Green for Danger (7 page)

He looked at her with a quizzical smile. “You mean I talk like a pansy?”

She had not met many men in her sheltered life with her mother, in their little flat; not on equal terms, not in easy badinage. She was a little embarrassed and said doubtfully: “No, of course, not that. But … well, one thinks of brewers as large men with brawny arms and red noses.”

“Well, I don't know about brawny arms,” said the tib. and fib., laughing, looking down at the muscles bulging under the thin sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. “The red nose is only a matter of time, I expect. I have to explain that I'm the sort of King Brewer. I own the place, you see.”

“Yes, I see,” said Esther.

“So, if you ever want any free beer, you know where to come.”

“Well, I'm not very fond of beer,” said Esther apologetically.

“That's a pity,” said the fractured tib. and fib. He added: “Because you're going to see an awful lot of it in future,” but he did not say it out loud.

The sister on day duty came bustling in from the bunk where she had been in consultation with the retiring night sister. “Everything all right, nurse?”

“Yes, Sister, thank you.”

“You know number eight is going up for operation at half-past nine?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“And the fractured femur after that.” She went to the corner bed where the screens had now been moved aside. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”

“I had a terrible night,” said the man briefly, opening his heavy eyes and looking at her resentfully.

“Is your name Higgins?”

“Yes, it is,” said the man, “who wants to know?”

“Well, we all want to know. They couldn't find out last night. You're a postman, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” said Higgins; “at least I was. It doesn't look as if I'll ever be able to do it again.”

“Oh, nonsense, of course you will,” said Sister brightly. She said to Esther as she hurried on round the ward: “He seems very low. You'd better have a talk to him about his operation while you prepare him for it, or he'll start refusing to have it done or something. By the way, I believe the police rang up to inquire for his wife; if she comes, you'd better let her sit with him before he goes up to the theatre.”

“Yes, Sister.”

“And you'd better go up with him, Sanson, and stay there and bring him back. By the way, there's that duodenal being done before him. Would you like to watch it? Have you seen any abdominals?”

“Well, no I haven't, Sister. I
would
like to see it, if I could.”

“Yes, all right, then. The other two can manage in here for an hour or so. You can take Higgins up early. It'll keep him from lying here upsetting the others by getting nervy and also get rid of the wife if she turns out to be trying.”

Mrs. Higgins turned out to be very trying. She objected to being sent out to the bunk while Barnes came round with his stethoscope, checking up on the patients due for anæsthetic that day; and again while Gervase Eden made a second examination and sat for a little while talking to her husband at his bedside. At nine-thirty, by which time, in a hospital ward, the day seems well advanced, Esther transferred the old man to a trolley with the help of an orderly, and pushed him out of the ward and across the great, circular hall towards the theatre.

2

The modern operating-theatre is no longer a dazzling white, trying to the surgeon's eyes and inclined to tricky shadows, but a restful, rather dark green. The theatre at Heron's Park was a large, square, green-tiled room, with glass cabinets and shelves of metal sterilising drums ranged round its walls; the table was in the centre, under a huge, circular metal lamp, lined with innumerable mirrors so angled that the surgeon's hands cast no shadow across his work. The table itself was of light, strong metal, white-enamelled and hinged at either end; it stood on a thick, central pedestal so that no legs or cross bars should get in the surgeon's way, and was fitted with pedals and handscrews for raising or lowering the whole or either end. It was covered with a thick pad of sorbo rubber, wrapped in a linen sheet. The stretcher was placed over this, and steel supports removed, leaving the patient still lying on the canvas of the stretcher, so that as little lifting as possible need be done after operation. To the patient's right were two small trolleys, presided over by the theatre sister, one with a selection of instruments appropriate to the operation on hand; the other with open troughs of knives and scissors, needles and catgut and swabs. To the left of the table was a tray on a single tall leg so that it could be pulled across the patient's body, to receive the instruments used or still in use; a basin of antiseptic stood ready for rinsing the hands, and a couple of buckets to receive the blood-stained swabs. In a corner of the theatre, a red rubber sheet was spread out on the floor, where the swabs could be counted over and checked and rechecked with a slate hanging on the wall over the sterilising drums from which the swabs were taken. The temperature of the room was kept very high by means of radiators hidden in the walls, and over all was the strong, sweet, sickly smell of ether.

Barney was sitting at the head of the table getting the first patient under, when Esther arrived wheeling Higgins. His trolley stood to his left, a sturdy metal affair with the big iron cylinders of gas and oxygen strapped to one side of it, the water in the glass jar, through which the anæsthetic must pass on its way to the patient, bubbling merrily away at the top. A thick red rubber balloon, in a black net bag, inflated and deflated regularly with the patient's respirations.

Higgins had had his pre-operative injection of morphia and atropine in the ward, and was feeling drowsy and more or less at ease. “You'll have to wait a little while, Higgins,” said Esther, wheeling him into the anæsthetic-room, and putting up the catch inside the door to keep him safe from interruption. “Just lie here and keep quite quiet. Do you feel all right?”

“I feel a bit thirsty, miss,” said Higgins, licking his dry lips.

“I'm afraid you will; that's the atropine. Now, will you be all right for a minute or two, while I go and get a gown?”

“Yes, I'll be all right, miss,” said Higgins indifferently.

Woods was the theatre V.A.D. She and Sister Bates were both in the washroom in long green gowns, tied at the back of the neck and waist with tapes. Woods had a small oblong of green gauze hanging by its strings round her neck, ready to be pulled up over her mouth and nose when she went into the theatre; but Sister Bates wore a more elaborate mask, a sort of yashmak that covered her whole head, and tucked in under the neck of the gown; her eyes, acknowledging Esther through the slit, looked very big and blue against the green. “Get yourself a gown, nurse, if you're going to stay.” The mask was sucked in and blown out over her mouth as she spoke.

Major Moon turned away from the washbasins, holding out dripping hands. He was dressed in a white cotton singlet and wore a pair of shrunken white duck trousers and huge ankle-high rubber boots. Woods handed sterile towels and a green gown for him to shuffle his way into, his own hands held stiffly away from his body; she fitted a little round green cap on to his head, and fixed a small head-lamp on a band round his forehead. Woods chucked Esther a gown and an oblong mask like her own, and hurried to pick up the battery attached to the head-lamp; she followed Major Moon into the theatre, carrying the battery at the end of its long flex like a page with a bride's train. Major Moon wriggled his plump little hands into thin brown rubber gloves.

The patient was breathing quietly, his eyes closed, his head lolling a little to one side. Gervase Eden, already masked and gowned, stood at his side, waiting with curbed impatience to get on. Major Moon went over to the sister's trolley and stood looking down at the instruments there. As Esther pushed open the door into the anæsthetic-room to make sure that Higgins was all right, she heard the old surgeon say, in his mumbling voice: “What a rotten collection of stuff we've got in this place; we could do such a lot more if we only had better equipment.”

Woody adored Major Moon. He reminded her of Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Churchill was the idol of all Great Britain. She quoted, looking back over her shoulder as she stood at the door of the anæsthetic-room with Esther: “Give us the tools and we will get on with the job!”

Sister Bates bridled. Honestly, these V.A.D.s! Who did they think they were, joking with the officers? After all, V.A.D.s were only ‘other ranks'. She said indignantly: “Be quiet, please, nurse! You're not here to …”

But she never finished her sentence, for there was a wild cry from the anæsthetic-room, and Higgins was struggling up to a sitting position on his stretcher, clinging to Esther, staring at the doorway into the theatre, and mumbling over and over and over again: “Where have I heard that voice? Oh, my God, I can't remember! I must remember! Where have I heard that voice …?”

3

Major Moon looked up astonished. He said sharply: “Who's that?”

Woods let the door swing to behind her and leaned back against the wall of the theatre; she said hurriedly: “It's only that man Higgins, sir; the fractured pelvis, your next case. He's—I expect he's excited by the morphia, or something.” They could hear Esther's voice in the other room, calming the old man down.

Moon and Eden shrugged their shoulders and went to the patient, now well under the anæsthetic, on the table. Barney pulled down his mask to say kindly: “You look very shaken, Woody. Did he startle you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes,” she said hastily, “I'm perfectly all right,” and, with a glance of purely professional inquiry, stepped forward to pull back the blankets from the patient's body, folding back the grey flannel gown on to his chest, unwrapping the bandages, removing the sterilised towels, and leaving the abdomen bare.

Eden picked up a brush and idly sloshed iodine over the gently heaving patch of flesh; Major Moon came and stood opposite him, and together they arranged the rubber sheets and sterile green cloths across the body, leaving only a naked, yellow-painted square. They looked for all the world like two women helping each other to make a bed. Eden said, grinning: “I regret to inform you, sir, that the patient has a pimple right in the line of fire!”

Moon smiled absently, standing turned a little away from the table, pushing with bunched fingers at the slack stomach. He nodded to Barnes. “Yes, he's very nice,” and, without further ado, picked up a knife and made a long, slow, deep slash, apparently at random, across the yellow square. The flesh gaped, fatty white, turning to deep red against the dark green of the surrounding cloths: opening out after the point of the knife like the wash in the wake of a ship. Eden took forceps from Sister Bates' hand and clipped up the blood-vessels, holding each for a moment while Moon tied it off with gut, before dropping it and passing on to the next. There was no flow of blood, but swabs and instruments became stained in ugly patches. Barnes forced open the man's mouth and thrust in a short, red rubber air-way to keep clear the breathing passages.

Moon worked steadily, freeing the adhesions from the slack, veined balloon of the stomach with little half-scraping, half-paring movements of the knife, plunging his whole hand into the wound to feel his knowledgeable way about. He might have been a woman washing out old and fragile lace—his hands moved with the same delicate care, the same scrupulous attention to detail, the same cool competence and freedom from hesitation or strain. When the stomach was finally exposed, they wrapped it up carefully in a wet, green gauze and left it, bubbling pale pink and faintly blue, out on the abdomen, at the edge of the wound. Moon said to Barney, in the voice of a man asking for a little more butter on his bread: “Let's have him a bit slacker, will you?” and Barnes fiddled with a tap. The patient gave a little grunt as though in response, and was silent again.

Major Moon rinsed his hands in the saline at his side, already discoloured with blood from his rubber gloves. Sister Bates said: “Change the basin, nurse.” It was an education in itself to watch her handing the instruments, each held so that it presented itself most readily to the surgeon's fingers. Major Moon exposed the duodenum.

Woods tipped blood-stained swabs on to the rubber sheet in the corner of the theatre and began sorting them out. She said, out of the corner of her mouth, to Esther as she slipped back into the theatre: “How's the old boy now?”

“Oh, he's quietened down again. He thought he'd heard your voice somewhere.”

“So I gathered,” said Woods drily. She crouched on her hams, busily separating swabs with a pair of long-handled forceps, holding them well away from her spotless gown. “How are you liking your first abdominal?”

“I feel a bit sick, to be honest.”

“Well, you can't be sick here. You look rather green I must say; it's the heat, I expect. Why don't you sit down?”

Esther moved over to a stool and sat down quietly. Barney looked at her over his mask and raised an eyebrow; he had fastened the rubber mask over the patient's face with wide red rubber bands, which gave a somewhat unattractive, snout-like effect. “They look as though they were slaughtering a pig,” thought Esther, revolted.

Major Moon, bending over the body, suddenly straightened himself. “There it is! See it? It was an ulcer, all right.… Just give me a little swab, Sister, will you? Want to have a look, nurse? Wait a moment while I swab. There! You'll never see a prettier example of a duodenal ulcer than that!” Woods peered over his shoulder into the wound. Esther shuddered.

Woody came over and stood beside her, glancing into the anæsthetic-room
en route.
“Your old boy's all right; lying quite dopey and quiet. Didn't you want to see the ulcer?”

“No, I can't take it to-day. It's the heat in here.”