Chapter Four
Four
Iso was right, of course. The details of the German ward were different and its character was unique.
The patients would talk and sometimes move around, as in any ward, but the talk was in German and movement was discouraged if it wasn’t part of the treatment. Some sisters forbade it, regardless.
It was on the matron’s watch that the ward felt most relaxed. She let patients who were mobile sit on the beds of others to chat or play cards or help with writing or reading letters. I realise now that she wasn’t scared of them the way others might have been. The way I was at the beginning.
The sun had risen and the day was already warm when I arrived for my shift.
I held the door for two orderlies coming out of the ward with a stretcher between them, a sheet over a body, or most of one.
Matron Livingstone was at the nurses’ desk, documenting the deceased, I assumed.
I walked the length of the ward and stood in front of her.
‘No sister this morning?’ I asked.
‘Clearly,’ she said, not looking up from the notes she was writing.
I looked towards the storeroom. There was no sign of Dr Henning and the surgery beyond was quiet.
‘My patient notes are meticulous,’ she said, pushing the ledger towards me then rising from her chair. ‘Read them carefully and don’t be sloppy with your own. As soon as I’ve given these’ – she picked up a kidney dish with several syringes, needles attached, and ampoules of morphia – ‘I’m going.’
‘Where?’
‘To bed, I’ve been here all night. You’ll be on your own for a while.’
‘And if there’s a problem?’ I tried not to sound anxious.
‘The head in bed nine and the abdomen in twenty-two are critical. Either they will die or they will not. If one dies, note the time and clean up the obvious then pull the screens around.’
‘And just leave them there?’
‘Tell an orderly when they come round for the waste, they’ll organise the laying out.’ She looked at her notes. ‘The rest are stable and there should be no problems. If there are, you can try next door.’ She gestured in the direction of 24 General. ‘But they won’t thank you.’
‘And how long will I be on my own?’
Did I care that one of them would die on my watch?
I hope I did, but that is not the fear that my body recalls.
The matron was leaving and all I could think was that one of the Germans might jump from his bed and hold his hands to my throat and none of the others would stop him.
It had happened, the hands on my throat.
But the boy had been British and other British boys had convinced him I was not the enemy.
Those with two legs rose from their beds, those with arms pulled him off.
One spoke gently into his ear and made him feel safe.
I had bruises for a week and that boy could not bear to look at me.
‘By the time you’ve done breakfast and a dressings round, the Hun will have arrived.’
‘Dr Henning?’
‘That’s the one. He’s on nights at the moment but our own doctors are in short supply and I’ve been asked, very politely, to refrain from calling on their expertise. I sent the Hun to bed at four am. He will be back at ten, exhausted, but aren’t we all?’
‘And if they ask for pain relief before he gets here?’
They were always asking for pain relief.
‘If you think it genuine, give them some. Consult my notes for timing.’ She opened the drawer of the desk and retrieved a key. ‘The drugs cupboard,’ she said, dangling it. She looked at me, thoughtfully. ‘Some will need more than oral. Have you been trained to give injections?’
‘I’ve prepared a few.’ The rules were quite clear on what VADs could and could not do.
‘Needs must,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’
The abdomen, as Matron called him, was too weak to wail and it wasn’t until we were by his side that we could hear his pain: a tired whimper, that was all.
‘Pay attention,’ she said as she swabbed his upper arm with iodine.
Then she picked up an ampoule, held it with gauze and broke its neck.
She drew the morphia into a syringe. ‘One ampoule is usually enough, sixteen milligrams, but sometimes they need more.’ She broke the neck of a second ampoule, drew up a little more of the drug.
‘Tap and push,’ she said, tapping the side of the syringe then pushing a few drops through the needle.
‘Thigh or upper arm is best, you want muscle.’ Then she grabbed the boy’s deltoid between her thumb and fingers: ‘Stabilise then stab.’
There was a small indent before the needle sank into his arm. I felt it. I thought I felt it. I rubbed the same spot on my own arm and she looked up, said nothing.
‘Slowly,’ she said as she pressed on the plunger. ‘Fifteen minutes and his mewling should stop.’
Three more demonstrations, each quicker than the one before, then, ‘Your turn.’ She held out the dish with its remaining iodine swabs, an unused syringe and an ampoule of morphia. ‘It’s harder than it looks, try not to hesitate.’
I’d seen it done often enough and had rehearsed it in my head, but that first time felt like a violence.
‘A natural,’ Matron said. She handed me the kidney dish and walked towards the door. Just before reaching it she stopped, alert to something. ‘This one has soiled his sheets,’ she said, pointing but not turning around.
I threw the sheets on top of an evening’s worth of dirty linen, a macabre canvas mottled with all the colours of human waste.
Each had its own odour and, if I paused to think how they coated my tongue, its own flavour too.
I thought of Iso’s pastels. The reds, yellows and browns.
The charcoal – necrotic black, I would call it.
The patient notes were meticulous. I carried them with me and did a round of the ward.
Each man was breathing; the ‘head’ in bed nine, barely.
I looked at his notes. His left eye, cheekbone and jaw had been blown away, along with a small part of his brain.
He was just a head to Matron Livingstone, but his name was Jakob.
I held his shoulder and said it aloud, ‘Jakob.’ Then again, ‘Jakob.’ It was all I could do.
Over the next couple of hours I took observations – temperature, pulse, blood pressure – and changed dressings.
I brought bedpans and urinals and cleaned up any spills.
When they said Wasser, I fetched water. When they said Mutter, I sat and held their hands.
At half ten, a Redcap walked onto the ward, a German prisoner beside him.
Blue cap, blue trousers, white jersey. The letters PG were printed large and black on the front, the number 29 below.
The curls of his fringe were tangled as if he’d just been woken.
‘All yours,’ the Redcap said, then left without any confirmation that I wanted him.
The prisoner nodded, as he had that first day, the day I wrote in the journal about a German being pushed to his knees. He walked to the nurses’ desk and took up the ledger with the patient notes. I realised, then, why they were so detailed, so clear. They had to do the work of a handover.
He disappeared into the storeroom and emerged a moment later wearing his white coat. A doctor, like any other, I thought, though he was wearing clogs. They were a reminder. They kept me alert.
He did his round and ignored me, like any doctor, though avoided might be a better word, and I avoided him.
He had two functioning legs and two functioning arms and his hands, I’d noted, were large.
I kept to the opposite row of beds but found myself looking for him, constantly.
Know the threat and keep it in sight – that was my habit and it had kept me safe, mostly.
Though, to be honest, Bill had never been far away.
Since we were children Bill had been my shadow.
‘I’m surrounded, little brother,’ I whispered.
And I was angry with him again for not being there, where I could keep an eye on him.
Where he could keep an eye on me. His last letter said he was digging trenches somewhere near Paris, Great view of the Eiffel Tower, he wrote.
It wasn’t censored so I knew it was a lie.
He would have made an excellent orderly, or cook, or clerk. Why the hell did they give him a gun?
I looked along the ward. Dr Henning was removing a soiled sheet from beneath a patient. There would be no fluids left in him soon, I thought.
I went to the storeroom and stared for a moment at the shelves of linen, their soothing pallet – white is never white, Iso told me. I chose a sheet that Iso would have coloured with a few strokes of pale violet and blue.