A Girl in a Million Read online

  The nurses’ home, a grim appendage to the hospital, looked bleak from the outside, but inside it was cheerful enough, and although the rooms were decidedly small they were nicely furnished and there were three sitting-rooms, one for the sisters, one for trained staff and one for the student nurses. Caroline poked her nose round the door of the last mentioned and was greeted by several girls lounging around reading and drinking tea.

  They begged her to put her case down and tell them all about her holiday while she drank a mug of tea, unpacked the cake her aunt had made for her and handed it round.

  ‘Meet any nice men?’ asked one of the girls, Janey, a pretty fair-haired girl.

  ‘No—at least, I did meet one, I’m not sure if he was nice…’

  She had everyone’s attention. ‘Do tell…’

  She told and when she had finished Janey exclaimed. ‘You could have fainted or burst into tears, you know—captured his attention.’ She sighed. ‘Really, Caro—for a woman of twenty-four you’re hopeless at catching the male eye!’

  ‘I didn’t feel faint, and you know how hideous I look if I cry.’

  There was a protesting chorus telling her that she hadn’t needed to feel faint; just to look pale and helpless would have done very well.

  Caroline said meekly that she would know what to do next time, with the secret thought that being pale and helpless would cut no ice with a man like Mr van Houben. His eyes, compellingly blue though they were, were razor-sharp.

  She went on duty the next morning, back to Women’s Surgical, chock-a-block since it was take-in week, with beds down the centre of the ward and several disgruntled ladies forced to sleep in Women’s Medical where they had beds empty.

  ‘It’s a funny state of affairs,’ observed Staff Nurse James, deftly shortening a tube and putting on a fresh dressing while Caroline handed things and made cheerful remarks to the nervous patient. ‘Here’s us bursting at the seams, and two whole wards closed because there’s no money to keep them open. There, that’s done, Mrs Crisp, and I’m sure you’ll feel more comfortable now. Clear away, will you, Nurse, and then go and get your coffee?’

  Corinna was in the canteen and as Caroline went in she called her over to the table where she was sitting. ‘Did you find the house?’ she wanted to know. ‘I hope it wasn’t too much of a nuisance for you? I’m very grateful—the book was far too precious to send by post—a first edition. Thanks awfully. Did you have a good time?’

  ‘Yes, delightful, thank you.’ Corinna, she thought, was very like her cousin; her eyes were bright blue too, although her nose was a delicate beak, which rather added to her good looks. If she had known Corinna better she might have told her that she had met her cousin; as it was, she went and got her coffee and sat down at another table with several of her friends.

  She was tired by the time she went off duty at six o’clock; there had been two emergency admissions who had gone to Theatre during the day and one of the student nurses had gone off sick during the afternoon, which meant that two of them were doing the work of three.

  Caroline kicked off her shoes, made a cheerful telephone call to Aunt Meg and curled up with a book in the sitting-room. Exercise in the fresh air was essential to a nurse’s well being, Sister Tutor had been telling decades of students that, but Caroline decided that her day had provided enough exercise, and anyway the air, laden with fumes from the never-ending traffic of the East End of London, wasn’t fresh. The book, she decided after ten minutes’ reading, was dull, so she closed it and allowed her thoughts to wander.

  The holiday in Amsterdam had been a success; Aunt Meg had had a long-cherished dream fulfilled and they had seen as much as possible of the city. It would have been nice to go inside some of the magnificent houses they had inspected so avidly from the streets. It was a pity she hadn’t had the wit to do as Janey suggested; if she had fainted, or appeared to faint, she would have had to spend much more time inside Mr van Houben’s house and had a chance to look around. As it was she had barely glimpsed the hall before the brief session in his study while he dealt with the grazes. She would know better next time—only there wouldn’t be a next time. She and her aunt had saved for some time for their holiday; there wouldn’t be one next year, and if there was enough money for the year following that Aunt Meg would want to go somewhere else. When holidays were few and far between one couldn’t afford to go to the same place twice, not if one wanted to see as much of foreign parts as possible.

  Impatient with herself for feeling discontented, she went away to wash her hair and by the time it was dry and fastened neatly once more it was time for supper. Afterwards, everyone lucky enough to be off duty crowded into the sitting-room to drink tea, talk shop and compare notes about their boyfriends. There was the usual hospital gossip too: who was going out with which house doctor, Mr Wilkins’ nasty fit of temper in Theatre that afternoon, Casualty Sister’s unjust treatment of one of their number who had had the misfortune to drop a pile full of sterile dishes… By the time she got to bed she had forgotten her discontent. Life, she thought sleepily, was really quite fun, and somewhere, some time, she would meet the man she would marry. He had until now been a nebulous figure, vague as to feature and voice, but now he bore a striking resemblance to Mr van Houben. ‘Which really won’t do at all,’ muttered Caroline as she closed her eyes.

  Life was by no means fun the next day. Mr Wilkins’ morning round was far from smooth; he had come on to the ward in a bad temper to start with, which rendered the already nervous students even more nervous so that they were either struck dumb or gave all the wrong answers; moreover, several of the ladies lying in their beds dozing peacefully deeply resented being wakened so that he might examine them. Sister Cowie, who prided herself upon the perfection of her ward, pursed her lips and said very little; later several people would get the sharp edge of her tongue. Certainly her nurses would be held to blame for allowing the patients to drop off when Mr Wilkins’ round was imminent. Those who could kept prudently out of sight, but Staff Nurse and Corinna, following in Sister’s footsteps bearing charts, X-ray forms and all the impedimenta needed to keep Mr Wilkins happy, were very aware of her displeasure. Staff would get the blame, of course, which she would pass on to everyone else.

  Two more patients and the round would be finished and Mr Wilkins and his registrar would drink coffee with Sister. He was approaching the last bed when he was nudged aside, his foot trodden on and urged to wait a moment. Caroline, bearing a bowl, reached the patient in the nick of time. An arm around the heaving shoulders, the bowl nicely in position, and sitting on the bed because it was easier, Caroline turned a cheerful face to Mr Wilkins. ‘So sorry if I hurt your foot, sir, but Mrs Clarke is always sick without warning—so awkward and horrid for her.’

  Mr Wilkins gobbled wordlessly; he was a pompous man, short and stout and middle-aged. He was a splendid surgeon and the students held him in awe, something he rather enjoyed, and here was a dab of a girl actually pushing him aside, telling him to wait. The fact that if he hadn’t waited the consequences would have been unpleasant to himself cut no ice. He opened his mouth to administer a dignified rebuke, but Caroline spoke first. ‘There—Mrs Clarke is better now.’ She mopped the lady’s pallid brow and picked up the bowl. ‘I do hope,’ she added in a motherly voice, ‘that your foot isn’t painful, sir.’

  She slipped away and Sister, Staff and Corinna, who had been holding their breath, let it out with a sigh of relief. Mr Wilkins looked around him but the various f
aces looking back at him seemed solemn. ‘We will now examine Mrs Clarke,’ he told them and embarked on a rather lengthy dissertation concerning that lady’s insides, very much to her discomfort.

  Drinking his coffee presently, Mr Wilkins voiced his disapproval of Caroline’s conduct. ‘I have neither the time nor the inclination to speak to this nurse,’ he observed, ‘I rely upon you, Sister, to deal with her as you think fit. I intend to speak to the senior nursing officer, of course. I cannot have my authority undermined.’

  Sister, a strict disciplinarian but always fair, spoke up. ‘Nurse acted with foresight, sir. If she hadn’t reached Mrs Clarke with the bowl you would have been—er…’ She paused delicately.

  ‘She pushed me,’ said Mr Wilkins crossly, ‘and trod on my foot, and then had the impudence to hope that she hadn’t hurt me.’

  His registrar said quite quietly, ‘It was either that or vomit all over your suit, sir. I agree with Sister—Nurse acted promptly in the best interests of both you and your patient.’ He added, ‘It would be most unjust to blame her for what she obviously saw as her duty.’

  Mr Wilkins had gone red. ‘Since I am to be outnumbered I shall overlook the matter, but rest assured that I shall make it my business to keep a strict eye on the girl. What is her name?’

  ‘Nurse Frisby. She has just entered her second year. She is a promising student.’

  Mr Wilkins said, ‘Pish,’ and went away, his registrar, poker-faced, with him. He didn’t like his chief overmuch, and he was glad that Caroline had escaped his bad temper. He grinned at the thought of the medical students recounting the episode to their fellows. Most of them had suffered at some time from Mr Wilkins’ ill humour and would relish a good laugh at his expense.

  All the same, something would have to be done about it, Sister decided, and took herself off to the office to see her superior.

  Two days later, before Mr Wilkins’ next ward round, Caroline was transferred to the children’s ward.

  It was a happy choice made by her two superiors. The paediatric unit was housed at the back of the hospital, a modern wing built on to the ponderous Victorian main hospital. It was presided over by an elderly woman, Sister Crump, reputedly as mad as a hatter but none the less a miracle-worker when it came to getting her little patients well again and, what was more important, keeping them happy in the process.

  After the strict regime of Women’s Surgical, Caroline found it very much to her liking. Here there were no orderly rows of cots; they were wheeled here, there and everywhere according to Sister Crump’s mood, and down the centre of the long ward there were low tables cluttered up with toys, teddy bears and picture books and the children who were well enough were allowed to scamper around within reason. On first sight it appeared to be a madhouse, but there was order too, and if a nurse couldn’t fit into Sister Crump’s way of working she was moved to another ward, for she demanded meticulous care of the children in her charge. Dressings were done, little patients got ready for Theatre, temperatures taken, medicines given to the strains of cheerful music. Since the children, unless they were very ill, shouted and screamed a good deal, the nurses had to lift their voices above the din. There was discipline too: the children addressed all the nurses as Nurse—Christian names, according to Sister Crump, carried no authority with them, and authority, gentle though it might be, was needed at all times.

  Sister Crump had liked Caroline at once; nothing to look at, as she observed to Staff Nurse Neville later, but from all accounts she had acted with commendable promptness on the surgical ward even if she had upset Mr Wilkins’ sense of importance. ‘A fuss about nothing,’ she declared, and sailed into the ward, to clap her hands and tell the children to shout more softly. At the same time she observed that Caroline was sitting on the edge of a small bed, holding a little wriggling girl on her lap while a senior nurse dressed the wound, beautifully stitched, on the small arm.

  There were side-wards leading from the main wards where the very ill children lay. It was quiet here, the rooms with glass walls, equipped with all the paraphernalia necessary for urgent treatment and nurses constantly going from one child to the other. In a few days, Staff Nurse had told Caroline, when she had got to know the ward thoroughly, she would take her turn too with the other nurses, looking after one or two children, giving them the specialised treatment they had been ordered. Caroline looked at the array of monitoring screens, tubes and drips and hoped that she would know what to do. Of course, Sister Tutor had explained it all, but applying theory to practice demanded the keeping of one’s wits about one.

  She got on well with the other nurses—they were all her senior but she was a little older than most student nurses and made no effort to call attention to herself; besides, she was willing to help out on occasion and made no demands about having days off to suit herself and not the ward. By the end of the week she had been accepted by both nurses and children alike; moreover, Sister Crump had taken care to introduce her to the various housemen who visited the ward, cheerful young men who were quite willing to waste ten minutes playing with the children, eyeing the nurses and coaxing mugs of coffee out of Sister Crump. And when the consultant paediatrician came to do his round she wasn’t exactly introduced, although she was pointed out to him as being the new nurse on the ward. He stared at her, gave her a nod and took no more notice of her; indeed, it would have surprised her very much if he had. He was a youngish man with a long, thin face which lit up when he was with the children. One of the other student nurses, standing discreetly in the background while he went from one small patient to the other, whispered that he had three small children of his own and had married a nurse from the hospital. ‘The children love him,’ she added, ‘and he and old Crumpie get on like a house on fire.’

  Certainly the round had none of the formality of a grown-ups’ ward. Mr Spence sat on the cots and small beds, carrying, from time to time, a grizzling infant over a shoulder while he discussed something with his registrar and the housemen. Caroline went home for her next days off happier than she had been for some time, although she had to admit to herself that if only she could banish Mr van Houben from her mind she would be completely happy; he was taking up too much of her thoughts, which was absurd; she had exchanged only a few words with him and none of those exciting enough to engage his attention, and besides, she had made a fool of herself falling down his steps. If he ever thought of her at all, which she doubted, it would be with an amused laugh.

  When she went back on duty after her days off it was to be told by Sister Crump that they were short-handed, what with days off and one of the third-year students off sick and a badly injured child brought in late the evening before. ‘Ran away from his nanny, climbed a wall and fell on to a concrete path. Head injuries and in a coma. Mr Spence doesn’t want to operate until he improves; unfortunately he has broken ribs and a punctured lung, makes giving an anaesthetic very tricky. He’s being specialled, Nurse, which means that for long periods you may be alone in the main ward. Can you manage that?’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Sister. There’s no one very ill there, is there? It’s a question of keeping them happy and potting them and feeding them…’

  ‘Just so. You’ll have another nurse with you whenever it’s possible and I don’t believe that you’re a girl to panic. Now, we will go through the charts—there are one or two children you must keep an eye on…’

  It wasn’t until the afternoon that Caroline was left alone, and it would only be for an hour or so while th
e other nurse took two children down to the X-ray department. The children had had their after-dinner nap and she had got those who were allowed out of their cots and beds and organised them into manageable groups around the little tables. They were for the most part good; only Bertie, four years old, was a handful. He had been admitted ten days previously, having fallen off a swing in the play-pit below the high-rise flats where his mother lived, twelve storeys high. He hadn’t been found for some time and had been taken, concussed and bruised, to the hospital. Sister Crump had spoken severely to his mother about the risk of letting a very small boy play so far out of her sight and she had promised to go to the social worker and get him taken to a pre-school playgroup. In the meanwhile he was enjoying himself enormously, doing everything he shouldn’t.

  He hadn’t settled down with the other children who were up. Caroline, distributing sheets of paper and coloured pencils, saw him making for the ward doors at the other end and darted after him, to catch him into her arms—just as the doors opened and Mr van Houben walked in.

  Caroline, clasping a struggling Bertie to her person, stared up at him, her face alight with surprise and delight. Quite forgetful of where she was, and for that matter who she was, she said happily, ‘Oh, hello!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAROLINE saw at once that he wasn’t going to remember her. She hoped that he hadn’t heard her little burst of speech and asked in her most professional voice, ‘Can I help you? Are you looking for someone?’

  He looked at her then, but it was impossible to tell if he had recognised her. His handsome face was bland and unsmiling. ‘I’m looking for Mr Spence.’