Nightingales at War (9 page)

‘
THE WHOLE WARD
will need to be swept and damp-dusted every day, including the floors, the window sills and the lockers. Be sure to dust the bedsprings and clean the wheels of each bed, too. Sister will check it’s done properly. You’ll find brushes and everything else you need in this cupboard here . . .’

Jennifer stifled a yawn with the back of her hand and wondered if Nurse Riley would ever stop talking. She’d been going on and on for the past ten minutes, listing all Jennifer’s duties. They seemed never-ending.

‘And this is the linen room,’ Nurse Riley went on. ‘This is where we keep all the clean sheets and pillowcases. The beds will need to be changed every day, and remade several times a day. It’s very important to make sure the patient is comfortable. You have been taught how to make a bed, I suppose?’

She regarded Jennifer with a frown, and the girl stared back at her. The staff nurse was a few years older than Jennifer herself, sturdily built, with muddy green eyes, gingery eyelashes and a freckled face. She looked fierce enough that Jennifer knew she wouldn’t want to cross her.

‘Yes, Nurse.’

‘Good. I hope you can do it quickly, too. Sister expects a bed to be made from start to finish in under two minutes. Any dirty linen needs to be rinsed in the sluice, and then packed up and left in those bins out there for the porters to take to the laundry.’

Jennifer stifled another yawn. She really shouldn’t have gone up west with Cissy the night before she started her new job at the hospital. But Cissy had just heard that Paul was safely back in England, and she was in the mood to have some fun.

Boy, they’d really kicked up their heels! There were no British boys in London any more, but the city was teeming with all kinds of exciting foreign soldiers from all over the world. Jennifer had danced all night with Canadians, Polish, Frenchmen, all lonely and looking for some lively company. But in the end it was a young Norwegian who had caught her attention, a handsome blond giant in a blue serge suit. She hadn’t been able to understand a word he’d said, but that didn’t seem to matter when she was in his arms.

She and Cissy had finally crept home just as dawn was breaking, their shoes in their hands, having cadged a lift on the back of a milk float from Aldgate. Thank God their dads had both been working nights, or there would have been hell to pay.

‘Am I keeping you up, Caldwell?’

Jennifer came back to the present to find Nurse Riley staring at her.

‘Sorry, Nurse,’ she mumbled.

Nurse Riley tutted. ‘Really, I hope you’re livelier than this when Sister’s around. She won’t take any of your nonsense. Now here’s the kitchen, where you’ll boil up the urn for the drinks round, and here are the bathrooms – they’ll need to be scrubbed thoroughly every day, although most of the patients will need to be bathed in bed, due to their injuries.’

Was there an inch of the ward that didn’t need to be scrubbed or mopped or polished or dusted? Jennifer wondered as she followed Nurse Riley out of the bathroom. As she left she caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors and paused to adjust her cap to a more rakish angle on her dark curls.

The uniform rather suited her, she thought. She’d always looked good in blue, and the crisp white apron emblazoned with a red cross gave her an air of importance.

‘Caldwell!’ Nurse Riley snapped at her again, breaking her out of her daydream. ‘Follow me, and I’ll take you down to the sluice.’

Nurse Riley led the way down the ward, her shoes squeaking on the polished floors. Jennifer looked around at the patients. What a terrible, sad sight they were, some with limbs missing, others with their faces and bodies swathed in bandages. Some of the beds had screens around them, shielding them from view. Jennifer wondered what shocking sights lay behind them.

‘Don’t stare,’ Nurse Riley snapped. ‘These are wounded men coming to terms with their injuries and the last thing they need is you gawping at them. You must try not to be silly or insensitive when you’re on the ward.’

Who are you calling silly? Jennifer felt like asking. But she didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Dora Riley. She seemed short-tempered enough already.

None of this would have been so bad if Cissy had been with her. It was so unfair that they’d been separated. Jennifer had been pleased when she found out she was going to be looking after soldiers on the Male Acute ward, until she found out Cissy was being packed off to Casualty. What had seemed like an adventure was turning out to be very dull indeed without Cissy to share it.

‘This is where we keep the trolleys and the screens that go round each bed when the patient is being washed or examined.’ Nurse Riley pointed them out as she swept past. ‘And these are the private rooms.’

Jennifer peered in through the first door, which was half open. The curtains were pulled, shutting out the June sunshine. But in the shadowy darkness, she could make out a figure in the bed, lost amid what seemed to be a complicated arrangement of bandages and straps.

‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

‘He’s one of Mr Cooper’s patients.’ Nurse Riley’s voice was clipped with impatience. ‘You don’t need to go in there. Now this way is the sluice, where you’ll be spending most of your time . . .’ She swung open the door to a small room. The stench caught the back of Jennifer’s throat, making her eyes water. She reeled back, holding her apron to her face.

‘That awful smell . . .’

‘Bedpans,’ Nurse Riley said. ‘You’ll get used to them. Have you ever cleaned one before?’

Jennifer shook her head. Her gaze was fixed on the towering pile of porcelain pans ranged on the floor beside the large sink. They were covered, but the smell still made her stomach churn and her throat tighten.

‘Bushell will show you what you have to do.’ Nurse Riley nodded towards the skinny blonde girl standing at the sink. ‘Be quick about it, mind. No chattering, please. I will be keeping my eye on you,’ she warned.

‘She’s a laugh a minute, isn’t she?’ Jennifer said, when the door had closed behind Nurse Riley.

‘She’s actually very nice, usually.’ Daisy Bushell shrugged. ‘Although I must admit, she has been rather snappish this morning . . . But still, she’s much kinder than Sister.
She’s
the one you really have to watch out for. Now, about these bedpans . . .’ She reached for the topmost one. ‘Here’s what you need to do. You have to empty the contents down here –’ She pointed to the large hole in the centre of the sink ‘– unless you’ve been told to keep them for inspection. Oh, and make sure you pick out any bits of tow before you empty it away.’

‘Tow?’ Jennifer said faintly.

‘It’s a kind of wool stuff that the nurses use to wipe the patients when they’ve finished using the pan,’ Daisy said. ‘They shouldn’t throw it in the bedpan, it really needs to go in a separate receiver dish, but sometimes they forget so you have to check and fish it out with forceps before you empty it.’

‘Fish it out . . . with forceps . . .’ Jennifer echoed queasily.

‘Once you’ve emptied the bedpan, you tip it upside down over this spray,’ Daisy went on briskly. ‘Remember to put it over before you switch on the spray, otherwise you’ll make an awful mess. Clean the pan out thoroughly, then use this mop to scrub each one with plenty of disinfectant. Keep the mop in the disinfectant when you’re not using it. Then rinse out the pan again, dry the outside and then put it up here.’ She pointed to a rack on the wall. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I?’ Jennifer replied gloomily. She looked around. ‘Where are the gloves?’ she asked.

‘What gloves?’

Jennifer stared at her in horror. ‘You don’t mean I’m supposed to clean these – things – out with my bare hands?’

‘That’s the idea,’ Daisy shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it soon enough. And mind you scrub inside the handles, too. Sister always checks the handles.’

‘And what about those?’ Jennifer pointed to a row of bottles, covered by calico cloths.

‘You clean them in the same way, by emptying them out and then rinsing them. But be sure to check first with Sister or Nurse Riley that they don’t need to take a speci-men.’ She looked anxiously at the clock on the wall. ‘We’d better get a move on,’ she said. ‘The consultant is due to do his rounds at half past ten and we need to have all these done, the ward cleaned, the patients washed and the beds all made by then.’

Jennifer gazed at her hands despairingly. The thought of picking up one of those revolting bedpans was more than she could stand.

Gingerly she picked up the first pan and held it at arm’s length. Holding her breath, she whipped the lid off another pan, gave it a quick half glance and tipped it over the sinkhole, her face turned away. The slopping of the contents down the hole made her retch.

Daisy watched her with amusement. ‘I don’t actually mind the bedpans,’ she lisped. ‘It’s the patients I can’t cope with. All those horrible, gaping wounds, and the missing limbs – ugh!’ She shuddered.

‘They didn’t seem too bad to me.’ Jennifer shrugged.

‘You haven’t seen them up close,’ Daisy warned her. She picked up one of the bedpans from the draining board, dried around the outside, then hung it up on the rack.

‘What about those patients in the private rooms?’

Daisy stared at her in horror. ‘Oh, you must never, ever go in there,’ she warned, her voice hushed. ‘Sister would have a fit, apart from anything else. Only the trained nurses are ever allowed in those rooms, even to clean.’

‘Is that right?’ Jennifer was intrigued.

‘I mean it, Caldwell. You mustn’t ever go in there.’

‘All right, keep your hair on. I wasn’t going to break the rules. I just wondered who was in there, that’s all.’

‘Well, so far as I know they were both brought in yesterday. One is a soldier. He’s suffering from gas gangrene and he’s had his arm amputated. And the other is an airman whose plane crash-landed.’ Daisy pulled a face. ‘It’s a very sad story, from what I’ve been told. Apparently he had the chance to escape, but he went back to try and pull his wireless operator free. That’s when he got burned by the exploding fuel tank.’

‘How awful.’ Jennifer thought about the figure in the shadowy room, swathed in straps and bandages. ‘Will he live, do you think?’

Daisy sent her a strange look. ‘I don’t know, do I? Goodness, don’t you ask a lot of questions?’

‘I can’t help being curious, can I?’

Sister Holmes appeared as Jennifer was finishing off the last bedpan.

‘Are you still in here? What on earth has taken you so long, girl?’ she demanded. ‘I hope you two haven’t been gossiping instead of getting on with your work?’ She looked at Daisy, who blushed guiltily.

‘Just finished, Sister,’ Jennifer said

‘Let me see.’ Sister Holmes picked a pan off the rack and turned it around in her hands, peering down the hollow handle. ‘Still filthy,’ she declared, handing it back to Jennifer. ‘You’ll have to do them all again.’

‘They seem clean enough to me, Sister—’ Jennifer started to protest, but Sister Holmes snapped her a look that shocked her into silence.

‘I don’t care how they seem to you,’ she said. ‘I am telling you they are not cleaned to my satisfaction. I want you to clean them again. And make sure you do it properly this time. Good heavens, at this rate by the time you finish them the patients will be wanting to use them again!’

She turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

The rest of the morning didn’t go much better for Jennifer. Once she’d finally finished the bedpans, Sister made her rinse the soiled bedlinen before it went off to the laundry, and scrub and dry the mackintosh sheets. Then it had been time for more bedpans and bottles, and cleaning the bathrooms from top to bottom. By the end of the morning three of her nails were broken and her skin itched from being constantly doused in disinfectant.

And then Sister made her help with serving the patients their meals before she was finally dismissed to the dining room for her own.

Cissy was already there, sitting at a long table with the other VADs.

‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ she said.

‘Neither did I. That wretched woman kept me working right up till the last minute.’ Jennifer collapsed into a chair and stretched out her aching legs. ‘That’s better. I haven’t sat down all morning.’

‘I was lucky,’ Cissy said. ‘Sister Casualty is an angel, she sent us off on time.’

‘You are lucky.’ Jennifer grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been scrubbing bedpans with your bare hands all morning either?’

Cissy pulled a face. ‘You haven’t?’

Jennifer held out her hands. ‘Look. And I’ve got the broken nails to prove it.’

‘All we have to do is tidy up the consulting rooms between patients, and make sure no one vomits while they’re waiting to be seen,’ Cissy said.

‘I wish I was on Casualty with you, in that case.’

‘Me too.’ Cissy leaned forward. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve been paired up with?’

Jennifer followed her friend’s gaze to the end of the table, where Eve Ainsley sat alone, picking at her food.

‘No! Poor you. I don’t think I envy you at all, in that case. How’s she been getting on?’

‘Oh, she’s already in Sister’s good books. She’s a real teacher’s pet, just like she was in the classes.’

Jennifer looked down the end of the table. ‘What’s that mark on her face?’ she asked.

Cissy shrugged. ‘Reckons she walked into a wall in the blackout,’ she said, helping herself to another slice of bread.

Jennifer frowned to see the fading bruise on the girl’s cheek and felt a pang of guilt. She wondered if she’d had her accident after Jennifer had abandoned her to go off with Johnny. Oh,well, it was Eve’s own fault, Jennifer told herself. She should have accepted a lift when she had the chance.

Thinking about that night reminded her of Johnny Fayers. Not that he was ever far from her thoughts. She was annoyed with herself for thinking of him so much when he clearly didn’t care about her.

It had been a week now, and she still hadn’t seen him. Jennifer kept trying to tell herself that he didn’t know where to find her, but she had a feeling that someone like Johnny would be able to find out if he’d been interested. Unfortunately, he hadn’t bothered.