Chapter 35 Elsie
Elsie
It was a strange feeling to go to work the next day, knowing that as well as helping my patients, patching them up and possibly saving their lives, I would be taking a life.
My footsteps were heavy as I went towards the hospital, thinking that when I returned home, Nelly would be gone.
But my heart was strangely light. Deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing.
Nelly would no longer have to suffer the excruciating saline baths, or be forced to lie awake at night thinking about how slowly she was going to die.
I was helping her – I knew that. I was helping her to avoid a terrible, painful, awful death.
And I had made my peace with that. Almost.
The thought of putting the morphine into the syringe and pushing it into Nelly’s vein made me wince.
It was so … physical. It was why I’d wanted to put it into her fluids at first, and why I’d been going over and over in my head if there was another way for her to take the drug.
But there was nothing. It had to be morphine, and it had to be an injection.
I was working the night shift and I planned to go to see Nelly as soon as I finished. I thought that among the hustle and bustle of the morning rounds and the nurses handing over, I could do what I had to do and be gone again before anyone noticed.
And in the back of my mind was the knowledge that Jackson tended to wait for me beside the main entrance after a night shift. The last thing I wanted was him lurking in the corridors, getting in the way of me doing what I’d decided to do.
As it happened, though, events got away from me.
The early part of my shift was quiet because the planes were coming in from the east tonight, following the river to their targets instead of the railway line.
We could hear the anti-aircraft guns booming and our planes roaring overhead, but the bombs weren’t dropping so close to us.
That meant that while we would no doubt have patients arrive in their buses later on, for now things were, if not calm exactly, then calmer than they’d otherwise have been.
And then I had a stroke of luck, if you could call it that.
One of our patients, a sweet woman called Mrs Chalmers, took a turn for the worse.
She had lost a leg in a raid, a few nights earlier.
She’d been recovering but now she was going into shock and things were so bleak for her, that her doctor thought she would do better on ward 2 where there were more nurses to give her more concentrated care.
Matron phoned down to see if there was a bed available and when the ward confirmed they had space, she phoned for a porter to take Mrs Chalmers away.
I wanted to make sure she’d had a chance to write in the book, before she got too poorly.
I had a bad feeling that she wouldn’t be returning to our ward.
But I didn’t want to ask her outright, because she looked pale and afraid and I didn’t want to make things worse for her.
‘She wrote a message you know,’ one of the other nurses said out of the corner of her mouth as we gathered Mrs Chalmers’ possessions. ‘You did right by her.’
Pleased that the book was working exactly as I had intended, I made myself scarce in case Jackson arrived to take her, skulking at the back of the ward where I was unlikely to be spotted.
But it was Frank who came and I was relieved.
It was silly how I had started planning my days around whether I was likely to see Jackson, but he just made me feel so on edge, I couldn’t help myself.
Frank took Mrs Chalmers down to the other ward, and we went about our business. But then, just as the phone rang to tell us casualties from the East End were on their way, Frank came back from ward 2.
‘Elsie?’ he hissed. ‘Come here.’
With half an eye on Matron, who was on the phone looking grim-faced at whatever news she was receiving, I went over to where he stood.
‘Your Nelly’s not looking good,’ he said. ‘Nurse down there said she was suffering bad with the pain tonight. She thought you might want to go and see her.’
‘Now?’
He nodded. ‘If you can spare five minutes before the buses arrive.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Nurse said she thought she was giving up. Like she didn’t want to live anymore.’
Well, that was true enough.
Matron had hung up the phone and was briefing the other nurses. I nodded to Frank. ‘I’ll pop down now,’ I said. ‘Thanks for that.’
The buses were on their way, Matron said. And they were full to the brim. It was going to be a difficult shift – that was clear. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the bottles of morphine I had in there and I made a decision.
‘I’ll go and bring the patients in,’ I said. ‘But could I go now and pop in on Nelly on the way? Frank said she wasn’t great.’
I thought Matron might say no, but she was fond of Nelly, too, and her eyes softened as she said: ‘Of course.’
Hardly believing that I was simply going to visit Nelly, give her a lethal dose of morphine and then leave again, I walked quickly down my ward and out into the corridor.
My heart was thumping and my legs felt weak. I could stop this, I thought. I didn’t have to do this. I could end it now and tell Nelly I wasn’t going to do as she’d asked.
As she’d begged.
And yet, my legs kept moving towards Nelly’s room.
The nurses in the ward were efficiently preparing beds – they were obviously expecting some more patients too. One of them looked up and gave me a little wave, but they barely acknowledged me as I slipped into Nelly’s side room and shut the door behind me.
‘Nell?’
Nelly’s eye blinked open.
‘Were you sleeping?’
She shook her head gently.
‘I’ve come …’ I said. My voice shook. ‘I’ve come to do as you asked.’
Nelly reached out and took my hand, squeezing my fingers tightly.
I looked down at her hand on mine, noticing that her fingertips were dusky purple and her knuckles were swollen.
She didn’t have long, I thought. Even if I didn’t do this now, there was no doubt that she was dying.
But this way the end would be quick and painless.
She would fall asleep and she wouldn’t wake up and I would be by her side.
‘I have the morphine,’ I said, speaking slowly and clearly, but quietly. ‘If you want me to administer it, please squeeze my hand once for yes and twice for no.’
Nelly squeezed once. I felt dizzy suddenly and I was glad she was holding me.
I looked round at the closed door of her room.
It was shut tight, but on a whim, I pulled the chair from next to the bed to block it.
Just in case. Through the window I could see nurses bustling past. No one would bother us, I thought.
‘I’m going to prepare the dose now,’ I said. ‘Remember we discussed you hitting the bedclothes if you want me to stop? Don’t forget.’
Nelly’s fingers stayed still. Carefully I let go of her hand and laid it on the sheet.
Then I went to the end of her bed and checked her drug chart to see how much morphine she’d been given.
I’d done my sums over and over but I wanted to be sure.
Satisfied I knew how much to give her, I filled the syringe I’d brought with me, put it on a tray, and went back to her bedside.
‘Nelly,’ I said, stroking her hair and speaking softly. ‘It’ll just be a sharp scratch and then you’ll go to sleep. I’ll be here the whole time.’ I swallowed. ‘Can you hit the bedclothes if you want me to stop?’
I fixed my eyes on her hand. It didn’t move.
Fighting the urge to throw the syringe into the waste bin and run away, I cleaned her arm, and then I tried to pick up the syringe, but my hands were trembling so violently that I couldn’t even do that.
‘Sorry,’ I murmured. ‘Sorry.’ I took a deep breath, clenching my hands into fists and then releasing them. When I felt less shaky, I tried again. This time I fumbled a little but picked up the syringe.
‘Last chance,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to stop?’
Nelly’s hand twitched and I froze, my eyes never moving from her fingers.
But instead of hitting the sheets, she brought her hand up towards her mouth, touching her fingers to her chin briefly and them taking them away.
I smiled. She’d had a deaf patient on her ward a few months before who had used sign language and we’d all picked up a few things. “Thank you,” Nelly was signing.
‘You’re welcome,’ I whispered. ‘Ready?’
Nelly gave a tiny nod.
‘I love you, Nell.’ I said. Then with a deep breath, I put the syringe into her arm and pushed the drug into my best friend’s vein.
When I was done, I leaned over and kissed her head, noticing her eye was closed already and her breathing was slowing.
Quickly, I cleared away the mess, dropping the syringe and bottles into the waste bin and putting the tray back where I’d taken it from.
As I worked, I counted Nelly’s rasping breaths.
One … two … Slow, slower, slower. I reached out and felt her pulse.
It was very weak now and I could barely feel it, though her wrist was thin and frail and her skin was so pale that her veins were visible.
Around her nose and mouth was some frothy liquid.
I knew that meant her lungs were failing.
Very gently, I wiped it away and bent over her, listening for another breath.
None came.
I watched for a moment, to see if her chest would continue to rise and fall. But it didn’t. She was gone.
I breathed in deeply, a painful, juddering breath. I wanted to throw my head back and wail because Nelly was dead and I had killed her and I would miss her. But instead I wiped my eyes and straightened my dress. There were patients to attend to and jobs to do.
I went to the door of the room, and looked over my shoulder. Nelly was lying still, her face no longer twisted in pain.
‘Goodbye, Nell,’ I said aloud. ‘See you again someday.’
I shifted the chair out of the way of the door. Then I straightened up, opened the door and saw, with a start, that Jackson was standing a little way outside the room, looking in.
‘Elsie,’ he said.
Our eyes met and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had been watching the whole time. He knew what I’d done.