No Place For a Lady by Gill Paul

Author:Gill Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780008102135
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-six

When Dorothea arrived at the Castle Hospital – a row of prefabricated huts built along the clifftop overlooking Balaklava harbour – she was immediately questioned about her experience by four different doctors. Looking around, she saw the hospital was well-supplied with new beds and mattresses and more linen than they could possibly use – all sent by well-meaning members of the British public. There were patients of many nationalities, some of them muleteers who had hoped to make a profit from the war and had been injured in the fighting, others recruits from different regions of the vast Ottoman Empire, as well as British and French soldiers. Each doctor was in charge of two or three huts, and they all seemed keen for her to work with them, but it was a tall, ginger-whiskered Scotsman called Mr Crawford who prevailed.

‘What languages do you speak?’ he asked in his lilting brogue.

‘French, and a smattering of Italian,’ she replied. She had learned them from her governess.

‘No Scots? Will we need a translator then?’ he twinkled.

Dorothea smiled: ‘I can just about discern your meaning so I’m sure we’ll get by.’

‘Good! Now, I have my professional peculiarities and like nurses who will humour me. I require my instruments to be rinsed in boiled water between patients.’ He showed her the gleaming set of tools he had brought with him, neatly arranged in a wooden case with a blue satin lining. ‘And at the end of the working day, I like the operating table to be washed down and the floor mopped clean. Does this put you off working with me?’

Dorothea admitted she had not assisted in an operating theatre before, but added: ‘I attended a lecture on the subject of cleanliness and it sounded convincing to me. The idea of mingling one man’s blood with that of the next seems to me rather grim. Certainly if I were to be operated upon, I should not wish it.’

He continued: ‘I like to work quickly, not in order to set any national records but so I can give the patient a minimal amount of chloroform. An above-the-knee amputation should take no more than seven minutes if we understand each other’s ways. I hope you will not faint on me. I’ve got no time for fainters.’

Dorothea promised she would endeavour not to faint, adding that in her work so far she had proved to have a strong stomach.

‘In my Edinburgh hospital, the survival rate of my patients is over sixty per cent, but out here so far it is under forty, because the injuries are so very severe. I will need your help to raise it, and I will require superlative post-operative care. So long as you don’t consider it impertinent, I’d like you to accompany me on a ward round so I can check your dressing skills.’

Dorothea was surprised and at first she felt rather patronised, but they walked together round one ward, discussing the injuries presented, and she liked the way he bantered with the patients.

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