Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [136]
‘A lovely-looking lass,’ an all,’ one of the men had said. ‘Walking out with one of the ambulance drivers, she is, so I’ve heard.’
Seb wasn’t surprised, of course, that a pretty girl like Grace was walking out with someone.
He remembered very well how tempted to kiss her he had been himself. The Tennis Club dance seemed to belong to another life now, one he could hardly relate to any more. He tried to move and stopped as pain shot through his shoulder.
Immediately Grace was at his bedside, smiling calmly as she fluffed up his pillow and poured him a fresh glass of water.
To his embarrassment his body was responding to the thought of kissing her in a way it had no right to at all. To stop it he said to her, ‘It’s not just a nurse’s uniform you’ve got now, from what I hear. You’re going steady with an ambulance driver as well.’
Grace looked over her shoulder to make sure that Sister wasn’t watching them. They weren’t supposed to talk about their private lives to the patients.
‘If you’re meaning Teddy, then him and me aren’t going steady, we’re just friends,’ she told him with great dignity.
Seb was surprised at how much that pleased him.
‘I’ve just got to take your temperature now,’ said Grace, determined to be professional, ‘and if you could use this …’
She didn’t look at him as she handed him the urine bottle, and Seb was surprised at how self-conscious he suddenly felt in view of the way he’d been prodded and checked over by so many nurses these last few days. War, after all, had a way of causing a man to lose his embarrassment about any bodily functions – or at least some of them, he corrected himself, remembering his discomfort over his ‘short arm’ reaction to the thought of kissing Grace.
Seb’s temperature was higher than it had been last night. Grace frowned. His colour was high as well.
‘I’d better just check your pulse.’
‘Give over, Nurse,’ the man in the next bed joked. ‘We all know you only do that ’cos you want to hold our hands.’
Grace laughed and managed to fight back her unwanted blush. Seb’s pulse was faster than it should be and his skin felt hot and dry. He was manifesting all the classic signs that his wound could be infected. There wasn’t anything on his chart about changing his dressings but Mr Leonard would be doing his round later, she knew, and would naturally check up on those patients on whom he had recently operated. Even so, it wouldn’t do any harm just to mention her suspicions to Staff, would it?
She waited until the staff nurse was on her own and then hurried over to her, quickly explaining what concerned her. Staff Nurse Reid gave her a searching look before going over to Seb’s bed, where she checked both his chart and redid his temperature.
As discreetly as she could Grace watched her whilst she collected the bottles to take to the sluice for urine tests. Staff was now speaking with Sister. They both went over to Seb’s bed, and then Sister demanded, ‘Screens, please, Nurse.’
Leaving the bottles, Grace hurried over to help the ward’s second-year nurse wheel the heavy screens into place around Seb’s bed.
As soon as they were in place Sister told her, ‘Dressings trolley, Campion.’
It was Staff Nurse Reid herself who removed the dressing on Seb’s shoulder wound. Grace had plenty of experience of unpleasant sights now but for some reason the hole left in Seb’s flesh where Mr Leonard had removed the shrapnel so shocked her that she thought for a moment she might actually faint. Or was it the smell of the infected wound that was affecting her? It shouldn’t be. She had seen and smelled far worse on gangrenous wounds and amputations.
Grace tried to focus professionally on Seb’s shoulder. The skin had been torn by the shrapnel, one piece having been removed originally and the wound stitched without the surgeon realising there was a smaller piece left inside. Mr Leonard had had to dig deeper to remove it, and the area around the wound was very inflamed and infected, probably because of the shrapnel left inside,