Poppy by Mary Hooper

Author:Mary Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

That night Poppy and Matthews walked down together to catch the bus home.

‘I’m fearfully jealous of the amount of hands-on nursing you’ve done,’ Matthews said, after listening to Poppy’s tales of the boys of Hut 59. ‘I’ve not been trusted to do so much as take a man’s temperature!’

‘I’m sure you’ll be doing more stuff soon,’ Poppy said. She thought of the miles of bloodied bandages that she’d taken on a trolley to the laundry and cringed. ‘And when you are doing it, you’ll wish you weren’t.’

‘But mine are all “up” patients. How am I supposed to cultivate a bedside manner when none of them are actually in bed?’

‘Your turn will come.’

Matthews looked at Poppy enviously. ‘But you’ve helped those boys. You’ve done something you can be proud of. All I’ve done is wash up!’

Back at the hostel, Poppy had a bowl of soup, washed and went to her cubicle. At this time, just before she drifted off to sleep, it was usual for images of Freddie de Vere to flit through her mind. On this occasion, however, the faces of the injured boys of Hut 59 would not be driven out by Freddie de Vere. Round and round they went in her head: snippets of the things they’d said; the singing while their wounds had been dressed; the strangely modulated voice of the band-leader on the gramophone record; the fatigued face of young Thomas; Private Mackay, straight from the front, talking about his trews . . . Vivid slices of her day refused to leave her. It was at once the most shocking, the most dreadful and the most rewarding day of her life.

After lying awake for a couple of hours, she got out her notepad and fountain pen.

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