The New Sister Theatre Read online

  Sandra appeared in the gallery and looked down on us. The gallery was cut off from the theatre by a glass wall, connected during cases by an intercom. It should now be switched off ‒ one of the junior’s jobs at the end of the day’s list. The junior had gone up there earlier, when the watching students filed out, but as I had not yet had time to check her tidying there was a chance she had forgotten, and it might still be switched on. The obvious course of calling up to find out, and then telling her to turn it off if it were on, was out, as Sandra was there. With her passion for getting things wrong, and if possible taking umbrage, to do that now would be to convince her I had some secret criticism to make of her to Mark.

  I caught his eye to warn him we probably had an audience who could listen as well as observe.

  His smile said plainly, ‘Let us not disappoint ’em.’ His voice said brokenly, ‘You don’t think me a heel? Honest to God, have I not been right the times I’ve told you you’re the only girl I’ve ever really loved, with you understanding me the way you do.’ As ever when his tongue was in his cheek he produced a superb brogue. ‘I have to leave you now ‒ I give you this.’ He handed me the old envelope with the anaesthetic details I needed for the theatre log-book. ‘From my heart. It’ll tell you all you have to know.’

  I was nearly choking with suppressed laughter. I had to suppress it. The junior had vanished, but Sandra was still up there. If I laughed, and the intercom was off, she would be sure I was laughing at her. ‘Thanks, Mark. That’s big of you.’

  He blew me a kiss and ambled out. The light in the gallery went out a few seconds later.

  The junior came into the theatre about five minutes afterwards. ‘The Assistant Matron would like to speak to you on the telephone, Nurse Lindsay.’

  The Assistant Matron sounded perturbed, but did not tell me why. ‘Sister Theatre is with Matron and will be late back. I have asked Sister Dining-room to keep your supper hot. Will you carry on in charge of the theatre for the rest of the evening?’

  ‘Yes, Sister. Thank you.’

  Sandra joined me as I rang off. I handed on the message.

  She sniffed. ‘Reception committee for the new creature, no doubt,’ she remarked, as the telephone rang again.

  ‘Casualty switchboard here, Nurse. You got the S.S.O. there?’

  ‘Sorry, Charlie, no. He hasn’t been back since the list ended. Why?’ I asked. ‘Case for us?’

  Charlie said as to that he couldn’t say as he wasn’t sticking his neck out, he wasn’t, not after twenty-one years in Casualty. ‘But I got a gent from St Martha’s Hospital on the line for the S.S.O., Nurse Lindsay ‒ sounds real anxious ‒ but I can’t contact that Mr de Winter nowhere. Rung all round I have, and buzzed his signal time and time again, without getting no answer. Reckon he must have a fault in it, like.’

  ‘He must. He’s probably talking somewhere between wards. You’ve tried the dining-room and his rooms?’

  ‘Tried the lot, Nurse. He has to be somewhere in the hospital, seeing he’s not left word he’ll be out and I’ve never known that Mr de Winter to go out without leaving word, nor switch off his receiver long as he’s been here. But where he’s got to beats me.’

  It did me. I had never heard of Joe vanishing either. ‘How about the terrace? He sometimes goes out for air.’

  ‘That’s an idea, Nurse. Ta. Much obliged.’

  Sandra had been listening. ‘So Charlie’s joined the hue and cry for the S.S.O.?’

  ‘Is there a hue and cry on? How did you know?’

  ‘Someone from Martha’s wanted him a little while ago.’ She looked down her nose. ‘Some female. That’s why I was up in the gallery. I thought he might be in the theatre.’

  My mind was on Joe. It was so unlike him to be out of touch. ‘Why go up to the gallery?’ I asked absently.

  ‘And have Mark Delaney think up another excuse to get rid of me so that he could have you to himself? No, thank you. I preferred to use my eyes.’

  It had been a long day; my feet were aching; I was very sorry Sister was leaving; rather bothered about Joe. ‘Sandra, for heaven’s sake relax. You know quite well Mark Delaney nourishes no passion for me. He just likes playing the fool.’

  She turned scarlet. ‘I know a whole lot more than you may think, Maggie! I can see you imagine you are being very clever the way you handle the men in your life ‒ being engaged to one and keeping the other on a string. I just happen to know you are not quite so clever after all. You see, I was at school with her. If you’re interested, her name’s Frances Durant!’

  The ill-suppressed violence of her outburst disconcerted me far more than what she had actually said. This Frances Durant was probably Mark’s latest heart-throb.

  I said, ‘I don’t think I’m being at all clever standing here nattering with a mass of instruments still to finish. You ready to go to supper?’

  She had enough sense to take the hint and disappear.

  Instrument-drying was a soothing occupation. After a little time at it I decided Sandra was just het-up over the new Sister and Mark, had been ready to explode all evening, and it was pure chance that I happened to be around when she exploded. The name Frances Durant floated through my mind. Nice name. I wondered if she was a curvy blonde.

  ‘Nurse Lindsay, I’m most awfully sorry …’ The junior was doing her jack-in-the-box act again, and this time holding out a kidney dish filled with instruments. ‘These were in the anaesthetic-room. I forgot to give them to you.’

  ‘Oh, no! I’ve just turned off the instrument-sterilizer. Never mind. Let’s have ’em.’

  ‘Thanks, Nurse. Er ‒ is it all right now I’ve tidied all round if I go and write up those notes Sister gave us this evening? If I leave them until I get off,’ she added honestly, ‘I’ll forget.’

  ‘Then get them down. Do them in the duty-room, and you can listen for the telephone at the same time.’

  She removed herself. I rinsed the instruments she had brought, put them in a large kidney dish and the dish into the smallest instrument-sterilizer, and turned up the heat. When the water began to bubble I closed the lid, adjusted the heat, then set a large wooden-framed egg-timer on the closed lid. The first grains of sand began to trickle through the narrow waist.

  ‘This theatre,’ said Joe’s voice just behind me, ‘seems the one quiet spot in the entire hospital.’

  I turned, and a wave of sheer joy at seeing him swept over me. He never had to do or say anything as far as I was concerned. He just had to be there. From the way he often looked at me I knew he felt the same.

  He was not looking at me now. He was watching the egg-timer.

  ‘Joe. Casualty wants you.’

  ‘I know. It was only to take an outside call. Wasn’t important. I was on the terrace. My receiver had a short. Mark Delaney’s just fixed it for me in Cas.’

  I smiled. ‘Handy man to have around, our Mark. If he ever had to chuck medicine he could always get a job with our repairs-and-works boys.’

  He looked up. ‘Why the devil should he have to chuck medicine?’

  ‘No reason. I was just waffling.’

  He glanced round. ‘Sister back from the Office?’

  ‘So you know she’s there? No. Want her?’

  ‘No. You. I have to talk to you, Maggie’ ‒ he hesitated ‒ ‘about us.’

  ‘Us?’ I echoed, surprised. He was generally so careful to avoid our private affairs on duty. He said that was the only way he could work with me. ‘Joe. Something wrong?’

  He did not answer. His attention was back on the egg-timer. I watched him with sudden anxiety. He looked more tired than I ever remembered. I would have thought I knew every line of his intelligent, sensitive face by heart. There were now new lines at the corners of his eyes, and shadows beneath ‒ shadows nearly as dark as his hair, and that was as close to black as any Anglo-Saxon’s can get.

  He did not give the impression of being a huge man like Mark, even though he was nearly as tall. In a white coat he loo
ked long and thin. In a theatre T-shirt he was not so much thin as without an ounce of extra weight. Physically he was strong as they come. Good surgeons need stamina. He was a good and apparently tireless surgeon. He had not had one day off through sickness all his years at Barny’s, and the only ailment I had ever know him admit was an occasional touch of rheumatism.

  ‘Joe, is something wrong?’ I repeated. ‘You look so tired.’

  ‘I’m all right. What’s in the sterilizer? Sharps?’

  ‘No, an assortment of forks.’

  ‘Then another run through won’t hurt.’ He flicked the glass over and faced me. He was not wearing a mask, but he might well have been. ‘Yes. Something is wrong, Maggie. Do you know why Sister Theatre is with Matron?’

  ‘No. The Ass Mat didn’t say.’

  He told me Miss Davis, the new Sister Theatre, would not now be arriving, as the taxi in which she had driven to a railway station that morning had been in a collision with a lorry. ‘The poor woman has a fractured base and right clavicle. She was concussed, and didn’t come round until late this afternoon.’

  ‘Joe, how wretched for her! I am sorry. Was that why Martha’s wanted you? Did they hear first?’

  ‘You know Martha’s rang me?’ he asked curtly. ‘No. I told them. Miss Davis is up north. The S.M.O. at the hospital that admitted her rang our Matron at her ‒ Miss Davis’s ‒ request after she came round.’ He put his hands in his coat-pockets. ‘Matron told me. She’s going to ask you to take the job, Maggie. You’ll have to do it.’

  ‘Must I? I don’t want it.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll have any alternative. Our Sister Theatre’s plans are all fixed. She can’t stay. This theatre has to have a Sister. Matron can’t produce someone with the right qualifications and experience’ ‒ he snapped his fingers ‒ ‘just like that. You’ll do nicely. And as you know, she would have offered you the job originally if we hadn’t fixed up our future.’

  ‘That’s true.’ I thought it over. ‘Perhaps I could cope for the next two months. That’ll give time to see if Miss Davis is going to be well enough to come on to us later, or for Matron to find someone else. That poor woman! What a thing to happen on your way to a new job!’

  ‘A tough break. It’s too early for any prognosis, but from what Matron told me I doubt she’ll be fit to work anywhere inside of six months.’ He paused. ‘Maggie, Matron wants you to take this job for at least six months.’

  ‘Six? Joe! She can’t ask me that! I’ll help out ‒ but we’ve got everything all fixed up.’

  He said very slowly, ‘We had. However, I’m afraid’ ‒ and he seemed to have to drag the words out of him ‒ ‘I feel the time has come to do a little unfixing. That’s why I wanted to see you now. Before Matron sends for you.’

  The theatre was very quiet. In the quiet the gentle bubbling of the sterilizer was ominous as distant thunder.

  We looked at each other in silence for perhaps ten seconds. Or hours. Or years. I could not have said which. Possibly pride should have made me realize immediately what he was trying to say and give him the right civilized answer. I loved him too much to waste time on pride. Also I knew him too well. We had not just seen each other in our free time, as most engaged couples do; we had worked together daily for over two years ‒ in the very early mornings before breakfast, in the late evenings when emergencies came in at the end of long, heavy days, in the cold darkness of the small hours when we had been called up, in the colder greyness of countless dawns.

  Anyone could keep up an act for a limited period. No one could act successfully through all the hours he and I had spent together. He had loved me. Nothing would persuade me to believe otherwise. I was too shattered to understand what had made him say what he had just said. My judgement registered the blunt fact that he must have fallen out of love with me. Yet every instinct I possessed was insisting that for the first time he was now putting on an act with me.

  I broke the silence. ‘Joe dear, what is all this about? I just don’t understand.’

  His face tightened as if I had hit him. ‘Isn’t that obvious’ He had to break off as the little receiver clipped to his breast-pocket suddenly buzzed like an infuriated bee. He reached for it instinctively, pressed the switch.

  ‘Senior Surgical Officer wanted in Casualty at once, please,’ chanted Charlie’s voice thinly. ‘Acute abdomen. Male. Age forty-eight. Senior Casualty Officer suspects perforation. I will repeat: Senior Surgical Officer ‒ ’ and Joe switched off.

  Training made me say calmly, ‘You’ll have to go.’

  ‘Yes.’ His face was nearly as white as his coat. ‘We’ll have to finish this conversation later. I’ll have to look at that man. May have to operate.’

  ‘The emergency setting is ready. I’ll turn up the steam. We can always turn it off later.’

  ‘Right. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve seen him.’ He walked towards the double doors. I suddenly thought: that’s how he’ll walk when he’s old.

  ‘Maggie.’ He turned back momentarily. ‘I’m sorry this had to happen.’

  I said, ‘I don’t yet know what’s happened or happening, Joe. But I’m sorry too.’

  The nurses-in-training returning from supper came in as he went out.

  ‘Trouble brewing, Nurse Lindsay?’ asked the senior, Nurse Bachelor, cheerfully. ‘That why Mr de Winter’s just gone down our corridor as if jet-propelled?’

  ‘Possibly.’ I explained briefly. ‘Will you ring the students’ room and warn our four dressers to stand by? Both our porters are down in Cas. They’ll bring themselves back, if necessary.’

  Ten minutes later Mark rang from Casualty with the confirmation. ‘Up in twenty minutes to you. Then on to Henry Carter Ward. A rip-roaring perforation.’

  ‘Right.’ I reached for the memo pad. ‘Name and so on, please?’

  ‘Peter Arthur Worth. Age forty-eight. 30 Water Street, S.W.3. Religion, C. of E.’

  ‘Hang on …’ I wrote fast. ‘Next of kin known?’

  ‘Very well, to our Maternity Unit. Mrs Sylvia Worth ‒ his missus ‒ produced twin boys this morning. They’ve three more kids, all boys, and the lot under seven. This chap was looking after the trio, and that’s why he delayed calling in their family doctor. They’re Australians. Haven’t been over here long. No handy relatives, but the neighbours have rallied.’

  ‘Good. How is he?’

  ‘Dodgy,’ said Mark. ‘With luck ‒ he’ll get away with it.’ Sandra came in quickly as I put down the receiver.

  ‘Case?’

  ‘Yes.’ I gave the details, asked if she had heard about Miss Davis.’

  ‘It was all round the dining-room.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘Matron’ll have to promote you.’

  I said wearily, ‘Then you’ll be promoted too. Now, about this case. Bachelor can “dirty”. I’ll take it. Will you keep an eye on the inside and out? As the man has already perforated, we may run into snags. Will you see the juniors get off on time? Home Sister will go up the wall if they are as late off as they were last night.’

  ‘All right.’ There was an emergency on, so she shed her prickles like an old coat. ‘What about your supper?’

  ‘They’ll keep it hot. I’m not hungry.’

  She hurried off to change back into theatre clothes. I returned to the theatre proper to carry on with the necessary preparations.

  The operation, though an emergency, was a routine emergency. A few minutes after the recalled dressers (senior students working temporarily in the theatre) had taken their places Joe came in with his registrar and houseman. As he walked over to his sink he gave me the brief nod he always gave the instrument nurse when entering the, theatre for any operation. At the sink he glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘This man Worth is heavily built. I may need our special skin-retractors, Nurse Lindsay.’

  ‘They are ready, Mr de Winter.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He concentrated on lathering soap high over his elbows.

  He
looked and sounded so normal, everything else was so normal, that for a fleeting moment I let myself wonder if that interrupted conversation really had taken place. Then the double doors opened. The two porters, Sandra, a ward nurse, and Mark wheeled in the unconscious man on the stretcher trolley, and also the attached anaesthetic machine.

  Joe got into his gown, waited while Bachelor tied the back tapes, then eased on his gloves.

  ‘All well, Mark?’ He checked to see if his assistants were ready. ‘Right. Let’s get started.’

  A very short while later a porter, disguised behind mask and gown, came in with a note. Bachelor took it from him, glanced at it, then came to my elbow and held it out for me to read. It was a message for Joe. My job included handing on all messages for any surgeons during an operation.

  ‘Casualty are on the telephone for you, Mr de Winter. They have a Dr Durant from St Martha’s Hospital down there asking about a medical case which may have been left in your car. Dr Durant apologizes for disturbing you while operating, but requires that case urgently.’

  He did not look up. ‘If it is in my car it’ll be on the back seat. My keys are in the inside pocket of my jacket hanging in the surgeons’ room. Could you ask someone to look and send them down, please? Oh, yes ‒ and my apologies to Dr Durant for her having to come back.’

  I had already caught Sandra’s eye to ask her to deal with this. I had given the message, heard most of the answer without taking any of it in. It seemed unexceptional. The senior residents of most London hospitals were frequently in touch with each other about rare cases, the need for a special serum or drug, or the shortage of beds. Then that ‘her’ and the sudden blatant triumph in Sandra’s eyes made me feel exactly as if I had had an electric shock.

  I had to ignore it. Later it could and would register. Not now. I caught Bachelor’s eye and nodded at the twin bowls of sterile saline in the stand by my instrument trolley. The saline was growing lukewarm. It was time for their first change.

  Chapter Two

  A NEW SISTER THEATRE

  The theatre was warm, and grew warmer. The dressers shifted from one foot to the other surreptitiously, flexed their shoulders, and as they were only watching and not assisting (as occasionally happened) edged a little farther away from the powerful lights.