The Secret Armour Read online

  I thought I must have missed something. ‘What “look”, Sister?’

  She sighed. She seemed much older to-night. ‘It’s just a look, Nurse. Something you can only learn by experience. And you’ll learn it in time. And when a patient has not got that look, whatever the charts may say, they don’t die. It’s as simple as that.’ She smiled. ‘I feel very much happier about him now I’ve seen him,’ she said, and left me.

  I wished I could feel the same. I went back to his bedside and gazed at the bell, my one contact with the outside world. Then I forced myself to look again at the face of the man in the bed. I took his temperature, his pulse, counted his respirations. I checked on the condition of the plaster drying on his injured leg.

  Sister had told me to do nothing that might worry him ‒ not to attempt to move him unless he became restless, to sit, wait, watch, record. She did not add, and worry. She could have. I did all she told me, with my own addition. I had seldom seen anyone as ill as he was. I had never before been alone with a patient who was officially dangerously ill.

  I had been sitting there for an hour, when he opened his eyes. ‘Where?’ he whispered thickly.

  ‘You are in hospital, Mr Thosset,’ I said. ‘You had a bit of an accident in your car. I’m a nurse.’

  His eyes focused anxiously on my face. ‘You are staying here?’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes.’ I smiled to show that everything was fine and under control. ‘I’ll be here all night.’

  He said, more clearly, ‘I’ve never been in hospital before,’ then he added slowly, ‘I suppose I’m not going to die?’

  Sister had said she thought he would come round soon and she thought he would be all right. I should have said what I said even if she had not told me those things, but I was glad of her backing.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, and went back to sleep again.

  I reached for his bell, cautiously. Sister had said I was to ring immediately he was conscious. The Judson fourth-year nurse came into the room at once, and I whispered my news. ‘I’ll ring Sister,’ she said, and left me alone again.

  Night Sister and Dr Allingham, the Medical Registrar, came in together ten minutes later. As they went out, Sister said, ‘All right, Nurse Howard?’

  I said, ‘Yes, Sister.’

  The hospital clock was striking midnight when the door opened again. A man I did not recognize came in. He wore a leather-patched tweed jacket and the ubiquitous corduroy trousers that all Benedict’s students wore. He nodded to me unsmilingly, and came over to the bed. He said nothing.

  He stared down at my man for a few moments, then collected the notes from the bed-table, and sat down on the locker-seat beside my chair. It was the only spot in the room in which there was sufficient light with which to write. He wrote for several minutes, reached out a hand for the chart, mouthed, ‘Thanks,’ and wrote some more. After a time he looked up, caught my eye, and jerked his thumb upwards. I nodded back.

  The hours moved slowly; the student stayed on the locker-seat; when Thosset woke again he helped me lift him, holding Thosset’s head and shoulders carefully in his arms as I turned his pillows, then gave the sick man a glucose drink. This happened a couple of times or so, and in the intervals we sat in silence. After the first half-hour I forgot the student was there as he leant back against the locker. He seemed to fade into the shadows that lay beyond the red ring of light.

  When Sister and Dr Allingham came back at 2 a.m I began to worry in case the student should not be there. It was nothing to do with me, but I knew enough of hospital life to know that reason never excuses any nurse from culpability. I was relieved to see they ignored him as they did me.

  When Dr Allingham had finished with Thosset, Sister said, ‘Come outside a minute, Nurse.’ Dr Allingham closed the door behind us. ‘I’m sorry I have not been able to relieve you earlier for your meal, Nurse Howard,’ she said, ‘but as I told you, I’m desperately short of nurses to-night. Mr Hartigan can stay in there while you eat in the duty-room. The kitchen have sent up your tray. Then you can take over again for the rest of the night.’

  Dr Allingham said, ‘I expect Hartigan will be glad to get to bed. He was up most of last night in Luke.’

  Mr Hartigan apparently liked night work. He did not choose to go to bed when I returned from my belated supper, but waited until the senior night nurse came in at a quarter to four.

  ‘Nip into the kitchen for a quick cup of tea, Nurse Howard. I’ll stay here.’ Then she noticed the student, and raised her eyebrows. He tapped his chest languidly.

  ‘Thanks, George,’ she murmured. ‘Come along, Nurse.’ We went along to the kitchen together. ‘Help yourself to tea,’ she said, sitting down at the table. ‘I haven’t started my report yet, so I’ll press on and drink later. Thank God, George Hartigan’s a keen type!’

  ‘Is he a Judson clerk, Nurse?’

  She said no. ‘His finals are due any minute, and he’s nuts on medicine. Damned useful for the medical wards. As good as an extra fourth-year.’

  Thosset was sleeping properly when I got back, and the student was waiting in the open doorway.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

  He spoke to me for the first time that night. Until now all our conversations had been in mime. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said. ‘I’m off. Good night, Nurse.’ His rather long, thin face lightened, he pushed back his fair hair, and smiled. ‘You want to watch out in the morning, Nurse, when you get on that bike of yours or there’s no telling what damage you mightn’t do the student body.’

  Thosset slept on. I took his pulse again; it was strong and more regular now, his breathing quiet. I sat back in my chair, my hands in my lap, and wondered for the first time since I had arrived in Judson how David Corford was getting on ‒ whether he had missed me at all, whether he knew I had only gone for one night. I thought about his leg ‒ I hoped it was more comfortable, and that he was sleeping well. I glanced down at my hands and nearly jumped out of my chair. My hands were blood red!

  I took a grip on myself, and realized that the scarlet shadow on my apron-lap was the result of the double reflection from the red screen and red shade-cover. The whole room was tinged with red, although I had not registered it properly before. I looked up, and saw on the ceiling another patch of scarlet.

  I had first been too frightened, then too worried, and later too busy to notice anything but Thosset. Now he was conscious and sleeping I could register anything I liked. Outside the window the stars were fading, the night was growing pale. I relaxed and thought some more about David Corford.

  There was a note waiting for me in my pigeon-hole outside Matron’s office that night. The envelope had no stamp. The note was formal. It said the senior students were giving a sherry party to celebrate their coming finals, and Mr George Hartigan would be glad of my company. There was a postscript. It was less formal. ‘I was the one you knocked flat with your front mudguard. We met again in Judson last night, but I saw you did not recognize me. I expect I look different the right way up.’

  I did not know what to do about it, so I asked Alice.

  ‘Have you got nights off on that evening? And do you want to go?’

  ‘I don’t know that I do,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want to be rude.’

  ‘Being on duty is a cast-iron excuse,’ said Alice, ‘but why don’t you want to go? And who is this George Hartigan and where did you meet him? I mean, apart from knocking him down?’

  ‘He was in on that case in Judson last night.’

  Alice said Sister Tutor could say what she liked about our working side by side with the Medical Profession on our joint missions of mercy, but sex would always raise its ugly head.

  ‘What’s wrong with him, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s quite nice. You must know him. Dr Allingham said you had him for that flap in Luke a couple of nights back. He’s fair.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘the golden boy. He is nice, Maggie. The quiet, gentle type. Why ever
don’t you want to go?’

  I was not so sure of this myself, so I said I thought Sister Willy B. would make a fuss if I asked for nights off.

  ‘She won’t make a fuss,’ said Alice grimly, ‘she’ll kill you. Sister Willy B. will not tolerate changes in the off-duty list! Slipshod, Nurse Howard, slipshod! All the same,’ she went on, ‘I think it’s a pity. You and this George Hartigan should get on well. I should say you have a lot in common.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, ‘as like as two peas in a pod. Apart from the fact that he’s tall and fair and I’m short and dark.’ I turned on her. ‘How do you know so much about him, Alice? What is all this?’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not like you, dear girl. Me, I get around the hospital and notice people. I haven’t a simple little one-track mind concentrating on my work, noble as it is, and work alone. I gossip,’ she finished smugly.

  ‘It isn’t that,’ I said, then I changed my mind; ‘perhaps it is. Really, what with dodging out of Sister Willy B.’s way and my poor feet, I can’t take in more than the patients, and have I written up my last lecture notes? I can’t face even the minor problem of getting involved with a student.’

  Alice hooted, and Home Sister at the end of our table frowned, ‘Less noise, please, Nurse Fell.’

  ‘Maggie, you are positively Edwardian! The fact that the man has asked you to a sherry party doesn’t mean that he’s going to shower you with proper or improper proposals!’

  I said, ‘I thought you said sex was bound to raise its ugly head?’

  ‘Normally yes, but not with you.’

  ‘Why not with me?’ I was indignant.

  Alice finished her coffee. ‘Sister’s going to say Grace,’ she whispered, and we stood up quickly.

  ‘I’ll tell you why not with you,’ she said, as we left the dining-room, ‘because you are too dumb to recognize anything like that. You’d just think the young man was being kind, or feeling lonely, or bored. I used to wonder’ ‒ she swung her cloak over her shoulders ‒ ‘how your parents dared let you loose in London. Now I know you better, I understand. Innocence is a Great Protection,’ she added sententiously.

  I said seriously, ‘Of all thenonsense!’ I thought that would shake her, and it did!

  ‘Maggie! For Heaven’s sake! You mustn’t say that! Where on earth did you hear those words?’

  ‘Innocence,’ I said, ‘is a Great Protection. From a patient. Do you know what they mean?’

  Alice groaned. ‘You should have a twin brother. There is nothing I don’t know the meaning of!’

  A voice behind us said, ‘Well, Nurse Howard? Have you taken root in the hall? Or are you going to favour William Brown with your presence to-night? In which case may I remind you it is twenty minutes past eight?’ Sister William Brown, as awe-inspiring in her grey tweed suit as in her uniform, loomed squarely over us.

  ‘Yes, Sister, thank you, Sister, I’m sorry, Sister,’ I chanted obediently. When I looked round Alice had vanished. I walked quickly down the main corridor and up the stairs to William Brown.

  It was only when I reached the right floor that I wondered if I was right in returning to my own ward, or whether I should go to Judson. I had meant to ask Night Sister at supper, but first Alice and then Sister Willy B. had put the thought out of my head. Luckily Mallinson was already in our changing-room, and she knew the answer to that as to the majority of my other little problems.

  ‘That fractured base is much better. I met Night Sister in the yard on my way here and she told me. She says one of the students can cope alone to-night. I must say I’m very glad. Your friend Fell is a good girl, but rather heavy-footed. The men’ll be glad, too. They always loathe changes of staff.’ She repinned her cap and turned to smile at me. ‘Our Mr Corford was flapping all night. I think he thought we had lost you for good.’

  I smiled back. ‘That was nice of him, Nurse.’

  ‘Yes’ ‒ she sounded amused ‒ ‘he’s got a soft spot for you, has young David. Which is quite a good thing,’ she went on more seriously, ‘as far as it goes.’

  ‘What do you mean, Nurse?’ Mallinson had taught me a good deal in the time we had worked together. She was the most approachable senior I had yet met at Benedict’s, and her advice on all things to do with our job I had found invaluable.

  ‘It’s always easier to nurse anyone, to get them better, if they like you personally. Can you imagine yourself ill and loathing the guts of the person nursing you? It’d be enough to rocket your temp, and blood-pressure. But, of course, particularly in a men’s ward, a little of that goes a long way. So far and no further, if you follow me?’ I said I did.

  ‘I thought you would,’ she said. ‘You’re quite sensible, for all that you wear a cap over one ear. You see’ ‒ she rebuckled her belt ‒ ‘patients have precious little to do in hospital, beyond worry over their ailments, panic over their home life, or brood on the nurses. And naturally they are apt to get things out of proportion. It all evens up when they go out of here, but when they are in you’ve got to make allowances, and discount a good deal of the surplus emotion.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We ought to go in. But there’s another thing. Do you know the quickest way to get thrown out of any respectable hospital? Short of deliberately poisoning a patient?’

  ‘No, Nurse?’

  ‘Fall in love with a patient,’ she said briefly. ‘Once it gets round ‒ and everything always gets round ‒ it’s a trip to Matron’s office, and out!’

  I said slowly, ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I thought you might not,’ she said kindly.

  The day Staff Nurse was writing the day report when Mallinson opened the door. The Staff Nurse glanced at the clock and sighed. ‘My God. Is that really the time? Come and sit down. I haven’t finished this yet, but I won’t be a few moments.’

  ‘That clock’s slow by the hospital,’ said Mallinson. ‘It’s nearer twenty-five to. I was just going to apologize for nattering in the changing-room.’

  ‘You needn’t bother,’ said the Staff Nurse. ‘I’m glad you nattered. It’s given me a bit of breathing space.’

  Mallinson folded the corners of her apron and sat down on one of the two chairs I had produced. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Been busy?’

  ‘Busy!’ The Staff Nurse rubbed her forehead. ‘I’ll say. And I’m glad to see you’ve got your own pro back again to-night. You’ll need someone who knows the ward.’

  ‘Why? Is someone ill? Are we going to need a special?’ Mallinson said casually.

  ‘I don’t know if Night Sister will be able to raise a special,’ said the Staff Nurse, ‘but I’ll say we’ve got someone ill. Mr Corford.’

  Nurse Mallinson’s voice was calm. ‘What’s the matter with Mr Corford?’

  My inside turned over.

  Chapter Four

  A KISS IN MY HAND

  The Staff Nurse said that David Corford had had a reactionary haemorrhage in the middle of the afternoon. ‘The ward was thick with visitors, the corridors and balcony jammed with the queues waiting to go in.’

  She said they had had a warning shortly after breakfast. ‘It was only a few drops on his plaster. I rang Mr Vanders, and we had him regrouped to be on the safe side, although he was done a few days back. They sent us up a couple of bottles of whole blood at lunch-time in case we needed them. We did,’ she added grimly, ‘before tea.’

  Mallinson asked, ‘Did the plate slip?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The Staff Nurse shook her head. ‘I mean, it wasn’t a case of a ligature or a clot shifting. It wasn’t even a bit of bone. It was one of his shrapnel-splinters. One that’s been sitting there all these years. Mr Vanders got it, and four more, out in the theatre this evening. His plate’s fine, but they knew that.’

  Mallinson asked, ‘What did it go through? Femoral artery?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s all nice and tidy now?’

  ‘It’s all grand,’ said the Staff Nurse dryly; ‘he should have a good leg there.
If he lives to use it.’

  I was glad it was my job to listen, not to talk.

  Mallinson said, ‘Why shouldn’t he live? Is he so shocked?’

  The day nurse nodded. ‘Yes. We had everything on hand, of course, in case those few drops early were the genuine article and not the usual false alarm. But obviously it took a few moments before we got that plaster off at the top and a tourniquet on. Remember we had a hip spica to cope with. Luckily Mike Mellows (the Orthopaedic Registrar) was on this week-end and next door in Judson. He got over almost before Nurse Aimes had a chance to put down the receiver. A couple of the boys came with him. Mike picked them up in the park as he dashed across, and while he and I were cutting that miserable plaster, one of the men did a good job of manual compression on the abdominal aorta. That saved Corford a packet of blood. All the same he was pretty low. He still is. And he’s still being transfused.’

  ‘Nasty,’ said Mallinson, ‘very nasty. Poor man.’ She sighed. ‘I had that happen to me once at night. My nightmare is having to cut quickly through soggy plaster on a frightened patient.’ She turned to me and explained as she always did. ‘The plaster-knives and shears slip, and it’s murder trying to get a grip.’

  The Staff Nurse said, ‘My God! I hope he makes it.’

  Mallinson said, ‘Yes.’

  I said nothing.

  When we had had the report on the rest of the patients Mallinson stood up. ‘We’ll go along and see him first, Howard. You may have to stay with him. If so I’ll ask Night Sister for a relief.’

  She led the way through the extra-quiet fracture wards. The patients had sensed, as patients always do, that someone was very ill. I did not take this in then, I was too frightened to take in anything, but my mind registered the unusual silence of the men, although I thought myself incapable of registering any other sensation than the shock I felt. A shock that was doubled by my own self-amazement that I should feel so upset over David Corford.