A HAZARD OF HEARTS (12 page)

Elly grimaced. It would keep her alive. ‘Matron,
I’d like to apply for the position. I could start immediately.’

Mrs Box glanced at Elly’s meagre luggage and
rose. Clearly she was reassured by Elly’s own evident need for somewhere to
stay and earn her keep. ‘Come and I’ll show you the wards. Oh, dearie me. I
quite forgot to ask your name.’

‘It’s Eleanor Ballard, Miss Ballard.’

‘Then, Ballard, you may begin your duties on a probationary
basis tomorrow at six a.m. Do you have any baggage to be collected from the
Quay?’

Elly, flushed, shook her head, and found herself
bustled out into the corridor.

Matron Box indicated a nearby door. ‘These are
the nurses’ quarters, which I’ll show you later. Now, here we have Number Five
men’s ward. I should warn you that we are fearfully overcrowded, due to the
recent influenza epidemic, although, thankfully, this has begun to wane.’ She
flung open the door.

Elly looked over the smaller woman’s shoulder,
and was stunned. The room was chaotic. Ambulant patients ran up and down in
their nightshirts, some clearly feverish or semi-demented. Those confined to
bed lay like waxworks, either comatose or physically unable to move, with at
least two and often three men to a bed.

Clearly a meal had recently been served. A
wheeled wagon stood inside the door with metal dishes piled high. Several more
dishes lay on the floor, their contents discharged over the boards and trodden
in. Nearby two men struggled with a third, naked and yelling as they tried to
force a nightshirt over his head. A bowl of water had been spilt over the bed. An
elderly man held his head, shrieking piercingly, on and on, while two others
clutched a torn blanket at each end in a grim tug-of-war. A young fellow whose
hair sprang up like a fox’s brush danced a hornpipe on the wide window-sill,
while two others chanted and beat with spoons on the bed ends. It was total
uproar.

Mrs Box, looking annoyed, trotted up to the
dancing sailor and dragged him down from the sill. Her voice somehow rose above
the cacophony. ‘Get back to bed, Billy Wales, at once. If you’re well enough to
dance, then you’re well enough to be discharged.’

Billy obeyed, sheepishly, but immediately joined
his friends in beating time to the sea-shanty. The shrieking man had his hands
pulled away from his ears as Matron called for the wards men to leave their
naked patient and come tie Mr Abrams’ arms to his bed. The screams died to a
keening wail. Matron turned to Elly.

‘It’s not always so noisy,’ she bellowed above
the uproar. ‘Come outside where we can be heard.’ She closed the door on the
ward. ‘I’ll send someone to take away the wagon and clear up the floor. Oh,
dear, we could use twenty more staff, I’m sure. They do their best but...’ She sighed.

Elly said, ‘That man who was shrieking, surely
he’s deranged. Shouldn’t he be kept apart from the other patients?’

‘He should of course. But that’s a luxury we are
denied. Now I’ll show you the lower floor, with the operating theatres, as well
as the Board Room.’

‘Could we see the women’s wards, first?’ Elly
thoughts were grim. It would be better to know all she had to face.

The Matron frowned. ‘I don’t see why. They’re
just the same.’ But flicking a glance at Elly’s determined expression she
weakened. ‘Oh, very well.’

Elly followed her down the corridor, well
satisfied with their first clash of wills. They stopped outside a room where a
minor battle seemed to be raging, and entered.

‘I won’t. I won’t,’ screeched a young woman with
ragged shift and unkempt hair streaming as she ran down the ward pursued by
another woman in cap and apron brandishing a ladle.

‘Yes you will, Annie Moon,’ the presumed nurse
said, cornering her prey and advancing on her with ladle poised.

Fascinated, Elly watched her throw her
considerable weight against the recalcitrant Annie Moon then literally pour the
contents of the ladle down her throat. Annie spluttered, cried and sank down in
a heap in the corner.

The nurse poked at a childish figure in the next
bed.

‘You’re next, Charlotte. Open wide.’ She went to
a stone jar standing on the sill and refilled the ladle. When she turned around
Charlotte had gone under the bed. Dragged out, she was pinned uncompromisingly
to the mattress, her nose held and the dose administered. Charlotte choked,
spat and bit her tormentor’s arm. A vicious slap knocked her flat on the bed
where she began to sob, her thin frame shaking as if with an ague.

Elly’s eyes questioned the Matron, who shrugged.
‘Nurse Jenkins administers the black cordial because she has better control. They
don’t like it.’

‘The black cordial?’

‘To open the bowels. It’s a rule of mine that
each patient has a dose each day to cleanse the system.’

‘Surely an aperient may not suit all
circumstances, recovering surgical cases, for instance?’

‘No exceptions,’ said Matron, firmly. ‘Rules are
made to be followed.’

Elly swallowed a retort, saying instead, ‘Your
Nurse Jenkins is severe. What does the girl Charlotte suffer from?’

‘She’s subject to epileptic fits. Someone
brought her in off the street last night, unconscious.’

‘Has a doctor examined her?’

‘Not yet. There’s been no time. Mr Wykeham will
see her this afternoon.’

Meanwhile, thought Elly, the poor child is
subjected to the black cordial while being bullied into another fit. However,
she held her tongue and followed the Matron down the ward as she greeted each
patient, enquiring kindly about their comfort. Some ignored her, going on with
their moaning and mumbling as if too preoccupied to attend to anything else. Others
answered according to their natures, sprightly, grumpy or with a flow of
invective drawn from the back slums. Matron answered all with a smile then
passed on to the end of the room where a card game was in progress.

Ignoring the players she pounced on a bottle
half-hidden under a cot. ‘Jenkins, get rid of this.’

‘I’ll do it for ye.’ A woman of middle years
with a grossly swollen belly, picked up the bottle and with one heave raised
the window. A wave of noxious fumes poured in, making Elly gag.

‘Shut it at once.’ Matron sprang forward to slam
the window down. Jenkins grabbed the bottle and gave the fat woman a push,
knocking her over.

‘What on earth is that?’ asked Elly. ‘A tannery?’

‘The drains,’ snarled the woman on the floor. ‘The
privies,’ said another. ‘Doctor Houston just farted.’ It was Annie Moon. She
poked out her tongue at Nurse Jenkins then hid behind the Matron.

Matron sighed. ‘It’s so unfortunate. Since our
move to the central building we’ve suffered terribly from proximity to both the
privies and the mortuary. Also the drains need repair. The cesspool is right
under our windows.’

Elly didn’t hide her shock. ‘But that’s
appalling! It’s so insanitary.’

Matron shrugged. ‘We keep the windows and doors
closed while we continue to petition the Clerk of Works. Nothing happens
quickly here, as you will discover, my dear.’ She closed her lips, as if
regretting her confidences to a mere underling.

I wonder whether I want to make any more
discoveries, thought Elly, half-regretting her decision.

Nurse Jenkins’ sharp nose twitched and, elbowing
aside two patients, she marched up to Matron. Her carroty hair peeked out from
under a grubby cap, vying for notice with a face pin-pointed with freckles.

Her pale eyes drilled into Elly. ‘Is she coming
on the staff?’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Matron. ‘I’m showing her
around the hospital.’

Jenkins’ gaze would have penetrated a brick
wall. ‘You never did it for the others, or for me. Is she going for your place,
then?’

‘Manners, Jenkins. Manners, if you please.’ Matron
Box seemed more amused than affronted. She moved towards the door, trailed by
the nurse still firing questions at her.

Elly followed slowly, taking in details: the
crowding of two or three to a bed; the noise; the lack of privacy, all of which
she’d expect to find in Bedlam, not in a general hospital. There were mentally
disturbed patients mixed in with the seriously ill and helpless, children and
frail aged, while it seemed the preferred form of treatment was coercion. And
while the ward appeared superficially clean, the boards remained unhealthily
damp from scrubbing, and in places the ceiling hung down, swollen from rain
seeping through an unpatched roof.

She was hit with a sudden urge to take over, to
change matters. It would not be easy, but in time, with patience and hard work
and the right staff , it could be done. Wasn’t this what she’d longed for – a
challenge to show the world what nursing could be? If she could ingratiate herself
with Matron, make herself indispensable, then suggest small improvements...

In that moment she made her decision. She would
join the nursing staff and let them discover, too late, what a whirlwind they
had reaped.

~*~

Two months later Elly sat in the narrow
room that was Matron’s power centre, pondering her immediate future. Copies of
old reports lay before her on the table, demonstrating what would be expected
from her at the next inspection by the weekly committee, plus the more detailed
report required for the monthly meeting of the Board of Directors. Since Mrs
Box’s recent collapse from liver disease and her subsequent departure, Elly had
found herself Acting Lady Superintendent by default. None of the other nurses
was remotely capable of administration, and at the hastily convened special
meeting of the Board Elly had been all but begged to take on the position,
temporarily.

The only protests, predictably from the
unamiable Jenkins, had been swept aside, and Elly had proceeded to clear out the
rubbish of ages from her predecessor’s wall cabinets. There were bundles of yellowed
papers including old laundry lists, details of patients long dead or departed,
notes on ward requirements from the dispensary and stores. Amongst the mildewed
sheets were rusted canisters whose purpose she could only guess, and jars with
their mysterious contents hardened and caked at the bottom. She had found only
a few useful utensils and some linen that could still be salvaged. Judging by
the vermin trails in the dust no-one had bothered to look inside for months,
and her opinion of Matron Box had sunk. The woman had clearly been unwell, but
this was the accumulation of years.

Elated at her sudden rise to a position where
she could really bring about change, Elly scrubbed the shelves herself, listing
her requirements, which included a supply of paper pads for reports and some
facilities for making a hot drink. She expected to spend a good deal of time in
this tiny space, keeping a finger on the pulse of the wards.

Today, beyond the wall the usual noise swelled, although
kept within reasonable limits by Elly’s carefully timed appearances. Despite
closed windows, the all-prevailing drains forced themselves upon her notice. The
breakfast oats had been burnt and she’d thrown them away, so she was ravenous
and, worst of all, she’d hardly slept, having spent the night pursuing
frightful hordes of vermin which emerged in the darkness to attack every living
thing in the hospital.

Rats could be driven off, but the bugs marched
in loathsome armies across the beds, biting and tormenting to madness, and impervious
to any counter-attack. Something would have to be done. Soap and water to scrub
down walls and floors; fresh whitewash wherever possible; incoming patients’
clothes steamed over burning sulphur before being stored away; and the patients
themselves scoured from crown to heels and back again. There was not one bath
in the whole of the hospital, while all water had to be carried in great casks
from the bore in Hyde Park. Perhaps she could dunk the patients in the casks!

Elly stifled a yawn then set to work drawing up
her plan of action. The Board of Directors would be the focus of her campaign
to improve nursing training and status, but she had to move carefully. There’d
been no mention of change on the day she had been formally instated, shaking hands
with The Hon. Edward Deas Thomson, Colonial Secretary and Board President, then
with the Vice-President, Captain Dumaresq. The Resident Surgeon and Apothecary,
Mr Hugh Houston, who had almost knocked her down in the corridor that first
day, had wished her well then rushed away again.

There were other physicians and surgeons
present, as well as the majority of directors, all male. Yet Elly was conscious
of one pair of eyes somewhere in the crowd, dark brown liquid eyes in a swarthy
face, fixed on her with uncomfortable intensity. Elly left the Board Room soon
after the business of the meeting had been concluded, and without having met
the owner of that disturbing stare, although the memory of it went with her. But
she left with the thing she most wanted, a challenge, which had begun to
resemble Hercules’ Augean Stables.

Each day at five she rose from her thin, lumpy
mattress to wash and dress in a room no larger than a cupboard, breakfasted
with the other nurses in a draughty hall distressingly near to the privies,
then began her day with a ward inspection. She retired at night after the last
patient had settled, which could be any time up to midnight, too weary to do
more than wash her face and hang up her clothes on their peg, then put out the
candle.