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Maggie turned on the taps on either side of the sink and swilled out the pans before loading them one at a time into a sterilising unit that looked like a narrow metal washing machine. Each bedpan was blasted with boiling, steamy water before Maggie removed it with a thick linen cloth and placed it on a clean trolley ready for the next bedpan round.
‘The trick is to get it over and done with as quickly as you can,’ Maggie said. ‘Grit your teeth and just do it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that bedpans won’t clean themselves and, believe me, the smell gets worse the longer you leave it!’
I felt at ease with Maggie and hung on her every word, eager to learn from her experience. Our next task was to perform a bed bath on Mr Finch.
‘He’s a good one to start with as he lives up to his name and is as light as a bird,’ Maggie whispered as we approached his bed.
‘Good day, Nurses!’ Mr Finch beamed as Maggie pushed a trolley beside his bed and I closed the curtains around him. ‘Is it bathtime? Oh, go on then, if y’insist!’
Mr Finch put down his Daily Mirror and rubbed his hands together cheekily, eyes glinting.
‘He’s just teasing,’ Maggie said. ‘Aren’t you, Mr Finch?’
‘I am indeed,’ he tittered. ‘I’m a good boy really.’
Maggie caught my eye and winked, but I still felt slightly nervous. Mr Finch looked a bit scruffy, with nicotine-stained fingers and blackened teeth, and I shivered as I wondered what we might have to deal with under the sheets.
‘Any trouble from him, Nurse Lawton, and we’ll make sure the water is ice cold next time,’ Maggie said in an exaggerated whisper.
On the trolley Maggie had a pot of zinc and castor oil cream, a metal bowl filled with warm water and a tin of talcum powder. Mr Finch reached into his locker and produced a toilet bag containing a bar of Palmolive soap, two grey flannels and a small, thin towel.
Maggie showed me how to strip the counterpane back and pull the blanket off the patient and over an A-shaped frame she had placed at the foot of the bed.
‘Keep the top sheet in place and work underneath it as best you can,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘That’s the privacy guard.’
She demonstrated by washing and drying Mr Finch’s face first and moving on to his arms, chest and underarms without exposing an inch of flesh unnecessarily.
‘Ooh, that’s grand, Nurse,’ Mr Finch commented. ‘You’re right good at this!’
Next I helped turn Mr Finch on his side, so Maggie could wash down his back and I could dry it. He certainly was as light as a bird. He was skin and bone, in fact, and I realised he looked rather like the old man in the television comedy Steptoe and Son, which amused me.
‘Would you wash your private bits?’ Maggie said, making it sound as though she was posing a question when in actual fact she was instructing Mr Finch politely to do so.
‘Course,’ he said. ‘I tell ye what, it’s a damn sight easier t’ get m’self clean nowadays. Used to be murder when I were down the pit.’
It turned out that Mr Finch was born at the turn of the century and had worked nearly all his life at the Astley Green Colliery in Wigan, mining coal for decades until his retirement a few years earlier. He had seven children and seventeen grandchildren, and had served in both world wars.
As Maggie and I rolled him onto each side again so we could strip and re-make the bed beneath him, I thought how silly I was to have been nervous about him, and how unkind I was to have assumed he might be smelly or uncouth, just because he was old and had spent his life working his fingers to the bone.
I loved getting to know such interesting folk and I soon realised that once people are stripped bare in a hospital bed, that’s when you find out who they really are. This realisation struck me as so profound that I wrote it down in my notebook when I returned to my room after tea, because I never wanted to forget it. As I did so, I realised with some satisfaction that despite still being plagued by homesickness, and despite feeling mentally and physically drained at the end of the day, I was doing my very best and I was slowly starting to find my feet.
I fell into an extremely deep sleep that night. Sister Mary Francis would have called it the ‘sleep of the just’, but my much-needed slumber was suddenly interrupted when an alarm bell rang out. In my dream I saw a ghostly-white patient desperately pressing a red emergency buzzer. I couldn’t see the patient’s face and I didn’t know which ward he was on or what was wrong with him. I could see him holding out his hands to me, but I couldn’t get close enough to help him because I was stuck behind a pile of textbooks that towered higher and higher the more I tried to move forwards. Physiology. Anatomy. Dietetics. Bacteriology. The words swarmed, distorting my vision.
‘Wake up, Linda! Get up quick!’ It was Anne’s voice, and she was hammering on my door. ‘There’s a fire! Get up!’
I stumbled out of bed, my heart thumping. The alarm in my dream suddenly got louder and louder. My door was open now and I could see nurses running towards the emergency exit along the corridor. The fire alarm was blasting out as I grabbed my dressing gown and ran, barefoot, into the arms of a burly fireman.
‘Steady now!’ he grinned. ‘There’s no need to panic. Just make your way outside calmly and we should be able to get you back inside in no time at all.’
We were told a small fire had broken out on the opposite side of the nurses’ home, which was soon contained. This news travelled quickly around the car park, where I stood shivering in my nightie and dressing gown, still feeling drugged by sleep. Eventually another very handsome fireman led me back to my room, which he was in the process of checking over when the home sister stuck her nose round my door.
‘See that you remove that poster in the morning,’ she said huffily, pointing to my beloved black and white John Lennon portrait taped boldly above my bed. ‘You know quite well it is forbidden to decorate the walls.’
The fireman flashed me a dazzling smile and rolled his eyes behind her back before wishing me a very good night.
‘Do you know, I think I’ll always have a soft spot for firemen,’ I told Anne dreamily at breakfast the next morning.
‘All the more reason to work hard,’ Anne replied with a wink. ‘Everyone knows firemen have a soft spot for nurses, too.’
‘You’re right,’ I smiled. ‘Perhaps I’ve chosen the right career after all!’
Chapter Three
‘I didn’t expect to be looking after people who are actually ill’
‘Lawton, attend to Mrs Roache in bed thirteen,’ Sister Bridie ordered. I hated the way she addressed us by our surnames, as if we were in the Army. I leapt to attention, nevertheless.
I was now a good few months into my first year of training. So far I’d had a trouble-free start to my nursing career. Soon after the eight weeks of study with Mr Tate, which were punctuated by visits to wards and units, I completed my first placement, which happened to be at the eye hospital over the road in Nelson Street.
We had no say in where we were sent for work experience, but I had no complaints and was quite happy dishing out eye drops, wiping down lockers and fetching cups of tea for patients, while at the same time learning how to sterilise equipment, organise the linen cupboard and generally keep Sister happy.
The only part of the work that worried me at the eye hospital was using the sterilising equipment. The machine was different to the bedpan steriliser I’d become accustomed to operating in the sluices at the main hospital. This one stood on a substantial trolley that was positioned right in the middle of the ward. It looked harmless enough, shaped like a small stainless-steel oven, but it hissed and bubbled as loudly as a witch’s cauldron.
I’d seen other nurses adeptly sterilising kidney bowls, syringes and needles, seemingly oblivious to the dangers of the swirling clouds of hot steam the contraption emitted whenever it was opened, but I was scared to death the first time I had to operate it by myself, jumping back in fright as the sweltering steam billowed into my face. I practically threw the instruments in, pulling my hand away and slamming the door shut in record time. It was a miracle I hadn’t been burned, especially as I had to repeat the process in reverse five minutes later, retrieving my poker-hot equipment with a pair of Cheatle forceps.
Needless to say, I soon got used to the steriliser, and by the time I left the eye unit I think I could have operated it in my sleep. My next placement was to be on Sister Bridie’s surgical ward.
‘Are you looking forward to it?’ Graham asked me the night before I was to start there, when he picked me up in his car and took me out for a coffee at a little snack bar in Piccadilly Gardens, up near the station.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘Very much so. The eye unit was good experience but it wasn’t exactly exciting.’ The fierce steriliser had been the only thing that made my pulse quicken. ‘I’m ready for the next challenge. A surgical ward should be very interesting. It’s a female ward and I expect women need surgery for all sorts of reasons. It’ll be good to deal with more than just eyes.’
‘That’s my little nurse!’ Graham said encouragingly.
‘I’m a bit worried about Sister Bridie, though,’ I admitted. ‘She’s Irish and a spinster, so I hear, and she seems terribly strict and bossy.’
‘Don’t fret. You were worried about the Matron to begin with,’ Graham reminded me, ‘and I’ve hardly heard you mention her since.’
‘That’s true,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I guess I’ve learned that Miss Morgan leaves you alone as long as you keep your head, and your skirt length, down!’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he smiled.
‘Besides, you always know when Matron is on the warpath, as word spreads like Chinese whispers. “Matron’s coming, pass it on,” we say, and usually the entire ward is on best behaviour before she has set foot through the main doors.’
Sister Bridie worried me more, I realised. ‘I’ll be seeing her on a daily basis on the surgical ward, come what may. I’ve heard she used to be on the men’s cardiac ward, and she shouted so loudly at the student nurses that she nearly gave the patients another heart attack.’
Graham laughed and I joined in, seeing through his eyes how funny this was. He was a marvellous help to me. Despite the camaraderie I shared with Linda and the other girls and the endless encouragement offered by my mum on the phone and on my occasional weekend visits home, it was Graham who kept me going, always willing to drive up to the hospital two or even three times a week to see me and let me unload about my day.
Sometimes I cried in his arms as we huddled together in the hospital car park, because I was tired out and I missed him and my home so much. Graham always provided a good reason for me to keep my chin up and carry on. ‘Think how you’ll feel when you’re a qualified SRN,’ he would say. ‘We’ll be able to get married and get a place of our own! You’ve come this far. You can do it, Linda. I’m so proud of you. You were made for this job.’
Now he commented: ‘I can’t imagine you giving Sister Bridie any reason whatsoever to shout at you.’
I hoped he was right, and his words helped set my mind at ease a little. All I had to do was obey orders and work hard, and I had nothing to fear. ‘What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger,’ I thought.
Graham also used to chat to me about events in the news and life outside the hospital, which helped to put things in perspective. I was so wrapped up in my own life I hardly ever took time to read a newspaper. Sometimes I didn’t even breathe fresh air for days on end, as the nurses’ home was attached to the main hospital by a covered walkway. Graham was my reality check, my link to the outside world.
‘Life is full of ups and downs, Linda,’ he said. ‘You have to take the rough with the smooth. Look at it like this. One minute the country is on a huge high, ruling the world with the football. The next, something terrible happens, like the Aberfan disaster. That’s life.’
It was just a few months since England had won the World Cup in the summer of 1966. I’m not a football fan, but I remembered Graham proudly telling me that Geoff Hurst, our hat-trick-scoring striker, was a local man who had been born in Ashton. Then in October the terrible Aberfan tragedy had united the country in the most dreadful grief. More than 100 children perished in that Welsh village when a slag heap collapsed on their school.
Life can be very cruel, and plenty of people had it a lot harder than me; that was an absolute certainty. In the big scheme of things, Sister Bridie’s harsh tongue was scarcely a hardship, and I resolved to do my very best under her watchful eye.
The night before my placement on the surgical ward began I noted in my diary that, thanks to my gentle introduction to basic nursing at the eye unit, as well as Graham’s words of wisdom and encouragement, I was feeling much more settled, and my confidence was slowly building.
The hospital and nurses’ home are now very familiar, and the strict regimes bring a sense of order and security, which I find comforting. Graham hasn’t actually ever proposed to me properly, but I like it when he suggests we’ll get married one day, and settle down. I would like that very much. I have learned that I prize security over uncertainty, and I want to pass my exams and qualify, because then my future will be set.
‘Lawton, attend to Mrs Roache in bed thirteen,’ Sister Bridie repeated impatiently, even though I was already picking up the notes to obey the order.
‘Yes, Sister,’ I said politely, giving her a nod. ‘Right away, Sister.’
I thought about being strong and making Graham proud as I strode to the far end of the surgical ward. I didn’t want to make any mistakes here. Sister Bridie had split purple veins etched across her grey complexion. Her silver hair was wrapped in a tight bun and a single white whisker protruded from a stone-like mole on her chin. She was as round and squat as a concrete mixer, and when she barked orders it felt as if she was spitting gravel at me. Sister Bridie was not a person I wanted to cross.
I hadn’t been prepared for the strong smell on the surgical ward, like nothing I’d ever encountered before. It clung in the air, and I found myself trying to take short, shallow breaths through my nose so as not to experience the full stench. Breathing like that made me tense my neck, and I could feel my starched white collar tighten around my throat, making me slightly light-headed. I remembered Janice telling us how she had embarrassed herself by gagging violently in front of the patients when she had to collect used bedpans on her first placement, but this smell was different and at first I couldn’t identify it.
I could hear trolleys rattling hurriedly past, Sister Bridie pebbling other nurses with orders and the unmistakable, upsetting sound of ladies crying out in pain. Against this background noise, all I could think about was the inescapable smell sticking to every pore on my skin. It made me clench my insides, to try and stop the smell getting through to me.
Mrs Roache was lying on her back with her right leg in traction. She had been hit by a speeding car as she crossed the Stretford Road in Hulme to collect her pension, and her thigh bone was very badly smashed. The old lady was on powerful drugs to help her cope with the considerable pain. Her leg had been dressed and strapped into what I recognised as a Thomas splint, which ran from beneath her pelvis right down to her ankle. Poor soul, I thought. She looked a sorry sight, propped up on top of her bedclothes, her blue-rinsed hair still matted into an ugly gash in her scalp.
‘How are you, Mrs Roache?’ I smiled as I approached her bedside. She was a generously proportioned lady who gamely attempted a smile, but her pain got the better of her. ‘Been better, t’ be honest, Nurse,’ she struggled. ‘Can I have some more p-p-painkillers?’ She winced as she squeezed her lips together to suppress a moan.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I soothed. ‘You’re ready for your next dose. If you’ll just allow me to help you tilt your head, I’ll pass you a fresh glass of water.’
I offered words of encouragement as she eagerly placed the two pellet-like pills in her mouth and swallowed them down in one tremendous gulp. I had learned that it is not uncommon for patients to be sick after taking painkilling drugs, and I had brought a vomit bowl with me, which I was holding in my hand.
‘They should start to work quite quickly …’ I began, but I was promptly silenced by the sight of Mrs Roache simultaneously retching and lurching towards me.
I froze and looked on in helpless horror as she valiantly aimed for the metal bowl but missed it completely. Instead, she vomited right the way down my arm, splattering the sleeve of my uniform, my cuff and my bare forearm simultaneously. The sight and smell of her vomit, not to mention the warm feel of it clinging to my skin, made my own insides churn. As Mrs Roache was sick again, this time directly into the metal bowl I’d let drop beside her, I threw up the contents of my own stomach right into the same receptacle.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Nurse …’ Mrs Roache apologised. She looked ashamed and forlorn, and I didn’t want her to suffer any further distress.
‘It’s no bother. I’m sorry too.’ I wiped my face with the hem of my apron and took a slow, deep breath to gather my composure before I began to mop up Mrs Roache’s chin with a tissue from her locker. ‘What a pair we are,’ I smiled at her. Nausea was swimming through my insides now and I desperately hoped I wouldn’t be sick again. ‘Give me a minute to clean myself up and we’ll start again, shall we?’
‘Thank you, Nurse, I’m ever so sorry,’ she said as I walked unsteadily to the sluice to dispose of the contents of the sick bowl.
I was burning with a mixture of emotions. I felt sorry for the poor old lady, who had suffered the most appalling injury, and I felt mortified by what had happened. My cheeks flushed and I found myself saying a little prayer in my head, and imagining God was holding my hand. This was something Sister Mary Francis had encouraged us to do at school whenever we needed a little help and guidance.
‘Dear God,’ I began as I held my nose and emptied the vomit into the sluice. ‘Please help me to be strong. This job is going to be harder than I imagined.’
I heaved, changed my apron and headed back to attend to Mrs Roache again. Sister Bridie was patrolling the ward now, and I had to look competent and in control, though I felt anything but.
In the bed next to Mrs Roache lay a distinguished-looking elderly lady called Mrs Pearlman. If my memory served me correctly, the patient notes I’d seen when I arrived on the ward told me she was Jewish, and she had a fractured pelvis.
She raised a thin arm to attract my attention. I stepped towards her with a smile and said, ‘How can I help? I’ll be with you just as soon as I’ve finished with Mrs Roache …’
‘There is no need, my dear,’ she said in a raspy whisper. ‘I just wanted to say I think you are doing a marvellous job.’
I felt humbled.
That night I sat on my bed and cried. I’d had a long soak in the bath but I was sure I could still smell poor Mrs Roache’s vomit on my skin. It mingled with the scent of the powdered Ajax and Lysol cleaning liquid we used on the wards, and the medicated pong of Izal toilet paper that hung in the air around all the communal bathrooms and toilets in the nurses’ home.
I was scrubbing my hair with Sunsilk shampoo for the third time when there was a knock on the bathroom door from Anne, who was politely wondering if she could possibly hurry me up so she could ‘de-hospitalise’ herself as well.
Her words made me think of the putrid smell that hung in the air on the surgical ward and I suddenly realised why it was worse than the usual hospital smell I was used to: it was gangrene. I hadn’t been able to identify it because I’d never smelled anything like it in my life before, but now it all became horribly clear. Mr Tate had explained that antibiotics were used to help prevent gangrene setting in, but they did not always manage the job. I remembered his words clearly and recalled wincing when he told us: ‘Gangrene occurs when body tissue and cells are no longer receiving blood flow and oxygen, and those parts of the body effectively die and emit a fetid smell.’
I was not familiar with the word ‘fetid’, though it was obvious it meant something unpleasant. As he spoke, Mr Tate was squeezing his upper lip between his thumb and forefinger, as he had a habit of doing, and I remembered feeling slightly queasy.
Now I felt a wave of sickness crash in my stomach all over again. I was so clean my skin was pink and shining, yet I still felt infected with bad odours. Fetid, I realised, was a polite way of describing the stench of rotting flesh. The patients on that ward had suffered horrific injuries. Beneath the assorted splints and dressings and Plasters of Paris, parts of their bodies were dying. I was repulsed. This job really was much harder than I’d thought it was going to be.
I cried and cried for hours that night, longing to go home so much it physically hurt. I had a deep pain in my chest. Each rib had hardened around my lungs and each breath I drew made me ache more.
Perhaps I could pack my suitcase and slip quietly out of the hospital in the morning? I allowed myself that fantasy, watching myself, in my mind’s eye, grappling with the heavy drawers of my wardrobe, removing my clothes silently and running off. I would leave my uniform behind, and as I slipped away Miss Morgan and Sister Bridie would become small, insignificant grey dots in the distance, never to be seen again. ‘I’m going home to my mum!’ I would shout, waving my John Lennon poster brazenly in my hand.
I knew it couldn’t happen like that. Even though I was still a very young eighteen-year-old, I was wise enough to realise there would have to be meetings and confrontations, soul-searching and contingency plans.
What would I do instead of nursing? How could I let everyone down? My parents were so pleased I had entered not only a respected profession, but the magnificent institution that was the NHS. They were delighted I would earn such luxuries as a staff pension and holiday pay, benefits not available to them as they were self-employed. I couldn’t upset them, certainly not without a back-up plan. Perhaps I should look into nursery nursing, which had crossed my mind when I first considered nursing. I imagined working with children would be a much more enjoyable job, but how could I change course now?
Graham would be so disappointed if I gave up nursing. He had joined the police force from school and had wanted to rise through the ranks, but health problems prevented him from fulfilling his ambition. Now he was making a very good job of selling second-hand cars, like his father, and he wanted the world for me. He would be sad if his little nurse faltered and failed, despite his optimistic predictions.
As I tucked myself in and lay awake in the dark, I felt another emotion: shame. I felt ashamed of myself for wanting to quit. I thought of poor Mrs Roache, paralysed in her hospital bed, unable to take control of her own destiny. She had been knocked down by a car and was in agony, but still she tried to smile at me. Still she made an effort. That’s what I had to do.
‘Please promise me, Linda, that you will always work hard for your living.’ I heard Sister Mary Francis’s words as I nodded off to sleep, and I told myself to keep going, just keep going.
The following week Nessa, Anne, Jo, Linda, Janice and I assembled in the schoolroom for some practical work. We were to be shown how to use a Ryles tube, which caused great excitement as we all enjoyed having hands-on experience. It meant we were progressing, taking another step closer to becoming qualified nurses, without the daunting pressure of being on the wards.
‘How are you getting on?’ Jo asked while we waited for Mr Tate to fetch the tubes from the store cupboard. We’d been so busy working on our separate placements, as well as studying, that it had been weeks since we’d had a proper catch-up. In the evenings we were completely exhausted, and all we wanted to do was get to bed as soon as possible to make the early starts more bearable.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, giving a thin, unconvincing smile. ‘The surgical ward with Sister Bridie is tough, though. I didn’t expect to be looking after people who are actually ill.’
I hadn’t meant to make a joke but Jo sniggered. ‘What did you expect?’ she asked, then added, ‘I know what you mean. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for either, not really. At the start I couldn’t see why we needed ten aprons, but I certainly do now. I’ve had two of mine covered in unmentionable bodily waste already this week. It’s disgusting!’
Jo explained that she’d done a bedpan round on the cardiac ward and had misjudged how full one of the covered metal pans was when she carried it rather too hastily to the sluice.
‘I think the poor man must have been hanging on to that lot for a week,’ she said, holding her nose dramatically and pretending to gag.
‘Once I’d changed and collected the next set of pans from the other side of the ward, I then managed to splatter myself in hot, orange-coloured urine. It was toxic, I swear!’
‘Yuk!’ I said, thinking Mrs Roache’s vomit didn’t seem quite so repulsive after all. ‘At least you can laugh about it.’
‘Needs must,’ Jo replied, somewhat begrudgingly.
