The New Sister Theatre Page 6

  ‘And how do you come to know him?’

  Apparently he had met Dr O’Brien at some recent medical convention, discovered they were both Dublin men. ‘And that’s not the whole of it. His mother’s sister’s husband’s first cousin ‒ or it could be second ‒ is my father’s brother’s wife’s aunt’s sister-in-law. You follow me?’

  I smiled. ‘Roughly, Doctor, roughly.’

  He groaned. ‘How can you look and sound so revoltingly fresh at this ungodly hour? You’re as bad as your ever-loving ‒’ he corrected himself quickly ‘‒ as old Joe the Knife himself. There he was just now, after being up all night, saying there was nothing he needed more than a fine walk by the river in all this cold and then a bath and shave to set him up for the day’s work.’

  ‘What kept him up?’ I asked, to give myself time to decide whether to take him up on that slip or not. Joe must have told him. I had not yet mentioned my private affairs to him, partly through lack of opportunity, partly through lack of courage.

  ‘Three road smashes coming in one after the other. The orthopod boys were snowed under ‒ if that would be the right word for all the blood that was flowing round Cas. They had to have a spare pair of hands. And where else would they get them but from the S.S.O. himself?’ He jerked a thumb downward. ‘Your pal Ellen Watt was down there until five this morning.’

  ‘No wonder Joe looks so tired.’

  ‘A strong man, but no machine.’ He watched me put the clean instruments on to boil, then arrange a trolley for their drying. ‘So all is over and done between the two of you?’

  I faced him. ‘Yep.’

  He took that impassively. ‘He’ll be missed when he’s gone.’

  ‘You know that as well? Why haven’t you mentioned it before?’

  ‘Tell me, now, Sister Theatre,’ he drawled, ‘have we had so much as five minutes for quiet talking together ever since you acquired that fetching little lace bow under your chin?’

  That was true, yet not all the truth. Because of my own reticence, I let it go and asked his opinion of Joe’s leaving the country.

  ‘The man feels he wants a complete break. And why wouldn’t he? He’s given some good years of his life to this hospital. Why shouldn’t he walk another set of wards ‒ and earn the hell of a lot more money for walking them? Let me tell you something, darlin’ Sister. Over on the other side of the Atlantic they actually pay their doctors big money! Would you expect a man to ignore that?’

  ‘If a man wasn’t prepared to ignore that he would never have worked ten years in Barny’s as Joe has done ‒ or taken up medicine in this country in the first place. It’s scarcely a short cut to riches.’

  He said I could be right, but what in hell did it really matter why Joe was going? ‘Point is ‒ he’s nearly on his way. Which leaves you free to get out and about ‒ live it up. Which reminds me, have I told you how much I love you?’

  ‘Not for a couple of weeks ‒ and not now! It’s indecent before breakfast. I’ve got to get this clearing finished, and I’m in no mood for a jolly laugh.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ He took my shoulders in his hands. ‘Hurts bad?’

  ‘Worse than bad.’ I leaned against him momentarily, forgetting my new job and where we were. ‘I don’t know what to do about it, Mark.’

  ‘And the boy with all the answers has no answer for you.’ He rubbed his face against mine. ‘I guessed it would be like this for you.’ He used a voice I had not heard him use before, then muttered something under his breath.

  ‘What was that, Mark?’

  ‘Nothing I can repeat to a lady, my sweet.’ He let me go. ‘When’s your next free evening off?’

  ‘Not sure. Can we talk about it some other time?’

  ‘We’ll do that. And we’ll do the town on that evening.’ He looked round as Bachelor returned. ‘I’ll be on my way or Nurse will be shoving me down the laundry chute. I see the light in her eyes!’

  Bachelor smiled after him with the expression of an adult with a playful but tiring small boy. ‘Mr de Winter’s been waiting for him out in the corridor. And he asked me to tell you, Sister, that he’ll be starting his afternoon list an hour later than usual. The wards have been warned.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I checked the time, switched off the instrument-sterilizer, began fishing out the steaming instruments. ‘Why an hour late?’

  ‘He didn’t say, Sister. Oh ‒ was it all right to make more tea? He looked so queer. I don’t remember his looking like this after other all-night shifts. Would you say,’ she added absently, ‘those injections he’s having in Martha’s tropical lab are affecting him?’

  I glanced at her sharply. She had clearly no idea she was giving me news.

  ‘Injections can be upsetting. Depends what they are, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, lor’! I forgot!’ She clapped a hand to her masked face. ‘Hugo ‒ he’s my cousin’s husband ‒ told Sylvia, my cousin, but no one, no one at all, should discuss those new injections for rheumatism! He’d be livid with me! I’m terribly sorry, Sister! I shouldn’t have said a word! I haven’t to anyone else! I promise. It just sort of slipped out!’

  ‘Things do in the early morning. It’s the same as late at night. Don’t worry.’ I changed the subject even though I would have liked to pursue it. So Joe was having injections for his rheumatism? That was possible, and yet why go to Martha’s, when we had our own very large pathological department? Unless Martha’s path lab was on to something new and he was willing to be a guinea-pig, because he suspected he might have one of the more unpleasant forms of rheumatism.

  I had changed the subject to Bachelor’s connection with Martha’s, then asked about the tropical lab she had mentioned. ‘Big as our own?’

  ‘Much bigger. Nearly as big as the Tropical Medicine place. One of Hugo’s assistants is top girl there. She’s a great friend of Sylvia’s. A fantastic woman. She looks like a pin-up, and is loaded with brains. She’s got Membership and an M.D. and isn’t thirty yet! And ‒ which is really quite maddening in a crazy way ‒ she’s awfully nice. Her name’s Frances Durant.’

  I concentrated on my instruments. ‘I’ve heard the name. I believe she was at school with Nurse Brown.’

  ‘She was? I’d never have thought it! Frances isn’t at all ‒’ she corrected herself ‒ ‘a bit like Nurse Brown.’ And to cover her embarrassment she took the subject back to Joe’s injections. ‘I honestly can’t think why Hugo made such a fuss when he heard Sylvia telling me Frances was treating Mr de Winter. After all, he is our Mr de Winter. And as for being an injections victim, that doesn’t make him news! I’m a human pin-cushion, what with being vaccinated, anti-polioed, anti-TB-ed, anti-typhoided, and God knows anti-what-else-ed! Home Sister’s only got to see me to send me to the nearest path lab for another shot of this or booster of that! I suppose poor old Hugo, being such a Big Doctor, just has to be hot on ethics?’

  ‘Lots of doctors are,’ was all I said.

  We finished the clearing and the resetting in silence. The theatre was always left ready for immediate use in an emergency. We had everything in order just in time to go to early breakfast. Bachelor said she was starving. ‘My stomach’s flapping against my spine, Sister! These early calls are ruining my waistline!’

  ‘They do give one an appetite,’ I agreed. As we sat at separate tables in the dining-room she would have no opportunity to observe that on this occasion they had not had that effect on me. Her description of Frances Durant had fixed that.

  Chapter Four

  AN INVITATION FROM MARK

  A few days later one of the dressers was racing along the theatre corridor on his return from lunch.

  ‘Hey, Dolly! Have you heard the latest? Old Joe the Knife’s leaving and Bill Swan’s taking over at the end of ‒’

  His voice stopped suddenly, and there was a scuffle of steps as Dolly Bachelor swept him into the sanctuary of the at present empty surgeons’ room.

  I was at my desk. I went on with my writin
g, pretending I was deaf. It had been the best-kept story I had ever known at Barny’s, but every story has to break some time.

  By evening it was all round the hospital. At dinner my fellow-sisters cast me discreetly speculative glances, but, as we were fortunately still on the most formal terms, refrained from mentioning the subject to me. Ellen came up to my room that night and told me the staff nurses had discussed little else at their meal.

  ‘The only staff nurse whose views I haven’t had is Sandra. She having a day off?’

  ‘Yes. She hasn’t got a late morning, so she’ll be back tonight.’

  She said, ‘I don’t know whether this’ll amuse you, but thanks to Sandra the girls are all convinced Joe’s mainly getting out of the way to leave the road clear for Mark Delaney. Doing a Galahad, in fact.’

  ‘That so? Nice to know.’

  I took myself on duty extra early that day. We had very long lists scheduled for both morning and afternoon, and I wanted to get most of my paperwork finished before breakfast. Sandra, my senior staff nurse, was in charge of the department until I came on officially, after breakfast, at eight-fifteen. I reached the theatre just after half-past seven. At that time she would be in the theatre proper organizing and supervising the early cleaning. The fact that the theatre had been cleaned and reset after the last case last night made no difference to the early-morning work, the theatre being a department in which one cleaned the clean. I knew she would take umbrage if I looked in on the cleaning to say good morning, and assume my presence must show the juniors I considered her incompetent to be in charge, so I let myself in quietly, went along to my duty-room, and got on with the forms.

  It was some little time before she came into the duty-room. ‘Oh! I should have knocked. I didn’t know you were on, Sister.’

  ‘I’m not, officially.’ I explained why I was there, handed her the dispensary book. ‘Wanted this?’

  ‘Yes; thanks.’ She lingered, frowning. ‘Is it true about the S.S.O. leaving and Bill Swan taking over?’

  ‘Quite true.’

  ‘I just couldn’t believe it!’ She went very red in the face. ‘I’ve been expecting something to happen ‒ not this! I must say ‒ I’m sorry ‒ but I think it’s downright wicked his having to chuck up so much just because you’re in love with Mark Delaney!’

  I had had enough ‒ and no breakfast. ‘I may or may not be in love with Mark Delaney,’ I snapped, ‘but I am well aware who is! So I don’t think we’ll continue this conversation. I came on to work. And you had better get on with your dispensary order.’

  If I had not been so angry I would have been interested on the effect Mark’s name was having on her vasomotor system. She had gone red, white, then red again. She tore off like a starched tornado.

  A little later a trolley was trundled to the tin-room next door. ‘How many gowns are we going to want this morning, Rose?’ asked Dolly Bachelor’s voice.

  ‘Nurse Bachelor!’ Sandra must have bounced out of the stock-room. ‘Are you incapable of doing simple arithmetic? I have already told you Mr Partridge has seven operations on his morning list. That means six gowns per op: three for the surgeons, one for Sister, one for the dresser, one spare ‒ as you very well know!’

  ‘Sorry, Nurse Brown,’ apologized Dolly.

  ‘I should think so! How many more times am I going to have to tell you to think for yourself? And how many more times am I going to have to hear you using Christian names on duty? Now you are supposed to be an acting staff nurse, will you kindly act like a staff nurse?’ The dispensary basket creaked as she deposited it violently on the bench to await removal by one of our porters. ‘Nurse Garret,’ she added icily, ‘I am now going to do the needles in the theatre proper, if I should be needed.’

  There was silence until Sandra’s rubbered footsteps vanished behind the soundproof doors.

  ‘Dig her for a crazy, mixed-up staff nurse!’ remarked Rose Garret. ‘Watch it, Dolly. Our Sandra’s out for blood this morning, and if you’re not careful you’ll be first donor.’

  ‘I don’t see why she has to be so narked,’ replied Dolly plaintively. ‘It isn’t her man who’s leaving.’

  ‘Don’t be dumb, duckie! Do a little of that simple arithmetic she was bleating on about. It adds. Of course she’s doing her nut about old Joe leaving. That’ll mean the end of all hope for her ‒ and heaven knows she never had any ‒ with the massive Mark. We all know he’s nuts about Sister.’

  ‘Is that why old Joe’s vanishing? Is he being that old-fashioned square ‒ a little gent?’

  Rose said she wouldn’t be at all surprised. ‘Old Joe’s a cutie.’ She sounded as if he was two inches high and made of sugar. ‘Sister has to have what it takes, having both those men in her pocket. Yet she doesn’t look a sex-pot to me.’

  Dolly Bachelor assured her Women Never Could Tell. ‘Evan thinks Sister’s terrific.’

  I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I did know it was high time to make my presence known. I picked up the telephone, asked for the Orthopaedic Theatre. Ellen answered. I asked if she had any Forms XLVI to spare. ‘No, don’t bother to send them up. I’ll collect them on my way to breakfast.’ There was an embarrassed silence from the corridor when I replaced the receiver. Then the tin-trolley was trundled away.

  Later, when I called in on Ellen, she said, ‘What did I tell you, Maggie?’ And then, ‘Those girls work with Mark. Do they have to be so wrong? He is rather nice; you have always liked him. Why not ‒ well ‒ just keep an open mind? I hate to say this, dear, but you aren’t always right in your judgements on men.’

  I could not answer that one. Thinking it over in the quiet of Sisters’ breakfast, I was as convinced as ever that Mark was no more in love with me than I was with him. He had more or less dropped his act about loving me more than life itself when I first got engaged to Joe, but before that, whenever it had suited him in between girl-friends, or because there was some particular girl he wanted to impress, he had gone into the old routine. To give him his due, he knew I never took him seriously.

  I was not clear now why he had again decided to give the impression I was the love of his life. As far as I had observed, there was no girl in my theatre whom he wanted to make jealous. The fact that he was doing just that to Sandra was incidental. For her ‒ and the theatre’s ‒ sake I wished it was not, and that Mark would grow out of his tiresome teenager tactics.

  Directly after breakfast each morning I made out the day’s work-list. Sandra knocked on the open door as I was studying the off-duty rota for this purpose.

  ‘Sister, would it be possible for me to be off this morning instead of this afternoon?’

  ‘It would suit me far better if you did change. This afternoon’s is going to be much the most difficult list. Sir Robert’s having one of his days. Every single op is a major, and this abdomino-perineal means his usual double team. Sir Robert and Mr Swan the top end, the S.S.O. and Mr Ellis the bottom.’ She studied the list over my shoulder, formally yet attentively. Despite our earlier scene, and her personal animosity to me, theatre work fascinated her.

  ‘Should be interesting. Pity to miss it. You’d like me to take for the S.S.O.?’

  ‘Very much. I must take for Sir Robert. Garret’ll be on, and is shaping nicely, but knowing Sir Robert’s speed I would infinitely prefer having you behind the other instrument trolley.’ I glanced at the time. ‘We are starting early this afternoon. Could you go off now and come back at twelve-thirty instead of one? That suit you?’

  ‘Please.’ She flushed. ‘If you’re sure that’s all right?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better.’ I was astonished and relieved by this, wholly unexpected olive-branch. After my outburst, which I now regretted, I had expected her to sulk for days. ‘Thank you very much for offering to change.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she mumbled uncomfortably. ‘And ‒ er ‒ incidentally, Sister, Nurse Garret has asked me to give her a lift up West. She wants to meet her mother and go shopping, or som
ething. Could she leave now and come back early too?’

  ‘Certainly. Bachelor and I can manage Mr Partridge between us. Go and collect Garret now. And thanks again.’

  She looked as if she was suddenly regretting her offer, but she only said, ‘Back at twelve-thirty then, Sister.’

  I could not conceive what had brought about this change of heart, but was too thankful to waste time looking for reasons. That afternoon list had been on my mind because of Rose Garret’s comparative inexperience. Sir Robert was such a swift surgeon, and Garret was slow. Slowness infuriated Sir Robert. On occasions I had known him order a tardy houseman or dresser, ‘Out! Out, boy! Go on. I’ve got work to do! If ye can’t get on, get out!’ In general he was less fierce with nurses, but even so I remembered the time in my early days when he had asked me in the middle of a case if I was married. ‘Ye not, eh, Nurse? Just so, just so. And if ye’ll forgive me, just as well if you’re going to take as long darning y’husband’s socks as ye are getting those needles threaded for me! I’m not doing a tasteful bit of tapestry-work, gel! I’m trying to stitch up a ruptured bit of gut!’

  That had had me nearly weeping into my mask, but at least it had been a late-evening operation and the gallery had been empty. Sir Robert was due to teach all afternoon. If Garret annoyed him there would be a packed gallery to hear as well as see his reaction.

  I finished my work-list, pinned it up, went along to change into theatre clothes. A junior tapped on the door. ‘Please, Sister, Mr Swan would like to speak to you on the telephone.’

  I took the call on the corridor telephone. ‘Sister Theatre here, Mr Swan. Good morning.’

  ‘And to you, Sister. Now, about the new order for to-day. The S.S.O. asked me to contact you as he’s had to go along to Cas Point is this: Sir Robert’s apologies and so forth, but as he has to be in Paris this evening for that International Surgeons’ Conference, he wants to operate this morning. Starting at nine-thirty. Any objections?’