The New Sister Theatre Read online

  The New Sister Theatre

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2018

  This edition first published 2018 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1964

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Syda Productions / XiXinXing / PicturesFactoryUK (Shutterstock)

  izusek (istockphoto.com)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Wyndham Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  Nurse Errant

  Flowers from the Doctor

  The Young Doctors Downstairs

  A House for Sister Mary

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  Wyndham Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

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  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Preview: Also by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: Wyndham Books: Timeless bestsellers for today’s readers

  Preview: A Nurse’s Life by Jane Grant

  Preview: Doctors and Nurses 3-in-1 box set by Sheila Burns

  Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell

  Preview: A Doctor’s life by Robert Clifford

  Chapter One

  ONE QUIET THEATRE EVENING

  Sister Theatre came back into the theatre proper just after seven that evening. I was sitting on a high stool drying and polishing the great stack of instruments spread on the top shelf of the glass trolley in front of me.

  ‘My poor Nurse Lindsay! Still at it?’

  ‘And one more lot still to come out of the sterilizer, Sister.’ I eased my turban a little farther back on my head. ‘Those men must have used every single instrument in the General Surgical Unit Theatre to-day.’

  ‘I certainly got that impression handing them out.’ She looked round the quiet theatre, at the empty table, then up at the silent gallery. ‘It’s been one of those days. In a way I’m glad. I’ve had no time for “am-I-really-doing-the-right-thing?” thoughts. But how I am going to miss you all!’

  She had been in charge of that theatre for the past ten years. To-day was her last day. Next week she was flying out to West Africa to take over the theatre block in a new teaching hospital. I had been one of her theatre staff nurses for two years; senior staff nurse for the last eleven months.

  I said, ‘And how the Unit is going to miss you, Sister! This theatre just won’t be the same after to-day.’

  ‘That’s probably a very good thing, my dear,’ she replied briskly. ‘We’ve all been jogging along in a nice, pleasant rut. It’s time for a jolt. And having a new Sister Theatre from St Martha’s, across the river, will have everyone on their toes. You nurses will want to show Miss Davis that no theatre nurses are as efficient as those trained here in St Barnabas’ Hospital. Miss Davis will be just as determined to uphold her training school. It should all work out very well’ ‒ she smiled at my expression ‒ ‘once a few corners are rubbed off. As senior staff nurse, getting busy with tactful sandpaper will be your job.’

  We had become great friends in the last eleven months. So I was honest. ‘Thanks very much, Sister. I can hardly wait.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too bad, Lindsay. Miss Davis is a pleasant woman and an experienced Sister Theatre. Our Staff Nurse Brown may be a shade tricky at first, as she hasn’t attempted to hide her resentment at the job being given to a non-Barny’s nurse. She’ll just have to get over that. The fact remains that, with the exception of yourself, none of my other staff nurses have had sufficient experience, or ‒ in my view ‒ are temperamentally suited to taking charge of the busiest theatre in this hospital.’ She took a pair of sponge-holding forceps off my trolley, tested their grip reflectively. ‘I must admit that chip on Brown’s shoulder is very much larger than I had anticipated. I always wanted you to succeed me, but I am beginning to feel it’s just as well our Mr de Winter made you a far more attractive offer first. You could manage the work and administration perfectly, but Brown’s being only one year your junior would have presented you with no small problem in her present frame of mind.’ She put down the forceps. ‘It’s a very good thing that you are shortly to become Mrs Senior Surgical Officer. Incidentally, what news of that flat?’

  ‘We can have it from February. It’s pretty expensive. Joe’s brooding on it.’

  ‘He’ll come up with the answer you want. And I’m sure you’ll be very happy together. I mean that, Lindsay. Your clever young man has worked so hard during his time as S.S.O. He needs someone like you to look after him and stop him working himself to death. Also,’ she added slowly, ‘someone who will always understand how much his work means to him, and how much he’ll mean to Barny’s. I have not said this before, because it is not the kind of thing a theatre sister should say about one specific surgeon, and I don’t believe in using the word “brilliant” idly. I will use it now. I consider your young man the most brilliant young surgeon I have ever had in this theatre. I think he will be one of the great names of modern surgery, and that one day I shall say with tremendous pride, “I worked with Mr de Winter of Barny’s.” And after all that I must get off to supper or I shall be very late, and then you will be very late, and Sister Dining-room will be very cross!’

  ‘That would never do, Sister. And, Sister ‒ thanks.’

  She did not answer. She just smiled and took herself off.

  Alone again, I let myself think of my future with Joe. It was all so perfect that at times it scared me. My engagement ring ‒ as always on duty ‒ was pinned inside the big pocket of my uniform dress. I fingered it now through my theatre gown. It was real enough.

  A theatre junior pushed in an empty metal trolley. ‘Sister asked me to tell you Nurse Brown is doing the autoclaving, and she has sent all the other nurses to supper. I am to go later.’

  ‘Right. How’s your tidying going?’

&n
bsp; ‘I’ve finished the surgeons’ room, glove-room, linen-room, tin-room’ ‒ she ticked them off on her fingers ‒ ‘and Sister’s duty-room. I thought I’d do the gallery next.’

  ‘How about the anaesthetic-room? That’s more important.’ She looked worried. ‘Dr. Delaney’s in there writing notes. I didn’t like to disturb him.’

  She was in her second year of training and third week in the theatre. Mark Delaney, the Resident Anaesthetist to our Unit, had registrar status and wore a long white coat. Our house physicians and house surgeons wore short whites. At her stage I had been nervous of the short coats, scared stiff by the long.

  ‘I’m afraid that room has to be done. Dr Delaney won’t mind being asked to move into the surgeons’ room. But as I do want to ask him something about that last man we did this evening, could you ask him to spare me a moment? That’ll get him out, and you can nip in and tidy fast.’

  She beamed. ‘I will, Nurse. Thanks.’ She spun herself and trolley round, and into Sandra Brown, who had come in behind her.

  ‘When are you going to learn to look where you are going, Nurse?’ snapped Sandra. ‘You’re not pushing a luggage trolley round Waterloo Station! This is an operating theatre!’

  The junior apologized nervously and scuttled off. Sandra turned her scowl on me. ‘I can see you think I was too tough on that girl, Maggie. But the juniors are supposed to be getting a training. Have you forgotten how we got pushed around?’

  ‘No. Nor what we called the people who pushed us around. Come down off that soap-box, honey. She’s only in her third week. You needn’t take her too seriously.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ she retorted. ‘You never take things seriously ‒ perhaps because you’ve never had to. You’ve always been dead lucky ‒ had everything handed you on a plate. Like ‒ like those two girls directly above you getting married in the same month, and Matron making you an official theatre staff nurse in your fourth year! And then you just shot up to senior because Angie Forbes decided to take that job in Australia in the middle of her two years on the top! I’ve had it the hard way.’

  ‘You’ll be senior when I leave. Only two months.’

  She shrugged. ‘This creature from Martha’s will probably have her own ideas on that.’

  I had been six years in the hospital, known Sandra for five of them. We had worked together several times during our training, and although we never had, and never would, become friends, we had got along fairly well on the whole, and very well when there was a crisis on. She was magnificent at rising to surgical occasions, but even in a constantly busy theatre life was not one long crisis. We had days, sometimes weeks, of routine operations, when the theatre ran like a well-oiled machine, and there were regular quiet intervals which allowed us to get on with the vast amount of cleaning, testing, restocking, and resterilizing that had to be done whether we were quiet or not. In general it was infinitely preferable to be able to do all that in peace ‒ unless Sandra happened to be on duty.

  It was during those periods that her conviction that she was being put upon, unloved, and unappreciated made her the one difficult member of the present theatre staff. If she had not had such a talent for theatre work Sister Theatre would probably have had her moved months ago.

  I murmured some soothing bromide about the new sister from Martha’s being certain to appreciate a good theatre girl when she saw one, and changed the subject. ‘Is the autoclave’s safety-valve still whistling? It nearly burst my ear-drums last night when I was doing the gloves.’

  An autoclave is a machine that sterilizes articles by subjecting them under pressure to intense heat. In common with the five other surgical units in our theatre block, we had our own autoclave, and did all our own sterilizing.

  ‘It had a bit of wool or something jammed in the works. Sister was going to send down for a repairs-and-works man this morning while you were off. Mark Delaney came in and fixed it. He said it had upset you.’ She folded her arms, leaned against the sink. ‘Of course, he couldn’t have that.’

  ‘Nonsense, Sandra! You know Mark’s passion for machines. He adores taking things to pieces and putting than together again.’ Then, as her scowl had returned, and the one person who could bring her to explosion-point in record time was our R.A., I switched the conversation again to what I thought was the safe subject of the next day’s operations.

  I thought wrong.

  ‘No point in our discussing who’ll do what, Maggie. The new creature will be here by then. Incidentally, why hasn’t she arrived? I thought she was supposed to be coming on this evening for an hour. We run out of red carpet?’

  ‘Could be. Or she could have missed a train. She was due in at five. Sister didn’t know why she hadn’t turned up. If the Office do they haven’t told us.’

  ‘It’s a wonder Matron hasn’t gone to the station to meet her! It really is too bad. Shoving some ghastly woman from Martha’s in over our heads! What’s so wrong with Barny’s girls?’

  We had been through all this so many times that I left her to chat it out with herself as she drifted aimlessly round the theatre.

  Theatre clothes suited Sandra Brown. She was tall, very slim, had good eyes and excellent legs ‒ two useful assets for any theatre girl, since for hours of any working day they are the only two visible portions of the anatomy. She was more striking than pretty ‒ her features were too strong ‒ but occasionally, when she smiled, she could look very attractive.

  ‘If you’ll forgive my intruding, ladies,’ drawled Mark Delaney from the door, ‘there’s a fine scent of cooking rubber out there in the corridor.’ He held open one of the thick, soundproof swing-doors as Sandra shot past him, then let it swing and strolled over to me. ‘An over-sensitive olfactory nerve can be highly convenient to a man on occasions.’

  ‘That was a false alarm? Mark!’

  ‘Now, did I give any alarm? Did I not merely announce there was a scent of cooking rubber out there? And will you tell me, Maggie, my love, when does an autoclave packed with glove-tins not give out with its inner secrets?’ He draped his large body not ungracefully on a high stool. ‘I’ve already had to listen to the sultry Sandra doing her nut about this new Sister Theatre twice this evening. If I’ve to hear it again I’ll go crazy. But as that cute little doll with the big blue eyes said you wanted me, here I am. I am all yours. But you, alas, are not mine! Tell me, darling, what has Joe de Winter got that I lack?’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing. More sense than to tease Sandra. She doesn’t enjoy it.’ He grinned unrepentantly, and, knowing him so well, I gave up. ‘That cute little doll with the big blue eyes wanted to tidy the anaesthetic-room. You’re a Big Doctor to her, and she didn’t dare throw you out. As I have to get the log straight, and am not clear what you used for our last man, I thought we might kill the two birds with one stone.’

  ‘So the little thing thinks I’m a Big Doctor, eh?’ He laughed. ‘She’ll learn, the darling girl that she is. Just a flipping anaesthetist. The lowest form of life in the theatre.’ He paused reflectively. ‘She’s got good legs too.’

  ‘Mark dear, you are nothing but a wolf in a white coat. Date that junior later if you like ‒ but I’ll warn you she has a boy-friend amongst this present set of dressers. Right now, let’s get back to business.’

  ‘A wolf, am I? How right you are, Maggie! Now, about that chap …’ He produced an envelope. ‘I’ll write the details down for you.’

  I was very fond of Mark Delaney. He was a good anaesthetist and a nice man. We had been friends since he was the student with the broken ankle in the third bed on the left in Albert Ward and I was a harassed first-year in my first ward. He had been unofficially engaged to a physiotherapist student when he broke his ankle on the rugger field. When he left Albert he was unofficially engaged to the Albert fourth-year nurse. Both girls had been tall, curvy blondes. Since then he had been involved with a whole series of similar blondes, and twice reached the stage of giving them rings. Those engagements had later
broken off. Mark had remained on the best of terms with his two ex-fiancées and all his ex-girl-friends.

  Back in Albert he had asked my advice about that fourth-year. He had gone on asking my advice about his love-life until I got engaged to Joe. Joe knew all about our old friendship, and once admitted to having been very worried by it. I had explained that never in a hundred years would anyone need to worry about Mark and me.

  ‘We just like each other. No more. He only dates me when one of his blondes lets him down. His murmuring sweet nothings doesn’t mean a thing. He can no more help doing that to any female than he can help breathing.’

  That was true. Mark was great fun, providing he was not taken seriously. Sandra, I had lately suspected, did that in more ways than one. That was why she was so violently anti-him on the surface. I did not yet know whether she herself realized why he made her so edgy. She was one of those people who spent so much time analysing other people’s motives that she had none left for looking under her own personal stones. I was quite sure Mark was well aware of the effect he had on her and why, without ever discussing that specific subject with him. I had not mentioned it to Joe, either. I had long reassured him about Mark, but there was a limit to how much the nicest man wanted to hear about his fiancée’s other male friends.

  Mark heaved himself off the stool. ‘Time I got me down to Casualty. I am on medical call this night. Who knows? The customers may be queueing up to see me.’

  ‘If they were that walkie-talkie in your pocket would be blasting off like the autoclave last night.’

  ‘So it would.’ He took out his little receiver. ‘An electronic slave-driver, no less.’ He put it away, flexed his huge shoulders. ‘Old Achilles Delaney is on his way to hold the hospital on his manly shoulders.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you mean Atlas?’ The light being switched on in the gallery made me look up. The junior was above, bustling round the benches, straightening the hard cushions. ‘Wasn’t Achilles the man with the heel?’

  ‘So he was. Blame my subconscious, darling. Guilt will out.’