Chapter 22
I felt better after a night’s sleep. Desperately worried about Nelly, of course, but more able to deal with it all.
Mr Gold had sent a telegram to her mother in Ireland and he’d told me he had the car from work for as long as he needed it so he would drive me wherever I needed to go.
He was being so kind, just like Mrs Gold was.
But when I said as much to Mrs Gold, as I got ready for work the next morning, she pooh-poohed my sentimentality.
‘Where I come from, people help each other out,’ she said. ‘It’s just what we do. I think Londoners are no different. You helped me, now I help you.’
‘Where are you from?’ I asked curiously, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me.
‘Are you sure you’re up to going to work?’
I honestly wasn’t sure. I’d been a nervous wreck when the bombs had started falling, but Mrs Gold had tucked me into my bunk tightly, like I was a little girl, and she and Mr Gold had stayed awake in the shelter, playing cards and talking quietly between themselves, until I fell asleep.
I’d been so tired that I hadn’t even woken with the thuds and wails of the raid, except once, when I turned over on the hard bunk and half-woke.
But even then I must have still been dozing, because though I could hear the Golds chatting in low voices, I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Now though, I felt a bit stronger. I was glad I was on daytime shifts for now so I didn’t have to cope with a raid and patients, and I was keen to see Nelly. So even though I was nervous about going back to the wards, I nodded.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Good girl,’ said Mrs Gold, like my mother always used to. It made me laugh because I was not a girl, and she was really only a few years older than I was.
‘Are you going to work?’ I asked. ‘Will you be all right, with your head?’ She was dressed for the office in a neat suit and shoes that I wouldn’t be able to walk in. She even had stockings on – sheer shiny nylons that were very different from the thick woolly monstrosities I wore under my uniform.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, touching her hand to the plaster on her forehead. ‘This is nothing, really and Albert has the car, so he can drive us.’
‘Be careful,’ I warned.
She nodded. ‘You too.’
I was worried Jackson might appear somewhere on my journey to the hospital but thankfully, he wasn’t there. Though the streets were busy with emergency workers and families who’d been bombed out, and the WVS volunteers dashing about with mugs of tea and blankets, so perhaps I just hadn’t seen him.
In any case, my mind was on Nelly.
My train was delayed because there was debris from the raid on the line, so I ended up getting a bus to the hospital, which took ages, and I had to rush to my ward, worried I was going to be late to start my shift.
As I hurried along the corridor, Matron appeared. ‘Nurse Elsie Watson,’ she bellowed down the hall at me.
‘I’m here,’ I called, trying to walk even faster, because running was strictly forbidden. ‘I’m coming.’
But Matron came towards me, and held her hand out to stop me and for an awful, heart-wrenching moment I knew absolutely what she was going to say. Nelly was dead. I was sure of it. Because Matron had never sought me out in the corridor before and I couldn’t ever imagine it happening again.
My legs buckled beneath me and I reached out to steady myself on the cool, distempered wall.
‘Is it Nelly?’ I asked, my voice quiet and small in the busy corridor.
Matron had arrived at my side and now she took my arm and I leaned on her, grateful for the support.
‘She’s awake,’ she said.
My vision blurred and I thought I might faint for a second. Then it cleared and I looked at Matron, whose own eyes were filled with tears. ‘She’s awake,’ she said again.
‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘It’s still too early,’ Matron said. She was a large woman with a big bosom and a heavy tread.
She rarely smiled or laughed, was sharp-tongued when she had to be, and she was very good at her job.
I respected her but I could never have said that I liked her.
Now, though, she seemed more human. ‘Too early to be sure,’ she added. ‘You should go and see her.’
‘Now?’ I was surprised. ‘But my shift is about to start.’
‘Nurse Bateman will cover until you’re back,’ she said. The tiniest of smiles crept across her lips. ‘She wasn’t busy last night so she’s fine to stay.’
Nurse Bateman – Petra – was sweet, but she was a devil for taking ages to move patients or fetch files from the records office. If there was an opportunity for her to skive off work for five minutes, she took it. I was amused to know that Matron had spotted her habits, too. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Half an hour,’ Matron said. ‘I need you back on the ward by half past eight. Don’t make me send Nurse Bateman to fetch you.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, half over my shoulder because I was already turning to go. ‘Thank you.’
Not caring about any rules about not running, I pounded along the corridor to Nelly’s ward, and burst through the door. It was a different matron in charge today, but she obviously knew I was coming because she looked up at me and smiled.
‘Here to see Nelly Malone?’
‘Is she awake?’ I gasped. ‘Is she talking? Will she be all right?’
She got up from behind her desk and came round to where I stood.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ she warned.
‘Nelly is very poorly. She’s off the sedation but she is still on a lot of pain medication.
She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, but I think she’ll know you’re there and be glad of it. ’
‘That’s what I think,’ I said. ‘I always think that.’
She nodded. ‘She can’t speak.’
‘Because of the oxygen?’
‘We think her airway was scorched by the flames. She’s responding to our words but can’t make a sound herself.’
I put my hand to my mouth. ‘That could heal though? With time?’
‘She’s very badly hurt,’ the matron said softly. ‘Her burns are extensive and there is a high risk of infection.’
‘Can I see her now?’
‘Five minutes, no more.’
Nervous about what I would find, I walked into the side room where Nelly lay. She looked just the same as she had the night before. But as I neared her bed, her eye – the one I could see that wasn’t covered in that awful expressionless mask – flickered open.
‘Hello,’ I said.
She looked at me and her breathing changed, just a little, as if she were trying to speak.
‘Don’t try to talk.’ It sounded so painful, I didn’t want her to hurt herself. I took her fingers in mine, averting my eyes from her bandages and her terrible shaved head. Weakly, almost imperceptibly, I felt her hand squeeze mine.
‘Oh Nelly,’ I said, almost dizzy with relief. ‘You’ve given me the most awful scare, you sod.’
Her fingers moved again and her eye met mine.
‘We’ve got to get you better, love. And get you home. Because you know how untidy I am. There are already dirty plates in the sink. Piled high they are.’
I laughed, but it sounded forced and fake. Nelly’s eye closed and her fingers went limp in mine. Without thinking, I shifted my hold so I could feel her pulse. There it was, beating nicely. A little fast, perhaps, but there all the same. She was asleep. I felt light-headed with relief.
‘I have to go or Matron will be furious,’ I said. Nelly stayed still. ‘I’ll come back later. I’ll try to find the book, shall I? We can have a look at what people have been writing.’
Wiping a tear from my eye, I kissed Nelly’s hand and then headed off to my own ward to start my shift.
*
Much later, after hours on my feet and after spending half the day rearranging the ward to squeeze in another two beds, much to all of our disbelief and concern, I handed over to the night staff.
‘I owe you for this morning,’ I told Petra. She looked at me impassively through her dark, sleepy eyes and then grinned.
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Nelly’s one of us, isn’t she? How’s she doing?’
‘On the mend,’ I told her confidently, half-hoping that if I said the words, they’d be true.
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘And thank you for passing the book on. Do you know where it’s got to?’
‘Last I heard it was going down to theatre.’
*
I found the book in the holding ward next to the operating theatre in the basement.
It was strange down there, dim and gloomy in the corridors and ward, and then brightly lit in the theatre itself.
I wasn’t sure how Nelly coped being down there all the time.
I was glad I didn’t work in that bit of the hospital.
Apart from anything else, the part of nursing I liked the best was talking to my patients and getting to know them.
I wasn’t cut out to be a theatre nurse. Unlike Nelly who loved the precision that was involved.
With a shudder, I went along the gloomy hallway following the daubs of white paint that had been splattered on the walls to lead the way.
It was odd down here. There were a few cupboards that were used for storage and a slightly larger room that had the emergency generator in it.
I knew it had been used a few times when the power had gone out during raids.
And next to that was the boiler room, which was the warmest place in the hospital.
When I’d been a student nurse, we’d had the most awful cold snap with deep snow and freezing temperatures.
I remembered there had been ice up the inside of all the windows at home and in the hospital and we would be shivering constantly on the wards.
We nurses used to dash down to the boiler room in our breaks to thaw out our frozen fingers and sometimes we even sneaked off for a snooze down there if we’d been tired after a hectic shift.
I gave a little snort of laughter. I’d had no idea back then what a hectic shift was really like.