She turned her back on the thought. ‘Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married,’ she went on, anxious to talk about something else. ‘That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a Junior Night Sister’s post to start with anyway, and that won’t be for quite while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg.’
‘You might marry,’ said Mrs Mogg chattily, Georgina gave her a wide smile. ‘Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they’re far too busy and penniless to marry, and if you’re thinking of rich consultants, they’re all married. Besides, it will be nice to earn some real money at last—it’s time I did my share, you know.’
Miss Rodman straightened an already straight back. ‘That is very good of you, dear Georgina, but Mrs Mogg and I are old women. We need very little, and we manage. You’ve worked hard, the money is yours to spend. Why don’t you go abroad?’
Georgina lied cheerfully, ‘I really don’t want to, Aunt Polly. Perhaps later on when I’ve had more experience—I think I’ll stay at St Athel’s for a year or two and get that Sister’s post, then see how I feel.’
She got up and carried her tray out to the kitchen where she put it on the scrubbed wood table, then took the dishes to the sink and washed up, singing cheerfully in a clear voice so the occupants of the sitting-room would hear how happy she was.
CHAPTER TWO
ST ATHEL’S looked grim and grey on Monday morning, Georgina walked into the cold, well polished hall of the Nurses’ Home and started to climb the stairs to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be all right again. But somehow she wasn’t, despite the fact that Gregg had a half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy—too busy to think on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o’clock and Ned telephoned to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker—he was on the medical side, which didn’t prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty. When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper, what with Mr Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while pronouncing an obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles’ fracture a Potts’. She had asked him crossly if he hadn’t learned the difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.
‘Days off,’ snapped Georgina. ‘I’ll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back,’ and had the satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr Baker would serve her purpose as well as any, she supposed.
He backed to the door. ‘I merely wished to know,’ he stated coldly, ‘because I’m not completely satisfied with your work.’
‘I’ll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning,’ she said with equal coldness. ‘I’m sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other housemen—she wouldn’t like to think that our standards aren’t up to yours.’ She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.
When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs Mogg. The cake disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the conversation turned, as it always did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into the QAs, two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting married or engaged.
A voice said, ‘George, you haven’t told us what you’re going to do.’
‘Well,’ she began; she wasn’t sure if she should mention about getting a Sister’s post, ‘I thought I’d stay here …’
‘Did Matron dangle a Sister’s cap before you?’ someone wanted to know.
‘Later on … it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I’ll do my Midder.’ She had only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.
Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn’t show through, and presented herself, outwardly composed, at Matron’s office. She came out again within a couple of minutes. Night duty—four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience, Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too, several days at home each fortnight. She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, ‘Thank God! That woman who’s on now calls me for the merest scratch—besides, you’re nice to have around.’
Georgina chuckled. ‘Go on with you, Ned,’ she said comfortably. If she had had a brother, she would have used the same tone of voice she was using now. ‘But I promise not to call you for scratches!’
They started on their separate ways and as they went he called over his shoulder, ‘Are you on tonight?’
She went on walking away from him. ‘No, tomorrow,’ she replied, thinking that she must remember to ring Aunt Polly.
Night duty on Cas followed a pattern, she discovered, after she had been on for a few nights. Until eleven she was kept busy by a steady influx of people who ‘didn’t like to bother the doctor’; toothache, teething babies, bruises it was best not to enquire too deeply into; boils and headaches, cut fingers and ingrowing toenails; they crowded into the benches, confident that someone would do something for them, and in the meantime it was pleasant to have a natter. After the pubs closed, it was the turn of the drunks, cheerfully escorted by a constable, who as often or not gave a helping hand. There was seldom very much wrong with them, but they wasted everyone’s time, for they invariably needed stitches.
After the first night, when there were two or three waiting for scalp wounds to be sutured, Ned suggested that she should give a hand, and after that she added stitching to her duties; of course he did the complicated cuts, but very often it was only a case of one straightforward stitch, which the patient was frequently far too drunk to notice. The crashes followed a pattern too—round about midnight and five or six in the morning, so that Georgina quite often ate her dinner at two o’clock in the morning and had to miss tea altogether, but that was something you expected if you worked on Cas, and it didn’t occur to her to grumble about it. She slept like a log during the day, and there were nights off to look forward to.
On this, the fifth night, however, she had gone on duty tired after an almost sleepless day. She smiled at the waiting patients as she passed them and went on into the office to take over from Sister, who was looking, surprisingly, quite different from usual. She gave Georgina one or two police messages in an abstracted sort of manner and told her that Ned would be on duty, and that Mr Bingham would be available at ten o’clock. There was something
