The Liverpool Nightingales, page 9
‘Now, Mr Latimer,’ said Eddy, for once her voice quiet, ‘that’s all done for you. Let’s get you moved over on to your other side.’
As the man nodded and tried to smile, Maud could see that his eyes were watering but she didn’t think he was crying, he was just so very poorly. Without being told she stood at the opposite side of the bed and helped the man over. She pulled the pillows that propped him up in the bed into a better position, making sure that the cloth was straight under his face. He tried to smile again and murmured, ‘Thank you, Nurse.’
Maud felt her heart tighten and she smiled back at him, but already his eyes were closed and he was drifting to sleep.
‘Why didn’t he scream with pain when you did that?’ asked Maud as they walked together back down the ward.
‘I wondered that as well the first time I did the dressing. Sister said that when the wounds are deep like that the nervous connections don’t seem to be there, whereas if it’s near the surface people can scream blue murder with something much smaller.’
‘Right,’ said Maud, glad at least that Mr Latimer was without pain.
‘Might it still heal up?’
‘That’s the thing,’ said Eddy, her voice falling quiet again. ‘There is no way that a huge hole like that can heal. It is bound to be fatal.’
Maud took a sharp intake of breath and felt her heart flutter. So that was it; that was the everyday reality of this work that she had decided to undertake. This was going to be hard, she knew that now, but she would do her absolute best.
Before Maud could ask any more questions Sister was calling down the ward with further instruction and immediately they were assigned another task.
‘Nurse Pacey, Nurse Linklater, please take two bowls of soup and two cups of tea into the side room. We have a couple of patients in there who have been isolated due to some fever that has flared up since they were admitted.’
Eddy and Maud went straight to the kitchen and prepared the trays, and then Eddy led the way to the side room and used her hip to open the door whilst she held the tray with both hands. She was a bit vigorous with the swing of her hip and the door opened with a crash into something inside the room. Then as Maud approached, at a much slower rate, she heard more rattling inside as Eddy seemed to be jostling her tray. Aware that Sister was fast approaching down the ward Maud slipped quietly into the room with her tray perfectly balanced.
She could see Eddy trying to clear some space on the table between the men’s beds with one hand whilst she held the tray in the other. The cup was rocking on the saucer and some tea was spilling.
As Maud assessed the situation – about to put her tray down temporarily on top of some papers so that she could help Eddy – the door swung open and Sister Cleary appeared.
‘Sorry, Sister,’ Eddy said. ‘I seem to have got myself—’
‘Shhh!’ said Sister, and then in a whisper: ‘No noise around fever patients, remember.’
‘Sorry,’ said Eddy again, unable to use a quiet tone of voice.
Sister helped straighten things up and Maud sorted out her own tray. Once outside the side ward, she took time to speak to them both, but mainly Eddy.
‘Do you remember what Miss Nightingale advises about noise in the sickroom, Nurse Pacey?’
But despite standing there frowning, Eddy could not recall what had been written by Miss Nightingale. She had no idea.
Maud knew, but she would never have said, not when Eddy was racking her brains to find an answer.
‘Remember, Nurse Pacey,’ said Sister Cleary, ‘ “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well. Even the fidget of silk or crinoline, the creaking of stays and of shoes, will do a patient more harm than all the medicines in the world will do him good.” Do not be the nurse who cannot open a door without making everything rattle, or carry a tray without shaking the tea cup and spilling half the drink into the saucer. Try, do try, to not be that nurse because “a nurse who rustles is the horror of the patient.” ’
‘That’s it,’ said Eddy, ‘Of course, I remember it now.’
‘All right then, you two,’ said Sister, ‘it’s about time for you to go off shift. I’ll let you off a bit early today so that you can look through the chapter on unnecessary noise in Notes on Nursing. See you both in the morning; on time, please, Nurse Pacey.’
‘Yes, Sister. Thank you, Sister,’ they said as they made their way off the ward before Sister Cleary could change her mind.
Maud walked away from the ward in some kind of trance. She didn’t know what to think. It felt like everything had happened in a whirl that day and now she was relieved to be getting away from all those men. Hurtling along the corridor, trying to keep pace with Eddy, she began to realize that it would take her a long time to get used to the new routine and all the detail of the work. Until she understood all the basics, and more besides, she knew she would not feel entirely comfortable. All she could do was keep going day by day, slowly and steadily, until things started to make sense and fall into place.
Then she saw a woman whom she recognized but couldn’t quite place immediately walking down the corridor towards them. It was only as she got nearer that she recognized Stella, who was heading down towards them at quite a pace. She looked preoccupied with something and didn’t see Maud at first. Ordinarily Maud would have let a person in that much of a rush pass by, but for some reason she felt an urge to connect with her. She felt she needed to speak to someone who had got to know her before she was a nurse probationer, when she was just a housemaid visiting a hospital ward – when she knew exactly what she was doing.
So as Stella drew level with them Maud stepped in her direction and said a bright ‘Hello’, stopping Stella in her tracks. Eddy carried on walking and when she glanced back Maud gestured for her to continue, telling her that she would catch up later. Stella had stopped, and looked up, surprised.
‘Oh, hello. It’s Maud, isn’t it? I didn’t recognize you in that uniform and with that little starchy cap on your head. You look quite different … but it suits you, it really does.’
‘Thank you,’ said Maud, starting to relax. ‘Just had my first day on the ward.’
‘Crikey,’ said Stella. ‘Hope it was all right. I mean, personally, I don’t know how you nurses do what you do. Not everybody could do it. You need something special, I think. I couldn’t bloody do it, that’s for sure.’
‘Well, your job can’t be easy either,’ said Maud, without even thinking about what she was saying and definitely not wanting to get into any conversation about the workings of a brothel whilst she was stood in the hospital corridor.
‘Well, you know what they say, it has its ups and downs,’ said Stella, starting to laugh. Then, seeing Maud’s uncomfortable expression, she moved on to another topic. ‘I’m just off up to see the half-sister again; we seem to be getting on all right at present.’
‘That’s good,’ said Maud, warmly. ‘Did you find your friend, the man who was in the next bed to Alfred?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Stella. ‘I thought I knew where he’d be but he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. He’ll probably turn up sooner or later: they usually do. I’ve known any number of men who were injured in the Crimea, some with terrible injuries. Life has been very hard on them since that war finished. Usually they turn up again, but sometimes they just disappear for ever. And speaking of disappearing, that’s the reason I’m on my way to see my half-sister, see if she can help. One or two of my girls went missing a few weeks back and they still haven’t turned up. I think they might have been taken into the Lock Hospital. Have you heard anything about that sort of thing?’
‘No,’ said Maud, ‘but I’ll listen out and let you know if I hear anything. You’re on Lime Street, right?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Stella. ‘What an excellent memory you have. And don’t worry, if you need me, or the boy does, come any time. We will give you a welcome and try to help in any way we can.’ Then Stella put her arm around Maud in her brand-new uniform and gave her a squeeze, whispering in her ear, ‘And remember, Maudie, if things don’t work out for you here on the wards you can always come and get a job with me.’
Maud knew that Stella was joking but she felt her face start to flush red. After all the naked flesh she’d seen on the ward today, it seemed a bit much for someone to start talking about her working in a brothel.
6
‘All nurses and Probationers will be provided with a sufficient allowance of beer or porter to take at mealtimes.’
Florence Nightingale
After two weeks Maud was finding life at the hospital much harder than she expected. She had held on to the plan of just keeping going day after day with the work on the ward but there were some things that she hadn’t taken into account whatsoever. Maud was used to hard work – very hard work – and she was used to feeling tired at the end of the day, but the work at the big house involved cleaning or supervising or answering the bell for a tray of tea, not dealing with people who were desperately ill, and often in tragic circumstances. Coping with that, the patients, the diseases, the sheer workload, and managing her own feelings at the same time, was exhausting. She was still working on the male ward, and it was the nakedness of the men that she was struggling to cope with as well. Having grown up in a very small household with just women, she had never had brothers or fathers strolling around with their shirts off or getting a wash at the sink. And then at the big house, she had shared a room with another woman. So now, to be fully exposed to men in all states of undress, well, it was very difficult indeed for Maud. She was just hoping that she would get used to it, but there was no sign of her getting used to any of it yet. If anything, she was feeling even more overwhelmed.
The other thing that was becoming increasingly difficult for her was to stomach the beer that they were given to drink. She didn’t like the taste of it, it made her feel sick and she didn’t like the fuzzy feeling in her head that it gave her during the afternoon shift. Prior to coming to the hospital she had never touched any liquor, but now she had to drink it. Well, she didn’t have to, exactly, but she didn’t want to risk catching the cholera or some other horrible disease from the water. It hadn’t been a problem at the big house. Their water supply was good, or so they were told. It had been fed in when the new houses were built and there had been absolutely no cases of cholera in that area that she knew of. Also, they always drank tea, so the water was boiled.
She was hoping that she would get used to drinking the beer, but even the thought of it now made her feel sick. For a start, she couldn’t manage her daily allowance of three pints. Some of the nurses could manage it, but she was struggling to get one pint down.
Eddy seemed to be all right with it – she could knock it back – but Maud had noticed Alice sipping at it and not able to take her full amount, probably on account of the sickness she had from being with child. The one that she couldn’t work out, though, as usual, was Nancy Sellers. She just seemed to sip at it smoothly but when you looked across it was gone. Maud had seen Alice, who always sat next to Nancy at the table, passing hers over as well, but Nancy never looked any different, having drunk so much, not even the slightest slurring of her speech. Maud was beginning to wonder if the woman was a real person or some kind of machine.
Anyway, it looked like she was going to have a chance to find out. Miss Merryweather had told her to report to Alfred’s ward, Male Surgical, for duty that morning, so she’d be back with Alice and Nancy. The nurses on Male Medical who had been off with the fever had unexpectedly pulled through and were returning to duty, so Maud was leaving that ward just as she was starting to get used to the staff and Eddy crashing and banging her way through the duties.
She was glad, in a way, because she would see more of Alfred before he left the hospital, even if it did mean being back under the eagle eye of Sister Law. In the meantime, Miss Fairchild had sent Maud a note: everything was in hand, she had spoken to Sister and would be taking Alfred up to the Blue Coat School herself.
That morning Maud left the Nurses’ Home with Alice and Nancy, and made her way back to where it had all begun.
As they entered the ward she broke away from the other two and nipped down to see Alfred. He did look fine, there was no mistake. They had kept him a bit longer than expected after he’d started with some mild fever. But she could tell that he was recovering by the way that his eyes were shining and he was sitting up in bed bright and alert.
‘I can’t stay,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know if I’ll be working down this end, but I’ll give you a wave in passing.’
‘That’s all right,’ said the boy. ‘They are really busy on here. You need to get on with the work. And I’ll be going tomorrow or the next day, going to the school.’
‘I know,’ said Maud, ‘Miss Fairchild sent me a note. That is good, very good. I’ll—’
‘Nurse Linklater,’ bellowed Sister Law down the ward, ‘you are not a visitor now. Get up here at once.’
‘I have to go,’ she said, feeling her face turning bright red as she walked away from Alfred’s bed.
Sister Law scowled at her and then set about reminding her that now she was an actual nurse and legitimately able to use the sluice, then she would have to make sure that she remembered that she was there to work on the ward and therefore prioritize her duties over fraternizing socially with the patients. Then her beady eyes scanned the whole of the group and she said, ‘Right, you two, Sampson and Linklater, get down to the bottom of the ward, to the end bed. There’s a man who was admitted last night badly beaten. We don’t know his name and he’s been unconscious. Check on him, give him a bit of a wash if he needs it, and report back to me. Once he comes round we want to get him discharged as soon as possible. He’s been checked over, no bones broken, apart from his nose.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said Maud and Alice in unison, heading straight down the ward. Maud was so relieved that she hadn’t been partnered with Nancy and determined that she would stick right by Alice’s side.
Neither of them had been prepared for the man that they found lying on that bed. They had never in their lives been up close to any man that looked so beautiful. There he lay, still completely out of it, but like some prince from a storybook. He had a mop of black curly hair and yes, his face was bruised and swollen, but they could see the shape of his cheekbones and his nose was a bit crooked but it only seemed to add to his beauty, the slight imperfection making him more real and more desirable. His clothes were far from new, but he had on a dark-green jacket that had obviously been very splendid indeed in a past life.
‘Right, well,’ said Alice. ‘I suppose we’d best get him cleaned up.’
‘Now wait a minute,’ said Maud, starting to feel uncomfortable and not able to cope with seeing the naked flesh of such a handsome man just yet. ‘He looks clean enough, on his body. I think we should just give his hands and face a wipe and see if he rouses up and then we can report back to Sister.’
Maud could see the disappointment on Alice’s face.
‘You’re probably right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the water.’
Whilst she was away Maud crouched down beside the bed and spoke a few words to the man. ‘Hello, are you awake?’ But there was no response. She could smell the beer on him, but she could also smell something else, something musky and very male, something she had never smelt before on any man. And she had been very close to quite a few over the last couple of weeks. This was some kind of particular man smell and for some reason she really liked it. And then she saw that he had a small gold loop through his ear lobe. She’d never seen anything like that before.
It seemed all too soon before Alice was back with the water and handing it to Maud. ‘Sister wants me to move along to the man in the next bed and check his dressings. I’ll be just there if you need me.’
Maud nodded and immediately started to wash the man’s face. Then she gently dried him, patting his closed eyes, then his sore nose and then wiping his mouth. Then she took his hands each in turn and soaked them in the bowl of water. They were dirty with what looked like fresh muck from the streets, and the knuckles on both hands were skinned raw.
‘He’s been fighting all right,’ she said quietly to herself.
As Maud was just finishing she caught a piece of raw skin on a knuckle and it started bleeding, fresh red blood soaking into the towel. She was leaning down to have a closer look when the man shot straight up in bed and grabbed her by the front of her uniform, pulling it tight around her neck and swinging his other arm up as if to punch her.
Maud gave a scream – she couldn’t help it – and Alice was there instantly, grabbing the man’s arm, shouting, ‘No!’
There was a moment when Maud didn’t know which way it would go. He was holding her tight with one hand and they were face to face. She could feel his breath in her face and see his eyes, almost black, with dilated pupils. She hung there, suspended and completely helpless for what seemed like a long time but in fact was probably only seconds. Then Alice pulled on his arm more firmly. ‘Let her go,’ she instructed. And he released Maud and fell back on his pillow with a groan.
Maud reeled back and caught her breath, then immediately straightened the bodice of her uniform and made sure that her cap was set square on her head. She could still feel the strength of his fist and the stinging of the skin on her neck where he had held her, and she was breathless.
‘Are you all right?’ said Alice, her face full of concern. ‘Do you want me to take over here?’
‘No, no, I will be fine,’ said Maud, taking a deep breath. ‘You get on. Honestly, I will be fine.’
‘All right then,’ said Alice reluctantly, ‘but you shout for me straight away if this fella starts any rough stuff again.’
