That's Another Story: The Autobiography Page 12

  The insurance office, on the other hand, was a proper job. The office was divided into sections, each one consisting of a couple of rows of desks, with four desks to each row. Being the most junior, I was on the end of the second row and was in charge of finding the files that corresponded to the post that came in each morning. I soon tired of the tedious nature of the work and would spend as much time as possible staring wistfully out of the window at the traffic on its way in and out of town, longing to be in one of the cars speeding along and, more importantly, away from what I began to see as a kind of prison. Post began to pile up when I couldn’t find particular files and eventually I resorted to putting it down the toilets. This practice was brought to a close when I came in one morning to find that the Ladies’ toilets were closed due to some sort of flooding; there was water coming out from under the door and a plumber was going in and out with pliers and buckets. Luckily the blockage was cleared, the offending substance being too wet and mushy to be identified, but I wasn’t the only junior with a red face that morning.

  I sat next to a girl, a slightly more senior junior, called Linda and immediately created the same role that I played in school. We were always gossiping and I would spend most of the day trying to make her laugh. The names of various clients, as we went through the files, sent us both into purple-faced, hissing hysteria, often causing Linda to get under her desk so as not to be seen by Miss Kelly, our spinsterly section leader, whose head was continually whipping round in our direction to shush us. Sometimes I would scour the filing cabinets, not for files in connection with the morning post, but purely for names to make my new friend laugh. Cornelius Clark was an explosive favourite; John Smellie and Katarina Balls were others that can still get me going today. Every so often this behaviour would be punctuated by a serious bollocking from Miss Kelly after which we would knuckle down to work for a couple of days, only to slowly but surely return to our old ways. Linda was fifteen and had already been at the place for about six months.

  ‘How old am ya?’ she asked on my first day there.

  ‘Seventeen,’ I replied.

  ‘Am yer engaged?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jesus! Yer ent engaged?’ Her voice rose into a falsetto.

  ‘No, I haven’t got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Blimey! If I ent engaged by the time I’m seventeen, I’ll kill me bloomin’ self.’

  About ten years later, on a visit home, I saw a woman I’m pretty sure was her, pushing a baby in a stroller along Smethwick High Street with two other children in tow. She had a badly bruised eye and a swollen and cut lip.

  At the age of eighteen, in May 1968, I enrolled in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing in Edgbaston, Birmingham. My mother was never prouder, before or since. It is what she would have wanted for herself, had she had the opportunity. Frustratingly for her, her parents sent her younger sister, Agnes, to England to train as a nurse, but she never took it up, becoming a secretary instead.

  My first ward, after six weeks in the preliminary nursing school, was an ophthalmic ward in the bowels of the hospital, dealing mainly with cataract operations. The ward Sister, a Sister Hartwell, was a relatively elderly and rather eccentric Irishwoman, who had lived in the nursing home across the road from the hospital since she was seventeen. This was a detail that I found both depressing and claustrophobic as at this point she was apparently sixty-seven. She never called me by my name; it was always ‘Come here, Little Nurse’ or ‘Where’s the little nurse?’ booming embarrassingly from one end of the corridor to the other. Her huge blue eyes peered piercingly at you through thick dark lashes, over half-moon glasses perched midway down a largish, Roman nose. It was a slightly alarming stare for she could do it at any moment, and often for no fathomable reason. You might be engaged in some nursing activity or other and suddenly she would be at your side, a little closer than was comfortable, staring directly at the side of your face. She was equally eccentric when dealing with the patients; in fact the drug round, which occurred four times a day, was something to be endured by nurse and patient alike.

  In order to administer drugs, in the form of drops, to the eye, it was first of all necessary to dilate the tear duct, which was done with a fairly small, pointed, sharp-looking implement. For the purposes of carrying this out, Sister whose eyesight wasn’t all that it should be, would get up on to the bed, shouting down at the patient to relax and keep still. Then on her knees, wobbling about on the mattress and hovering over the victim, millimetres from their face with the said implement, she would, whilst peering myopically through her half-glasses, attempt to dilate the tear duct. If she didn’t succeed the first time, she would loudly berate the terrified patient, blaming their inability to keep still for her inaccuracy, at which point they usually didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping their eyes open out of sheer terror.

  When I was on duty I generally accompanied her on the drug rounds and dreaded this procedure, because it often resulted in her shouting in exasperation, ‘Little Nurse! Get up here now, you, and finish this off! You should be doing this, not me! You have the eyes for it. Come on!’ On one occasion, red-faced with embarrassment, I started to move towards the patient with this dilating tool and just as I was about to pull the patient’s lower lid down to insert it, she slapped me on the arse with such force I nearly blinded the poor woman I was trying to treat and I even let out a little screech of fright, for which I had to apologise to the patient.

  ‘What are you playing at? Get up there on the bed. Let the dog see the rabbit. You can’t do this standing by the bed, you’re too small, Little Nurse.’

  When I lost my fear of her, I became very fond of this Sister. Apart from being scarily hilarious on a day-to-day basis, she was immensely kind to the staff and I know she was fond of me. Although I worked on several different wards during my nursing life, my experience on this one was unlike any other.

  I never really settled into nursing, feeling that I couldn’t possibly be up to the task as well as ultimately knowing that I was there to please my mother and to fulfil her ambition rather than my own. I was terrified of being given any responsibility, constantly doubting my own judgement and ability. Mind you, this wasn’t without cause. Within the first few weeks on the wards, I whipped out what I thought were my Spencer Wells forceps, which were kept in my top pocket and were used to clamp off tubing. In this instance the tubing concerned linked a bag of blood that was being used in a blood transfusion to the patient. Snapping them on to the tube, I found that it was not the forceps at all but my surgical scissors. I was sent back to the nurses’ home to change, looking as if I had just performed major abdominal surgery with a blunt kitchen knife and no skill whatsoever.

  Another unfortunate incident occurred, involving a faulty bedpan washer. Bedpans were placed in these contraptions, the heavy, round, nautical-looking door would be closed and then for several minutes the thing would spray the pans with hot water with the force of a fire hose. However, on this occasion, no sooner had I placed the bedpan inside and closed the door than it somehow fell open again almost immediately, but sadly not before the water had started to spray. Luckily, because the machine was faulty, the water was breathtakingly cold and it hit me full in the face and chest, sending me reeling backwards against the sluice room wall, where I remained in shock until the cycle had finished, my beautiful, pristine nurse’s cap, which was made of paper, wilted and flattened into a sodden mush. Whilst I stood there, rigid and winded, being battered by the spray, the staff nurse, having seen the incident through the porthole window in the door, came in and stood looking at me with an amused smirk on her face. When the water finally stopped, she said hand on hip, ‘What is this? Carry on Nursing?’ And then wearily, ‘Go and get changed.’ And so ensued another embarrassing walk back to the nurses’ home in disarray, having to endure titters and ‘witty’ comments. Halfway back I suddenly remembered my cap and tried to take it off, only to find it ripping away in soggy handfuls.

  I nev
er got into any serious trouble, but came close to it once when I was working on a men’s surgical ward. I was on the night shift and on this particular ward the consultant in charge insisted on every patient giving a mid-stream specimen of urine. This process involved first cleaning the area with cotton-wool balls dipped into a mild disinfectant, which was poured into a small foil galley pot. Then the patient would begin to urinate, catching some pee mid-stream in another little pot.

  One night after most of the men had gone to sleep an old man appeared like an apparition at the end of the ward. It seemed that he should have been admitted earlier on in the day and, for some reason that neither I nor the senior nurse could glean, he had turned up at eleven o’clock. I showed him to his bed and, drawing the curtains around it, went to make a cup of tea for him, leaving him to get into his pyjamas. When I returned he was in bed and it was only then that I remembered the required specimen, the requisites for which were on his bedside locker.

  ‘Oh, Mr Jackson, I’m going to need a specimen of urine from you before you go to sleep,’ I whispered.

  He smiled at me benignly and nodded, ‘Yes.’

  I waited, he smiled.

  ‘Yes, I need you to do a specimen,’ I said a little louder.

  ‘WHAT?’ This was extremely loud and rasping, and several people near by started to stir. I tried to keep my own voice down.

  ‘Yes, now we are going to have to be very quiet, Mr Jackson, because everyone is asleep.’

  ‘Fat bloody chance!’ came a weary voice from the next bed.

  ‘WHAT? YES ... GOODNIGHT.’ And with that he slid down under the covers and turned on his side, pulling them up over his head.

  ‘No, no, no, Mr Jackson.’ Now my own voice was rising in volume. ‘You can’t go to sleep yet.’

  ‘No, neither can we!’ came a voice from the bed opposite.

  I pulled the covers back, at which Mr Jackson shot up and looked at me as if I was an intruder in his own bedroom.

  ‘WHAT’S GOIN’ ON? WHAT ARE YOU DOIN’?’

  By now everyone was awake, and requests for cups of tea or exasperated moans of ‘Oh Jesus!’ and ‘For Christ’s sake!’ were coming from all directions. After much negotiation and by this time virtually shouting at the top of my voice, I managed to get him out of bed, although he looked totally confused as to the reason why. I showed him the little pack on his bedside locker and told him that we needed to go down to the ward toilets. He seemed to pick up the word ‘toilet’ and spun around.

  ‘THERE’S NO NEED TO SHOUT! PEOPLE MIGHT HEAR!’

  ‘Shame you can’t,’ came the weary voice from next door again.

  Eventually I part coaxed and part manhandled him down the ward and into the toilets. Once inside I showed him again the pack containing the little foil container of disinfectant and explained. ‘Mr Jackson, I want you to clean yourself with this.’ I handed him the cotton-wool balls. He stared down at them and then up at me. I dipped them into the disinfectant and pointed at his flies. At this he sprang back, cowering, his mouth agape with horror, protecting his nethers like a footballer defending himself from a free kick.

  ‘WHAT’SYOUR GAME? I’M OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR GRANDFATHER!’

  ‘No, no, Mr Jackson, I just want a specimen.’

  And I showed him the little specimen jar. He then seemed to understand and I went through the instructions, with him nodding and loudly affirming his understanding at every stage. Then with fingers crossed I left him to it. Half an hour or so later I went to check in the toilets, to find that the pot containing the disinfectant was empty but so was the specimen jar, and the old man had gone. When I went back to his bed to discover what had happened, he was again snuggled down under the covers and this time clearly asleep, so I waited until morning.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Jackson, what did you do with your specimen?’

  ‘YES, YES, YES ...’ he said dismissively. ‘I DRANK THE MEDICINE.’

  I stood there for several seconds, unable to take in what he had said. ‘Oh my God,’ I murmured ever so quietly when I realised that he had in fact drunk the disinfectant and simply had a pee straight into the toilet.

  ‘AND WHAT’S MORE IT GAVE ME A BELLYACHE!’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I said again and went to make my confession to the senior nurse. I was hauled up in front of the assistant matron, who explained how irresponsible it was to leave an old deaf man etc., etc., etc.

  I suppose I messed up quite a bit during my eighteen months of training, but none of my cock-ups came anywhere near that of a poor girl in my set. She was on a ward mainly filled with elderly women and one evening after bed-baths she got the brilliant idea that, instead of going round each old dear and cleaning her false teeth, she would collect all the dentures in a big bowl and wash them all together. She only realised her gaffe when it was too late and just had to guess whose belonged to whom. Patients were complaining of sore gums for weeks after, and night after night she apparently went round when they were all asleep, whipping dentures off the beside lockers and swapping them around with other people’s, still trying to match the right teeth to the right mouth.

  One of the most exciting places to work, I found, was the Casualty department of the General Hospital, which was situated in the centre of Birmingham and, along with the Children’s, was the other major hospital that we trained at, all three being part of the United Birmingham Hospitals group. On a busy Saturday night on two or three occasions, I was sent down from my quiet men’s medical ward to swell the numbers of this overstretched department. On one such occasion a very odd-looking man came in, in the small hours of the morning, walking with a strange, swinging scuttle. The conversation went like this.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘No, dear, I wish to see a doctor.’ His face was pale and sweating.

  ‘I’m afraid the doctor’s busy at the moment. Can I help?’

  ‘No, no, I need to see the doctor. I don’t want to see you, dear. It’s got to be the doctor.’

  Having showed him to a cubicle, I went to find the nurse in charge. Finally the doctor went in to see him, taking me with him. When we got behind the curtains, the man was standing in the corner.

  ‘No, no, dear, I want to see the doctor, I don’t want you present.’ So the doctor signalled for me to leave.

  Some time later, I saw the man being wheeled on a trolley, presumably to a ward, lying on his stomach with what looked like some sort of cage over the top of him covered in a blanket. It turned out that he had the handle of a wire-mesh, deep-fat fryer stuck up his bottom. When asked by the doctor how it happened to be there, the man replied, ‘I ’ad an itch.’ It was inserted so far up and with such force that it had pierced his colon and he had to go to theatre to have it removed.

  I encountered death many times whilst nursing, but never got used to the shock of finding a bed empty when arriving on duty and discovering that someone you had got to know, whose face you’d washed, whose bed you’d made, whose bottom and feet you’d rubbed to prevent bedsores and whose family you had met and chatted with, was now dead. The first time this happened, I had come on duty for the afternoon shift, which was from two till ten, and the ward was frantically busy. Usually at the beginning of a shift the senior nurse going off duty would give notes on all the patients, so that those coming on duty would be up to speed. But on this particular day they were still carrying out their various duties; nurses were rushing up and down, curtains were pulled round beds; patients were still having their pressure areas tended to, and it was clear that help was needed. At the top of the ward, next to Sister’s office, was Mr Claydon’s bed. He was a long-stay patient and had been unconscious for at least a couple of weeks. Seeing that the curtains were closed around his bed, I decided that this was where I would start. I went in and immediately began chatting. We were told that unconscious patients could more than likely hear what you said, as hearing was the last sense to go in a coma. In fact, hospital gossip had it that a nurse who had talked about how fa
t a female patient was whilst the patient was unconscious was slapped across the face by the woman when she came round, the woman having heard everything that was said, even though she had been unconscious at the time.

  Mr Claydon was lying in a normal position on his back and next to him on the table was a bowl of tepid water. Someone was obviously intending giving him a bed-bath. Thinking the water a little too cool, I set off with the bowl to the sluice room to get some more hot. On the way, the ward Sister asked what I was doing. When I said I was getting some nice hot water for Mr Claydon, she said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t need to be hot, he’s not exactly going to complain, is he?’ I was speechless: to treat an unconscious and therefore vulnerable patient like this, even when run off your feet, was unconscionable.

  I ignored her cruel assessment and carried on into the sluice room. When I returned to Mr Claydon’s bed, he was in much the same position and I began the preparations for his bath, getting his toilet bag and towel from his beside locker, whilst plucking at a large bunch of black grapes in his fruit bowl and talking away as I did so.

  ‘I expect your wife will be in soon, so we’ll get you nice and fresh for her.’ And so forth.

  Then I pulled the sheet down and proceeded to wash him, whilst telling him what the weather was like and how busy the ward was. At one point the staff nurse popped her head through the curtains and said, ‘Oh! Are you doing this? Good . . . good . . .’ Then shortly afterwards she popped her head through again and said, ‘You do know he’s dead, don’t you?’

  I felt sick and immediately, almost as a reflex action, spat out the grape I had been eating, which landed splat in the middle of her apron bib. It stayed there, all chewed and purple, for a second or two and then dropped to the floor, leaving a magenta smear in its wake. We both stared at it.

  ‘Oh no! I’ve been eating his grapes!’ And again I felt nauseous.

  ‘Well, they’re no different now to what they were half an hour ago when he was still alive. You’ve been stuffing them down you all week. His wife must be wondering how come he gets through so many, considering he’s been in a coma for two weeks. Now, do you know how to lay him out?’