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An arm around the heaving shoulders, the bowl nicely in position, and sitting on the bed because it was easier, Caroline turned a cheerful face to Mr Wilkins. ‘So sorry if I hurt your foot, sir, but Mrs Clarke is always sick without warning—so awkward and horrid for her.’
Mr Wilkins gobbled wordlessly; he was a pompous man, short and stout and middle-aged. He was a splendid surgeon and the students held him in awe, something he rather enjoyed, and here was a dab of a girl actually pushing him aside, telling him to wait. The fact that if he hadn’t waited the consequences would have been unpleasant to himself cut no ice. He opened his mouth to administer a dignified rebuke, but Caroline spoke first. ‘There—Mrs Clarke is better now.’ She mopped the lady’s pallid brow and picked up the bowl. ‘I do hope,’ she added in a motherly voice, ‘that your foot isn’t painful, sir.’
She slipped away and Sister, Staff and Corinna, who had been holding their breath, let it out with a sigh of relief. Mr Wilkins looked around him but the various faces looking back at him seemed solemn. ‘We will now examine Mrs Clarke,’ he told them and embarked on a rather lengthy dissertation concerning that lady’s insides, very much to her discomfort.
Drinking his coffee presently, Mr Wilkins voiced his disapproval of Caroline’s conduct. ‘I have neither the time nor the inclination to speak to this nurse,’ he observed, ‘I rely upon you, Sister, to deal with her as you think fit. I intend to speak to the senior nursing officer, of course. I cannot have my authority undermined.’
Sister, a strict disciplinarian but always fair, spoke up. ‘Nurse acted with foresight, sir. If she hadn’t reached Mrs Clarke with the bowl you would have been—er…’ She paused delicately.
‘She pushed me,’ said Mr Wilkins crossly, ‘and trod on my foot, and then had the impudence to hope that she hadn’t hurt me.’
His registrar said quite quietly, ‘It was either that or vomit all over your suit, sir. I agree with Sister—Nurse acted promptly in the best interests of both you and your patient.’ He added, ‘It would be most unjust to blame her for what she obviously saw as her duty.’
Mr Wilkins had gone red. ‘Since I am to be outnumbered I shall overlook the matter, but rest assured that I shall make it my business to keep a strict eye on the girl. What is her name?’
‘Nurse Frisby. She has just entered her second year. She is a promising student.’
Mr Wilkins said, ‘Pish,’ and went away, his registrar, poker-faced, with him. He didn’t like his chief overmuch, and he was glad that Caroline had escaped his bad temper. He grinned at the thought of the medical students recounting the episode to their fellows. Most of them had suffered at some time from Mr Wilkins’ ill humour and would relish a good laugh at his expense.
All the same, something would have to be done about it, Sister decided, and took herself off to the office to see her superior.
Two days later, before Mr Wilkins’ next ward round, Caroline was transferred to the children’s ward.
It was a happy choice made by her two superiors. The paediatric unit was housed at the back of the hospital, a modern wing built on to the ponderous Victorian main hospital. It was presided over by an elderly woman, Sister Crump, reputedly as mad as a hatter but none the less a miracle-worker when it came to getting her little patients well again and, what was more important, keeping them happy in the process.
After the strict regime of Women’s Surgical, Caroline found it very much to her liking. Here there were no orderly rows of cots; they were wheeled here, there and everywhere according to Sister Crump’s mood, and down the centre of the long ward there were low tables cluttered up with toys, teddy bears and picture books and the children who were well enough were allowed to scamper around within reason. On first sight it appeared to be a madhouse, but there was order too, and if a nurse couldn’t fit into Sister Crump’s way of working she was moved to another ward, for she demanded meticulous care of the children in her charge. Dressings were done, little patients got ready for Theatre, temperatures taken, medicines given to the strains of cheerful music. Since the children, unless they were very ill, shouted and screamed a good deal, the nurses had to lift their voices above the din. There was discipline too: the children addressed all the nurses as Nurse—Christian names, according to Sister Crump, carried no authority with them, and authority, gentle though it might be, was needed at all times.
Sister Crump had liked Caroline at once; nothing to look at, as she observed to Staff Nurse Neville later, but from all accounts she had acted with commendable promptness on the surgical ward even if she had upset Mr Wilkins’ sense of importance. ‘A fuss about nothing,’ she declared, and sailed into the ward, to clap her hands and tell the children to shout more softly. At the same time she observed that Caroline was sitting on the edge of a small bed, holding a little wriggling girl on her lap while a senior nurse dressed the wound, beautifully stitched, on the small arm.
There were side-wards leading from the main wards where the very ill children lay. It was quiet here, the rooms with glass walls, equipped with all the paraphernalia necessary for urgent treatment and nurses constantly going from one child to the other. In a few days, Staff Nurse had told Caroline, when she had got to know the ward thoroughly, she would take her turn too with the other nurses, looking after one or two children, giving them the specialised treatment they had been ordered. Caroline looked at the array of monitoring screens, tubes and drips and hoped that she would know what to do. Of course, Sister Tutor had explained it all, but applying theory to practice demanded the keeping of one’s wits about one.
She got on well with the other nurses—they were all her senior but she was a little older than most student nurses and made no effort to call attention to herself; besides, she was willing to help out on occasion and made no demands about having days off to suit herself and not the ward. By the end of the week she had been accepted by both nurses and children alike; moreover, Sister Crump had taken care to introduce her to the various housemen who visited the ward, cheerful young men who were quite willing to waste ten minutes playing with the children, eyeing the nurses and coaxing mugs of coffee out of Sister Crump. And when the consultant paediatrician came to do his round she wasn’t exactly introduced, although she was pointed out to him as being the new nurse on the ward. He stared at her, gave her a nod and took no more notice of her; indeed, it would have surprised her very much if he had. He was a youngish man with a long, thin face which lit up when he was with the children. One of the other student nurses, standing discreetly in the background while he went from one small patient to the other, whispered that he had three small children of his own and had married a nurse from the hospital. ‘The children love him,’ she added, ‘and he and old Crumpie get on like a house on fire.’
Certainly the round had none of the formality of a grown-ups’ ward. Mr Spence sat on the cots and small beds, carrying, from time to time, a grizzling infant over a shoulder while he discussed something with his registrar and the housemen. Caroline went home for her next days off happier than she had been for some time, although she had to admit to herself that if only she could banish Mr van Houben from her mind she would be completely happy; he was taking up too much of her thoughts, which was absurd; she had exchanged only a few words with him and none of those exciting enough to engage his attention, and besides, she had made a fool of herself falling down his steps. If he ever thought of her at all, which she doubted, it would be with an amused laugh.
When she went back on duty after her days off it was to be told by Sister Crump that they were short-handed, what with days off and one of the third-year students off sick and a badly injured child brought in late the evening before. ‘Ran away from his nanny, climbed a wall and fell on to a concrete path. Head injuries and in a coma. Mr Spence doesn’t want to operate until he improves; unfortunately he has broken ribs and a punctured lung, makes giving an anaesthetic very tricky. He’s being specialled, Nurse, which means that for long periods you may be alone in the main ward. Can you manage that?’
‘I’ll do my best, Sister. There’s no one very ill there, is there? It’s a question of keeping them happy and potting them and feeding them…’
‘Just so. You’ll have another nurse with you whenever it’s possible and I don’t