‘No, Nurse,’ I murmured, and then wondered if I should have said, ‘Yes, Nurse.’
She was frowning. ‘I hope you have lost the bad habit you had in Catherine of chatting interminably to the patients? And that you are now capable of walking down a ward or into a room without knocking something over?’
‘Yes, Nurse.’
‘Good. I gather you’ve had measles?’ She sounded as if this was a personal affront to her.
‘Yes, Nurse.’
‘How very childish. And very typical.’
She puzzled me. She was so pretty and had done so well in her career, yet she seemed to go out of her way to be unpleasant to a totally unimportant junior. I wished I could understand her motives, and although I could not pretend to like her, I felt genuinely sorry for her. She must be so unhappy to behave as she consistently did. Happy people never tried to make others miserable. I asked nervously about my first drinks round. ‘May all the patients have what they like, please, Nurse?’
‘Didn’t you pay any attention to the report? Or my diagnosis and treatment list? You should know there is no one on a restricted diet, or restricted fluids.’
I apologised, escaped thankfully to my kitchen and sat down on the bread-bin to recover.
I should have had the sense to realise she would supervise me very closely on my first night.
‘Nurse Blakney, what do you you think you are doing on that bread-bin with your eyes closed? Get on with your work at once. Never let me find you slacking again.’ A bell rang as I leapt to my feet. She looked at the kitchen indicator. ‘Miss Mason is awake now. I want to see her, so I’ll answer her ring. Carry on with the drinks, and if Night Sister or any of the men arrive for their rounds, come and fetch me immediately.’
‘Yes, Nurse.’
A few minutes later the same bell rang again. Standing was with Miss Mason when I answered the ring. ‘Nurse Blakney, did you put this shade-cover on the bed-light? Did you not notice it was frayed? Put this one in the mending basket and fetch another. Next time, would you mind using your eyes when you go to the linen cupboard?’
The girl in the bed picked up a magazine when Standing began to speak. She seemed engrossed by some picture and did not look up at all. I did not know whether her interest had been genuine or purely tactful; either way, I was grateful. As I went for the new shade-cover, I remembered the many times I had had cause to be grateful to the nice women in Catherine, and wondered why Standing failed to realise that her habit of reprimanding juniors in front of the patients was as upsetting for the patients as it was for the nurses.
A fair man in a white coat stepped out of the lift when I was leaving the linen-cupboard. Standing came out of Miss Mason’s room at the same moment. ‘Nurse Blakney, why did you not let me know Mr. Yates had come to do his round?’
Mr. Yates, the Senior Surgical Officer, had been one of the Surgical Registrars when I worked in the Theatre over Christmas. He had a crisp, cheerful voice and breezy manner. ‘Nurse would have needed second sight to do that, Nurse Standing! I’ve only just arrived.’ He gave me a pleasant nod as he strode by to Standing. ‘Well, Nurse? How are all my patients? Well? Splendid. Splendid.’
Fiona Mason put down her magazine as I re-shaded her lamp. ‘Are you new, Nurse?’
‘New to the Wing, but not the hospital. Nurse Standing brought me in to meet you earlier, but you were asleep. I have come in Nurse Fisher’s place.’
She said that she was sorry Nurse Fisher had gone, but was so pleased I had come to take her place. She was very polite, but she sounded as if she was utterly disinterested in both Paula and me. I asked her about her injured leg.
‘It’s quite comfortable, thank you, Nurse.’
I asked how she had come to have her accident. I knew the answer, but I hoped it might make her a little more forthcoming.
‘Ski-ing. Such a bore,’ she drawled, ‘but there it is.’
‘It’s also very bad luck. Do you do much winter-sporting?’
‘Whenever I can,’ she said, and we went on to discuss winter sports, air travel, the comfort of her room and the weather. Her very dark hair was beautifully cut; her skin was very fair; her eyes were a vivid blue. She was wearing much more make-up than she needed. The effect was charming, even if it did make her appear several years older than her age, and quite alarmingly sophisticated. She was very polite, formal and poised. Her poise at first impressed me; then it began to worry me. I knew I had not had much nursing experience, but I was used to young women, and it seemed to me to be unnatural to find such cool detachment in someone of her age, particularly when talking alone to another young woman only a year or so older.
We were not chatting; we were talking like strangers meeting once, formally, never to meet again. It was while we talked that I first began wondering whether her apparent sophistication was not some form of armour, and if it was, why she should need it. ‘Have you been in hospital before, Miss Mason?’ I asked when we had finished with the weather.
Her expression altered infinitesimally. ‘Once.’ Her smile returned. ‘I hurt my back in a car crash when I was thirteen.’
‘Were you in long?’
‘Only about eighteen months.’
I let that ‘only’ pass. It told me a lot about the severity of her accident, and a good deal about her. ‘In Jude’s?’
‘No. I was in a hospital in Maryland. A wonderful place.’ She mentioned the name. ‘I expect you’ve heard of it?’
‘Oh, yes. I believe it’s one of the best hospitals in the world.’
‘My Uncle Jock said that. He has been working there, recently. My uncle is Dr. Cameron, your Senior Medical Officer ‒ as I expect you know?’
‘I have heard that. I’m afraid I have not yet seen him.’ And I told her how my measles had caused me to lose touch with the affairs of Jude’s. ‘It may be an undignified complaint for an adult, but it was really very useful. I had never been a hospital patient before. My measles gave me a fine patient’s-eye-view on hospital life.’
The first flicker of genuine interest stirred in her blue eyes. ‘Did you make many mental notes?’
‘Masses! I discovered how maddening is that kindly “And how are we today?” The answer of course is, “We aren’t! I am sick and you are well”.’
She smiled properly. ‘Uncle Jock once said something like that.’
Standing came in carrying a huge bunch of yellow roses. ‘More flowers for a very lucky young woman,’ she announced brightly. She laid the tissue-wrapped flowers in Miss Mason’s arms and glanced at me. Her glance was not happy. ‘Nurse Blakney, I hope you have not been tiring Miss Mason with your chatting? And why has Miss Mason not got a hot drink?’ She switched on her smile again, ‘What are we going to have tonight, my dear? Cocoa? Chocolate?’
Fiona Mason considered her roses, incuriously. She did not attempt to catch my eye. ‘I really don’t mind, Nurse Standing. Anything will do, thank you.’
Some time later, when I was washing up the drinks crockery, Standing brought the yellow roses into the kitchen. ‘Put them in a vase, label them, and leave them in the clinical room for the night.’
‘Yes, Nurse.’ I dried my hands. ‘Aren’t they perfect? I can smell them from here.’
She shrugged. ‘That spoilt young woman did not seem to think them worth a second glance. Her apparent lack of interest in all the wonderful flowers she receives is nothing but a pose. She is utterly artificial and, I suspect, hard as nails under all that make-up.’
‘I see, Nurse.’ I took up the roses. ‘I’ll put these in water now.’
She was standing between the door and me. She did not move. ‘Whilst on the subject of that girl, there is something I want to mention. You do realise who her uncle is?’
I looked at her inquiringly. ‘Yes, Nurse?’
‘His being the S.M.O. won’t make the slightest difference to the manner in which we’ll nurse her, but it might be as well ‒’ she seemed to be choosing her words carefully ‒ ‘if
you remember when with her that he is her nearest relative, and that whatever you may do or say in her presence may possibly be repeated to him. Dr. Cameron is a little older and considerably more experienced than the average hospital resident. He was last S.M.O. here, when Mr. Yates was one of the junior house-surgeons. He will very shortly be taking old Dr. Frinton’s place as Consultant Cardiac Physician on the Teaching Staff.’
‘Is Dr. Frinton leaving, Nurse? Goodness! The hospital won’t seem the same. Hasn’t he been here over forty years?’
‘Forty-four.’ Her eyes rested on my face. ‘Forty-five by the end of the year when Dr. Cameron succeeds him. So just keep that in mind, Nurse Blakney, when you feel tempted to give Miss Mason your life-story, or any so-called amusing anecdotes about the hospital. There should really be no reason for me to give you this warning at all. You know very well that nurses must not gossip with patients, or behave in any but a dignified manner.. But unless you have altered greatly ‒ which I doubt ‒ my words may be necessary. And I will admit,’ she added with unusual sincerity, ‘that I am very anxious to show Dr. Cameron that the standard of nursing in Jude’s has not altered in the years he has been away.’
I felt thoughtful and slightly apprehensive when I took Fiona Mason’s flowers into the clinical-room. I did not agree at all with Standing’s opinion of Fiona, but I could well understand how Standing felt about this Dr. Cameron. It was obvious that his good opinion meant a great deal to her.
The scent of the roses interrupted my thoughts. I buried my face amongst them, and wondered what it must feel like to be given wonderful flowers by some admiring young man. I knew dozens of young men, but had never in my life been given so much as a bunch of daisies. Ever since we left the P.T.S., Jo had lectured me on my sisterly approach to the students, but I had found it impossible to look on the inhabitants of the Medical School in any other light, after being the only sister to my own five brothers. In self-defence, I had learned how to deal with boys when I was growing up; when we arrived in the wards, I found the Medical School was overflowing with young men exactly like my brothers. We were only two months out of the P.T.S., when a student in Catherine walked into the sluice and demanded to know if my name was Blakney.
‘You must be Maggie!’ he announced triumphantly when I acknowledged my surname.
He had said he was George Thanet, and had been at school with my brothers. ‘I knew I couldn’t be wrong. You’re a pint-sized version, but you’ve the same face and fair hair. How are the chaps getting on?’ From that moment I had been Maggie to George and his friends. A week later he asked if I could sew leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. When the jacket was done, he said Bill Flanders was having a grim time with his socks, and could I oblige? I was quite happy to oblige, and from that time I had patched innumerable jackets, mended countless socks, listened to a host of romantic problems, and given liberal sisterly advice on everything from appeasing landladies to what to eat for breakfast before taking an exam.
At first Jo had been rather shocked. ‘You mustn’t let the boys heap so many tasks on you, Maggie. You’ve enough work of your own.’
I had eventually managed to persuade her that I had long since regarded mending as a relaxation. ‘How could my poor Mama have coped with the wear and tear of six males if I hadn’t helped with my needle? It doesn’t worry me at all. And as for heaping tasks on me ‒ look at the fun they’ve given us all in exchange. We would never have been swept into the social swim in our first year if George hadn’t been at school with my brothers.’
‘That’s true. But don’t you mind them regarding you in a purely fraternal light?’
‘I’d be shaken to the core if they regarded me in any other way. My brothers are dears, but they’re ruthlessly honest as only brothers can be, and they long forced me to accept the fact that I’m a girl who gets asked to be a sister, but never gets sent flowers.’
Jo was an only child. ‘How miserable of them!’
I laughed. ‘Just honest. And I had certain advantages through them. Because I was their only available partner when they learned to dance, I’ve learnt to keep my feet well out of the way, no matter how big and heavy my partners may be. That’s quite something when dancing with the Rugger boys!’
I sniffed the roses absently, still smiling. I had been very lucky, even if no one sent me flowers. If my brothers had not teased and bullied me out of the crippling shyness I experienced on leaving school, the hospital would have seemed a far more terrifying place than it did, and Standing would have reduced me to tears daily in Catherine and now nightly in the Wing.
‘Nurse!’ Standing was in the doorway. ‘Do you intend to spend the entire night seeing to those flowers? Get one of those vases down from that top shelf ‒ and hurry!’ She swept away so quickly that the starch crackled in her skirts.
I decided to listen out for that small sound of crackling; if she was going to continue with this shadow-act, it would at least give me some warning, I thought, reaching on tip-toe for one of the vases on the top shelf. I could not even touch the shelf. There was a small step-ladder in the linen-room, but as I did not want to waste any more time in fetching it, I glanced down the corridor to see if Standing was around. She was disappearing into the duty-room. There was a square-topped linen-bin at the far end of the clinical-room, so I did what I had often done ‒ illicitly ‒ in Alberta clinical-room at night. I swung myself on to the bin, stepped gingerly from it to the broad white, china shelf that ran the length of the wall, edged down the shelf, carefully avoiding the three glass-dome-covered microscopes until I was in easy reach of the empty flower vases on the high top shelf.
‘Do you consider it advisable, Nurse, to stand on that shelf?’ asked a very deep voice from the neighbourhood of my left shoulder. ‘It is made of china, and not intended to support any weight but the microscopes.’
I hardly dared to look round. When I did, I wished I had not. Two very blue eyes were regarding me with icy calm. The owner of the eyes had dark hair that was lightened by twin streaks of white over his temples; his mouth was a firm line; his jaw could only be described as ominous; and the shoulders beneath his spotless white coat were broader than any I had seen on the hospital Rugger field. He did not wait for my explanation. He held out his hands peremptorily. ‘Come along, Nurse ‒’ and I was on my feet on the ground.
He knelt to examine the supports of the shelf. ‘You don’t seem to have done any damage.’ He straightened, tested the shelf itself carefully. ‘Fortunately you’re not heavy. But do you appreciate how much microscopes cost? You might well have smashed all three ‒ and the shelf,’ he said sternly.
I nodded unhappily. ‘Yes, Doctor. I might have. I’m very sorry. I just didn’t think.’
He looked at my belt. ‘Aren’t you in your second-year? Isn’t it time you learnt to start thinking?’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ I gazed miserably at the lower half of his tie. That half stood at my eye-level. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘You could have hurt yourself, too. You could have been severely cut if you had fallen amongst all that china and glass.’ He paused. ‘Are you in the habit of climbing on these shelves?’
‘Not these. I ‒ er ‒ have done it elsewhere.’
‘Then, please, do not do it again.’
I swallowed. ‘No, Doctor.’ I braced myself to be asked my name in order that he might report my lamentable conduct to my staff nurse.
‘Which vase do you want down, Nurse?’
I looked up, startled. He was watching me with cool interest rather than disapproval. ‘The tall one on the left ‒ but please don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the steps.’
He handed me the vase. ‘Get them next time.’ He walked away before I even had time to thank him.
I filled the vase. I nearly knocked it and the roses flying when I heard Standing’s quick, ‘Good evening, Dr. Cameron.’ I had not really doubted who he was, but I had not been able to stifle the faint hope that he might turn out to be t
he new Surgical Registrar who looked like Gregory Peck. It would have been bad enough to be caught on that shelf by a registrar; to be discovered perched up there by a man who was practically a consultant cardiologist was utterly shattering.
I labelled the flowers in a dither, imagining the words he was using to tell Standing about my behaviour. It needed no imagination at all to guess her reaction. Consequently, I was astonished and relieved when I met her in the corridor a few minutes after, and she gave me an almost affable smile. ‘Will you make a small pot of tea and bring it into the duty-room, Nurse. Dr. Cameron is visiting his niece.’
He could not have reported me.
Standing smiled on me again when I took in the tea. ‘Nurse Blakney is my new night junior, Dr. Cameron,’ she announced brightly.
His incurious glance and ‘’Evening, Nurse,’ reminded me instantly of Fiona Mason. She had his colouring and eyes; she must have inherited some of his detachment, too. But where her remote expression seemed to me to be carefully assumed, Dr. Cameron gave me the immediate impression that his detached attitude was as natural as breathing.
A bell rang with the urgency all bells have at night. It was Miss Ashbrook, the old lady with a cardiac disease in Room 9. ‘Could I have my oxygen off now, please dear? I feel so nice and sleepy. I am sure I no longer require it.’
Afterwards I sponged her face and hands, turned her pillows and straightened her sheets. ‘Now, how about a little more hot milk?’
The man in Room Ten rapped softly on his locker as I went by with Miss Ashbrook’s milk. ‘Got a drop of tea going, Nurse?’
‘If there isn’t, there soon will be. Lots of sugar, Mr. Sinclair? Right.’
Nurse Standing came out of the duty-room when I passed the open door for the fourth time. ‘Must you rush up and down like this, Nurse? No wonder the patients are waking. Who is that cocoa for?’
‘Miss Carter, Nurse.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to see to her.’ She was standing with her back to the duty-room. She looked and sounded her normal self. ‘You juniors seem to have no conception of how to make an arthritic patient comfortable. Please collect the tea-tray, Nurse. Will you excuse me, Dr. Cameron?’ she asked in a very charming ‒ and different ‒ tone.
A Ward Door Opens: A touching 1950s hospital romance (The Anniversary Collection Book 7) Page 2