Betty Neels - Not Once But Twice

Christina made her way upstairs to the top floor of the medical wing, exactly on time as she always was. During her training she had suffered long waits to go off duty in the morning because the Ward Sister had been late, and she had vowed then that if ever she became a Ward Sister she would make a point of arriving on the dot.

The two night nurses were waiting for her now, pale and heavy-eyed from eleven hours of duty. Christina bade them good morning, sat down composedly at her desk and listened to the night report without interruption. At the end of it she made one or two necessary comments, made a note or two and sent them off duty before her day staff nurse, Carole Pring, put her head round the door and was bidden to come in. Carole did so, bearing two mugs of tea and shutting the door neatly behind her with a foot.

‘That new man, Sister,’ she began at once, ‘his BP’s too low. Would you take a look presently? And young Tate is complaining about his head again.’

Christina cast her eyes over the report once more. ‘Ah yes—the night staff mention it too. I’ll get Dr Fisher to have a look before Dr Robinson comes—he can take a look at Mr Truscott too. We’ll alter his observations to half-hourly, don’t you think?’ She took a sip of tea. ‘They’re getting the patients ready for X-ray? Good, and there’s Mr Soames’s barium swallow at half past nine. You take Nurse Bates with you until she goes to lecture; the other two can make beds and get people up, that leaves Mrs Toms to take patients down to the departments.’ She swallowed the rest of her tea while she sorted the post on her desk. ‘I’ll do my round.’ She smiled at the girl opposite her, her grey eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, and you’d better take Mr Soames down, Carole—Ken’s on duty this morning.’

Carole blushed and giggled. She was twenty-one and pretty and she and the assistant radiographer spent all their free time together. ‘I say, thanks awfully, Sister!’ She added happily: ‘He’s taking me to see Private Lives this evening.’

Christina watched her go: that was twice in less than half an hour—first Beryl with her Freddy, and now Carole with Ken. She didn’t know that she sighed as she got up and went into the ward.

It was a long ward of twenty-eight beds, not yet modernised, so that the beds faced each other in rows against the walls. There were two side rooms too where the very ill were nursed or occasionally a private patient, although they had a wing of their own in the centre block.

Christina went into the first of these now, to greet the old man sitting up in bed, glasses askew on his beak of a nose, reading The Times. He looked up as she went in and without saying good morning began a forceful summing up of what the government should do immediately. Christina listened quietly, her intelligent face very calm while she looked him over. He had been in hospital for more than a week with cardiac asthma and wasn’t improving. It was a pity that he had no family to bother about him; his wife had died years ago and his two sons were both abroad and not in the least interested. She had tried once to get him transferred to the Private Wing, but he had objected so strongly that she had given it up; she supposed she would have him for a very long time, giving extra work to her nurses, wanting things they hadn’t got, demanding attention while he read out long articles from The Times when there were a thousand and one jobs waiting to be done…

‘I expect you’re right,’ she commented. ‘These people can be so exasperating, can’t they? Here are several letters for you, I daresay they’ll make pleasanter reading.’ She added: ‘How do you feel today?’

‘Not bad—couldn’t sleep, though.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll get your pills changed. You shall have a good night tonight, Colonel.’ She smiled and slipped from the room and into the next one. The young man with the headache was there. She saw that he looked ill and strained and when she spoke to him he answered drowsily. Not so good, she decided; the sooner Dr Fisher saw him the better. His pulse was too slow and although he hadn’t been vomiting since his admission less than two days ago, she was prepared to bet her month’s money on a cerebral tumour. He was due for X-ray that morning, but he wasn’t fit to move. He’d been admitted for observation and it had been decided to give him a day’s bed rest before starting on a number of tests, and although she had suggested an X-ray when he was admitted, Dr Fisher, who knew everything, had told her importantly that rest was far more important. Well, he had better think again, she thought as she whipped back into the office and asked the lodge to get him urgently.

He was inclined to be ill-tempered when he turned up ten minutes later. He had been up several times during the night and after a far too brief nap was about to sit down to a hearty breakfast, and instead of that here he was facing a calm-eyed young woman, telling him without heat to do something quickly. ‘And I do mean quickly,’ said Christina, not losing one ounce of her habitual serenity. ‘Dr Robinson will be here at eleven o’clock and if he finds Mr Tate like this heaven knows what he’ll do to you.’ She urged him towards the bed, saying softly: ‘It’s just my guess, but do you suppose it could be a cerebral tumour?’

John Fisher didn’t much like Christina. He respected her judgment, admired her cool which she never seemed to lose, and agreed with everyone else that she was a thoroughly splendid nurse as well as a loyal friend; perhaps it was because of these that he adopted a cocksure attitude towards her and why he said now: ‘I’ve thought that all along. Get him to X-Ray at once, will you, and let me have his notes.’

She did both, forbearing to mention that beyond the bare fact of Mr Tate’s admission there was precious little else written up. When she came back presently from seeing the patient safely to X-Ray, it was to find that Dr Fisher had filled a page with meticulous observations and added a query cerebral tumour at the end.

She finished her round after that before getting down to the task of having the ward ready for Dr Robinson, who had a fiend’s temper concealed behind his urbane appearance. But the round went off very well. Dr Robinson had most of the beds and behaved rather as though he had all of them, making a kind of royal progress down the ward. But nothing could fault his manner towards his patients; he was pleasant, reassuring and listened patiently while they talked. Some of them rambled on at length, telling him things they had told him on the previous round, but he never said so. Christina rather liked him; his temper didn’t worry her very much and since he had discovered that she wasn’t in the least afraid of him, he seldom vented it upon her, and if he sometimes flew into a rage with one of her nurses, then she stood up for her with a cool determination which he had found difficult to dispose of. On the whole, the two of them got on very well. He was on the point of leaving the ward when he turned suddenly and addressed her. ‘I suppose it was you who diagnosed Mr Tate for us, Sister?’

Her grey eyes were very clear. ‘Dr Fisher was concerned about him,’ she told him quietly. ‘He told me when he came to examine him early this morning that he had suspected a cerebral tumour, sir.’

Dr Robinson nodded, swivelling his eyes behind their glasses to look at Dr Fisher, as red as a turkey-cock.

‘That’s what I thought you’d say. Well, he’s got a chance now he’s transferred to the surgical side. Thanks to you,’ he added sotto voce.

The day was uneventful after that. Christina went down to her dinner presently, sharing a table with several of her friends, talking shop interlarded with clothes, boy-friends and holidays. Everyone seemed to be going abroad. She looked round her quite nonplussed when someone asked her where she was going for her winter leave.