Busman's Holiday, page 11
Bert’s broad, fair, Arumchester face had the amiable lines of every ambulance worker’s face I had ever seen. ‘The Doctor’s right, Miss! That wrist’ll be right as rain in no time ‒ and here we are then!’
A plump, youngish sister beckoned a staff nurse as she bustled to meet us. ‘The Orthopaedic Registrar is on his way, Dr. Loftus. Good evening, Miss Allendale ‒ what bad luck … you’re a niece, dear? No, thank you, dear ‒ just leave everything to us.’
They were all so efficient all I could do was stand aside and watch. Even Aunt Joey’s handbag and overnight case were taken for me by the staff nurse. As I followed Aunt Joey’s stretcher-trolley, for the first time I properly understood that mixture of overwhelming relief and personal helplessness so many patients’ relatives had mentioned to me. ‘It’s not that I’m not so grateful to see him ‒ or her ‒ in good hands, Nurse, but it’s just ‒ I don’t belong in this world.’
I was too worried over Aunt Joey to notice much, but I did register absently this was very much David’s world. He was wearing his elegant ‘casual’ off-duty clothes, but from his instinctive air directly he set foot in the hospital, he was in a professional dark suit and long white coat. Every member of the staff present treated him with the marked respect all hospital staff show their own consultants. The Orthopaedic Registrar was briefly delayed by a telephone call. He was short and fair and a year or so younger than David. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting like this, sir. Miss Allendale? Good evening. I’m Mr. Hall. Now, if I can just take a look ‒ yes ‒ yes ‒ we’ll just take a picture of that wrist, my dear, then fix it for you.’ He glanced my way. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit in our relatives’ waiting-room whilst we attend to your aunt?’
I bent over Aunt Joey. ‘See you, later. You’ll be fine,’ I whispered.
She patted my face with her good hand. ‘I know, dear, so don’t worry.’
I promised not to, knowing I could not keep that till I heard the result of the X-ray of her skull the registrar had not mentioned in front of me. But I had seen his expression turn professionally blank as he gently fingered the bump on her head and the quick glance he had exchanged with David.
The staff nurse touched my arm. ‘This way, dear.’
David caught my eye. ‘I’ll be along, shortly, Frances.’
‘Thank you.’ I tried not to go too reluctantly and momentarily, I just had to look back, remembering something so many patients had said to me: ‘It’s that moment when they wheel you away from your family, or your friends, Nurse ‒ and it’s all strange faces and strange uniforms and strange machines and you know it’s for the best ‒ but, suddenly, you feel so alone.’
The little procession was moving towards the X-ray room. David walked beside the trolley holding Aunt Joey’s right hand.
‘She’ll be all right,’ said the staff nurse kindly. ‘Nice for her having Dr. Loftus with her. He a nephew?’
‘A friend from his childhood.’
‘That’s nice! In here, dear. Just take a seat and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
I did not want to put her to the bother, but she vanished before I could say so.
I took the nearest chair as it was close enough to the door to overlook the length of the department’s corridor. This might not be my particular world, but it was a world I understood. From X-ray, Aunt Joey would be wheeled to the plaster theatre at the far end of the corridor. I had constantly misread David as a man, but training had taught me to read a diagnosis in a doctor’s face in seconds, no matter how blank his expression, how reassuring his smile. Directly ‘Dr. Loftus’ came out of that X-ray room, I would know the first vital answer to the query stabbing my heart.
A girl sitting near and feverishly knitting with twin blue and white balls of wool, caught my eye and smiled encouragingly. I smiled back, without properly taking in more than her knitting, and returned my gaze to the corridor. I did not see it either. The memory of Aunt Joey in a heap on the floor, my neglect at not making certain she knew about that window, and all I had been taught ‒ and seen ‒ or the grave complications that could follow on from a skull fracture, blotted out all else.
I tried to be sensible. I reminded myself of the merciful rarity of such complications and the number of patients with head injuries whom I had seen make excellent and uneventful recoveries. It was no use ‒ though being trained helped me feel much less strange in this strange hospital, having been trained to foresee and, if humanly possible avoid, the worst for my patients, I could not close my eyes to it for my beloved aunt I was now powerless to help.
Her broken wrist worried me, but in another way. It distressed me to think of the discomfort and inconvenience it would cause her in the next few weeks, but after, as David had said, the bone should heal as good as new.
The plaster theatre door opened. A porter pushed a young man in a wheel-chair with both legs in plaster down the corridor. The young man had a cheerful, tanned face and was carrying his crutches. The porter paused to let a masked nurse push a covered dressing trolley from one dressing-room to another.
‘Both legs?’ she exclaimed. ‘What were you up to?’
The young man chuckled. ‘You should ask that of the daft bloke as pulled up in front of my van without any warning, Nurse! Clear day, clear road and we both had our foot down ‒ and then he stops ‒ just like that! Never fancied doing things by halves, I don’t ‒ as you’d know if you’d seen what my van did to the back of his lorry! Know all he collected? Scratch on his forehead! Still, mustn’t grumble. Mr. Hall’s real pleased with my second X-rays and the wife fancies having me under her feet all day. Likes the bit of company, she says, so I best get my plasters dry and get back to her. Oy, driver!’
He tapped the back of his chair as the nurse moved on. ‘Home and don’t spare the horses!’
The porter trundled him on and my mind flashed back to that first evening when David had been too long without sleep and I had driven him with that little girl with the faulty heart-timer and her parents to Ulvercastle Infirmary. Only such a short time back, yet it now seemed as distant as the dark side of the moon. (And hadn’t they been in that X-ray room nearly as long? Why hadn’t they come out yet?)
Another young man in another wheel-chair came from the plaster room. That time the porter held the doors open long enough for the sickly-sweet smell of plaster to float down the corridor, and mingle with the very faint but omnipresent scents of anaesthetic and antiseptic lotion. I sniffed the old familiar atmosphere and thought I could be back at Martha’s. Those patients could have been our patients. The dapper, grizzled porter softly whistling through his teeth as he sorted notes in the lodge shared our Head Porter’s mannerism on that same job. A younger porter using one finger hooked through the back of an empty wheel-chair to twirl it into its correct position in the row by the entrance ‒ the nurses jog-trotting up and down the corridor ‒ the weary late evening walk and limp coats of a passing houseman and registrar ‒ were as familiar as my own name. I clung to that familiarity as a comfort. This was a hospital world I knew and trusted. This world would help Aunt Joey. That was what hospitals were for, as Sister PTS said long, long ago before my set worked in our first wards. ‘Never lose sight of this proud fact, Nurses, that in this country fundamentally our hospitals exist for one purpose only, to help the human race. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here.’
But where was David?
‘Feeling poorly, love?’
I did not realise I had closed my eyes till I opened them and found the girl with the knitting had moved into the next chair. ‘Sorry, no. Thanks. Just ‒ thinking.’
‘I know what it’s like!’ She knitted on at the double. ‘When our Dorothy was first took bad, I worried meself sick. But she’s getting on lovely now up the kiddies’ ward. Rheumatic fever, but that old Sister as is doing Sister Frampton’s holiday duty said this afternoon Dorothy’ll be home soon, so I got to get her sweater done! Waiting for my hubby now. Wrenched his shoulder ‒ but Mr. Hall said he could come home this evening if I cared to wait ‒ oh dear!’ She had dropped a stitch. ‘I keep doing that and you can’t with this pattern ‒ there!’ She righted the error. ‘Who you waiting on, love?’
I explained very briefly.
My companion nodded sympathetically. ‘Can’t talk till you know, can you?’ She had smooth, short red hair, rather heavy features, but a glorious skin and sweet mouth. ‘You live with your aunty?’
I hesitated, having been too worried to think ahead yet. I didn’t have to think, as my mind had made itself up. ‘No. I’m actually on holiday with her, but I’ll stay as long as she needs me. I’m sure my ‒ my boss’ll give me the leave I want.’
‘That’s nice ‒ oh, no! Just look!’ She held up her knitting. ‘I’ve gone all wrong the last inch ‒ I’ll have to undo and I’m shocking at undoing. Always go wrong when I pick up again. Oh!’ She was very upset. ‘It was all going so well!’
‘Can I help? I do know that pattern, and ‒’
‘Help to have something in your hands, love? I know so well! Ta!’ She thrust her work at me. ‘I don’t know why it is with my knitting. I’m fine, so long as I can keep going. Go wrong and I never get the pattern straight.’
It was a fairly complicated pattern but as I loved knitting I was able to correct her mistake, if not to silence the agonising what was causing David to delay like this? The pattern was repeated every ten lines. I was finishing the last line, when she suddenly exclaimed, ‘What’s this, then, Dr. Loftus? Having another of your busman’s holidays? Our Dorothy said this afternoon as you was off till Tuesday.’
Very quickly before answering her, David looked straight at me, shook his head slightly and smiled. Later, I hoped I had remembered to smile back, but in that overwhelming moment of relief I could not even see, much less think straight. I bent over the knitting until my eyes were dry enough for me to finish the line.
David finished his conversation with the red-headed girl. ‘Nice to have seen you, Mrs. Simmonds. I’m sorry about your husband’s shoulder, but I’m glad it’s not serious. You tell him to watch himself on that scooter! Ready, Frances?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ I returned the knitting. ‘You start now with the first line of the pattern.’
‘Ta, love ‒ you have done it well! I hope your aunty goes on all right.’
‘Thank you. I hope the same for Mr. Simmonds and Dorothy.’
She smiled. ‘Our Dorothy, Dr. Loftus’ll see to that. “My Doctor” she calls you, doesn’t she, Doctor?’
He was smiling. ‘I’m as proud of that as I’m sure you and Mr. Simmonds are of Dorothy. A fine child and a wonderful patient.’ He waved cheerfully, then as we moved down the corridor his expression so altered that my heart skipped a beat.
‘Aunt Joey hasn’t got a skull fracture?’
‘No. That bump is only superficial. Hall’s now setting her wrist under anaesthetic. He wants her to stay in overnight, as she’s not very young and had that touch of concussion. She should be able to go home in the morning.’
In contrast with my earlier fears this was such good news that I could not understand why he still looked so grim. ‘I’m so relieved! Can I see her, tonight?’
He hesitated. ‘How would you answer that, were Miss Allendale your patient?’
I sighed. ‘Sorry. I forgot. Of course, much better not disturb her after the anaesthetic. She needs quiet.’ I looked at the closed door of the plaster theatre. ‘In there now? I didn’t see you leave X-ray.’
‘We didn’t leave by this door. There’s another connecting X-ray with the plaster theatre. Miss Allendale’s been in there about ten minutes, but I was held up by Matron’s arrival on an unexpected round.’ He paused. ‘You do know our Matron, Miss Best, was formerly Assistant Matron at St. Martha’s?’
‘Yes. My Matron told me. Miss Best left after my first year.’
‘She remembers you. When ‒ er ‒ when I explained Miss Allendale’s domestic circumstances, just now, Miss Best kindly offered to contact your own Matron on your behalf, this evening. In my ‒’ he was choosing his words very carefully, ‘In my capacity as old family friend, I had to say I thought you would appreciate that very much. Miss Allendale’s going to need help certainly until her temporary plaster is replaced by the one in which she can use her left hand and arm in about ten days’ time. If possible, she should have help for around three weeks. She won’t require any degree of skilled nursing, but as Nicky’s vacation course is considered so vital for her forthcoming degree, I take it you’ll have to stay on. Or can one of your other aunts help out?’
‘I’m sure one would, if necessary, but, of course, I’ll stay.’ I understood his grimness now. In my concern for Aunt Joey, I had even forgotten last Thursday’s date. Very obviously, he had not, even if he had not let that affect his concern for an old friend. The sudden recollection of his ‘after this, I hope we don’t have to meet again …’ made me so acutely uncomfortable, that my thanks for his talking to Miss Best, sounded as ungracious as anything I had ever said to him. ‘I’ll ring my own Matron tonight.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’
We had been talking in the corridor and not unnaturally collecting discreetly interested glances from all the passing staff. I had to wait till we were outside. ‘Thanks, David. I’ll ‒ er ‒ say goodnight.’
‘Later.’ He was terse. ‘I’ve promised your aunt to see you home, and keep an eye on her household and car till she’s fitter. We’ll take the short cut through the hospital garden.’ He did not say more until we were back in our square. ‘You’d better ring your Matron straight away and as Miss Allendale’s ’phone isn’t yet connected, you can use mine.’ He gave me his latch-key and held open his front gate for me. ‘Use the extension in the hall. I’ll wait here.’
I obeyed, mechanically. My call took less than three minutes as Miss Best had just rung through to Martha’s. ‘I quite understand, Nurse Allendale,’ said my Matron. ‘I will write to confirm this. Keep me informed of Miss Allendale’s progress.’
I did not notice the large pale grey envelope on the hall floor until I was leaving. It was unstamped and addressed to David in a round, very feminine hand. His tense face relaxed slightly as I gave it to him. ‘Thanks. You’ll excuse me ‒?’ He smiled faintly as he read, then pocketed the letter. ‘Leave granted?’
‘Willingly.’
‘Good.’ But he frowned. ‘How long?’
I looked at the ground. ‘Th-three weeks.’
He took that in silence and we walked on to Aunt Joey’s gate. ‘I have to come in and look at that window,’ he said in a tone that left no room for doubts on that. ‘I have to.’
Poor Psmith’s sadly subdued welcome cracked a little ice. It re-froze and inches thicker when David slowly surveyed the newly painted room. The chest-of-drawers was where he had left it. The high bookcase, dressing-table and wardrobe where Charles had left them.
David looked up at the wet ceiling. ‘Furniture used as stepping-stones to paint that?’
‘Yes.’
He walked over to the window, stooped and retrieved from under the chest the warning label Nicky had written, and as I later learnt, propped against the sill. The draught from the open door had blown it off. ‘This label your idea, Frances?’
‘Well ‒ yes.’
He glanced at me without comment, took a piece of string and a penknife from his pocket, cut off some string, threaded it through the label then hung it securely on the catch.
I had to break the icy silence. ‘I feel so responsible ‒ I just don’t know what to say.’
‘I do,’ he retorted. ‘And as you’re supposed to be a trained nurse, if you worked in the same hospital as myself, I’d now say plenty! As you don’t, I’ll only say you’re the first Martha’s nurse I’ve met ‒ and I’ve worked with a fair number ‒ who has given me cause to wonder if a Martha’s training is as good as I’ve always thought. But there has to be the exception to prove every rule.’
He walked back to the window. ‘I’ll get a carpenter to fix this for Miss Allendale in the morning. And as I’ve promised her ‒’ he glanced over his shoulder, ‘anything else you want seen to?’
I just wanted to sink through the floor. ‘No, thanks. Thanks for all you’ve done.’ He faced me coldly. ‘I’m sorry my help was required in this context, but I’ll always be glad to help Miss Allendale. I’ll look in to see her early tomorrow afternoon ‒ that reminds me ‒ did she say anything to you about some meeting she was going to with Helen Vintner?’
‘Yes.’ I could have wept. Even this had been spoilt for Aunt Joey. ‘I’ll have to let Mrs. Vintner know.’
‘No need. I’ll tell her, now. I’m off to a belated supper with her father and herself. Helen’ll understand and take Miss Allendale along to next month’s meeting.’
‘Good,’ I said miserably. ‘Thanks.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll see myself out. ’Night.’
I did not intend watching him take the footpath that was a short cut to Helen’s home as well as to the hospital. But poor Psmith had crept back to the sitting-room window-seat and was patiently and anxiously watching for Aunt Joey’s return. I had to sit and comfort him. ‘Back soon, Psmith.’ I stroked him as David’s dark head vanished down the path. ‘Don’t fret, lovey.’
The silent house without Aunt Joey was a house with the heart missing. I dreaded the long, empty hours before Charles brought Nicky home. My heart was heavy for Aunt Joey and with the responsibility I felt for her accident. I didn’t blame David for his attitude. Any doctor or trained nurse would have said much the same. Yet it was curiously disturbing to think that had this happened before our ghastly date, almost certainly, David would have offered to stay and keep me company till Nicky got back. Till then, as he had said, he had been in real danger of loving me. That danger was now past.
