It Won't Hurt a Bit by Jane Yeadon

Author:Jane Yeadon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845025168
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2012-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

I hadn’t known then that the teaching department would be sending clinical instructors to make sure we were doing our work properly. In the classroom, improvisation had been frowned upon, but in those first few weeks in the wards we had had time to perfect it. Instructors might have a tough call and word was out they were coming.

‘Who’s yours?’ asked Maisie, as if they were personal property. ‘Mine’s Maggie Dee.’

As we went on duty she was practically skipping. Sometimes Maisie’s early morning, breezy way bordered on the unnatural. ‘They say she’s ok – better than that Sister Gorightly. Apparently she’s a holy terror.’

‘I’ll find out soon enough but I hope I don’t get her. She sounds awful.’

In the ward cloakroom, a limping Mrs Cockburn was the first casualty of the day. She tore off her cap, threw it into a bin, then, taking a large man-sized hanky from the shopping bag in her locker, trumpeted into it. ‘That woman,’ she said, slamming the locker door shut, ‘confiscated my bowl, tore strips off me in front of the patients and said I wasn’t to come back until my leg was better. Well, there was nothing wrong with it until her foot got in the way.’ She turned the locker key as if she were screwing a lid on tight, grabbed her coat and, before I could say anything, hobbled out the door.

Alarmed by her upset and use of whole sentences, I joined the ward report group, worrying how we could cover her work as well as our own and already missing the clarion call, the chrome clang and the bunion-shaped shoes which bounced her so cheerily round the ward. How would we get our patients mobile now?

As we gathered round Sister Miller for the morning report, I got a flicker of pity whilst the rest of the staff were handed lengthy work slips. Sister Miller’s usually blithe expression was grim. ‘Nurse Macpherson,’ she started to roll up her sleeves, ‘the rest of us will have to cover for staff shortages because we’ve lost a vital team member and you’re with Sister Gorightly.’

‘Oh God!’ I suddenly remembered the girl who’d fled the Nurses’ Home, the overheard conversations of nurses scarred by an experience best not shared, and my stomach turned.

Yet out of the sluice, a vision of loveliness appeared whilst Sister and her staff melted away.

But surely this couldn’t be the harridan responsible for all those tales of tears and trauma? This was a sweet-faced, silvery-haired angel with a peaches-and-cream complexion and an hourglass figure, over which a turquoise-coloured dress strained in enough places to engage the interest of patients previously considered moribund. Her heeled shoes accentuated the neat ankles now flying in my direction.

In the distance someone dropped a bedpan, breaking the hush that had fallen upon the ward.

‘Ah, Nurse Macpherson! I’ll be with you today to check out your practical work. I’m sure we will have a very instructive day.’ Her tones were dulcet – her smile dazzling, showing very white, if sharp, teeth.

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