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Linda was looking very pleased with herself and couldn’t wait to tell us she had given her first injection the day before, which we were all quite jealous of.
‘What was it like?’ we chirped.
‘It was as easy as pie,’ she beamed. ‘Mind you, thanks to Sister Barnes I did have a whale of a man as my first victim. He said he didn’t feel a thing, which was hardly surprising with all that blubber on his backside!’
Sister Barnes was my favourite sister. I’d spent several days between placements helping out on her orthopaedic ward, and every time I saw her she was smiling. She was big and blonde and, unlike practically all the other sisters, she had a man-friend whom she mentioned often and was clearly very much in love with. Her happiness seemed to rub off on those around her and she had a wonderful, calming influence on her staff and patients alike.
I learned from a third year that Sister Barnes had trained at the MRI and was still in her thirties, making her one of the youngest sisters I encountered. She always made herself available to us young students, telling us that she remembered her own training well and was there to help. If we had any questions whatsoever, we were to knock on her door and simply ask.
I admired Sister Barnes and, despite my difficulties, I aspired to be like her. How wonderful it would be to become a successful sister like her, and inspire students in the way she inspired me! The thought cheered me up. Hospital life was tough, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t make a success of it and come out smiling, just like Sister Barnes.
I listened attentively as Mr Tate dished out the narrow plastic Ryles tubes, which he explained were used either to deliver liquid food to the patient, or to ‘aspirate’ or empty the stomach contents, typically before an operation.
‘I want you to practise in pairs,’ he said. ‘Nurse Lawton and Nurse Maudsley, here are your tubes.’
Jo and I looked at each other cautiously, but were secretly quite thrilled about this lesson. If we were to be let loose on the patients with Ryles tubes, we knew we must have earned some trust and respect from our superiors, and were progressing well.
‘Please watch very carefully,’ Mr Tate continued. He picked out a student from another group, a fashionable-looking girl called Cynthia Weaver, and he set about demonstrating how to insert the thin tube into her nose and throat and then gently down into her stomach.
As she lay with her head on a pillow on a low couch, I could see Cynthia clench her fists and bite her lips until they went blue as Mr Tate threaded and teased the tube patiently up her right nostril. He gave a running commentary about the amount of force and manipulation required at each stage.
There was no need for him to tell us when it had reached Cynthia’s throat and stomach because she gagged and wriggled uncomfortably, her silky bobbed hair dancing around the pillow.
It was my turn to be a ‘patient’ next, and I was thankful to have Jo, whose self-confidence never faltered, as my ‘nurse’. She proved quite adept at navigating my nasal passage and manoeuvring the tube down my throat, and I was surprised to find it didn’t hurt one bit. The sensation was completely alien to me, though, and my eyes watered and I began to heave as it passed down into my stomach.
‘Mission accomplished,’ Jo said triumphantly, while I swallowed a whole pint of water in record time to lessen the sensation and keep the tube in place long enough for Mr Tate to acknowledge Jo’s work.
I found it surprisingly easy to replicate the process the other way round, and Mr Tate congratulated us on our efforts. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Textbook work.’ He was always succinct in his praise, but it meant a great deal.
Janice and Nessa were paired together, and I noticed they were both very quiet. This wasn’t unusual for Nessa. She was probably the cleverest of us all and was always diligently focused on the job in hand. Janice, however, didn’t look her normal assured self.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked as we sat down later in the canteen.
We each had a plate of unidentifiable meat, grey mashed potato and pellet-like peas. It looked totally unappetising, but we usually managed to eat a huge helping of food at each sitting, followed by a steaming pudding with lumpy custard you could stand your spoon up in. No matter what it looked like we tucked in, knowing we needed all the energy we could get through the day.
‘Fine, I suppose,’ Janice replied as she forked her food into her mouth robotically and stared into space. There was a moment of silence before she added, ‘To tell the truth, I’m not sure this is the career for me.’ Pushing her half-eaten meal away she shrugged her shoulders and asked, ‘How about you?’
‘A bit the same, I suppose,’ I found myself reluctantly admitting. ‘When I did my first placement at the eye unit, I thought I was fine. The worst thing I ever saw was someone’s eyeball dangling on their cheek. The rest of it was all putting on eye patches, administering eye drops, sterilising needles, taking people to the toilet, helping them into the bath. They weren’t ill, not physically ill. Now it’s all gangrene and vomit and pain and suffering, I’m finding it hard.’
Janice surveyed me. ‘I think we’re different,’ she said. ‘You’re a naturally caring person, Linda. You’ve got what it takes. I can’t even stomach helping people have a bath or go to the loo. How can you touch their bodies and wipe their behinds? I just can’t do it.’
I had never seen a man naked until I worked in the eye unit. Even Graham’s body remained something of a mystery to me, though we’d been together for well over a year by now. A bit of hanky-panky was allowed but nice girls waited until they were married before having sex; that’s how I was brought up. Despite living such a sheltered life, naked bodies didn’t alarm me in the slightest, and it had never occurred to me to be squeamish about bodily functions. I had taken it in my stride and focused on what I could do to help the patients, not how I felt to see them with no clothes on.
Perhaps Janice was right, I considered. Perhaps I did have what it took to be a real nurse, but I think I still needed some convincing.
Back on the surgical ward the following week, I was relieved to be given the mundane task of tidying and wiping down lockers, disposing of wilting flowers and filling up water jugs. This gave me the chance to chat to some of the patients.
Mercifully, Mrs Roache was lying in what appeared to be a comfortable slumber, though how she managed it with that enormous splint on her leg I never knew. Mrs Pearlman, however, was wide awake in the next bed.
‘How are you, my dear?’ she asked me kindly. ‘You girls do work so very hard. We’re lucky to have such angels as you to care for us.’
Mrs Pearlman was a wonderful old lady. Well into her seventies, she lived alone after being widowed many years earlier, and had fallen down the stairs of her old miner’s cottage in Hazel Grove. Her pelvis was fractured in several places and she had been in hospital for weeks on end. She never had many visitors and I was amazed at how she remained so positive.
‘I’m very well, Mrs Pearlman,’ I replied. ‘How are you today?’
‘Fine, dear, just fine. I think the care I’m receiving here is absolutely first class. Do you know what is on the menu today? I had the most delicious roast chicken yesterday, and a roll of ice cream that melted in my mouth. Isn’t the NHS the most marvellous institution?’
Mrs Pearlman did wonders for my spirits, and I made a point of chatting to her every day. She wore a beautifully embroidered bed jacket and often asked me to comb her surprisingly thick hair, which was dyed jet black but now had silver roots showing.
In her day, I imagined she had been an immaculately groomed, fine figure of a lady, the sort who might run the local Women’s Institute group or sing in the choral society. I marvelled at how graciously she accepted her fate, lying in this bed, silver roots creeping longer by the day.
‘Lawton, there are three beds to be made. Help Bennyon.’
The Irish voice was sharp and it made my nerves snap. ‘Yes, Sister Bridie,’ I said, nodding a polite goodbye to Mrs Pearlman and scuttling to the other end of the ward, where Lesley Bennyon, a friendly second-year student, was holding a pile of linen.
‘Three gone in the night,’ she said sadly, eyeing the empty beds. ‘Mrs Hall, Mrs Atherton and Mrs Lloyd.’
Their faces flashed before me. All were frail and elderly and had a collection of badly broken wrists, ribs and collarbones between them. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I wanted to say ‘I hope they didn’t suffer,’ but I knew, from the infections and smells and disturbing noises that inhabited this corner of the ward, that was highly unlikely.
‘It was their time,’ Lesley said softly, filling the silence.
Together we made the fresh beds with impressive speed, checking the corners of the sheets were tightly tucked and the counterpanes perfectly parallel, turning the pillowcase ends away from the ward door and twisting the wheels so they faced into the bed, for neatness and safety.
‘Neatness and safety,’ Lesley hissed to me, mimicking Sister Bridie’s Irish lilt. ‘You have to be neat and you have to be safe, to be sure! Don’t ever forget that, Lawton, or you’ll be struck down dead like these poor unfortunate ladies here, God rest their souls.’
I could sense Lesley had a soft heart and that this was simply her way of dealing with death.
‘You have to laugh,’ she said. ‘Or you’d spend the whole time crying.’
Despite being upset I gave a little laugh too, letting some of my tension escape, as Lesley wanted me to. Just then she leapt up unexpectedly and gave a little scream.
‘Arrgh! Not again!’ She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs and laughed awkwardly, as you do when you knock your funny bone. I leaned across the bed to place my arm on hers, to ask if she was OK, and suddenly I sprang up too, shooting inches into the air. A mild electric shock had run all the way through my body and, like Lesley, I instinctively began to rub my thighs, half-laughing and half-moaning.
‘It’s these ruddy suspender belts,’ Lesley winced. ‘Iron beds, prickly blankets and metal clasps on suspender belts are a lethal combination. Making beds in stockings should carry a “high voltage” warning! Come on, let’s go and sort out the linen cupboard. I think we’ve earned it.’
She gave me a little wink and I followed her through the ward and into the large linen store near the main doors. This was a godsend, I’d learned. Each ward had one, and it was a little haven where you could make yourself look busy and hide from Sister whenever you needed a breather.
‘Have you heard the gossip?’ Lesley asked when we were safely inside. She handed me a stack of pillowcases to fold, though they were already in a fairly neat pile. I was all ears.
‘Cassie Webster and Sharon Carter have been suspended for a month for stealing bread from the dining room.’
‘Never!’ I exclaimed, genuinely shocked. The hospital food was truly terrible. We lived on a diet of rubbery eggs and greasy strips of bacon for breakfast and the ubiquitous lumpy mash and unidentifiable meat for lunch and dinner. Afternoon tea was the only enjoyable offering of the day, when we had tea and fairy cakes and freshly baked Hovis loaves, which we slathered with jam and butter. Everyone tried to get to the first sitting for afternoon tea, else there wouldn’t be much left, but I’d never heard of anyone stealing the bread before.
‘Seems they fancied taking a couple of Hovis loaves back to their flat with them, and Matron, of all people, caught them red-handed! Walked right into them, apparently, as they smuggled them out the door, still warm and wrapped in their aprons!’
I gulped as Lesley continued the tale, knowing how seriously this offence would be viewed. ‘Matron was purple with rage as she marched them to her office, shouting as she did so. Nancy Porter heard every word and it’s gone all over the hospital!’
Lesley jutted out her chin, pursed her lips and pushed out her chest, Miss Morgan-style. ‘You have stained your reputations as upstanding, trustworthy young ladies!’ she mimicked. ‘Your mothers will be distraught when they find out about this disgraceful carry-on. Do not darken the door of the MRI for one month. You are suspended with immediate effect. Take the time to contemplate the error of your ways.’
‘Shhhhh!’ hissed a young nurse I’d never seen before, who suddenly loomed in the linen cupboard doorway. ‘I can hear you on the ward – and Matron’s coming!’
Lesley and I both fell into a heap, stuffing flannels between our teeth to stifle our laughter. We hid behind the door until the sound of Matron’s clicking heels subsided. We’d had a lucky escape and we wanted to keep it that way, so we held our breath as we strained to hear her distant tones telling some poor soul to report to her office at once. ‘It appears you need a reminder …’ we heard Matron saying before her voice faded away. No doubt she was going to deliver a lecture about skirt lengths or tidy hair, her two bugbears.
Before I finished my shift that day I went to see Mrs Pearlman.
‘Hello, my dear, I’m glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘I have something for you.’ She reached for an elegant gold watch that was lying on top of her locker and held it out to me.
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly …’ I began. I had never seen the watch before and I knew patients were not meant to have valuables lying about the place. I was pretty sure nurses were not meant to accept gifts like this from patients, either. I’d seen Sister Gorton confiscating bottles of sherry given as gifts to nurses at the eye unit, though rumour did have it that she was ‘fond of her drink’ and took the bottles home with her, whereupon they were never seen again.
‘Please take it,’ Mrs Pearlman said, clutching my hand and curling the watch into my palm. ‘You will make an elderly lady very happy. I want you to have it.’
I smiled and nodded awkwardly, slipping it into my pocket before thanking Mrs Pearlman politely and wishing her a good night. As I walked out of the ward I felt very uncomfortable. I imagined Matron striding up to me, her X-ray eyes zooming in on the gold in my pocket. ‘Explain yourself!’ she would bellow, I was sure of it. What if she thought I’d stolen the watch from Mrs Pearlman? My blood ran cold, and I decided to drop by Sister Barnes’s office on my way out, to ask her advice.
When I laid the watch on the table before Sister Barnes, I felt instant relief. ‘I didn’t want to offend her, but now I don’t know what to do,’ I explained.
‘You’ve done exactly the right thing in coming to see me,’ Sister Barnes smiled. ‘A small box of chocolates at Christmas is one thing, but a gift like this is something else. Your instincts are quite correct. I’m afraid you will have to return the watch to Mrs Pearlman and explain that, although you are very touched by her generous gesture, it is against the rules to accept gifts from patients, and you are sure she will understand that you do not wish to get into trouble.’
I exhaled rather more loudly than I meant to, releasing my stress.
‘How are you getting on?’ Sister Barnes asked thoughtfully.
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Just fine?’ She raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘Yes, it’s just … it’s harder than I thought it would be.’
‘I remember thinking the very same thing when I was your age,’ she replied. ‘You need to believe in yourself more. I think you have what it takes, but do you?’
I felt very small and meek besides Sister Barnes. My shoulders were hunched, my chin was lowered and I felt washed out with tiredness. She, on the other hand, looked vibrant and full of life. Her eyes were twinkling, and she had an energy about her that made me want to straighten my spine and pull my shoulders back.
Sister Barnes eyed me thoughtfully and then stood up and clapped her hands together twice, as if struck by a bright idea.
‘Come with me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Wash your hands and put your apron back on. I have a patient who needs an injection, and I think you are exactly the right nurse for the job.’
My heart leapt. I’d been desperate to give someone an injection ever since I arrived, but until now the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. Sister Barnes was young enough to remember how much it means to a young student nurse to be trusted with a syringe and a vial of drugs for the first time. I was thrilled.
As soon as I saw the patient in question I allowed myself a wry smile, remembering Linda’s description of the whale-like patient who was her first ‘victim’. Mrs Butcher was the female equivalent and I knew exactly why clever Sister Barnes had decided to let me loose on this particular patient.
‘Mrs Butcher, Nurse Lawton is here to give you your injection,’ Sister Barnes announced as she pulled the curtain around the bed and asked Mrs Butcher to lift her nightdress and present her right buttock.
‘Is it the first time she’s given an injection?’ Mrs Butcher asked, surveying me suspiciously, no doubt because I looked so young.
‘Not at all,’ Sister Barnes replied. ‘This is a demonstration to show how proficient Nurse Lawton is.’
Mrs Butcher sniffed and rolled over clumsily while I reminded myself to seek out the upper, outer quadrant of the buttock as I’d been taught during our practice on oranges in the classroom. Moments later, I pushed the needle through Mrs Butcher’s extremely well-padded rump and administered the drug steadily, with surprising ease.
‘All done!’ I said triumphantly. I tingled inside. I felt absolutely fantastic.
‘Didn’t feel a thing!’ beamed Mrs Butcher, her face cracking into a satisfied smile.
‘Thank you, Nurse Lawton,’ Sister Barnes said. ‘Now you can pop back in on Mrs Pearlman before you finish for the day.’
I wanted to skip down the corridor, I felt so exhilarated. I didn’t, of course. I walked on the left-hand side, as always, but there was a different rhythm in my step. It felt as though I was bouncing along on fluffy carpets instead of stepping purposefully on the hard stone floor, and I was pretty sure my eyes were twinkling just like Sister Barnes’s.
By now, we student nurses had been working flat out for about ten months. Nights out were rare, as we were usually either working, studying or sleeping, but that weekend Linda and I went to a dance at the university. We wore red and yellow mini skirts that Cynthia Weaver had helped us make, after we each bought a strip of fabric in Debenhams. We’d discovered that Cynthia was a very talented dressmaker, making every stitch of her clothing by hand, which is how she managed to always be in the latest fashions. On her advice we teamed the skirts with floral blouses, and I wore my hair in two long plaits, secured with velvet ribbons. As a final touch I doused myself in a generous splash of my favourite perfume, Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew, cramming the turquoise bottle into my tiny macramé handbag so I could refresh it later.
Strictly speaking, you had to be a university student to go to the dances, but we never had any trouble getting in. Some of the young male students wolf-whistled or messed about making saucy remarks about needing bed baths when we told them we were nurses from the MRI, but it was just light-hearted banter. The students were always happy to help get us in, and would leave us to our own devices once we were through the door.
Sipping orange squash between dances, Linda and I sang along to our favourite records, ‘I’m Into Something Good’ by Herman’s Hermits and ‘Bus Stop’ by The Hollies. During the evening we gently unloaded on one another too, swapping tales of forgotten bedpans, muddled-up meals and grumpy consultants who mostly seemed to be cast from the same mould and thought the rest of us should treat them like gods.
In contrast, the university students looked as though they didn’t have a care in the world. It was as if they had never left school, yet here were Linda and I, on a night out and letting our hair down, yet not quite able to forget about work: the business of life and death.
‘So you haven’t managed to kill anyone yet?’ Linda asked me jokingly, at which I flinched.
‘Not quite,’ I stuttered.
A month or so earlier I’d had a dreadful experience when I was thrown in at the deep end on one of my first night shifts. I’d pushed it out of my head, but Linda jogged it right back to the forefront of my mind.
‘You have to tell me now,’ she laughed. ‘It’s written all over your face!’
‘It was awful,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe what happened. I’ve tried to blot it out!’
‘Go on!’ she said. ‘Get it off your chest.’
‘OK,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Here goes. I was looking after a man called Stanley James, and Sister Craddock had given me strict orders to keep an eye on his fluid intake. He was only allowed an ounce of water hourly, as he was due an operation the next day, and you know what a stickler she is for the intake and output charts.’
Linda rolled her eyes and nodded.
‘He begged me for more water but I told him he had to do as Sister ordered, and eventually he settled down to sleep.
‘I didn’t hear him stir for a while, but when I went to check on him in the early hours I found his flowers on the floor and the empty flower vase in his hands. He looked at me apologetically and said, “I just needed a drink, Nurse.”’
Linda gasped. ‘He’d drunk the flower water? Oh my God! What happened to him? Did sister blow her stack?’
‘She did. I was as terrified of what she would say as I was of what would happen to Mr James. Anyhow, I managed to aspirate most of it back up, but I had to confess all in my report. When Sister Craddock read it, she yelled at me: “He’s a very poorly man and you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on him.” She was so angry her face went red and it made her freckles join up into one big freckle. She kept shouting, “You obviously weren’t keeping an eye on him properly!” I thought she was going to suspend me.’
‘What happened to Mr James?’ Linda asked, eyes bulging.
‘He died the next day, unfortunately,’ I said. ‘Apparently he was a dreadfully ill man and it was unlikely he would have survived for very long, even after the op. That’s what Sister Craddock said once she’d calmed down. She was surprisingly understanding, in fact. The flower water wasn’t what killed him and she wanted to make that very clear. So to answer your question, Linda, some of my training has been a baptism of fire, but I haven’t killed anyone yet! And I’m very glad that Mr James got his last drink before he died.’
We linked arms and walked home at 10.45 p.m. on the dot, to be sure to get in before the 11 p.m. curfew, as the Student Union where the dances were held was on the far side of the vast university campus, about half a mile from the nurses’ home. The roads were quiet as usual, save for the occasional Triumph Herald and Hillman Imp that drove by. One cocky young motorist with a head glistening with Brylcreem gave us an admiring wolf-whistle and the offer of a lift, but we politely declined. We broke into fits of giggles as we watched him pull away, leaning over the passenger seat to wind up the window manually, which was impossible to do with any style.
A few students walked in front of us, merrily swaying and singing the song ‘We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday’. I’d seen the film with Sue at the Stalybridge Palace when it first came out in 1963, and I’d been a big Cliff Richard fan ever since. Graham had even taken me to London to see him in concert with The Shadows at the London Palladium. Watching the students, carefree and clad in brightly coloured drainpipe trousers and winkle-picker shoes, took me right back in time.
‘Look at them, they think they’re on Carnaby Street!’ I joked to Linda, nodding towards the students. She asked about my one and only visit to the capital and I enjoyed reminiscing about it.
I told her Graham and I had gone on a North Western coach from Stalybridge and stayed in a twin room at a rather seedy hotel near the Palladium, though of course we never ‘did’ anything in the bedroom. Instead, we dutifully went to see the guards at Buckingham Palace and walked hand in hand along Downing Street to pose for a photograph with the policeman outside Number Ten, which every tourist did back then before security was tightened up and the road was sealed off.
