Betty Neels - Victory for Victoria

To which highminded speech Victoria could think of nothing to say, although the thought, completely unbidden, that perhaps she didn’t want to be a Ward Sister after all did cross her mind, to be rejected as there was a knock on the door and Johnny Dawes, the medical houseman, came in followed by a tallish young man, good-looking and fair.

Johnny said politely: ‘Good morning, Sister Crow, here’s Doctor Blake, you met yesterday, didn’t you?’ He looked at Victoria. ‘But I don’t think that Staff and he have met yet?’ He had half turned his back on the Old Crow as he spoke and gave Victoria a wink, for when that lady wasn’t about he was apt to treat her staff nurse like one of his sisters—an attitude which Victoria found quite natural, but now, as Sister Crow was present, she replied formally: ‘Good morning, Doctor Dawes. No, we haven’t met.’

‘The new RMO,’ said Johnny, ‘Doctor Jeremy Blake— Staff Nurse Parsons.’

She offered a hand and said, How do you do? and gave the new member of the staff a frank, friendly look. He seemed at first glance rather nice and very good-looking, although his mouth was a little too full for her taste and his eyes too pale a blue. Probably, she thought goodhumouredly, he was weighing her up too and finding her not quite to his taste either. She got up and fetched two more cups; Sister Crow poured coffee and settled down to a ten-minute lecture on how to run a ward and, what was more important, how the members of the medical staff should behave on it. Victoria and Johnny had heard it all a great many times before, but Doctor Blake hadn’t; he listened with polite attention and drank his coffee and when she paused for breath, suggested that a ward round might be a good idea. He looked at Victoria as he spoke and added: ‘If you’re busy, Sister, I’m sure Staff Nurse…’

‘Staff Nurse has a great deal to do,’ interrupted Sister Crow. ‘I shall go with you myself, and you,’ she finished, addressing Johnny, ‘may come with me.’

That left Victoria to collect the coffee cups on to the tray, ready for Dora the ward maid, and then go along to the treatment room to make sure that the various injections had been drawn up correctly and then supervise their giving, before disappearing into the linen cupboard to check the clean linen, a task she loathed and considered a fearful waste of time. She preferred to be with the patients, but Sister Crow considered that the ward staff nurse should do all the duller administrative jobs. ‘And that’s something I’ll change,’ Victoria promised herself crossly as she counted sheets. But some of the crossness, although she wouldn’t admit it, was disappointment at not doing a round with the new doctor, even though, upon reflection, she wasn’t quite sure if she was going to like him.

She had a split duty that afternoon because the Old Crow wanted an evening. She hated splits; there was no time to do more than rush out for any necessary shopping, or if the weather was bad, sit for an hour or so in the sitting room, reading or writing letters. Splits weren’t actually allowed, but they were sometimes inevitable and she seemed to collect more than her fair share—another thing she would put right when she had a ward of her own. She sat in front of the electric fire, writing home; she told them all about the new doctor, and all the while she was writing another image, quite a different one from that of Doctor Blake, kept dancing before her eyes. It was a relief when two of her friends came to join her, full of questions as to what she thought of the new RMO and what she had done on her holiday, a topic which naturally enough led to the more interesting one of clothes. They were all deep in this vital conversation when Victoria looked at her watch and exclaimed:

‘Lord, look at the time—I’m on in half an hour! Come up to my room and I’ll make some tea—I brought a cake back with me.’

The three of them repaired up the bare, clean staircase to the floor above where her room was, and being healthy and young and perpetually hungry, they demolished the cake between them.

Doctor Blake came again that evening as Victoria was sitting in the office writing up the Kardex. She looked up with faint surprise and some impatience as he came in, because she had got a little behind with her work and she wouldn’t be ready for the night staff unless she kept at it. He must have seen the look, though, for he said reassuringly:

‘Don’t stop, I only came to read up some notes—it’s the ward round tomorrow, isn’t it, and I want to be quite sure of things.’

Victoria made a small sympathetic sound. ‘Of course—behind you on the shelf, they’re in alphabetical order,’ and bent her bright head over her writing. She had turned over perhaps three cards when she became aware that he was staring at her. She finished writing ‘Paracetamol’ because it was a word she had to concentrate upon to get the spelling right and looked up.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, ‘Do you want something, or is my cap crooked?’

He smiled, his eyes like colourless glass. ‘I can’t help staring,’ he said, ‘you’re so utterly lovely.’

She had been called lovely before by various young men; usually she accepted the compliment gracefully and without conceit, for it would have been foolish to pretend she wasn’t pretty when she so obviously was. She had learnt at an early age to take her good looks as a matter of course—nice to have, but not vital to her happiness. But now for some reason she felt embarrassed and annoyed as well. He was almost a stranger and she hadn’t liked the way he had said it; as though he had expected her to be pleased and flattered at his admiration. She said with a composure which quite hid her distaste:

‘Thank you. Perhaps you would like to take the notes away with you? I have quite a lot of work to do still, and I daresay you have too.’

The annoyance on his face was so fleeting that she wasn’t sure if she had imagined it. It was replaced at once by a smile. ‘I’ve annoyed you, I’m sorry.’ He got up and put the notes away. ‘I’ll come back later if I may.’ His smile became apologetic. ‘Don’t hold it against me, will you?’

Victoria smiled too. Perhaps she had been too hasty in her judgement of him. ‘No, of course not. Goodnight.’

Sir Keith Plummer’s bi-weekly ward rounds were always a sore trial to Victoria, and she knew, the moment she set foot on the ward the next morning, that that day’s was to prove no exception to the rule. Not only had one of the diabetics thrown away a valuable specimen and been unable to produce another in the short time left to him before the great man appeared, but Mr Bates, that most docile of patients, had decided to feel sick, so that instead of lying neatly in his bed he was sitting up apprehensively over a basin, and to add to all these trials two sets of notes had disappeared into thin air. Victoria had sent two of the nurses to look for them and dared them to return without these vital papers. ‘Try Physio,’ she whispered urgently so that Sister Crow shouldn’t hear, ‘and OPD; the Appointments Office, X-ray, anywhere—and for mercy’s sake, be quick!’

They sidled in, a few yards ahead of Sir Keith and his retinue, and behind Sister Crow’s back, shook their heads and rolled their eyes heavenwards, then melted away into the sluice as the ward doors opened and Sir Keith walked in. Victoria, from her station by bed number one, watched a routine which she knew by heart. Sir Keith stopped short just inside the doors and Sister Crow, who had been lurking in wait for him, advanced to his side so that they could exchange civil greetings before forming the procession which would presently wend its way up one side of the ward and down the other. It was a pity, thought Victoria, that the Old Crow had been trained so long ago that she regarded all consultants as gods and had made no move to change her views and treat them like anyone else. Victoria watched her standing with her head reverently bowed, listening to Sir Keith’s pleasant voice rambling on, but the head came up with a jerk as the wretched student nurse Black, whose shoes squeaked, came out of the sluice, to retreat immediately under Sister Crow’s threatening gaze. The same gaze hovered over Mr Payne, who had bronchitis, and Mr Church, who had asthma, daring either of them to allow a cough to disturb the utter quiet of the ward, and both gentlemen, anxious to please, lay rigid, their slowly empurpling faces bearing testimony to this fact. When at last human nature could stand no more, they coughed in such good earnest that Victoria was forced to leave her position with the exalted group around the consultant and fly to their aid. She had only just succeeded in quieting them both when there was a fresh disturbance, this time at the ward doors, and obedient to the indignant jerk of Sister Crow’s head, Victoria sped silently down the ward. Some poor soul who had mistaken the visiting hours, she supposed, and saw at once how wrong she was. He looked different, of course, for he had exchanged his guernsey for a suit of clerical grey; her eyes took in its well-cut elegance and the exquisiteness of his tie as he advanced, with no sign of unease, to meet her.