Now the War Is Over (35 page)

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll be on the mend soon,’ she said, not wanting to add that she was glad he was still here. It would sound as if she wanted him to be ill.

The morning was very busy. She was not assigned to make his bed, but she enjoyed her work, knowing that he was there. She felt efficient and energetic, as if someone had lit a fire under her and
she was burning with energy.

‘Heavens,’ Nurse Jenkins said, half in complaint, when they were making a bed together. ‘Days off have certainly perked you up! It isn’t actually a race, you
know!’

‘Sorry,’ Melly laughed. She knew she was feeling a bit frantic and she tried to move in a more measured way.

She was waiting for an opportunity to speak to Mr Alexander again, wanted to tell him about the poem.

There was no chance during the morning, because there was so much to get done. But when the dinner trolleys appeared and Sister was supervising, she handed Melly a plate of meat in gravy with
vegetables.

‘Here – for Mr Alexander,’ she said.

Melly’s pulse speeded up. She carried the plate over.

‘Dinner time. Looks like a nice stew,’ she told him, though she didn’t think it looked all that marvellous.

‘Ah – thank you,’ he said, and coughed.

Setting the plate on his table she said, ‘I went to the library yesterday and had a look for . . .’ To her annoyance she hesitated. She still wanted to say ‘Yeets’.
‘For Yeats. I read a bit. He’s good, isn’t he?’

‘Oh – did you?’ He looked surprised and pleased. ‘Yes, he’s wonderful – some of them, anyway. I don’t necessarily read all the long ones.’

Melly was delighted to hear it. She had to go then.

‘Tell me, when you have time,’ he said in a friendly way. ‘What you read, I mean.’

‘I will.’ She smiled and went back to Sister, hoping that later in the afternoon, before the shift ended, she might have a chance to go and sit with him.

While they were clearing the dinner plates away on to the trolley, she saw Mr Alexander get up and walk along the ward towards the bathrooms. He was quite able to move about now and did not need
much assistance, which Melly was mainly relieved about though it would have been another chance to talk to him. He did not look in her direction as he went past and she thought it was because he
was heading for the toilet.

She went round the ward gathering plates. It was buzzing with noise. People tended to perk up a bit when they had had a bit to eat, before wanting to sleep, and some of the patients were
chatting. Someone was coughing along the ward and someone else laughed. The rubber wheels of the trolley squeaked on the polished linoleum.

‘Right,’ Sister said when they had all the plates back on the trolley. ‘Take it out now, please, Nurse Booker.’

She was wheeling the trolley towards the main door of the ward. She could hear the coughing, louder now, and she thought that must be Mr Alexander. They were right to keep him in – it did
sound bad.

There was a commotion then, by the door into the bathrooms. Cath, the first-year student, came flying along the ward in obvious panic. Melly saw, as if in a dream, that someone was lying on the
floor in the doorway into the bathrooms, and Nurse Jenkins was there and Cath was saying, ‘Sister – quick, he’s collapsed!’

Sister Anderson was along the ward in seconds. She dropped to her knees beside the prone figure. Nurse Jenkins hurried across to the ward telephone. Melly moved towards them, feeling as if her
destination was never coming any closer. Somewhere about her, patients were making comments, craning to see what was happening.

Mr Alexander was flat on his back. His eyes were closed and his body looked slack in a way which made Melly freeze. Sister Anderson was over him, breathing into his mouth, pressing on his chest.
She looked more frantic than Melly had ever seen her.

A doctor appeared, crashing through the doors to the ward, white coat flying behind him. He saw immediately what the situation was and joined Sister Anderson on his knees. He felt for a pulse,
asked questions. What happened? How long . . . ? They deliberated for a moment. Then the doctor laid a hand on Sister’s arm. Her eyes met his and he gently shook his head.

‘No!’ The sound came out of Melly’s mouth without her knowing it. They glanced round. She put her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream that wanted to tear out through
it.

‘He was only thirty-six,’ she heard Sister Anderson say to the doctor. There was shock in her voice. And sorrow and bewilderment.

She looked round at Melly, and almost in a confessional tone she said, ‘I’m afraid he’s gone.’

She lay in the dark, the blood thumping round her body. Every night now it was the same.

Berni was asleep across the room, making little popping sounds with her mouth like a fish. They sounded like gunshots to Melly. Sleep was completely impossible. Every cell in her body was in a
jarred, surging state that would give her no rest.

The room was completely dark. She wondered what the time was, but if she switched on the light Berni would wake up and complain. If only she could read to try and quieten her mind. She
considered creeping out to the common room, but she thought she might be in trouble if she got caught. And all she really wanted was to lie down and be able to sleep.

It was like this every night now. Since Mr Alexander died, four days ago, she felt she had not slept at all. Desperation filled her. So far she had kept going during her ward duties, full of a
crazed energy. But the body and mind needed sleep. What if she started to make terrible mistakes on the ward? It had been a close-run thing already.

The first night, over and over again she had seen Raimundo Alexander’s body on the floor along the ward, then herself moving towards him, unable to turn away and not see . . . Sister
moving up and down over him, trying and trying to pump the life back into his body, his crumpled look, the closed eyes.

How could he be dead? He was only thirty-six.

Asthma, Sister said afterwards, can affect the heart. The lack of oxygen, the extra strain on the body. His asthma was severe.

Thank heavens Melly had not been one of the ones to lay him out. Instead, she could remember him alive and smiling at her.

She knew really that Mr Alexander had not been interested in her
like that.
He was a nice man and he had seemed to like having a chat to her and having her look after him. She barely
understood her own tender attachment to him – not like being in love exactly, but involved so that her emotions fixed so strongly on him. But none of this really made sense of why, now, she
was in such an overwrought state. Every night her mind was like a flickering light, sending fast, broken-up images until she thought she might go mad. Eyes open or closed she could not stop it. Her
chest was tight and she had to keep reminding herself to breathe deeply.

Lying here, now, she turned on her back once more and stared up into the darkness. He was there. Then he was gone.

She had seen other patients die, or known of them dying. This one was different. The sudden, abrupt wrongness of it.

He was a beautiful man . . . The thought wrung her, but still she could not cry. If she could only shed some tears she might begin to get past it, but they would not come. She felt like a dry
stone.

There was nothing she could say to anyone. They all had their shocks and things to face on their own wards. Margaret had said to her, ‘Such a shame about that nice man, Mr Alexander. And
you were there? Terrible thing. Must’ve been a shock.’ She clicked her tongue, shook her head. That was all. It was a straight line for Margaret, it seemed, out the other end. For Melly
it was a circle in which she was trapped, which just kept swirling her round and round.

‘Nurse.’

Melly was walking along the ward. A hazy feeling filled her head, as if she was not really there. Everything felt like a dream.

‘Nurse!’

‘Melly – Mr Hopkins is calling you.’

Luckily it was Cath who saw her. She gave Melly an odd look but was not in a position to tell her off.

Melly went over to Mr Hopkins, a bluff, bald, pink-faced man with a heart problem. His legs were swollen with oedema and sometimes seeped astonishing amounts of liquid.

‘You with us, bab?’ he said wheezily. He was a kindly person, embarrassed by his condition. ‘Only, er . . .’ He whispered. ‘I need to, er, I need to go,
Nurse.’

‘Sorry, Mr Hopkins,’ she said wretchedly. God, she thought. I must pull myself together.

‘I’ll help you. You’d prefer to go along to the bathroom, rather than a bedpan?’

‘Oh, yes, I would,’ he said fervently. ‘I’d rather be private, Nurse, if I can.’

She supported him slowly along the ward. He made a gallant joke about them walking arm in arm. Like getting married, he said, and she managed a laugh. She delivered him to the lavatories.

‘I’ll be outside,’ she said.

She stood just by the door, almost in the spot where Mr Alexander had collapsed. Melly closed her eyes for a moment. Right there, by her feet, was where he had lain. For the first time, tears
welled behind her eyelids. Oh, God, not now. I can’t cry now. She swallowed them away and quickly wiped her eyes. Mr Hopkins took a while. She began to be afraid. Supposing his heart gave out
while he was sitting on the lavatory and she didn’t notice in time? Or what if he was in there haemorrhaging to death and was too faint to call out?

‘You all right, Mr Hopkins?’ she called to him.

‘Yes, ta, bab. Not doing too badly,’ she heard.

Eventually she was able to take him back to bed.

Nothing went wrong, she thought, with relief. She realized she did not trust herself. Even making beds, one of the easiest jobs on the ward, seemed fraught with danger. Taking patients’
TPRs, sometimes she had to start again several times because she drifted off.

‘Sure you can count?’ one man said to her sarcastically, when she had taken his pulse for a ridiculously long time.

Odd things kept happening, or seemed to her to be happening. She saw calamity everywhere: gushes of blood, horrific torrents of diarrhoea, unstoppable vomiting, all plagued her mind. Every time
a patient had anything wrong in that way, she froze with panic, terrified that something extreme was about to happen. She saw chaos breaking out everywhere.

Over and over again she tidied up; the beds, the ward. It was such a busy place that things got out of order very quickly. If only she could keep everything tidy, nothing would happen.
Everything would be kept at bay.

‘Nurse . . .’ Sister Anderson came to her one afternoon in the laundry cupboard, where she was folding and refolding pillowcases, pyjamas. Sister frowned. ‘What are you
doing?’

‘Just tidying, Sister.’ She felt hunted. Was she doing something wrong? She just wanted to be busy, to keep things under control.

Sister Anderson looked around the little room with its neatly stacked shelves. Then she looked at Melly.

‘Are you all right, Nurse Booker?’

‘Yes, Sister. Thank you.’

‘The laundry room is quite tidy enough. We have a new admission coming this evening – Mr Davis is going to be discharged today. I shall need your help with that. In the meantime, go
and make the patients’ drinks, please.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

She felt Sister Anderson’s eyes on her as she walked towards the kitchen. She had a moment’s relief. Making drinks was a soothing, easy job. Nothing terrible could happen.

Working wards was becoming more and more difficult but despite all the worry and uncertainty it caused her, it was the nights she dreaded most now, going to bed and lying there
in a scattered agony of mind, unable to fall asleep. Sounds echoed loud in her head. Images flashed and dashed across her mind.

She felt as if everything was sliding from her grip, but she did not know how to say so, or who to say it to. Nurses were not supposed to have emotions, or not for long. They were meant to get
over them. She was ashamed of the state she was in. It was unprofessional and weak.

‘You’ve been restless at night,’ Berni – who slept like a log – observed one evening, a week after Mr Alexander’s death.

‘Sorry,’ Melly said, amazed that Berni had only just noticed this. ‘I’m not sleeping very well.’

It didn’t get any better. A few days later, Berni tackled her about it again. Sitting on the side of her bed, she studied Melly’s face.

‘Are you still not getting your rest? I heard you moving about last night. You really don’t look any too good, you know. You’re all black under the eyes. And you’re
getting thin.’

Melly knew it. In the mirror a white, gaunt face looked back at her. Her uniform belt felt looser and she could easily circle her wrist with the finger and thumb of the other hand.

‘What’s ailing you?’ Berni asked, head on one side. ‘You look worse than some of the patients!’ She gave her laugh and Melly forced a smile.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Time of the month.’ She pretended to busy herself. ‘Better get my shoes polished.’

They were lovely March days, sunshine brightening the chill and spring flowers like a bright carpet across Bournville Green. But Melly was too exhausted to notice.

That morning, when she crawled out of bed, she felt so sick she could barely force any breakfast down. Normally the hearty slabs of bread and margarine were just what was needed to fuel a
morning’s work, but she was finding it difficult to eat anything. She only managed to nibble at the edge of a piece of bread, which settled her stomach a bit with a cup of tea.

Her placement on A3 was almost over and they would be back in the Training School for a few weeks after that. It felt like a relief. She was fast beginning to feel that she could no longer cope
on the ward. All the time she was full of doubt. She was the worst nurse there had ever been – and to think she had wanted to be the best! Maybe she had aimed too high and it was not for her.
She had failed.

When Melly walked on to the ward that morning she was feeling especially low. She thought every patient was looking at her and thinking, she shouldn’t be here, she can’t do the job.
She’s an impostor!