Damsel In Green

CHAPTER TWO

ST ATHEL’S looked grim and grey on Monday morning, Georgina walked into the cold, well polished hall of the Nurses’ Home and started to climb the stairs to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be all right again. But somehow she wasn’t, despite the fact that Gregg had a half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy—too busy to think on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o’clock and Ned telephoned to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker—he was on the medical side, which didn’t prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty. When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper, what with Mr Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while pronouncing an obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles’ fracture a Potts’. She had asked him crossly if he hadn’t learned the difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.

‘Days off,’ snapped Georgina. ‘I’ll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back,’ and had the satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr Baker would serve her purpose as well as any, she supposed.

He backed to the door. ‘I merely wished to know,’ he stated coldly, ‘because I’m not completely satisfied with your work.’

‘I’ll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning,’ she said with equal coldness. ‘I’m sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other housemen—she wouldn’t like to think that our standards aren’t up to yours.’ She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.

When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs Mogg. The cake disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the conversation turned, as it always did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into the QAs, two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting married or engaged.

A voice said, ‘George, you haven’t told us what you’re going to do.’

‘Well,’ she began; she wasn’t sure if she should mention about getting a Sister’s post, ‘I thought I’d stay here …’

‘Did Matron dangle a Sister’s cap before you?’ someone wanted to know.

‘Later on … it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I’ll do my Midder.’ She had only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.

Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn’t show through, and presented herself, outwardly composed, at Matron’s office. She came out again within a couple of minutes. Night duty—four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience, Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too, several days at home each fortnight. She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, ‘Thank God! That woman who’s on now calls me for the merest scratch—besides, you’re nice to have around.’

Georgina chuckled. ‘Go on with you, Ned,’ she said comfortably. If she had had a brother, she would have used the same tone of voice she was using now. ‘But I promise not to call you for scratches!’

They started on their separate ways and as they went he called over his shoulder, ‘Are you on tonight?’

She went on walking away from him. ‘No, tomorrow,’ she replied, thinking that she must remember to ring Aunt Polly.

Night duty on Cas followed a pattern, she discovered, after she had been on for a few nights. Until eleven she was kept busy by a steady influx of people who ‘didn’t like to bother the doctor’; toothache, teething babies, bruises it was best not to enquire too deeply into; boils and headaches, cut fingers and ingrowing toenails; they crowded into the benches, confident that someone would do something for them, and in the meantime it was pleasant to have a natter. After the pubs closed, it was the turn of the drunks, cheerfully escorted by a constable, who as often or not gave a helping hand. There was seldom very much wrong with them, but they wasted everyone’s time, for they invariably needed stitches.

After the first night, when there were two or three waiting for scalp wounds to be sutured, Ned suggested that she should give a hand, and after that she added stitching to her duties; of course he did the complicated cuts, but very often it was only a case of one straightforward stitch, which the patient was frequently far too drunk to notice. The crashes followed a pattern too—round about midnight and five or six in the morning, so that Georgina quite often ate her dinner at two o’clock in the morning and had to miss tea altogether, but that was something you expected if you worked on Cas, and it didn’t occur to her to grumble about it. She slept like a log during the day, and there were nights off to look forward to.

On this, the fifth night, however, she had gone on duty tired after an almost sleepless day. She smiled at the waiting patients as she passed them and went on into the office to take over from Sister, who was looking, surprisingly, quite different from usual. She gave Georgina one or two police messages in an abstracted sort of manner and told her that Ned would be on duty, and that Mr Bingham would be available at ten o’clock. There was something in the way she said this that made Georgina look at her carefully. Sister was excited, and excitement had turned her into a very pretty woman. She caught Georgina’s eye and said almost diffidently, ‘Mr Bingham and I are going out to dinner—to celebrate. I might as well tell you, Staff. We’re going to be married.’

Georgina put down her cloak and bag. ‘Sister, how wonderful! I am glad, and wish you every happiness. What a pity Mr Bingham has to be on duty—it’s his night on call, isn’t it?’

Sister got up and draped her cloak around her shoulders. ‘Well, yes, Staff, it is. But we shan’t be long—if anything big comes in, Ned can get help and send for Mr Bingham—there’s the phone number on the pad.’

She smiled dreamily, said goodnight, and slipped away. Georgina rolled up her sleeves and put on her frills, thinking about Sister and Mr Bingham. Sister would leave, of course. She went across to the cubicles and checked their contents with practiced speed, not because she didn’t trust the day staff to leave everything in a state of readiness, but because each one of them did it when they came on duty—it was a kind of unwritten rule no one forgot. This done, she began on the patients.

The benches were half cleared when she heard the ambulance. The two cubicles nearest the door were empty; she pushed back the double doors and wheeled two trolleys as near as possible to them, and found time to warn the waiting patients that they would be delayed. It was Ginger on duty. He drew up with a little rush and got out to join his mate.

‘Evening, Staff,’ he called politely. ‘Got an RTA here. Two kids and a man.’ He had opened the ambulance door and was pulling out the first stretcher. ‘Head injuries—broken legs for the little boy—man’s a walking case.’

She flew to the telephone and dialed the doctors’ quarters and waited a long minute while Ned was fetched. She said merely, ‘An RTA, Ned,’ and went to the first cubicle where the little boy was. He was still on the trolley and unconscious, and she thought that that was a good thing when she whisked back the blanket and looked at his legs. Nothing much to see, but there were already bruises showing between the splints—probably both femurs. He didn’t look too bad, and his pulse was good. The second child was a little girl, semi-conscious and bleeding from head wounds. She had long straight fair hair, hopelessly tangled and matted with blood. Georgina took her pulse too and hoped that she was right in thinking that she wasn’t badly injured. The third patient came in on his feet, looking rather white. He was holding his right hand against his chest, and said surprisingly, ‘I’m sorry to give you this trouble. The children?’

Georgina said quickly, ‘The doctor will be here in a moment—he’ll have to examine them first. Come and sit down. When we’ve seen to them and I’ve a second, I’ll get a sling for that arm of yours. It looks like a collar-bone.’

She smiled at him, her brown eyes soft with sympathy. He was about her own age or a little younger; very good-looking, with fair hair and blue eyes and a mouth that looked as though it could laugh a lot in happier circumstances. She left him sitting, and went at once to the small boy, to be joined at once by Ned. He stood looking at him while she cut away the clothes from the quiet little body, and then at a word from her, steadied each leg as she eased off the shoes and socks.

Ned explored them gently. ‘This is a job for old Sawbones—’ he meant Mr Sawbridge, the senior orthopaedic surgeon. ‘I’ll get Bill Foster down.’ Bill was his registrar. ‘Get him on the phone, George. What’s the lad’s pulse like?’

She had been taking it while he was talking. ‘A hundred and ten—strong, steady. I’ll get him on a half-hourly chart, shall I? And I suppose you’ll want skull X-rays as well as legs?’

She didn’t wait for an answer but went to the telephone for a second time to get Bill Foster, and then to send a message to the Night Super to see if she could spare the junior runner; it wasn’t very likely, and she was used to managing alone for the greater part of the night. She left Ned with the little boy and went to look at the girl. The ambulance men had stayed with her and she thanked them gratefully. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stop to make you a cup of tea, Ginger, but you’re welcome to make yourselves one—you know where everything is.’

But they thanked her and said, no, they’d go. There was sure to be some more work for them some time. They collected their blankets and said ‘Cheerio’ because it would have been silly to have said anything else when they would probably be seeing her several more times during the night. They said goodnight to the young man, however, and he wished them a good night in return and then asked them their names. They gave them awkwardly, and just as awkwardly received his quiet thanks. On the whole, not many people remembered to thank them, understandably enough, but it was nice when they did.

Georgina had taken the little girl’s pulse again. It was good, and she started to ease off her clothing. She was wearing a beautifully made topcoat; the dress beneath it was good too, but stained and torn. The child moaned softly and opened her eyes for a moment, and Georgina waited until she had lapsed into unconsciousness again before looking for injuries. There was a dull red mark on one cheek and another one on a shoulder—they would be livid bruises in a day or so. She covered her little patient with the blanket again and started to examine the small head. There were a number of cuts, none of them serious, but needing stitches. She started to swab them one by one, carefully cutting the long hair away from each small wound. The child was still unconscious when she had finished. She pulled the curtain back, hurried across to where the man sat and fastened a sling around his arm, then took an X-ray form along to Ned for him to sign. When she got back, she said, ‘Do you think you could manage to get to X-Ray? We’re a bit pushed for staff—it’s only just across the passage. I’ll fill in your name presently.’

‘The children?’ he asked again.

‘The orthopaedic surgeon will be in presently—I’m afraid the little boy has both legs broken,’ she said gently, ‘but his general condition is quite good. The little girl has a cut head—I can’t tell you anything else until the doctor has examined them.’

He stood up. ‘How kind you are,’ he said, and smiled so that she felt a small glow of pleasure. He took the form she was holding out to him, and walked away to X-Ray.

Bill Foster came then and joined Ned and Night Super followed him. She ran a practiced eye over everything and said, ‘You can manage, can’t you Staff? We’re two nurses short tonight and Men’s Medical is up to its eyes. They really need the runner there—I’ll try and send someone down to help you clear up later.’ She went away again, exuding confidence and encouragement.

Georgina went back to her patient. The trolley was set; it was just a question of waiting until Ned could get along to do the stitching. She took the child’s pulse, was satisfied, and began to draw up the Novocaine. It was while she was doing so that she became aware of the man standing in the doorway.

Her first impression was that he was enormous. She put the syringe, with its needle stuck in the top of the Novocaine bottle, on to the trolley top, and took another look. She had been right; he wasn’t just tall; he was massive as well, so that he dwarfed the small cubicle. He was handsome too, with fair hair brushed back from a high wide forehead, a patrician nose, and a mouth that looked kind. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes, but she thought that they were blue—they were staring at her now, and she made haste to say something.

‘Is this moppet yours? If you wouldn’t mind going to the cubicle at the end, the Casualty Officer is there—I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you calling in to see her.’ She smiled kindly at him. ‘She’s not too bad, although she looks … The boy, is he yours too?’

He smiled faintly. ‘Yes, Staff Nurse, they’re—mine.’ He had a deep voice, but she had expected that; any other would have sounded absurd coming from the great chest. ‘I’ve seen the Casualty Officer. May I come in?’

He suited the action to the word and went to stand by the couch. But he didn’t just stand; he raised the child’s eyelids to test for pupil reaction, examined the small ears and nose carefully and took her pulse. ‘Has she been conscious at all?’ he wanted to know.

Georgina said, ‘Yes, twice, for a few moments,’ and stopped, astonished at herself. The man was a stranger and she was meekly answering his questions just as though he was one of the hospital doctors. She shot him a look of mingled annoyance and perplexity which she was sure he didn’t see. Apparently he had eyes at the back of his head as well, for he said apologetically, ‘I’m sorry. You’re quite right to be vexed with me. I should have said that I am a doctor. Your excellent young man here suggested that I might like to stitch Beatrix while we wait for Mr Sawbridge’s verdict.’ He straightened, missing the ceiling by an inch or so. ‘He will—er—vouch for me if you would care to ask him.’

She hesitated. It didn’t occur to her to doubt him; he wasn’t that kind of a man. Indeed, she was struck by the thought that she had met him a bare five minutes ago, and on the strength of this short acquaintance was quite prepared to take his word on anything. All the same, perhaps she should ask his name. She was saved from making up her mind about this by Ned, who put his head round the curtain. He took no notice of her at all, but said with marked politeness:

‘Mr Sawbridge has just arrived, sir, if you’d care to see him? I could be having a quick dek—er—look at the little girl in the meantime.’

The big man nodded. When he had gone and Ned had started a careful examination, Georgina burst out, ‘Ned, for heaven’s sake, why are you so polite? Who is he?’ She passed him the ophthalmoscope. ‘Her blood pressure’s normal—her pulse is a bit fast too—a hundred and twelve, but nice volume. Who is he?’ she repeated.

Ned gave her back the ophthalmoscope and took the auroscope she was holding out. He peered down it and muttered, ‘Can’t see anything much wrong—better have her X-rayed, though, when she’s stitched. He’ll do it I expect, while the boy’s in X-Ray.’

‘Who’s he?’ Georgina tried again. She was used to doctors, who tended to get away from the point.

‘George, don’t you ever read those nursing papers of yours, or listen to the grapevine? He’s been here several times. He lectures us—he goes to most of the teaching hospitals. He’s Professor van den Berg Eyffert.’

She opened her pretty brown eyes wide. ‘What a name! Not English, surely. What’s he professor of?’

Ned frowned. ‘Your grammar’s a bit sloppy, isn’t it, old lady? Anaesthetics. Right in the front row, he is. Knows all the answers.’ He went to the door. ‘I’m going to X-Ray to look at that clavicle.’

He went, and the big man came back. He said nothing about the little boy, merely, ‘Shall we start, Staff Nurse?’

He took off his coat and white scarf, and stood in all the magnificence of white tie and tails, looking for somewhere to put them. Georgina took them from him and hung them behind the door, and his tail coat too while he rolled up his shirt sleeves. He was almost ready when she said hastily, ‘Before you start, sir, would you like me to send a message to your wife? I can telephone her … you could speak to her.’

He looked as though he was going to smile, but he answered gravely, ‘Thank you, but I have no wife.’

‘Oh, how awful for you—I am sorry,’ said Georgina, and went scarlet. Would she never learn to think before she spoke? she thought remorsefully, and plunged deeper. ‘I mean—it’s horrid for children when something like this happens, and there’s no mo …’ she stopped again, and met his eyes watching her quizzically from the other side of the trolley.

‘The young man with them—is he yours too?’

This time he did smile. ‘Yes, more or less. A cousin. I have seen him in X-Ray.’ He looked suddenly forbidding. Perhaps, thought Georgina, it would be a good idea not to ask him any more questions.

‘Shall I hold her in my arms in case she comes round?’ she asked. ‘If I sit on the side of the couch with her head over my arm—there’s a stool you could use, otherwise your back will ache,’ she added in a practical voice.

He did as she suggested and started to stitch. Two of the cuts had been closed when the little girl began to whimper, and they waited without speaking until she opened her eyes. Georgina said at once:

‘Hullo, Beatrix.’

The child looked at her for a long moment. ‘Who are you, please?’

‘Oh, a nurse,’ said Georgina, and turned herself round so that her patient could see the man on the stool. The small face lighted up.

‘Cousin Julius! I knew you’d come!’ She started to smile and then, because her scratched face was sore and stiff, began to cry instead. Georgina held her close, murmuring comfort, while the man sat impassive, showing no impatience. In a minute or two, Georgina produced a hanky to mop the large blue eyes and said firmly:

‘Hush now! If we tell you what has to be done to make your head better, will you be a brave girl while it’s done?’

She didn’t wait for an answer but waited for Professor Eyffert to explain. He said gently, ‘You’ve cut your head, Beatrix, and I’m stitching the cuts together again. I shall have to prick you once or twice and we don’t mind if you want to cry; only stay still on Nurse’s lap.’

She was sleepy again. She murmured, ‘Yes, Cousin Julius,’ and made no demur when he picked up the syringe again. He had almost finished when she said:

‘I know you’re a nurse, but what’s your name?’

‘Georgina,’ said Georgina.

The child repeated it. ‘That’s a nice name. Does everyone call you that?’

‘Well, no, not always.’

‘What?’ the small voice was persistent.

‘Actually,’ said Georgina, ‘I get called George.’ She felt faintly embarrassed.

‘I shall call you George. That is, if you don’t mind? I like you.’

Georgina was aware that the Professor had finished his handiwork and was just sitting on the stool, listening. She looked up and caught his eye and frowned in a repressive fashion at him because she found his presence unsettling. She said, ‘Thank you, Beatrix. I like you too,’ then laid the child gently back on to the couch, made quick work of spraying each small cut with Nebecutane and then said to no one in particular:

‘I think I shall be needed to take the small boy …’

‘Cornelis,’ said a small voice from the pillow. ‘He’s my brother.’

‘Cornelis,’ repeated Georgina obediently, ‘to X-Ray.’ She stood up and looked fleetingly at the man sitting so quietly. ‘Shall I find a nurse to sit with Beatrix, or will you …?’

‘Stay? Yes, of course. But please ask Mr Sawbridge if he would spare a moment.’

She went down the row of cubicles to where the little boy lay, and passed the young man on the way. He was sitting on one of the stiff wooden chairs, staring ahead of him, but he smiled fleetingly as she halted before him.

‘All right?’ she enquired. ‘I’ll see to you just as soon as I can—it won’t be long now. Your—er—cousin is in the cubicle with the little girl if you like …’

He interrupted quite fiercely, ‘Thank you, Nurse—if my cousin wants me, he’ll send for me.’

She blinked at this; it would have been nice if she could have spared the time to learn a little more about the Professor. Instead, she made all haste to where an impatient porter was waiting to go to X-Ray.

Ten minutes later, while they were taking the lateral views, Mr Sawbridge, Bill Foster and the Professor came in. They went straight to the darkroom, where she could hear them muttering together over the wet films until the radiographer had finished his work and went to join them. They all came out together very shortly, and Mr Sawbridge said, ‘All right, Staff, take him back. I shall want the theatre in twenty minutes, please. Ask Theatre Sister to telephone me here as soon as possible. Oh, and put a figure-of-eight on Mr van den Berg Eyffert.’