The Liverpool Nightingales, page 11
Turning round to check on him, she could see that he was trying to get up out of bed and she knew that he would fall. She ran back to him and spoke firmly. ‘You need to lie down, Mr Donahue, really you must.’
For some reason as she leant over him and put light pressure on his chest she saw him take on board what she was saying. There seemed to be a light of recognition in his eyes, some kind of connection, and he nodded and swung his legs back up on the bed and then lay very still on his back with his arms straight by his sides. Not quite what I had in mind, she thought, given that he looked like he was ready for laying out.
‘Stay there and don’t move,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m going for some water. I don’t want to see you trying to get out of bed again before I get back.’
Harry nodded and didn’t seem to have the energy to put up any more resistance. When she came back he was asleep. As she washed him, she decided this time to let him sleep, having reassured herself that he was responsive. His breathing was regular, his skin was a good colour, and when she leant down to gently wash his face and tend to the worst of the grazes, she felt overcome again by that special smell, which made her feel rather light-headed.
But she continued her work, deftly moving on to his swollen left hand, sponging it gently over the bowl and trying to get as much of the muck off as possible. She was engrossed in her work, being so careful not to hurt him and set him off like she had done last time that she didn’t hear the footsteps as they approached.
‘He’s my patient,’ said Nancy sharply, appearing by Maud’s side and almost pushing her out of the way. ‘I’ve nursed him before.’
‘What the—’ Maud started to say, but then hearing Sister’s voice calling for her from up the ward, she had to give in. She let go of Harry’s hand and put the cloth in the bowl of water. As she moved away from the bed she did at least have the satisfaction of hearing the man groan and when she glanced back she thought she saw him stretch his arm out in her direction, though that might just have been a fancy.
‘Nurse Sellers knows the patient well,’ said Sister Law. ‘She is the one best placed to assess him. Now I want you to go into the sluice and make sure that the sink is scoured and that all the sputum pots have been emptied.’
Maud’s stomach turned. She didn’t mind any amount of cleaning, but emptying all the sputum pots full of the thick phlegm that had been hawked up by the old men on the ward overnight, that was something that made her heave. And she never saw Nancy being given any of the sluice duties. It always seemed to be her and Alice. It didn’t seem fair, but she also knew that she would rather that than be the favoured one, the chosen one who got preferential treatment but was disliked by the rest of the staff. When she had been working at the big house she had known that Miss Fairchild liked her and through the years that they worked together she had probably become a favourite, but she respected Miss Fairchild for always, always making sure that no one, not even Maud, was aware of her preferences, and she knew that she always tried to treat everyone equally and give each individual some chance. Clearly Sister did not have the same ethos and it was, thought Maud, very much to her detriment.
The sluice door swung open behind Maud and she felt her stomach tighten. She thought it was Nancy but, looking round, she saw Alice, thank goodness.
‘Have you been sent to clean the sluice as well?’ said Maud.
‘What? Oh no, no,’ said Alice, her voice tight.
‘Are you all right?’ said Maud, immediately noticing that Alice sounded strange and not the same Alice that she had worked with just an hour before. ‘Are you feeling sick again?’ said Maud, placing a hand on Alice’s arm.
To her surprise Alice glared at her and pulled away, then almost shouted, ‘No I am not, and what is it to you anyway … traitor?’
‘What?’ said Maud, completely bewildered.
Then Alice was gone and when she looked out of the door after her she could see that she was heading back down the ward to Nancy.
Maud drew back into the sluice and then stood feeling shaken, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She held on to the sink and then, pulling herself together, returned to the task in hand, taking the scouring powder and a cloth and scrubbing the sink with fury. She nearly took the glaze off it but as she scoured she kept thinking over and over what had just happened, and by the time she had finished she thought she had a good idea. Could Nancy, somehow, have found out that Alice was pregnant? And if she had then Alice might naturally assume that Maud had told her. The more she thought about it the more she thought it could be the only explanation.
I will have to speak to her later, not here on the ward, when we get back to the Nurses’ Home. And what’s more, thought Maud, after I saw Nancy in the sluice yesterday taking a nip from her flask, it’s obvious she’s just trying to stir up trouble between me and Alice. It’s nothing more than a game of power to her.
Well, she won’t get far with that, thought Maud as she emptied the pots of phlegm with some vigour into the slop bucket. Plop, plop, plop. Emptying each one in turn, tipping all the nastiness straight out, all in one go, then washing out each pot and cleaning her hands in a fresh bowl of water. When she had finished she went back out on to the ward.
She could see Alice standing at the bottom of Harry’s bed with Nancy still fiddling about with something there. But she didn’t care about that. All she cared about now was that Alice was in some distress and her heart went out to her as she saw her friend standing there with her head slightly bowed, waiting for Nancy.
Maud knew there was nothing that she could do there and then, and she was overtaken by events as the ward door swung open again and the orderlies staggered through, barely able to walk with a huge man lying on the stretcher.
‘Here’s the big fella we were telling you about,’ grunted Michael. ‘We need to put him down, quick, quick.’
‘Over here,’ said Maud, seeing an empty bed next to Harry Donahue.
The men lurched across the ward, their knees buckling, and they just got the stretcher on to the bed in time. They both stood gasping for breath as the giant of a man gave a groan and tried to roll over. The pair of them used the opportunity to pull the stretcher out from under him.
‘Now then, champ,’ said the man at the head of the stretcher, ‘you just lie quiet and let this young lady, this nurse, look after you.’ Then they were both gone, scuttling out through the door with their stretcher.
Maud was straight there and starting to take a close look at the man, making sure he was breathing, which thankfully he was. She could sense Nancy’s cold eyes on her but it didn’t put her off her stride. She did, however, slip round to the other side of the bed, where she could have her back to her.
The man’s shirt was ripped open at the front and she could see his huge expanse of chest, full of black hair, rising and falling like an enormous pair of bellows. His forehead looked like a battering ram but there was a huge bruise coming up around one eye and his mouth looked like it had been smashed with something heavy. He probably doesn’t have any teeth left in there, Maud thought, but she dared not try to open his mouth to have a look in case she woke him. She couldn’t believe that a slim man like Harry Donahue could have floored this big fella. Like the orderly had said, Harry must have a hell of a punch.
Reassured that she had done all she could for the patient for now, she was taken aback to see Sister Law steaming down the ward towards them with her short legs covering ground at an extraordinary rate, and the bow of her cap tied so tight it made her face red and her full chin bulge.
Expecting a tirade, Maud braced herself, but none came. Instead Sister came to the other side of the bed and laid a careful hand on the man’s forehead, a gesture of gentleness that did not fit with the view that Maud had of the woman.
‘How long has he been here?’ she said quietly, her face full of concern.
‘Only about five minutes,’ said Maud.
‘You’ve checked him over, Nurse?’
‘I think so,’ said Maud, puzzled by this sudden change in Sister’s demeanour.
‘I know this patient well,’ Sister explained. ‘He’s been coming in for years. I know he’s a fighter – I know all that – but he is the gentlest man on earth.’
Maud was amazed by this other side to Sister. Could she trust it? No doubt it was just a brief interlude and Maud would find herself running for cover again any time soon.
‘What are you still doing with that patient, Nurse Sellers?’ snapped Sister, looking over to the next bed as her usual self began to re-emerge.
‘Just checking, just—’
‘Enough justs,’ said Sister. ‘I think that patient has had more attention than the rest put together on the ward today. Go to bed three. There is a man there desperate for a wash down and you will need to roll him and change his draw sheet. Take Nurse Sampson with you.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said Nancy, and as she passed the bottom of the bed Maud saw that her face was flushed bright red and her mouth was set in a sulky line. Maud tried to catch Alice’s eye as she followed along behind Nancy but she was looking at the floor.
‘This man will be all right,’ said Sister after she had completed her own assessment. ‘He’ll sleep it off and then we’ll send him out to fight another day. You can leave him now, Nurse Linklater. Oh, and I’ve been into the sluice and inspected the sink …’
Uh-oh, thought Maud, here we go.
‘… And I have to say,’ said Sister Law, drawing her shoulders up and puffing her chest out, ‘I have to say that I have never, in all my years on this ward, seen that sink in there … so clean.’
What? thought Maud. Can she actually be giving me praise?
‘Cleanliness on the ward is a priority and you have shown that you are committed to that principle. We have to keep clean to stop the spread of contagion and the festering of wounds. So well done, Nurse Linklater. I will recommend you to go through and assist our surgeon, Mr Jones, the next time that he takes a patient to theatre.’
‘Thank you,’ said Maud, still not quite able to believe or fully trust what she was hearing.
‘Now,’ said Sister Law briskly, ‘you just need to bathe that small cut – it won’t need a stitch – and he has some nasty-looking grazes on his knuckles. See to them as well. When you’ve finished get back up the ward and see if there is anything that needs doing.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said Maud, feeling her head start to buzz as she pieced together what Sister had just said to her about being allowed to go into theatre. She began busying herself with the cut, bathing it in clean water, as gently as she possibly could. It felt like she was tending a sleeping giant and, despite what Sister Law had said about him being a gentle man, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be there when he woke up.
Then she lifted his right hand to bathe the cut. His fist was huge and full of calluses, some of the fingernails were broken and they looked sore. Each finger had a mane of black hair running to the knuckle and all his knuckles were skinned raw like Harry’s. Moving round to the other side of the bed to bathe the cuts on his left hand, she pulled up his sleeve a little so that his shirt didn’t get wet. She saw the edge of what looked like a tattoo and, interested in what it might be, she slid his sleeve up further to reveal a big heart shape with an arrow stabbing through. There was a name in the heart: it said ‘Daphne’.
‘That’s his wife,’ said a voice from the next bed.
Maud let out a small gasp. She felt like she had been caught sneaking a peek at something that was out of bounds. She looked over to see, of course, Harry Donahue leaning up on his elbow, looking straight at her with his eyes twinkling.
She was unable to muster a response.
‘He worships her,’ Harry said. ‘He worships Daphne all right and all of his six children. Everything that he does is for them. He works down the docks like some mountain of a man, unloading cargo from as many ships as he can get near, and then he fights: he fights for extra money for her and the children. He is an honest, hardworking man and I am sorry that it was him that I had to go and beat.’
‘You two are friends, then?’ said Maud, trying to get her head round what it must feel like to step into a match with another man and beat the living daylights out of him, especially when you like him and admire all that he stands for.
‘Yes, we are friends,’ said Harry. ‘We’ve travelled the same path, me and him. Well, he’s older than me but we’ve come from the same people and we’ve worked the same jobs.’
‘How can you beat each other senseless then?’
‘Just makin’ a livin’. He wallops me and I wallop him back. Just makin’ a livin’ like everybody else. Can’t believe I knocked him out, though. I was more shocked than him, I think. I just caught him in the right place under the chin and that was it: he went down like a huge tree being felled. God, I was so worried at first that I might have killed him.’
‘Well, I still can’t understand it,’ said Maud, as she finished tending to the wounds and then pulled down the big man’s sleeve to cover the tattoo. ‘What would have happened to Daphne and the children if you had killed him?’
Maud saw Harry stare down at the sheet on his bed. He had no answer for that. Then just as he was about to speak the ward doors burst open again as the orderlies almost ran in with their stretcher. A thin man lay there screaming his head off, clearly in absolute agony and clutching his belly.
‘Up to the top of the ward,’ instructed Sister Law, who had appeared from nowhere. ‘He needs to see the surgeon straight away.’
The men swiftly found an empty bed with the sheets drawn back.
‘Nurse Linklater,’ shouted Sister, ‘this is your chance. If Mr Jones is taking this man to theatre, you can go in there with them.’
Maud saw the hostile look on Nancy’s face when she heard Sister’s direction but it only made her more determined than ever to make full use of this opportunity. And so with a glance back to Harry, who gave her a small salute, she made her way up the ward, quickly returning her equipment to the sluice, and arriving at the bed of the new admission just in time for the man to lean over the side of the bed and vomit all over the floor.
Then a door that Maud had never even noticed before at the top of the ward sprung open and a tall man with a long face came through, straight to the bed.
‘Right,’ said the man, deftly stepping around the pool of vomit and signalling to one of the orderlies to clean it up before moving to the side of the bed and trying to pull up the man’s shirt. But with the patient’s knees up to his chest it was impossible.
‘Sister,’ called the tall man, and Maud watched carefully as her supervisor spoke to the patient in the gentle voice that Maud now knew she used sometimes.
‘Now, sir,’ she said, ‘I know that you are in terrible pain but we need you to try to straighten your legs for just a minute so that the doctor can have a look at you. Can you do that?’
It took a moment for the man to respond but then Maud saw him make what looked like a huge effort to push his legs down straight and he lay there for just a few seconds, his face contorted with pain whilst Mr Jones pressed on his belly in a few places. Sister gestured to Maud to hold the patient’s hand and she immediately moved to the side of the bed. He was squeezing her hand so tight that it was hurting, but she stood firm and never flinched. Maud stood almost holding her breath until Mr Jones was finished and he straightened up from the bed. The man instantly drew his knees right up again to his chest and rolled on to his side groaning with pain.
Mr Jones looked across the bed to Sister Law, grimly. ‘I believe you’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ he said to her. Sister nodded and then Mr Jones said, ‘An abscess of the appendix.’
Sister Law nodded again and Maud thought she caught the inkling of a sorrowful look on her face.
‘Almost certainly,’ continued Mr Jones. ‘Acute pain in the abdomen, centred on the lower right quadrant, he is vomiting, his breath is foetid and he has pallor of his skin. This man almost certainly has an abscess that might have already ruptured.’
Maud saw the terrified look on the man’s face and took hold of his hand again.
‘But if we are in time,’ said Sister Law placing a hand on the man’s shoulder, ‘we might just be able to drain it, cut out the inflamed appendix and save his life.’
Maud saw the orderlies standing ready; they hadn’t even removed the stretcher from under the man. They seemed to have known exactly what would be required.
‘Right,’ said the surgeon, ‘take him straight through to theatre. Let’s see what we can do.’
Maud thought that the poor man looked like he was going to expire anyway with the pain and the shock at what had just been said over him. But she had no more time to think. Sister muttered into her ear, telling her to go in with them, observe everything and do anything that was instructed.
Maud felt her heart racing – she wasn’t sure if it was from terror or the thrill of being asked to help – but in she went with the whole party and as the door swung to on the orderlies after they’d left the patient on a high wooden table in the centre of the room, she knew that this was a huge opportunity for her. She would sink or swim.
The poor patient – she didn’t even know his name – was still screaming and drawing his knees up to his belly in pain. Her heart went out to him but she had seen so much pain on the wards in her few weeks at the hospital that she knew that the kind of agony that he was in could not be treated with anything that she had seen so far. It was pure pain, so deep inside the body and so unrelenting. It was terrifying.
Her heart was still racing so she took a few deep breaths to try to steady herself and make sure she took everything in. Mr Jones was over at the sink scrubbing and washing his hands with plenty of soap, and another man had quietly slipped into theatre, a slim man with dark hair, bright shining eyes and a quickness about him. Maud had never seen him before. He was at the head of the table and he had opened a bottle of something and was putting some drops of it on to a wad of lint. And there was a nurse wearing the same uniform as Sister but with a full bib apron. She was arranging knives and instruments on to a small table and then she placed a bucket and an enamel bowl on the floor. Then the surgeon looked round from the sink and nodded to the other man. He went over to the window and opened it, saying something about letting in some more light and some air.
