A Wartime Nurse (14 page)
Authors: Maggie Hope
Tags: #Nurses, #World War; 1939-1945, #Sagas, #War & Military, #Fiction
‘Workers only,’ called the conductor, a middle-aged chap with a limp and a strained, tired expression.
Theda gazed anxiously at the inside of the bus. It was packed with people, the seats all full and the aisle crammed with standing passengers. Some of the queue fell back and allowed the workers to go to the front, Theda amongst them. But one old man had reached the end of his tether.
‘What the hell?’ he whined. ‘I have to get home tonight. What do you want me to do, camp out in this cold? What happened to the last bus anyroad?’
‘Sorry, Dad,’ said the conductor. ‘It broke down and we had to bring this one out from the garage. So this
is
the last bus really. And there won’t be another the night.’
is
the last bus really. And there won’t be another the night.’
Theda moved past the old man, feeling really guilty. She managed to climb aboard the bus, just, and had to push herself tight against the front window as the door was closed. After that, she stood on the steps, holding on to the rail as the vehicle lurched around the corner, springs squealing a protest as the weight of the passengers bore down on the axles.
She stared fixedly at the notice pasted on the window. Though the light in the bus was very dim and she could not read what it said, she knew it by heart:
Is
your
journey
really
necessary
? Well, she had to get back to the hospital all right but she could have stayed there in the first place. After all, she had seen her family once this week. That old man was probably on his way back from visiting his family, his daughter maybe. Oh, well, he would have to stay there tonight.
Is
your
journey
really
necessary
? Well, she had to get back to the hospital all right but she could have stayed there in the first place. After all, she had seen her family once this week. That old man was probably on his way back from visiting his family, his daughter maybe. Oh, well, he would have to stay there tonight.
‘What the—’ There was a chorus of exclamations as the bus gave an extra sickening lurch and stayed leaning to one corner. If the passengers had not been packed so tightly they would have been thrown to the floor. As it was, they held each other up. Theda herself was thrown against the pole that held the handrail, catching her ribs a painful blow and taking the breath out of her. For a minute or two the world whirled around her.
‘Get out a minute, lass, let me past,’ the conductor was saying to her as she came to herself. He leaned over her and opened the door. Painfully she climbed down the steps. She must have banged her knee at the same time though she hadn’t felt it. She stood outside on the pavement and felt for the spot, flinching as she found it. There’ll be a right bruise tomorrow, she thought dumbly. Just when she was working the whole day too.
The driver and conductor were looking at the bus and she looked too. No wonder it was down. One wheel was missing. It must have come off as they turned the last corner.
‘There it is, Jack, t’other side of t’road,’ the conductor pointed out. ‘Now what?’ He sounded like a man past being surprised by anything that might happen.
‘Best get everyone off, lad,’ said the driver. ‘We’ll be going nowhere tonight.’
‘Aye.’
Sighing, the conductor went to the door of the bus. ‘All off now, please. Come on, hurry along. It’s shank’s pony from now on. All off, I said.’
They were about a mile from the town, Theda reckoned, maybe a mile and a quarter from the hospital. Ah, well. Taking out her flashlight, she set off. She couldn’t afford to waste time hanging about, she would be late as it was. A long string of people followed her and there was some muttering and grumbling now. But then someone began to whistle ‘There’s a Long, Long Road a-Winding’ and others took up the tune and set off in the face of the bitter wind which had sprung up, almost on cue.
‘Bloody hell,’ one man was saying to himself as he strode past her. ‘I’m sick to blooming death of this flaming war.’ As are we all, agreed Theda mentally.
By the time she reached the hospital she was about dead on her feet. She had taken the shortcut by the railway to get there, a mucky dark place at the best of times but thick with clarts in the winter. And of course she had almost fallen, slipping and jarring her injured leg as she put out a hand to stop herself and splashing mud up her arm and her stockings.
To cap it all, it began to rain, great sleety drops which stung her face and drenched her hair through her navy blue outdoor cap. What an afternoon off! Surely nothing else could happen? With the aid of her flashlight she picked out the gate to the hospital and thankfully walked through it, her whole leg throbbing by this time.
‘Ah, Staff Nurse. Good evening.’
She rubbed her hand across her eyes and blinked to clear the rain from her lashes. Major Koestler was standing there with Ken Collins, both of them looking curiously at her.
‘Staff Nurse Wearmouth,’ came the voice of Sister Brown from somewhere on her right. ‘Where have you been? You’re late!’
Chapter Eleven
It was just as well that nurses wore black stockings, thought Theda as she painted gentian violet antiseptic on to the grazes on her leg. She was fresh out of a hot bath. Thank God for the bathrooms in the home, at least she wasn’t confined to the old tin bath which they all had to use in West Row. Straightening up, she winced and put a hand to her ribs. There would be a bruise there tomorrow, she surmised.
Sighing, she sat down in front of the dressing table and towelled her hair dry as much as she was able. She was dead tired, would just have to go to bed with it damp. Laying a fresh dry towel on her pillow, she switched off the light and climbed into bed, snuggling up under the bedclothes.
The room was black dark, not a chink of light from the moon which, perversely, had come out after the rain. Slipping out of bed, Theda drew back the curtains at the high window before running back. There was a full moon and its light beamed in over her bed, strangely comforting. Drowsily she watched the white disc with its ring of frost, feeling her body relax in the comfort.
How embarrassing it had been when she went through the door to find Ken Collins standing there with Major Koestler. She squirmed at the memory. And then to be dressed down by Sister Brown in front of them! What was the German doctor doing there, anyway? He was supposed to be locked up in the prisoner’s area, wasn’t he? After all he was a prisoner-of-war. She remembered the way he had looked down his nose at her, unsmiling, his pale eyes expressionless.
‘Are you all right, Staff Nurse? Has something happened?’
It had been Ken who stepped forward, holding his hand out to her.
‘You’re late,’ Sister Brown had repeated. ‘For what reason, may I ask?’
‘I . . . The bus broke down, I had to walk the last mile, I fell . . .’ Theda found herself stammering like a first-year probationer. Pulling herself together, she turned to Ken. ‘I’m all right, thank you. I just grazed my leg and got a bit of a shock.’
‘Best go straight to bed. Don’t forget you are on duty at half-past seven in the morning,’ said Sister.
‘I’d better look at your leg,’ Ken began, but Theda was backing away.
‘No, thank you, it’s nothing. I can see to it myself.’
She fled. As she turned the bend in the staircase she saw the German say something and the three of them laughed and looked up at her. Now don’t get paranoid, she told herself, they could be laughing at anything.
She lay on her side and looked up at the moon, deliberately trying to think of something else. Anything, a song. The first lines of ‘In the Mood’ ran through her head, and maddeningly ran through again and again. Poor Glenn Miller, missing over the channel, most likely dead. So near the end of the war too and he not even a combatant. ‘String of Pearls’ had replaced ‘In Tthe Mood’ now, its melody haunting. It had been Glenn’s biggest hit, Clara was always singing snatches of it. Clara . . . Don’t think about her, not tonight. Theda put sad thoughts out of her mind by concentrating on how cosy it was under the blankets and after a few moments her eyes closed and she fell deeply asleep.
She woke with a start. She had been dreaming about Clara when they were both small girls and out on the Sunday School trip to Seaton Carew. They were paddling in the sea. Theda had her dress tucked into her knickers and was bossily telling her little sister to do the same but Clara wouldn’t and a wave came in and wet her up to her waist.
‘Eeh! Mam will play war. Do something, Theda,’ Clara had cried, and she had backed off up the beach and fallen down at the edge of the water, wetting herself even more. Theda put out a hand to pull her to her feet and just then there was a tremendous roaring and a motor boat came bearing down on them both and Clara screamed and Theda couldn’t manage to drag her out of the way in time. All the time the boat drew closer she was filled with a blind panic . . . and then the dream ended abruptly.
Theda sat up in bed, shaking. The room was black dark again, the moon had gone behind the clouds and rain spattered on the window. There was a droning outside – an engine. Surely not a bomber now, not at the tail end of the war? No, of course not, it was a bomber all right but a British one. It was in trouble. The sound drew nearer and nearer, almost overhead. Good Lord, it
was
overhead and the engine was cutting out, spluttering and stopping, and then there was the sound of a crash . . .
was
overhead and the engine was cutting out, spluttering and stopping, and then there was the sound of a crash . . .
A crash! Theda jumped out of bed and ran to the window. There was nothing to see, nothing at all. No, wait, there was a glow over by the football field. Hurriedly she pulled on her clothes. Surely someone was hurt, and extra staff would be needed. She paused as she was lacing up her shoes. There was the sound of the ambulance revving up and going out of the gates.
She was the first of the off-duty staff to get to Outpatients and Admissions but as she opened the door Major Collins caught up with her. Sister Brown, who was doubling as Night Sister, was talking into the telephone.
‘Three, you say? Oh, well, that’s not too bad. Oh, here’s Major Collins now.’ She handed over the phone to him.
‘Am I needed, Sister?’ Theda stepped forward.
Sister Brown turned to her. ‘Yes, Staff Nurse. A Canadian plane has come down by Bracks Wood, on the grammar school field, thank goodness. Three hurt, we think. You can go up to Block Two and see that beds are prepared and everything ready. It’s Nurse Atkinson on there, she’s on her own.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
Theda went out of the back door of the block and crossed over to the next one. Both the blocks had formed part of the old workhouse hospital and the upstairs ward of Block Two was used for British officers. Nurse Atkinson was an Assistant Nurse of some years’ experience and they soon had the beds ready and stone hot water bottles put in them for the Canadians.
‘I don’t suppose we’ll have them for long,’ commented Nurse Atkinson as she switched on the steriliser to boil up the surgical instruments, just in case. ‘We haven’t had any Canadians before, I suppose they go to Darlington Memorial. No doubt these will be transferred as soon as they can be. I wonder what the plane was doing so far off course?’
‘Only eleven miles,’ Theda replied. ‘The way the engine sounded, I’m surprised it got back at all.’
‘What’s going on?’
A querulous voice came from the row of beds and Nurse Atkinson hurried towards it. There was nothing else to be done in the ward now until the patients arrived so Theda went back to Outpatients.
Only one airman was there, laid on a stretcher with Ken Collins bending over him. Theda caught her breath as she recognised the smell of scorched cloth and burnt flesh, a smell she had encountered two or three times before – once when a child had crossed a smouldering pit heap and his leg had gone through the crust, and once when fire damp set coal dust alight down a mine and two miners had been burnt.
In all her nursing years she had never got used to that smell and hesitated now before crossing over to the stretcher, for she had to steel herself against what she might see.
‘Hold this, Staff,’ said Ken. ‘Come on, come closer, do.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The answer was automatic as she sprang to do as he asked, hold the collar of the man’s flying jacket away as the doctor moved his head so that he could more closely examine the burns on the neck. Theda looked down at the airman. His eyes were closed, the lashes and eyebrows singed, but thankfully his facial burns seemed to be first degree. It was his neck and chest which appeared to be the worst. He must have had his flying jacket open. And his hands . . . how on earth had he managed to pilot the plane home with his hands in that state? Parts of them were already black. He must have used them to beat out the flames.
‘Right, Staff, see that theatre is notified, will you? I will have to clean him up there. We won’t try to take off any of his clothes – not until he’s under anaesthetic anyway.’
Ken was business-like as he covered the man’s neck with gauze soaked in saline. The pilot moaned and moved his head and the moan became a cry of pain and his eyes flew open, causing a tiny drop of blood to appear in the corner where his lashes had fused together. But he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes had locked on Theda’s and they were the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Then the lids drooped and closed again and she looked at his dog tags before turning away to telephone theatre. Eugene Ridley, date of birth January 1921, followed by his service number. He was the same age as Alan had been.
Ken was in the smaller treatment room and as Theda passed she saw Sister Brown was in there too, pulling the blanket over the head of another airman. She came out shaking her head.
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