The Nightingale Sisters (8 page)

‘But, Sister—’

‘I really don’t wish to hear any more from you, Benedict. Now I want you to go back to the bathroom and sort out that poor woman’s hair. You’d better go with her, Tremayne, and make sure she doesn’t leave her completely bald next time.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ they chorused.

‘And while you’re at it, Benedict, you can think about how you’re going to explain this sorry incident to Matron, too. Because you can be sure I will be mentioning it in my ward report!’

Millie was still smarting over Sister Hyde’s harsh comment when she got back to the bathroom.

‘It’s not fair,’ she protested, taking off her stiff cuffs and rolling up her sleeves. ‘She made me sound like some silly girl who is just doing this for fun. For heaven’s sake, if I were out for fun, do you really think I would be here, disinfecting patients’ sores and killing head lice?’

‘You mustn’t blame Sister Hyde,’ Helen said. ‘She’s dedicated her whole life to nursing, and she expects the rest of us to do the same.’

‘Who says I’m not devoting my life to nursing, too?’

Helen sent her a sceptical look. ‘Everyone knows you’re going to marry Sebastian as soon as you finish training.’

‘You’re going to marry Charlie.’

‘Not for a few years. We agreed to wait before we got engaged, so that I could really make a go of my nursing.’

‘I might do the same.’

‘Do you think your grandmother would allow that?’

Millie was silent with resentment as she started to rinse the woman’s hair.

Helen leant forward to peer at her. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Certainly not. I’ve just splashed myself in the eye, that’s all.’ She wiped her streaming nose on her sleeve.

She wouldn’t give Sister Hyde the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Then she really would think Millie was an idiot.

‘She said she wasn’t crying, but I knew she was,’ Helen told Charlie later. ‘Poor Benedict, Sister really tore her off a strip. I’ve never seen her in such a temper.’

They were sitting in their favourite café, the place where Charlie had proposed nearly five months before. The cockney-Italian café owner had had a soft spot for them ever since, and often let them stay behind after hours while he cleaned up around them.

‘I reckon that Sister of yours could do with a sense of humour,’ Charlie grinned. ‘It sounds like a right lark to me.’

Helen smiled in spite of herself. ‘It was, but it could have been very serious. As nurses we can’t afford to make mistakes like that. Someone could have died as a result of Benedict’s reading a label wrongly.’ She twirled a teaspoon between her fingers. ‘The worst thing is, I can’t help feeling it was all my fault.’

‘How do you make that out?’

‘I told her about William’s new girlfriend. She put on a brave face, but I know she took it badly.’

Poor Millie. However much she might protest otherwise, Helen knew she still had feelings for William. She wished now she hadn’t tried to keep them apart. She’d only done it because she was worried her brother would break Millie’s heart, like he’d hurt so many girls in the past. But perhaps if she’d stood back and allowed the relationship to take its course, Millie would have realised for herself what he was like. Then her friend wouldn’t be feeling so sad now.

‘She would have found out sooner or later,’ Charlie said pragmatically. ‘Better it came from you than anyone else.’

‘That’s true,’ Helen admitted with a sigh. ‘William does seem rather besotted with this new girlfriend of his.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘I only know what he’s told me. She’s a doctor and they met at university. They got back in touch recently, and William apparently fell head over heels in love.’

‘How long’s it going to last this time, I wonder?’ Charlie’s mouth twisted.

‘That’s the thing. I think he’s really serious this time. He wants to introduce her to our mother. He’s never done that before.’

‘I hope she’s a brave woman,’ Charlie remarked. ‘She’s going to need to be.’

Helen looked across the table at him. He was smiling as usual, but she knew how hurt he was by the way her mother treated him.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t come from the right background, or because an accident had left him disabled, or just because he had given Helen the confidence to stand up to her mother at last. But whatever the reason, Constance Tremayne made it clear she disapproved of her daughter’s choice of boyfriend. No matter how well mannered and charming Charlie tried to be, her mother treated him with barely disguised contempt.

He certainly didn’t deserve it, Helen thought as she looked into his smiling blue eyes. Charlie was simply the most wonderful man she had ever met.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised automatically.

‘Whatever for?’ He looked at her in surprise.

‘My mother. I know she can be rather difficult . . .’

‘She’s protective of you, that’s all.’ Charlie put his hand over hers. ‘Any mother would be. My mum’s just the same.’

‘No, she isn’t.’ Helen pulled a face. ‘Your mother is an angel compared to mine.’

‘Only because she’s so relieved to find someone to take me off her hands!’

Helen smiled. ‘She adores you, and you know it.’

The Dawsons had welcomed her into the family from the first moment she’d met them. Helen had been a little intimidated at first, faced with Charlie’s extended tribe of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, who filled their cramped terrace house with constant noise and laughter. It was all so different from her own quiet, orderly upbringing in the Vicarage of St Oswald’s, where laughing or speaking out of place were frowned on.

Not by her father, of course. The Reverend Timothy Tremayne was a kind, loving man, but like the rest of the family he was dominated by his wife. Constance Tremayne controlled everything and everyone, and Helen, her father and her brother had learnt quickly that it was best to fall in with her plans.

Which was why Helen had ended up becoming a nurse in the first place. Constance had trained as a nurse herself, and it didn’t occur to Helen to argue when her mother announced that she should do the same. But even when she started her training, Helen couldn’t escape; her mother had seen to it that she became a nurse at the Nightingale, where Mrs Tremayne was on the Board of Trustees.

Helen might have gone on living under her mother’s thumb if she hadn’t met Charlie on her ward. He had lost his leg in an accident, and Helen had helped him come to terms with his anger and despair. But somewhere along the line professional caring had turned to friendship and then to love.

Knowing how horrified her mother would be at the idea of her daughter having a boyfriend, she and Charlie had kept their romance a secret at first. But inevitably Constance had found out. Of course she had tried to put a stop to it at once, even going so far as to pack Helen off to Scotland to finish her training. But by some miracle, and after an impassioned plea by Charlie, she had relented at the last minute and given her grudging approval to the match.

But that didn’t mean she was happy about it.

‘Tell you what, I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall when your mum meets William’s new girlfriend,’ Charlie said.

‘You won’t have to be a fly on the wall. We’ve been invited to lunch too.’

Invited, she thought with a smile. It made it sound as if anyone had a choice in the matter.

‘Me?’ Charlie looked surprised, as well he might. In all the months they had been seeing each other, he had only been allowed to visit the Vicarage once. And Helen knew even that had been for the sake of appearances, and nothing else.

‘Yes.’ She couldn’t meet his eye. ‘Mother says she’s looking forward to seeing you again.’

She could sense his sceptical look. ‘Are you sure about that?’

Helen bit her lip. ‘You will come, won’t you?’ she blurted out. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. But I’d like you to be there – for my sake?’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t look so worried, love. Of course I’ll be there. Don’t want to let your mum down, do we?’ he added mischievously. ‘Not if she’s looking forward to seeing me.’

Helen tried to smile back. It will all be all right, she told herself. But deep down, she couldn’t help secretly hoping that William’s new girlfriend would be awful. At least then it might make her mother more kindly disposed towards poor Charlie.

THE CHILLY GREY
January dawn brought another so-called miscarriage on the Gynae ward.

In the two weeks Dora had been on Wren, not a day went by without at least one woman being admitted, screaming in pain and haemorrhaging badly. Some were young, some older, some married, some single. Some were lucky and survived, others were not.

It was too early to tell if the girl they’d operated on in the early hours of the morning was one of the lucky ones.

‘Miscarriage, my eye,’ Lettie Pike sneered as she made up the fire in the side ward where the patient had been put to recover from surgery. ‘We all know what that one’s been up to, don’t we?’

‘Have they made you a doctor now, Lettie?’ Dora snapped.

‘You don’t have to be a doctor to see what she’s done. Can you see a wedding ring on her finger?’ Lettie shook her head. ‘No, she’s been caught good and proper. I expect she got a neighbour to help her out, or tried to do it herself. She made a right mess of it, too, from what I hear.’

‘You hear too much.’

‘I only hear what there is to hear.’ Lettie straightened up, massaging her back.

Dora didn’t bother to reply as she stroked a strand of pale hair back from the girl’s ashen face. A pulse jumped feebly in her temple. She was as white as her pillows, her skinny frame swamped by the hospital nightgown.

It was the first time Dora had been entrusted to sit with a post-operative patient. She was so nervous she didn’t dare take her eyes off the girl, just in case she missed the first flicker of consciousness.

Lettie looked down at her with a knowing eye. ‘You’re wasting your time with that one,’ she said. ‘She’s a goner, if you ask me.’

‘No one’s asking you, are they?’

‘Just giving my opinion.’

‘Dr Tremayne seems to think she stands a chance.’

‘Dr Tremayne isn’t much more than a kid himself,’ Lettie dismissed. ‘That one might have stood more chance if she’d had Mr Cooper operate on her.’

‘I expect next time she decides to collapse with massive haemorrhaging, she’ll remember to wait until Mr Cooper’s clinic hours,’ Dora said.

‘There won’t be a next time, will there?’ Lettie smiled nastily. ‘From what I hear, she’d let it get so bad Dr Tremayne had to take it all away.’ She looked down at the girl in the bed without sympathy. ‘I wonder if she’d have been so quick to get rid of that baby she was carrying if she’d known it was her last chance?’

‘Haven’t you got any work to do, Lettie?’ Dora turned on her, fighting to keep her temper.

‘Pardon me for breathing, I’m sure. But I take my orders from Sister, not you!’

Lettie hauled the coal bucket out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Dora turned back to the girl. Poor little thing, she thought. She looked so young, not much older than her sister Josie by the look of it. Her skin was as pale as pearl, her eyelids so translucent Dora could see the tracery of fine blue veins.

Lettie might be a vicious witch, but she was right about one thing, Dora thought. This girl, whoever she was, had said goodbye to her chances of ever having another child. But if she was desperate enough to turn to a backstreet abortionist, then perhaps she was too desperate to care anyway.

‘Now then, little Miss No Name,’ she whispered, covering the girl’s small hand with hers. The skin on her palm was rubbed raw. ‘How about you prove that old cow Lettie wrong and wake up, eh?’

It was just turned eight o’clock when the girl came round, and even longer before she was able to understand what was going on. Her eyelids fluttered open and she stared straight up at Dora. Her eyes were green, flecked with amber like a cat’s.

‘Hello,’ Dora greeted her with a smile.

The girl’s gaze darted around the room, then fixed back on Dora. ‘Where am I?’

‘In the Nightingale Hospital, love. You’ve been very poorly, but you’re getting better now.’

Emotions passed like clouds across her face as realisation dawned. ‘I collapsed.’ She frowned, trying to put it all together. ‘There was so much blood—’

‘You were in a bad way, love.’

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘She . . . she said it would be all right. She said I wouldn’t feel a thing and no one would need to know anything about it. But there was so much pain, so much blood. I thought I was going to die—’

What little colour she had drained from her face and Dora grabbed the enamel receiver dish, just as the girl leant over and retched into it.

‘Shh, don’t say any more,’ she said softly, stroking the girl’s hair back off her face. ‘You don’t want to tell too many people what happened, all right? As far as anyone else needs to know, you lost your baby.’

The girl nodded dumbly. Even in her state, she understood that admitting to an illegal abortion could get her locked up. Most doctors and nurses turned a blind eye for the sake of the poor women, but Dora knew there were some who might not.

‘Anyway, it’s all over now, and you got through it. I’ll fetch you some water, shall I?’

She felt the girl watching her as she filled a glass with water from the jug beside the bed. ‘Does my dad know I’m here?’ she asked fearfully.

‘I don’t think so, love. You turned up in the emergency department in the early hours, but I don’t know who brought you.’ Dora held the glass to her lips. ‘We don’t even know your name?’

‘It’s Jennie. Jennie Armstrong.’ She pushed the glass away and looked up at Dora. ‘I came here by myself,’ she said. ‘I started walking, but I ended up on my hands and knees when the pain got too bad.’

‘That explains all these scratches and grazes.’ Dora turned her palm over to show her. ‘Your knees are rubbed raw too. You poor girl, why on earth didn’t you call an ambulance?’

Jennie’s chin tilted. ‘I didn’t want no ambulance coming to the house, in case someone told my dad.’