Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [91]
Although officially, as trainee nurses, they were supposed to have one half-day and one full day off a week, as Grace had discovered, with all the studying they still had to do, more often than not that time off was spent in their rooms poring over notes and books.
She was reminded of what Teddy had told her about news being held back when she went on duty one the morning in early February.
As soon as daily prayers were over, Staff Nurse Reid informed them that they had received eight new patients overnight, four of them in beds on the ward itself and four more in the much smaller side wards, normally reserved for paying patients or special cases needing individual nursing.
The hospital had been built on the Florence Nightingale principle, the so-called Nightingale wards having high ceilings and tall windows to facilitate the flow of the fresh air, which Florence Nightingale had considered important in defeating the spread of infection and aiding patients’ recovery. The beds had to be a certain distance apart, with the wheels turned inwards to allow for proper cleaning and to prevent the spread of cross infection. Heavy screens were pulled around a bed should the patient need privacy. Ward Sister sat at a table in the middle of the ward, keeping a steely eye on her domain.
The nurses’ home at the hospital was attached to the main hospital via an underground tunnel, the entrance to which was guarded by an extremely fierce porter.
‘It’s going to be like living in a convent,’ Lillian had complained when they had first arrived earlier in the month.
‘Ah ha, now we know why you’re so keen to date a doctor,’ Hannah had joked with a grin. ‘It’s because you think they’re the only men that will get anywhere near the place.’
They might have finished their initial three-month training but in hospital hierarchy terms they were still the lowest of the low as had been made clear to them from the first moment they set foot on the wards.
Grace’s first duty of the morning was to help serve the patients their breakfasts.
‘We had some Merchant Navy lads brought in last night off one of the convoy ships,’ the junior nurse going off duty managed to whisper confidentially to her as they changed shifts. ‘In a real bad way they are, an’all. Got torpedoed by the Germans.’
There wasn’t time for her to say any more. Screens were drawn around four of the beds on the ward and the doors closed to the side wards, and Sister told Grace that she was not to take breakfast to those patients.
After breakfast came the inevitable ‘bottle’ round, and then the collection and removal of the bottles to the sluice room ready for the urine to be tested for ‘sugar’, albumin or blood, depending on what was written on the patient’s chart.
Then after that came the first of the many ‘locker’ rounds of the day, for which Grace had to set a trolley with a basin of carbolic, a cloth, a small pail for rubbish and a large jug of fresh water. Each locker top had to be wiped with carbolic. Any rubbish such as papers had to be removed, ashtrays had to be emptied and wiped, and finally the patient’s drinking glass had to be filled with water.
All the patients’ lockers were supposed to be finished by the time of the first nurses’ coffee break. During her first week it had taken Grace nearly half as long again as it should have done to complete this task but now she could work quickly and smoothly and still find time to chat to the patients as she did so, taking the letters she was given for posting and exchanging banter with those men who were well enough to want to indulge in it.
Several patients were recovering from serious operations and Grace always tried to spend a little more time with them. Today, though, even those patients who had seemed the most poorly were now making an effort to be more chipper and were asking anxiously