For King and Country (12 page)

‘Not surprising, if he can’t talk back,’ said Sally. ‘And I’ve got my doubts about that. He’s not very sociable anyway; even if he can’t talk, he could
join them for a drink in the day room. They’ve asked him plenty of times, but he won’t. And he’s . . .’

‘What?’

So horribly mutilated was what she’d been going to say, but it seemed so awful to give that as a reason for not wanting to befriend a man that she stopped herself just in time. And anyway,
none of the officers had seen his face. All they ever saw was bandages.

‘He’s the one with the bad facial injury, isn’t he? The one that made you sick?’ said Armstrong, looking very thoughtful.

Sally nodded.

‘My mother’s cousin’s boy had his jaw taken off by a lump of shrapnel, well before the Somme. They got him healed all right, and sent him to a convalescent hospital. He
hadn’t been there a week before he drowned himself. It’s awful the way it takes people, disfigurement.’

They stared at her, appalled. ‘You never told us that,’ said Sally.

‘I try not to think about it. They live miles away, in Manchester. We hardly ever see them. But I should think your Lieutenant Maxfield’s probably feeling pretty low. He’s
probably picked on you because you’ve got that sort of sympathetic face, Wilde – “like patience on a monument”.’ Armstrong seemed to be only half in jest, and after a
pause, added, ‘When you get a minute, why don’t you talk to him properly? Ask him what he wants to know, and tell him. Get to the bottom of whatever it is that’s bothering him,
let him get it all out of his system and then tell him straight, well, maybe not that he’s getting on your nerves, but that he’ll end up getting you the sack if he carries on. If
he’s got a shred of decency, he’ll leave you alone after that.’

Sally had just changed the saline drip of the captain with the belly wound and was hanging the fresh bottle on the stand when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maxfield
padding across towards Raynor with the feeding cup.

Sister Davies nodded approval. ‘Well done, Wilde. We’ll make a nurse of you yet.’

‘Thanks, Sister.’ Sally put the empty saline bottle on her tray and picked it up to follow Sister to the treatment room. Maxfield was playing nursemaid now, holding the spout to
Raynor’s lips, helping him to drink his afternoon tea, and Raynor was making no objection. It made quite a touching scene.

She wasn’t quite so touched on her return to the ward though, when after all the patients had finished their drinks and she was collecting the cups, Maxfield started following her
again.

‘What do you call your village?’ his note read.

Conscious of Dunkley’s eyes on her, she said: ‘What makes you think I live in a village?’

Knox exploded. ‘Confound the fellow, it’s painful to watch! Can’t he see she doesn’t want him bothewing her?’ He got out of bed, tapped Maxfield on the shoulder,
and took him aside.

Sally burned with embarrassment. As sorry as she felt for Maxfield she didn’t want him hounding her, and especially not so obviously that everybody noticed. She couldn’t help feeling
grateful to Knox, much as she disliked him.

A couple of days later, as Maxfield was holding the feeding cup to his lips, Raynor suddenly started coughing, spluttering cocoa everywhere, on himself and his newly changed
sheets. Eyes watering and face red he pushed Maxfield’s hand away, spilling more of it.

What a mess. Maxfield looked at Sally in alarm, and she hastened to reassure him. ‘Never mind, you were only trying to help. I’ll go and get some clean sheets.’

Judging by that odd smile on his face, Raynor must have thought the incident amusing, she thought, as she hurried up the ward to get clean linen. Maxfield strode alongside her and tried to grip
her arm. She evaded him, and almost ran to the linen room.

He was waiting by Raynor’s bed when she got back with the linen, complete with his notebook.

‘For the love of God,’ she muttered under her breath, borrowing a phrase of Curran’s as she tried to sidestep him, ‘you really will end up getting me the sack,
won’t you?’ But he stood determinedly in front of her, holding it right in front of her eyes.

‘
TETANUS
!’ she read.

As they moved him into the remaining empty single room, Sally saw all too clearly that there was no mirth in Raynor’s smile; his helpless grinning was caused by a
stiffness of his facial muscles beyond his control. Trismus, they called it, and she raked her memory to recall the lecture they’d had on tetanus. Ah, yes, that was it, ‘the involuntary
spasm of the masseter muscles’, and ‘risus sardonicus’ was the name of that awful grin it caused. They heaved the bed back against the wall as gently as they could, and pulled the
blinds. Maxfield had followed them, pushing Raynor’s locker with his good arm, and now stood in the doorway with it. Sally took it from him, and placed it against the bed.

A move from the ward to a single room was always a bad omen for a patient, and poor David Jones had drawn his last breath in this one. Sally remembered how they’d waited and waited for him
to take another, and gave an involuntary shudder.

Sister nodded brief thanks to Maxfield and closed the door, then murmured to Sally: ‘No bright light, and keep him as quiet as you can. This would happen just now, wouldn’t it, when
we’re a nurse short, and not a spare pair of hands in the hospital. But he can’t be left alone. I’m sorry, but that’s your afternoon off gone west, Nurse. You’ll be
spending it in here with the first case of tetanus we’ve had for months. Anyway, well done for spotting it.’

Oh dear, oh dear, and after hearing all the chief’s exhortations about the importance of observation, after hearing them repeated by every sister and senior nurse on every ward she’d
worked on, had she now to admit the truth – that she had seen nothing beyond a grin, and the credit for ‘spotting’ anything more sinister belonged to a patient? It was tempting
not to; Maxfield couldn’t tell, after all. But she couldn’t help it; the truth would out.

‘It wasn’t me, Sister. It was Lieutenant Maxfield.’

Even in the gloom Sally could see the glow of approval die in Sister’s eyes. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

So much for honesty, Sally thought, curling her fingers around Raynor’s wrist and gently pressing their tips along his radial artery. His pulse was rapid, and he had broken out into a
sweat. She found his flannel and wrung it out in cool water at the sink, to mop his fevered brow. She had just put the cloth away when the junior houseman arrived, the cocksure one who knew
everything. He took a wooden spatula from the pocket of his white coat.

‘Hello, old fellow, just open wide,’ he said in jocular tones to Raynor, who was in no position to do anything of the sort. No matter, the houseman bent over him and inserted the
spatula right to the back of his throat. His teeth promptly clamped down on it, much to the delight of the houseman. ‘There you are, Nurse! The bite reflex, instead of the gag reflex –
it confirms the diagnosis, of course. No samples to the lab needed here. I’ll just give him a sedative, and then a test dose of horse serum, and we’ll see how he reacts to that,
what?’

‘I
could swear on a stack of bibles it was him,’ said the night nurse, a few days later. She was standing by Maxfield’s empty
bed, having collected almost all the washing bowls in by the time Sally stepped onto the ward. ‘In the middle of the night, and he shouted it: “Muddy!” Hasn’t spoken a word
since he woke up, though.’

Sally felt a pang of sympathy. ‘Muddy? Why, France is famous for mud, I suppose. I’ve heard tell of men drowning in it.’ Maxfield, poor man, was probably engulfed in it in his
nightmares. If only he could have some visitors, people from his own regiment, or even his own country to take an interest in and write his notes to, it might stop him brooding and getting wound
up, take his mind off things for a bit and help him get over his nerves. It might even stop this obsession he seemed to have with her. Maybe she should act on Armstrong’s advice.

‘Go in and see Lieutenant Raynor, will you?’ the night nurse said. ‘I’ve been with him as much as I could, but he’s been on his own for nearly an hour
now.’

But Lieutenant Raynor was not on his own. Maxfield was at the door of his room, beckoning to her, and her sympathy was transformed into irritation at the sight of him. But when she entered the
room she saw Raynor’s lips drawn back in a bizarre grimace, his eyes wild and wide. He struggled to speak through clenched teeth, to tell her what was obvious. He was in pain. He
couldn’t swallow and his mouth, his throat, and his arms were going into terrifying spasms. Sally fled, to fetch Sister.

Her alarms made little impression. ‘I’ve seen him. The chief will be here in a few minutes to do his round. You go and stay with him, and send Lieutenant Maxfield back into the ward.
Breakfasts will be up soon. Fetch me if he gets any worse,’ Sister said.

Deflated and more than a little apprehensive, Sally returned to Raynor’s room. ‘Sister says you have to go back onto the ward,’ she said, and suddenly had a bright idea. Why on
earth hadn’t she thought of it before? ‘You know, Lieutenant Maxfield, I’ve heard there are a few Australians in the other infirmary,’ she said. ‘Maybe there are one
or two officers who could get permission to come and visit you, or you could go to see them. Shall I ask about it?’

Maxfield’s reaction was the opposite of what she expected. He tensed. His lips turned down in a grimace of disdain and repulsion and he shook his head.

‘All right,’ Sally shrugged, a mite offended. ‘I won’t mention it, then.’

He must have heard what they were really suffering from, those patients in the so-called dermatology wards, and thought himself too good for them. He was probably particular about what sort of
person he mixed with. She wondered why that should surprise her in an Australian, but it did.

‘What will give this patient the best chance of recovery?’ the chief demanded, turning to the shyest houseman. ‘To perform a tracheostomy now, or to delay it
until his breathing becomes
really
difficult?’

‘To do it now, sir.’

Doctor Know-All was craning forward, his every feature screaming: ‘Me, sir!’

The chief ignored him, his eyes fixed on his more reticent pupil. ‘Will you elaborate?’

‘Because delay makes complications more likely, mostly because of aspiration of secretions.’

His voice was so low that the chief had to lean towards him to hear. ‘Leading to?’ he prompted.

‘Bronchopneumonia, sir?’

‘Quite. It’s affecting his larynx,’ the chief said. ‘You’d better do it, Campbell. Then he’ll need careful nursing, for two weeks at least. I’m sorry to
put such a burden on you when you’re so short-staffed, Sister, but we really have no alternative.’ He turned to Campbell. ‘Better do it here – and disturb him as little as
possible.’

‘Get everything ready, Nurse Dunkley,’ Sister said. ‘You can assist.’

Lieutenant Raynor was stretched out with a sandbag under his shoulders and neck, fully conscious after the local anaesthetic, and struggling to breathe.

‘Odd he never made any complaint,’ said Dr Campbell, fingering the portion of his neck not covered by sterile cotton drapes. ‘He must have had some inkling, some stiffness
around the site of his injury, possibly, or his arms, or his jaw, some aching. Something.’

Sally had been sent into Raynor’s room, to stand by Nurse Dunkley and watch the procedure. ‘But he . . .’ she began, and then broke off, not daring to continue, not daring to
admit, guilty, guilty nurse, that he had complained, of his jaw, his back and his legs, and he’d had a bit of a temperature, and she should have reported it, because she ought to have known
he wouldn’t do it himself.

Dr Campbell was muttering to himself, too absorbed in his task to take any notice. ‘Well, at least we have one nurse on the ward capable of making an intelligent observation,’ he
murmured. ‘Sister sounded very impressed when she telephoned me – as was I, when you turned out to be right. Well done, Nurse Wilde.’

Dunkley gave a saccharine smile. ‘Pity we haven’t got a doctor to match her,’ she murmured.

‘Hmm,’ Campbell said, and conversation ceased.

Sister obviously hadn’t set him straight, but now was certainly not the time, Sally thought, not while he had a scalpel at the lieutenant’s throat. She wasn’t going to say
anything to Dunkley, either, or that madam would take pleasure in shattering everybody’s illusions about her, and make her look even more of an imbecile than she really was.

The scalpel was laid aside, and Dr Campbell inserted a dilator, and then pushed the silver tracheostomy tube into the carefully made incision. They heard an inrush of air, and saw their patient
relax, no longer having to fight for every breath.

Dr Campbell secured the tube with tapes. ‘Ten minutes, start to finish,’ he told Raynor. ‘Now,’ he picked up a Rhyle’s tube, lubricated the end with liquid
paraffin, and eased it as gently as possible into Raynor’s left nostril, ‘swallow if you can, and keep swallowing. We don’t want to cure you of tetanus, to kill you of starvation.
You nurses had better tube feed him with egg and milk mixture, two hourly to start with, until he can eat. That should give him something to fight with.’

But wasn’t there a ninety per cent mortality with tetanus, Sally wondered, as she watched Dr Campbell finish the task. He left Dunkley to tape the tube to Lieutenant Raynor’s nose
and cheek.

‘He will be all right, won’t he?’ Sally pleaded for reassurance.

Dr Campbell shrugged, raised his voice for Raynor to hear, and stressing the words, said: ‘The longer the incubation period, the better the outlook, all other things being equal.
He’ll certainly recover with good nursing, and that seems to be in abundance on Ward 7a. Wouldn’t you agree, Staff Nurse?’

But Dunkley missed this oblique invitation to instil a healing confidence into Raynor. ‘Hardly,’ she said, ‘since so many nurses have gone off to France and the military
hospitals. And now, just to put the tin hat on it, we’ve got one of our probationers off.’