The Angels of Lovely Lane (35 page)

She knocked on the door at her allotted time, glad that Pammy had agreed to wait for her at the bottom of the wooden stairs, leading to the office. ‘Don’t be long,’ Pammy had whispered as they passed through the large entrance doors. ‘If she starts asking you about the latest hairstyles or does she suit the new Max Factor Coral Pink, tell her yes and run.’ Victoria had looked down the stairwell at Pammy as she reached the top and only just suppressed a giggle. The thought of stern and austere Matron asking Victoria about hairstyles was beyond ridiculous.

‘Come in,’ boomed Matron. There was not a nurse in St Angelus who had not trembled upon entering that office. Not so Victoria, who strode across towards the desk with confidence. Half an hour later, she was tripping back down the steps to Pammy.

‘How did you get on?’ Pammy asked as soon as they were back out in the fresh air.

‘Well enough,’ Victoria replied. ‘She said I can go tomorrow. I just have the one shift to do today.’

‘That’s smashing that, Victoria. Your dad and your aunt will be really pleased. It must be really hard, having to move house. They will want you to do your own room anyway.’

Victoria just smiled in response. Matron had been more than accommodating. ‘Of course, Nurse Baker. Please give my regards to Lord Baker.’

‘I’ll tell you what, Pammy. I think Matron has a bit of a problem, you know.’ They were almost at the ward block and about to go their separate ways.

‘Why, what?’

‘Well, it’s really odd, but when I was talking, she was growling at me. It’s really disconcerting. I’ve never heard anyone growl like that before.’

*

If Victoria had not been granted her holiday that morning, by the time she had finished her day shift she would have needed it.

‘We have a burns case being admitted from Casualty and we need someone to special her.’ Sister had bustled down the ward where Victoria and another nurse were making beds on female medical. ‘Nurse Baker, prepare the first cubicle please. She will be with us in ten minutes or so. Set up a trolley for an intravenous infusion, and oxygen too. I have no idea how bad she is, just that the burns are extensive.’

On every ward in St Angelus, the cubicle nearest to the ward office was kept free, reserved for the most serious of emergency admissions. Victoria dashed into the linen cupboard and loaded her arms with fresh linen. Staff Nurse met her when she came out. ‘Here, I’ll help you make the bed up. Although really and truly, I think all we will need is a bottom and a draw sheet, from what I hear.’

Victoria felt sick in the pit of her stomach. This was not going to be good.

When Dessie wheeled the trolley in to the ward, with Jake Berry helping to negotiate the corners, Victoria could tell by the shortness of his manner that he was concerned about the patient. A doctor trotted along behind the trolley with a set of case notes in his hand. It was all Victoria could do not to put her hand over her mouth in horror.

The patient lying on the trolley reminded her of one of the big logs that Hudson burned in the fireplace at Baker Hall.

The body was black from head to foot. There was no hair or ears or nose or lips. The woman’s fingertips were burnt away, as were her toes, and she was covered in weeping blisters. Victoria was utterly shocked when the patient spoke to her.

‘Hello. Do you know where our Eddie is?’ she said. Her voice was strained, but as clear as a bell.

Victoria was quite unable to respond, but fortunately Dessie chose that moment to ask them all to move aside while he manoeuvred the trolley into the cubicle. ‘Every bump hurts this young lady and I don’t want to risk hitting the wall and jolting her to avoid you. Put your hands over the corners, Jake. That way, if the trolley hits a wall, it’s your hand what gets it and she won’t feel the bump.’ The atmosphere in the ward had become tense within seconds.

‘She’s not going to survive the day, is she?’ the staff nurse whispered to the doctor.

‘I think she will,’ said the doctor. ‘Not so long ago, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. Infection would already have been growing in the open tissue, but now... now,’ the doctor spoke with a gleam in his eye and a hint of excitement in his voice, ‘I can administer antibiotics via the drip and as long as she doesn’t succumb to the shock she might make it. New skin will grow if we can keep the infection at bay. We can’t replace her ears or her nose, but her husband will still have a wife and her children a mother.’

To Victoria’s utter amazement, the patient spoke again.

‘Am I all right, doctor?’ she croaked. ‘Will I be all right?’

They had all moved into the cubicle and positioned themselves around the bed, ready to help with the delicate transfer from the trolley to the mattress. Victoria had no idea how they were going to manage.

‘You will be fine, Ivy. Just hold on in there, my dear. We’re going to make a grand team, you and I, and I have new drugs to help. Now, you’re a good Catholic, I’m sure. I have the means, and you must have the will, old girl. I’m counting on it. I just need you to listen to me and pray to the good Lord to help us both. Can you do that for me?’

‘I can that, doctor.’ For a moment, they were all silent. ‘Is our Eddie here?’

Sister had gathered together a team of eight nurses to help transfer Ivy from the trolley to the bed. They stood around all four sides of the trolley with two at the foot and Sister at the head. ‘Right, nurses, we will lift this patient using each end of the draw sheet from the trolley and your fingertips. We won’t use the canvass and poles,’ she said to Dessie. ‘I will take your head, Ivy.’ Each nurse looked to Sister, hanging on her every word. No one wanted to make a wrong move. Dessie and Jake took the bulk of the weight on the draw sheet. ‘This will take less than ten seconds if we do it right.

‘Ivy.’ Sister leant over and spoke in an authoritative but reassuring tone. It felt odd to her to use the patient’s Christian name, but the new doctor had yet to learn the ways of her ward and had not supplied a surname. ‘We are lifting you on to the bed now. We are all here to help. You must try to relax, and not worry about a thing.’

It took only five seconds, and although they tried to be gentle, Ivy let out a chilling and ear-piercing scream as she was laid down on the bed.

‘Right, I need a bottle of 9 per cent Saline,’ said the doctor, swinging the trolley across the head of the bed. ‘There was one vein I managed to get into. I need to get more morphine into her now, through the base of the tubing. I need some plaster to cover the puncture afterwards and we need to keep pushing the IV through, like this.’ He opened the regulator on the tube situated close to the glass bottle. ‘She has lost a huge amount of body fluid through the open burns. About half the surface area of her skin is damaged and she’ll be as high as a kite soon on morphia. Those dressings on the burns are gauze soaked in liquid paraffin. The consultant is on the phone to a mate of his at the Queen Vic in East Grinstead. He was a doctor in the RAF during the war and specialized in burns. We can’t decide if the dressings should be changed frequently, or if we should just reapply more liquid paraffin over the gauze and see if the skin will heal and granulate underneath. These new IV antibiotics are a game-changer. You just keep an eye on her obs and let me know if there is any deterioration. I’m going to write up her pain relief and have a word with the pharmacist. We must keep on top of that. Find a way to keep the dosage constant.’

Sister tried her hardest not to, but she looked affronted. ‘Doctor, I know you are new here, but if you don’t mind, this is my ward and if you have instructions for my nurses, please do it through me in future.’

To Victoria’s horror, the doctor was unmoved. ‘I do apologize, Sister, but I’m afraid that at this moment the patient is my main concern, not the St Angelus protocol.’

There was a moment’s cold silence before Sister said, ‘You remain with the patient, Nurse Baker. Please do her observations while we sort out the pain relief.’

Victoria looked at Ivy and wondered how on earth she would take her blood pressure on her blackened and dressed arm. The drip was running through almost on full flow and this panicked her slightly too. It was the first time she had ever seen a patient being given so much fluid. A catheter had been inserted in Casualty, and yet still there was almost nothing in the bag. The fluids were going in, but not coming out.

‘Hello, Ivy,’ she whispered. ‘Are you in any pain now? Does it hurt to breathe?’

‘It was the chip pan, nurse. Our Eddie, he dragged me straight out, but when the pan fell on me he chucked some water on top of me and that made it worse. He’s a soft lad, is our Eddie, but he always means well. The kids will be home from school for their dinner soon. They’ll be wondering what’s going on. I suppose Mavis next door will see to them for me.’

Victoria was amazed. The prompt rescue explained why there was no lung damage from the smoke so that Ivy could still speak, but it was hard to see how anyone could survive such extensive surface burns.

‘Don’t you worry about the kids or your Eddie,’ she said. ‘We need to look after you right now, Ivy. Just you. Remember the promise you made to the doctor? I’m just off to fetch a new drip bottle; I’ll be back in two seconds. You say that first prayer Doctor asked for, to help him.’

Victoria was more like two minutes, but no longer. She risked a ticking off from Sister as she as good as ran across the corridor and flew into the clean utility room, grabbed a drip bottle of 9 per cent saline solution and shot straight back in through the cubicle door.

Before she had even reached the bedside, she could tell by Ivy’s breathing that something was terribly wrong. By the time she had called the doctor back into the room, Ivy was almost gone.

‘Get the head off the bed,’ said the doctor. ‘Quick.’

Victoria didn’t know where she would find the strength. She placed both hands on the bottom of the metal headboard and tugged upwards. ‘It’s stuck,’ she said.

‘Here, let me help.’ Staff Nurse had run into the cubicle. They lifted the headboard upwards and clear of the bed in one go, and looked at the doctor, but he shook his head.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘She’s gone. I can’t even try to massage her heart; her chest burns are far too bad. Damn, damn, damn.’ The doctor smashed his fist into the wall. ‘I knew it, I knew it. I said that transferring her to the ward before she was properly stabilized would be risky. It was the shock. If we could just have kept her where she was for twenty-four hours. We need a unit near to Casualty for the more serious cases. I keep saying this and yet bloody Matron refuses to give up the space.’

Victoria just stared at him blankly. She hadn’t heard the rumours, and had no idea that he was referring to Matron’s own accommodation, which the trust had requested be turned into a casualty theatre and a serious admissions unit. A request Matron had steadfastly rejected. She knew that once she gave in, the four elderly sisters on the accommodation corridor, along with Sister Antrobus would be turfed out too. The four sisters had worked and lived at St Angelus for over sixty years. They had given their entire life to nursing the sick of Liverpool. She would protect them to her last breath.

As they covered Ivy with a sheet, a man with a blackened face and bandaged hands appeared in the doorway.

‘Is that our Ivy, nurse?’ he asked, his eyes filling with tears. ‘They wouldn’t let me leave Casualty till me hands were bandaged. What did she say? Was she in pain? Did she ask for me?’

To Victoria’s relief, Sister appeared in the doorway. ‘We shall go to the sitting room. Nurse Baker, perhaps you could bring a tray of tea. Mr Collins has had a very nasty shock.’

‘Yes, Sister, right away.’ But Victoria always regretted that she hadn’t been able to tell him that Ivy had said he always meant well, and that her voice had been loaded with love and affection for her soft lad as she lay there with her life slipping away.

*

There had been much discussion in the group regarding who would take holiday leave and who would remain to cover. Victoria couldn’t wait to return home to Baker Hall and yet she also dreaded it. For the past three months, every other weekend, Roland had driven over to Liverpool if Victoria had a day off and driven back on the same day. Over that time they had become even closer, and although he had never so much as kissed her they had held hands and never stopped talking. She knew it was Roland she wanted to see, more than the Hall. She had worked every weekend for the past month and so it had been five weeks since she had seen him. They had written to each other twice a week. She was tired of writing letters. She wanted to spend more than a day at a time with him and to know whether they had a future together, because difficult as not seeing him was, not being able to talk about him openly with her friends was equally hard. Dana knew, but Victoria had been too shy to say anything to the others until she was sure she had something to tell them. He had wanted to collect her, but it was a Monday and so she told him that she would take the train and arrive at Bolton at five thirty when he had finished work. She was glad of the day alone. Ivy and her distraught husband had disturbed her. She had wanted to do more. To visit Ivy’s home, to help with the children. But Victoria knew her job was nursing at St Angelus, and she had to remember that. Not becoming involved with patients and their lives was going to prove to be her biggest challenge.

She saw him as soon as she stepped down on to the platform. He was difficult to miss, because he was running towards her, shouting her name. It was almost nine months since Victoria had taken the train from Bolton to Liverpool. She was aware a very different person was returning. At last, she had finally been allocated her holiday and she could barely wait to see Roland.

‘Victoria, over here.’

She could see nothing now for the burst of steam from the engine, and then suddenly he burst through the white mist and she was in his arms.

‘I thought they’d never let you leave that hospital,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I was scared to look forward to your coming home in case it didn’t happen.’