come and join us—I was beginning to think that you had found it impossible to come after all.’
He bent to say something to Sister Crow and the ‘dear fellow’, with a friendly pat on Victoria’s outraged shoulder, advanced to the group of people by number six bed, and she, because it was expected of her, followed him, to take up her position just behind Sister, so that when that lady wanted notes or a tape measure or a tendon hammer to hand to Sir Keith, Victoria was there to supply them. Sir Keith put out a hand and said: ‘Alexander, this is delightful, it seems a long time—Sister Crow, let me introduce Doctor van Schuylen, on a visit to this country. He’s by way of being a specialist in chests.’ He looked round the circle of faces. ‘My RMO,’ he went on, ‘Doctor Blake, and my houseman, Doctor Dawes.’ His gaze passed over the physiotherapist, his secretary and Victoria and rested on his patient, the hapless Mr Bates, his basin removed pro tem and looking very uneasy without it.
Victoria, handing X-rays, Path Lab forms and a pin to tickle the soles of Mr Bates’ feet to see if he reacted in the proper manner, kept a wary eye on him; Sir Keith had most luckily finished with him and was about to move on to the next bed when Mr Bates went a little paler than he already was, so that she dropped her burden of forms and notes and made a beeline for the basin, but Doctor van Schuylen was ahead of her; he had it nicely in position under Mr Bates’ pallid chin even as she reached him; he did it with a calm and matter-of-fact air which took no account of Sister Crow’s horrified indrawn breath, waiting impassively until Nurse Black squeaked out of the sluice and took over, and only then did he relinquish the basin, giving that damsel—a small, plain girl known inevitably among her colleagues as Beauty—a smile of such charm that she smiled widely back at him.
He rejoined Sir Keith without a word, to be drawn instantly into a discussion on bronchiectiasis. Victoria listened to his deep, quiet voice, comparing it with Doctor Blake’s. That gentleman, intent no doubt on impressing his chief, was holding forth at some length, addressing most of his observations to the Dutchman, in a manner which Victoria considered unnecessarily patronising, although their recipient apparently did not, for he lolled against the end of the bed with his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed steadfastly upon Doctor Blake’s face. It was only when that gentleman paused for breath that Sir Keith declared in a dry, gentle voice:
‘My dear Blake, all that you have said is most admirable, but I must point out to you that you are taking coals to Newcastle, for our good friend here happens to be the author of the various papers you have been quoting at him.’
Victoria was forced to admire the way Doctor Blake bottled up his rage; he even managed a laughing apology to Doctor van Schuylen, his pale eyes colourless with a dislike he almost, but not quite concealed. She shivered a little. He would be a bad enemy, she decided, studying his good looks, and then transferred her gaze to Doctor van Schuylen, still lolling, with a lazy, good-natured smile upon his face, just as though he was taking the other man’s apologies at face value. Surely he could see…? He turned to look at her and she realised that he certainly had seen; his eyes, in such a placid face, were very alert. She was so relieved that she smiled warmly at him and Sister Crow, catching her at it, gave an indignant snort and commanded: ‘Staff Nurse, be good enough to ask someone from the Path Lab to come here at once.’ She accompanied this command with a heavy frown. In her opinion, nurses—even staff nurses—did not smile at consultants, nor for that matter at any strange doctor who happened to turn up, especially the kind of smile Victoria had just given.
Victoria, aware of the Old Crow’s wrath, murmured: ‘Certainly, Sister,’ and went off down the ward and out of its door and into the office to telephone, something she did with dispatch and her usual competence, using only a small part of her brain to do so; the rest of it was deeply occupied by speculation upon Doctor van Schuylen’s sudden appearance, his probable departure and whether there was any likelihood of seeing more of him. She went back to the ward presently, the missing notes, which she had quite forgotten and which she had providentially discovered on Sister’s desk, under one arm. She added them tidily to their fellows and took up her station once more just behind Sister Crow without looking once at Doctor van Schuylen.
In fact, she studiously avoided his eye for the entire round—a fairly easy matter as it turned out, for Sister Crow saw to it that she was kept busy, and when the slow procession had at last wound its way out of the ward doors, Victoria, having made very certain that Dora had the right number of cups on the tray, was instructed to go back into the ward and make sure that the patients’ beds were tidied once more.
‘But have your coffee first, Staff Nurse,’ the Old Crow invited, a
nd looked at the clock as she spoke so that Victoria would know that she had observed the time and would expect her back in ten minutes exactly.
Victoria, once in the main corridor, flew down it at a good speed; she seldom went to coffee break, for it was usual for the staff nurses to have coffee with Sisters on the ward, but on round days Sister Crow didn’t want her, and anyway, Victoria admitted fairly, the office didn’t accommodate more than four people in comfort and the Old Crow disliked people sitting on the floor or perching on the sides of her desk. The dining room was only half full, but there were several of her friends gathered round a table in a corner. She joined them with an eye on the clock as she did so. ‘Ten minutes,’ she exclaimed breathlessly, ‘Sister Crow made a note of it as I left.’
Kitty Blane from Women’s Medical groaned in sympathy. ‘I don’t know how you stand her!’ She filled a mug and pushed it across the table to Victoria. ‘How did the round go? What do you think of our Jeremy?’
Victoria blew on her coffee to cool it. ‘He’s all right, I suppose.’ She sounded doubtful. ‘I don’t know anything about him yet. He’s good-looking…’
‘Talking of good looks, did you get a sight of a tall dark and handsome stranger up your way? He came sauntering into ours about an hour ago and when I asked him what he wanted he said he was looking for Sir Keith Plummer, and when I told him where he was, he said: “Oh, yes—is that where the staff nurse has long bronze hair?” Someone you know, Vicky?’