A Ward Door Opens: A touching 1950s hospital romance (The Anniversary Collection Book 7)

by Lucilla Andrews

  A Ward Door Opens

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2021

  This edition first published 2021 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published in 1959

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Daniel Dash / cristapper (Shutterstock)

  izusek (istockphoto.com)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  By Lucilla Andrews

  from Wyndham Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  Nurse Errant

  Flowers from the Doctor

  The Young Doctors Downstairs

  The New Sister Theatre

  The Light in the Ward

  A House for Sister Mary

  Hospital Circles

  Highland Interlude

  The Healing Time

  Edinburgh Excursion

  Ring O’ Roses

  Silent Song

  In Storm and Calm

  Busman’s Holiday

  The Crystal Gull

  After a Famous Victory

  The Lights of London

  The Phoenix Syndrome

  Frontline 1940

  The Africa Run

  The White Walls (The Anniversary Collection Book 1)

  The Golden Hour (The Anniversary Collection Book 2)

  The Long Voyage (The Anniversary Collection Book 3)

  The Secret Journey (The Anniversary Collection Book 4)

  The Small Star (The Anniversary Collection Book 5)

  The Fair Wind (The Anniversary Collection Book 6)

  A Ward Door Opens (The Anniversary Collection Book 7)

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  A Few Days in Endel (writing as Diana Gordon)

  Marsh Blood (writing as Diana Gordon)

  The Sinister Side (writing as Diana Gordon)

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

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  Chapter One

  Jo Ealey was waiting in my room on the morning I got back from sick-leave. She was wearing a long, flame-coloured dressing-gown and her dark hair was brushed high and wide on each side of her face.

  I put down my suitcase. ‘Jo, you look just like a film star! I love the hair-style. When did you change it?’

  She leapt from my armchair. ‘Maggie, you don’t know how glad I am to see you. We’ve all been so quiet and well-behaved since you came out in spots. Do you know, the set hasn’t had one rocket from Home Sister about noise on the Second-Year floor in all these weeks?’

  ‘My cherished set is obviously going into a decline.’ I shed my coat and gloves. ‘Never mind. Decline or not, I’m thrilled to be back with you all again. I’ve been so afraid I might have to drop behind and carry a lonely lamp through Jude’s all because of the measles. I nearly hugged Matron just now when she told me I would be rejoining my set on nights tonight. And I’m hungry for news, so tell me all. What’s been going on?’

  Jo relaxed into a chair and raised her hands dramatically. ‘I don’t know where to start, love. So much seems to have happened, lately. The new Theatre block has opened. George Thanet and Bill Flanders have resigned from the Rugger fifteen as their Finals are so near. There’s a new Surgical Registrar who looks like Gregory Peck ‒ and we’ve a new Senior Medical Officer who is about ten feet tall. How’s that to begin with?’

  ‘Why have we a new S.M.O.? I thought Dr. Heller had another six months to go?’

  ‘He did. But he got offered a fantastically good job in some Canadian hospital, so the Committee let him accept and hauled in this Dr. Cameron as a stand-in.’ She smiled. ‘There’s been a sort of two-way traffic of S.M.O.s over the Atlantic. The new man was at some hospital in the States ‒ not sure which. All I do know is that he’s considered very brilliant, has had masses of experience and must be quite old. He’s white here.’ She brushed the wings of hair at her temples.

  ‘Is he an American? Are you telling me we’ve an S.M.O. who isn’t one of our own men? Why do we have to import a senior physician from foreign parts? And what’s a man with a name like Cameron doing in foreign parts? Why hasn’t he been wielding his stethoscope north of the border?’

  She waved me to silence. ‘Give me a chance and I’ll explain. He is one of our own men. He’s a Scot. He was S.M.O. here, ages ago.’

  ‘How come he is having another go? What has this Dr. Cameron got that makes him so special?’

  ‘It’s something to do with his not being able to finish his original appointment. I don’t know just what, but, actually ‒’ her lips curved in an odd little smile ‒ ‘he is rather special. He’s absolutely enormous ‒ and the most wonderful dancer. Poor Bill was really put out when he danced twice with me at the Hockey Ball last week.’

  My eyes widened. ‘The S.M.O.? Danced twice? With you, a second-year? Jo, what is all this?’

  She studied her hands. ‘I wasn’t in uniform ‒ and I must say he was charming. But you haven’t heard quite everything.’ Her voice was ominously soft. ‘There’s a little more.’

  ‘You’re going to let Bill announce your engagement? Jo, I am so glad! He’s a dear. Is he thrilled? I bet he is!’

  She glanced up. ‘Darling Maggie, you’re sweet but terribly naive. Naturally, I’m very fond of Bill, but one has to keep one’s sense of proportion. One can’t tie oneself up to a student. It would be different if he were qualified and ‒ well ‒ had some sort of set-up to offer. I never have gone for the love-in-a-o
ne-room-flat routine.’

  ‘But, I thought you were already unofficially engaged to him. Surely, that’s a tie?’

  She held out her bare left hand. ‘We’ve talked it over, of course. Nothing’s ever been settled.’

  I watched her anxiously. I had never heard her talk like this before and for a strange moment I felt shocked and distressed. Bill Flanders was so nice and so very much in love. He would be very badly hurt if he could hear her now. Then I remembered that she was a night nurse and probably only feeling a touch of night-nurses’ blues. Not that she looked depressed; she looked vividly attractive. ‘Then what did you have to tell me, Jo? Has George fallen in love again? Who is it this time? When I left, he was writing sonnets that didn’t scan about Sister Matthew and Mark.’

  ‘Poor George. No, he is concentrating on medicine now. No. The details concern you.’ She raised her eyes innocently to the ceiling. ‘Care to hear where you’re going on nights?’

  Her expression filled me with instant suspicion.

  ‘Tell me the worst!’

  ‘The Wing.’

  I had been lounging comfortably. Now I sat bolt upright. ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Is Staff Nurse Standing still there on nights?’

  ‘For another four months.’

  I groaned. ‘I’m not sure I’m fit to work. I can feel the measles coming on again ‒ or maybe I can get whooping-cough? It’s the one thing I haven’t had.’ I coughed experimentally. ‘Any good? Oh dear. Jo, what am I to do? Standing loathes me.’

  ‘She won’t remember you from Catherine Ward, Maggie. Seniors never remember juniors. It’s always the other way about.’

  I knew she was doing her best to cheer me, but I was not cheered. ‘Dear Staff Nurse Standing never forgets anything. That’s how she won her gold medal.’ I sighed. ‘She chased me round Catherine all my first three months. Now she’ll have three months in which to chase me round the Wing.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Maggie, Paula Fisher hasn’t been able to cope with her any better than you did. You’re taking Paula’s place. She said this morning that if she hadn’t been coming off, she would have gone to Matron to ask for a transfer as she couldn’t stick one more night of Standing.’

  I thought this over gloomily. Paula Fisher belonged to the set above ours. She was a good nurse and very easygoing. Nurse Standing, the staff nurse on permanent night duty in the Private Wing, was an excellent nurse, but far from easygoing. She was a very good-looking and highly gifted young woman who, we were all convinced, would one day be the Matron of Jude’s. We were also all very pleased to feel that when that event took place, our training days would be over. We were very sorry for those future nurses-in-training, but even more sorry for any junior who had the present misfortune to work under Nurse Standing. Paula Fisher was one of the few girls whom I might have thought capable of dealing with her. And yet even Paula seemed to have admitted herself beaten. My heart sank. ‘I can hardly go to Matron and ask for a transfer on my first day back, so I’ll have to stick it out,’ I said. ‘Incidentally, what was the other minor detail?’

  ‘Just something Paula thought you ought to know about one of the Wing patients.’

  I looked at her, thoughtfully. ‘I’m about to nurse the Dean? Or some great pal of Matron’s?’

  She smiled. ‘Goodness no! Paula just told me to warn you that one of your patients is the S.M.O.’s niece and ward. Her name is Fiona Mason, and Paula said I ought to tip you the wink about her connection with him.’

  ‘It only means that everything I do for the child will be done in the greatest possible limelight, with my old pal Standing on the spot to make sure that no one misses any of my mistakes. I can hardly wait. How old is this child and where are her parents?’

  ‘I don’t think she has any. She is not a child. She is eighteen and ‒ according to Paula ‒ very sophisticated. Lots of make-up, matching nail-varnish, and the most exquisite of bedjackets. She hasn’t been in long.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Fractured right tib. and fib. got winter-sporting. She was flown home on a stretcher and the S.M.O. fixed up for her to go into the Wing. Paula says she is a good patient of the cool, calm, collected variety.’

  I had to chuckle. ‘If Paula says she is cool, she’ll be an iceberg. Don’t tell me any more, Jo. My morale is sinking beyond recall. To think I was looking forward to coming back to all this?’ I stood up, heaved my suitcase on to my bed and began unpacking. ‘I’ll have to get busy and make me the finest cap in Jude’s.’

  ‘Has Standing got a thing about caps?’ she asked a little later, as I pulled the drawstring of my new cap tight.

  ‘She’s got a thing about everything I do. This is just to boost my morale.’ I tried on the finished article in front of the dressing-table mirror. ‘I nearly cut my hair last week. I’m glad I didn’t. There’s nothing like pale hair, a middle parting, and a bun, for making one look splendidly insignificant.’

  She smiled sleepily. ‘I love your prim on-duty hair-style, Maggie. It’s so utterly out of character.’

  ‘I can hardly perch a cap on top of a pony-tail, or fix it to a curtain of hair, like a French movie star.’ I undid my hair and let it float over my face and shoulders. ‘Or can I? What do you suppose Standing’s reaction would be, if I turned up like this tonight?’ I peered through my hair and simpered meekly, ‘Good evening, Nurse Standing. Nurse Blakney reporting back from the measles.’

  Jo hooted with laughter. ‘Maggie, if you could see ‒’ She stopped in mid-sentence as someone tapped irately on my door.

  The Assistant Home Sister’s face appeared immediately. ‘Nurses! Do you realise the noise you are making? Have you forgotten this is the Night Home?’ She surveyed me without a flicker of emotion. ‘Home Sister told me you had returned, Nurse Blakney. I might have known it. Please continue your unpacking quietly.’ She disappeared.

  ‘From now on I’m going to be cool, calm and collected like Fiona Mason,’ I said.

  ‘How I wish Sister P.T.S. could hear you say that. Remember her saying ‒’ Jo sighed pleasurably ‒ ‘she hoped we would all survive our training at St Jude’s, and that St Jude’s would survive the training of Nurse Blakney?’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’ I drifted back to the window, pushed it up and leaned on the sill, looking at the long, grey lines of the great building across the road. ‘Jude’s is still here and so am I. Maybe we both have a capacity for survival?’

  She came to my elbow. ‘Jude’s has stood six hundred years. It should last.’ She turned to me, suddenly serious. ‘You will be careful in the Wing, won’t you? Authority won’t overlook your crazy ways now, as in our first year.’

  I was touched by her concern and promised to be very careful. ‘If it’s any consolation to you, Jo, Staff Nurse Standing never overlooked anything, even when I was fresh out of the P.T.S. Her standards are quite unnervingly high.’ I moved back to my unpacking. ‘In an academic way, she fascinates me. She is really very pretty.’

  Jo fingered her hair, absently. ‘The men don’t seem to notice that.’

  I nodded ruefully. ‘The trouble about doctors is that they have to be adults and have to have brains. A student might be taken in by her appearance. No one else ‒ but I wish someone would. I wish we could find some nice man for her. It would be such a kind act; not only to her, but to every nurse in Jude’s if something could be done to get her happily married off. How about this surgeon who looks like Gregory Peck?’

  She grinned. ‘He is married and has about four children.’

  ‘I suppose that rules him out. Pity. How about the new S.M.O.? Or is he too adult with too many brains?’

  ‘My dear, I’ve told you, he’s got white streaks and is quite brilliant. He’d see through her at a glance. Wait until you see him and you’ll understand what I mean.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, sternly. ‘Maggie, I’m getting suspi
cious. You’re looking prim. Stop thinking what you are thinking, at once!’

  I smiled. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I know you too well. The last time you went round looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, Bill proposed to me in the General Theatre Sterilising Room. And the time before,’ she added remorselessly, ‘Sheila Garside got engaged to Hugh Dickson.’

  ‘So what was wrong? Didn’t you want Bill to propose ‒ or Hugh not to fail his Finals because he was in a dither about Sheila? Someone had to take a hand to help you four on. I was around, so I took it.’

  ‘Bill and Hugh are only students. I know you’re the adopted sister of every other student in the Medical School, but you simply must drop the notion that you can be a sister to someone like the new S.M.O.! You must not have any scatter-brained schemes about him and Standing in the Wing. You must just keep your mind on your own work and try to keep out of trouble.’

  I smiled. ‘All right. I give in. I won’t even indulge in wishful thinking. In fact, if I so much as suspect the presence of a long white coat in the Wing tonight, I’ll hide in the kitchen until the coast is clear.’

  I found I was only too glad to retire to the kitchen before I had been a couple of hours in the Wing. I was not hiding from a long white coat, but from the grey-blue Staff Nurse’s dress of my night senior. Sister Wing was off that evening, and the day report given by the senior day nurse. When the report was over, Nurse Standing took me round the twenty rooms, introduced me with brief formality to those patients who were awake, and then gave me a very clear and detailed account of their conditions and treatments. After which, she ran through my night routine work: ‘The answering of all the room bells and telephone calls is your specific responsibility. You must call me when I am wanted on the telephone. Apart from the ordinary routine, you will share the care of the patients with me. You may occasionally be called on to chaperon for the Residents, or escort them on their rounds, if I am occupied with one of the Consultants.’

  She looked me over. ‘I very much dislike having to send a junior nurse round with a Senior Resident, but as there are only two of us up here at night, unfortunately, I have no alternative.’