Never the Time and the Place. Betty Neels
behind, closely followed by the students.
There were sixteen patients in the ward and half of that number were sufficiently recovered from their operations to gather, cosily dressing-gowned, in little groups and discuss and enlarge upon their various conditions. They did this cheerfully, their troubles nicely behind them, the prospect of going home in the near future buoying up their spirits.
Mr Bull waited a little impatiently while the nurses hurried these ladies back to sit by their beds, and then spoke a few words to each of them. For some reason which Josephine never quite fathomed, his patients, almost without exception, adored him. He wasn’t particularly nice to them, but even when imparting some unpleasant news to them he managed to convey his certainty that he would be able to cope with it and restore them to their homes in perfect health.
But most of his time was taken up with the patients who hadn’t reached the happy state of shuffling along to the day room, with these he spent time and trouble, reassuring them, reading up their notes carefully, sometimes asking questions that were pertinent to the apprehensive students behind him. His quick round had taken a good half hour and had left Josephine busier than ever, rearranging her patients once more, sending nurses to a tea they had almost missed, giving the Staff Nurse a hand with the evening medicine round. She sat now, waiting for the last of the visitors to go so that she could do her final round and then finish her report, turning over in her mind Mr Bull’s parting shot as he marched out of the ward. ‘I’m off to Brussels for a month, Jo, lecturing and marking exam papers, heaven help me. An old friend and colleague will be standing in for me—clever bloke, well known and highly thought of.’ He had given a guffaw of delighted laughter. ‘Don’t let him oust that fellow you are going to marry.’
She had said a little starchily, ‘That’s not likely, sir. I hope you enjoy your stay in Brussels.’ And at the same time she had felt a twinge of excitement and interest.
The night staff, coming on duty, interrupted her thoughts; she dismissed them at once and started reading the report.
This took some time; the four operation cases were gone into with meticulous detail and then the remaining ladies discussed at varying lengths. ‘And Mrs Prosser,’ finished Josephine, referring to an elderly lady who had given more trouble than the whole ward put together, ‘Mr Bull sees no reason why she shouldn’t go home in two days’ time—that’ll be Saturday. She’s dead set on staying the weekend, though. Says there’ll be no one at home to look after her. Nobody came to see her this evening, so I couldn’t discover if that’s true or not, but we do need the bed and she’s already been in several days longer than usual.’
She got up to go. ‘And Mr Bull tells me he’ll be going away for a month. He’s got someone coming to do his work, though. Have a good night.’
She picked up the big bag she took on duty with her, filled with the impedimenta needed by a young woman cut off from such things as she might require in the way of make-up, her purse, the letters she hadn’t had time to read, and an assortment of pens, her gold watch and a spare pair of tights, and left the ward. The nurses who had been on duty with her had already gone, the landing was silent as she crossed it, went through the wide swing doors at the further end and started down the stone staircase. She was in the more modern part of the hospital, but not as modern as all that; woman’s surgical and the gyny ward had been built some thirty years before and attached to the central, early Victorian block, a not very happy union, architecturally speaking. It was even worse on the opposite side, where the hospital had been enlarged only recently. It held the most modern of equipment and boasted colour schemes in the wards and such refinements as a tasteful waiting room for relatives, cloakrooms for the nursing staff and silent swift lifts which never broke down. But strangely, the nurses preferred the Victorian wing, despite the lack of colour schemes, even preferring in many cases to work in the central block, where the medical patients were housed in gloomy wards which no amount of modernising would ever disguise.
Josephine sped down the staircase, poked her head round the swing doors of the ward below her own, and finding Mercy Latimer already gone, went on her way. On the ground floor she crossed the entrance hall and went down a dark passage at its back which ended in a large door with ‘Nursing Staff Only’ painted on it. She went through this into another passage, very clean and smelling of furniture polish, and started up the stairs at the end. The Sisters had bed sitting rooms on the first floor, reached by a swing door on the landing and once through that she could hear the steady murmur of voices coming from the end of the corridor before her. She unlocked her door, flung her cap and bag on the bed and went on towards the sound of rattling tea cups.
There were half a dozen young women crammed into the small kitchen, intent on making tea. She was on good terms with them all, for they had all trained, just as she had, at St Michael’s.
‘Late off, aren’t you?’ asked Mercy.
‘Mr Bull did a round and it took me the rest of the afternoon and evening to catch up. He’s going away for a month…’
‘Bully for you,’ the small fair-haired girl spoke. ‘Think of all the empty beds.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’ Caroline Webster, the Senior Theatre Sister, spooned tea into a giant pot. ‘There’s someone coming to do his work for him. A glutton for work, so I’m told. Coming into theatre tomorrow afternoon with Mr Bull to cast an eye around. I expect you’ll get him, too, Jo.’
Jo put milk in a mug and spooned in sugar lavishly. ‘I hope not, you know what it’s like the day after ops, one long rush with drips and dope and the poor dears not feeling their best. And Mrs Prosser,’ she added gloomily, ‘he’ll be someone new to complain to. You see, just as we’ve got her all fixed up to go home on Saturday, she’ll get him to let her stay.’
The night had not gone well, Josephine discovered when she went on duty in the morning. The operation cases had, true enough, slept their way through the night in a drugged sleep, but everybody else had been disturbed on several occasions by Mrs Prosser, who declared herself to be dying, neglected and in need of cups of tea, cold drinks and bed-pans. That she had been on her feet for days now and perfectly able to get herself to the loo was an argument delivered in a fierce whisper by the night Staff Nurse, which she swept aside so noisily that they were forced to give in to her. She lay in bed now, looking smug, having declared herself incapable of getting out of her bed.
Josephine listened with a sympathetic ear to the night Staff Nurse’s report and sent her and her junior off duty with a promise that something would be done before the night, and once her nurses had dispersed to see to breakfasts she asked Joan to stay behind for a few minutes.
‘The side ward, the one at the other end of the ward that we don’t use unless we have to—we’ll put her in there. She’s not to be neglected, mind, but she must get up as usual—she can sit there and have her meals there, and when Mr Bull does his round I’ll see if he’ll talk to her.’
Josephine supervised the move. Mrs Prosser, at first delighted at getting so much attention, became incensed when she discovered that she was to be on her own. Josephine waited until she had finished her diatribe, forcefully delivered, about the cruelty of nurses and herself above all, and then she pointed out reasonably, ‘Well, Mrs Prosser, if you are feeling as poorly as you say, then I think that you should be kept as quiet as possible. I think Mr Bull will agree with me. He’s doing a round later this morning and you can tell him exactly what is wrong. Your temperature and pulse are quite normal, and you ate your breakfast and you haven’t been sick.’
Mrs Prosser said a rude word, but Josephine, inured to the colourful vocabulary of the majority of her patients, took not a bit of notice. She left Mrs Prosser’s door half open and swept back down the ward, distinctly eye catching in her dark blue cotton uniform and frilled cap; other hospitals might dress their nurses in nylon and paper caps, St Michael’s hadn’t changed the material or the cut since they were first designed in the mid-nineteenth century. Perhaps they weren’t as comfortable as the modern overall, but the St Michael’s nurses wore them with pride and spent time getting their caps just so.
With Josephine’s eye here, there and everywhere, the ward gradually