6
The clinic list on Wednesday morning was fairly long, and Maisie, Midwife Brooks, and Sister Hanna had been working flat out the entire morning.
As the three doctors headed off for lunch after seeing their last patients, the three midwives met in the middle of the waiting area, straightening chairs and tidying magazines by unspoken agreement.
‘That was some morning!’ declared Midwife Brooks.
‘It was!’ Sister Hanna agreed. ‘Yous did well.’
Yous did well. Just three words, but they sent a surge of pride through Maisie. Oh, she was only halfway through her third week in the job, but so far she was doing all right, thank God.
‘I need you to work in A Ward this afternoon, Maisie,’ said Sister Hanna. ‘One of the junior midwives will be out on the district, so we’re helping out.’
‘Yes, Sister.’ A flutter of nerves went through Maisie.
Just as she was getting used to the clinic, she now had to go to the in-patient ward, and refresh more things she’d learned in King’s College Hospital – a place that was now hundreds of miles away, and felt scarily distant in terms of the skill she’d learned there.
How far away it seemed already! Scared she was forgetting everything about her life in London, Maisie forced herself to remember the places where she had spent her time.
The hospital. Peckham. The Brixton Astoria.
Ruskin Park, where Gerald had first kissed her.
How happy she’d been! And how that happiness had been paid for in tears when it had all ended.
She bit back a sigh, frustrated with herself.
No matter how hard she tried, her thoughts endlessly circled back to him.
As she made her way to the little office in A Ward, Maisie looked about with interest. She’d had the tour on her first day, but it was different now she was to actually work here for the afternoon.
As Sister Campbell – the A Ward sister – gave a summary of each of the women currently in the ward, she listened intently.
This was mostly a postnatal ward, although they also occasionally looked after antenatal women who were on bed rest.
‘Right. Can you check on Mrs Watson, please, Midwife Canavan?’ Sister Hanna said crisply.
‘Yes, Sister.’
Mrs Watson’s bed was on the left-hand side of the main bay, near the bottom. She was chatting away to the woman in the next bed, which was nice, as there was a risk both ladies might feel lonely in here, away from their husbands and families.
‘Hello, Mrs Watson, I’m Midwife Canavan.’ Mrs Watson’s baby had apparently spent a few days in the nursery, and had been back with his mother since yesterday. ‘How are you today?’
‘Not great, love.’
‘Oh, no! What’s wrong?’ She lifted the woman’s right arm, feeling for the pulse at her wrist. Seems normal.
‘Me milk is coming in, and I’m so engorged I can’t even get my wee one to feed.’ She indicated the baby sleeping in the wooden cot by the side of the bed. ‘He tries, but I’m not sure he’s getting very much.’
‘Right. Let me pull these screens round for you.’ She rose, pulling one of the curtained screens on wheels across the room, then unfolding it between the two women’s beds.
The next screen she placed on the other side.
Finally, she added a third screen to the bottom of Mrs Watson’s bed space, ensuring her privacy.
‘Right. Let’s have a look.’ Mrs Watson unbuttoned the front of her nightdress, wincing as her left arm brushed the side of her breast.
‘Aw yes, very engorged,’ said Maisie, stating the obvious. ‘Let’s see if baby can relieve any of it.’
Carefully, she lifted the sleeping baby out of his cot.
He yawned and stretched, then snuggled back into deep sleep again in Maisie’s arms. ‘You’re a sleepy chap, aren’t you?
’ she declared, stroking his face with a gentle finger.
Thankfully he turned towards it, rooting and searching.
‘Ah, good stuff, wee man. Your mammy’s right here. ’
Carefully, she placed the baby on to his mother, then watched as he got himself attached and began to feed. ‘Looks good, Mrs Watson – oops!’ He had slid off, so she helped his mother reattach him.
‘You see?’ Mrs Watson sounded distressed. ‘He won’t stay on. Do you think he has a tongue tie like Mrs Murray’s wee girl?’
‘He might do. It also might be the engorgement.’
The baby was crying lustily now, so Maisie bent down to see into his mouth. ‘His tongue doesn’t look restricted – see?’ The front of the tongue was lifting well. ‘I’m going to get some gloves and check further back. All right?’
‘Aye.’ Mrs Watson was trying to soothe the baby, who was clearly hungry.
‘You try him again there. I’ll be straight back.’
Emerging from behind the screens, she saw that visitors were starting to arrive, and began to walk more quickly.
Taking a clean pair of gloves from the cupboard, she returned to Mrs Watson and quickly donned them.
The baby was still crying. ‘Now, I’ll need you to hold him up a bit for me, facing you.
’ Mrs Watson did so, and carefully, Maisie inserted her two index fingers into the baby’s mouth from behind him, exploring the space beneath his tongue.
Thankfully, there was no posterior tongue tie – a thick band of mucosa or fascia beneath the back part of the tongue which was less obvious than the anterior (front) version, but just as challenging for feeding. ‘All good,’ she said.
Mrs Watson looked crestfallen. ‘Ah no. I was hoping that would be it, cos that’s easily fixed.’
Maisie was sympathetic. ‘I’m sure. But we’ll figure it out, never worry.’ She ran a hand over the baby’s head. The anterior fontanelle – the soft spot on the child’s skull – was very slightly sunken, which suggested the baby was a little dehydrated.
‘Is he having plenty of wet nappies?’
Mrs Watson shook her head, making Maisie’s heart sink. ‘Only a couple.’ That’s not good.
‘And he was in the nursery, yes?’
‘He was, aye. Only because they said his breathing was all rattly when he was first born. But he’s not a bit rattly now.’
‘That’s great. So he’ll have been getting bottles up in the nursery.’
‘Aye. Dr Lowe said he might take time to learn how to feed properly, like.’
‘Dr Lowe is exactly right.’ Foolishly, Maisie’s heart had skipped a beat. I need to wise up. This was exactly how she had started with Gerald – thinking of him at random times, feeling that flutter of excitement in her belly. And look how that had ended.
‘So what do I do, Nurse?’
‘We keep trying until he manages,’ she said firmly. ‘Between having to learn a new sucking technique, and the fact that your breasts are so engorged, it’s going to be tough for him, and that’s the truth!’
‘Aye, that’s true. But I fed all the rest of them, so hopefully we’ll get there!’
‘Definitely.’ She eyed the baby intently. ‘Now, baby seems to be on there all right.’
‘He is! I hope he stays on this time.’
‘I’ll sit with you a minute just to see.’
‘I was so delighted that Dr Lowe managed to get my wee one out of the nursery. He’s a good lad. He was here earlier.’
‘Aye.’ Maisie’s answer was deliberately non-committal.
Gerald would never have been described as a ‘good lad’. The notion was shocking, but her gut told her it was true. He didn’t help people, not at all.
In fact she could not recall a single occasion when he’d done something genuinely altruistic.
Right now it seemed to her that everything he did was about meeting his own needs – even his courtship of her.
He had wanted her on his arm – an ornament to his own image, like the carnation he’d worn in his buttonhole on occasions.
She had been nothing but a different sort of carnation.
God! That couldn’t be true, could it? Guilt ran through her at the possibility she was being unfair to him – lashing out in her thoughts because she was hurt, as he had done to her.
She had never allowed herself to criticise him before.
While they were together it would have seemed disloyal.
So she had turned a blind eye to his flaws.
And he had many flaws. She bit her lip, her gut swirling and her mind restless.
Some important realisation was there, just out of reach, but she couldn’t indulge her thoughts right now.
Not at work, sitting with a stressed mother trying to feed her child.
After much coaxing, Mrs Watson’s baby eventually fed for a good fifteen minutes, after which Maisie placed him back in his cot and completed her assessment of his mother.
Her observations were all reassuringly normal, and so finally she began to fold the screens, wheeling them back to the far side of the room.
Continuing with her duties, she resolved yet again to put the whole topic of Gerald, and men in general, out of her mind.
As a midwife, she was immersed in a world of women, and that was how she liked it.
* * *
Having finished reviewing three babies in the nursery, Alex paused, wondering where to go next. Knowing that Maisie was in A Ward for the afternoon, his feet naturally took him in that direction.
Entering the ward, he saw that Sister Hanna was there, taking a woman’s temperature about halfway down the room, but there, in the office – and abruptly, his heart was thumping – was Maisie, writing up notes.
She lifted her head when he walked in, and Alex swore he saw a brief flash of joy in her eyes before she disguised it.
How could he move things on with her? Talking about work would never be enough, for she would always be completely in professional mode. An idea flashed into his mind that could be a potential way in and he strolled over to the office before he could second-guess himself.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said to Maisie as he approached, glancing through the glass towards the main bay to make sure Sister Hanna wasn’t coming back, and kicking out the wedge that held the door open.
‘Oh?’ She’s curious. Good.
The door had closed. ‘Did you ever wonder about Dan and Peggy?’
‘Dan and Peggy?’