Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [102]
‘It isn’t luxury I want, Jean. That’s not what I’ve come home for at all.’
There was look on her face that made Jean’s heart sink a little.
* * *
‘Come along, Campion, don’t dawdle.’ They were doing ‘beds and backs’, a process in which each patient had to have his sacrum, heels and elbows washed with soap and water and then rubbed with methylated spirits to harden the skin, which was then dusted with talcum powder. This was to help prevent bed sores, and it was Grace’s job to apply the methylated spirits.
Once that had been done, Staff Nurse Reid asked her, ‘Have you given morphia to a patient yet?’
Grace shook her head.
‘Come with me and listen carefully. Harry is due to have his next injection.’
First, Staff Nurse went to the Dangerous Drugs cabinet and removed one quarter of a gram of morphine, which Grace then had to dissolve over a spirit lamp in 5.5 cc of water in a teaspoon, and then place the liquid into a hypodermic syringe.
After Staff Nurse Reid had relocked the Dangerous Drugs cabinet she beckoned Grace to follow her into the private room where Harry was.
The young man was in a great deal of pain, his face lacking colour and his skin sweaty. Grace felt for him as she injected the morphine into his upper arm, holding her own breath a little as she waited for the drug to take effect. She could see a telling sadness in Staff Nurse’s expression as she leaned over him and spoke to him before straightening his bedclothes.
Once they were both back outside the room Staff Nurse turned to Grace and said quietly, ‘As you know, morphine is addictive and we have to be careful about how much we give, but thank heavens Sister believes that if someone is dying then it doesn’t matter if they become addicted, and that it’s far more important that they remain free of pain.’
She didn’t say any more; she didn’t need to. Grace understood what she was being told and it both shocked and upset her. Harry was, after all, only seventeen – not much older than her own twin sisters and younger than she was herself.
Harry was very much on Grace’s mind the next day when she met Teddy.
They might be in March now but she had noticed that increasingly Teddy was having to slow down when they were walking together, complaining that the cold winter had got on his chest and left him struggling sometimes with his breathing. Grace had felt like a bit of fresh air and so they had gone to Wavertree Park or ‘the Mizzy’, as the park was fondly known by locals. Its nickname had come about because the land itself had been given to the people of Wavertree by a ‘mystery’ donor who had specified that it was to be used to create a large open playground for children, and for recreation rather than a formally landscaped park. The original lake had been filled in but there was still a pretty circular structure, which was used as a bandstand on fête days, and before the Great War the park had even hosted the Royal Agricultural Show.
It was, Grace knew, because he was sensitive about having had rheumatic fever as a child, which had prevented him from joining up, that he didn’t like talking about it, but she still couldn’t stop herself from frowning as she watched him having to stop walking, his hand on his chest.
‘You should see someone about that, you know,’ she told him gently.
‘Oh, give over, will you? I’ve already told you it’s nothing serious.’
‘You mean, like you and me are nothing serious?’ Grace replied impulsively. What on earth had possessed her to say that? She felt mortified by her own silliness.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Teddy sounded angry.
Neither of them was making any attempt to walk now. Instead they stood in the park, confronting one another, oblivious to the curious glances they were attracting.
‘You know what I mean,’ Grace told him miserably. ‘I know you do. All the girls keep on asking me if you and me are going steady, and if you’ve asked me to be your girl. They want to know if … I need to know where I stand with you, Teddy, I really