Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [99]
Did that feeling mean that she was in love with Teddy? Grace admitted that she didn’t know. And there wasn’t anyone really that she could ask. None of the other girls was going steady, not even Lillian, who seemed to have given up on the doctor she was supposed to have been chasing. According to Luke, he and Lillian were still writing to one another and it was obvious from her brother’s letters how he felt about her. Grace wished she was a bit closer to Lillian so that she could have talked to her properly about Luke and how she really felt about him, but Lillian seemed to have taken a bit against her and was making comments she knew Grace could overhear about ‘people who went around interfering in other people’s lives’ without ever coming out and saying exactly what was on her mind.
‘Take no notice of her,’ was always Hannah’s advice whenever Grace worried about what she should do. ‘Now that she’s acting like she’s keen on your Luke, she’s probably afraid that you might go saying something to him about the way she was.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Grace had protested. ‘I wouldn’t do anything that might hurt him.’
‘People like her don’t understand things like that because they don’t mind who gets hurt so long as it isn’t them,’ had been Hannah’s pithy response.
Tonight was Grace’s last stint on night duty, and she was looking forward to her day off tomorrow.
All but two of the young merchant seamen who had been admitted to the ward in February had been discharged now. Only Davie, who had had his toes amputated, and Harry, who had lost both his legs, were still with them.
Davie had had his nineteenth birthday the previous week and Sister had arranged for the kitchen to bake him a cake. His face had been a picture when he had seen it. Sister had turned a blind eye as well when both his parents and his sisters had come to see him at visiting time.
Grace had told her parents about both young men – the youngest on the ward, as Harry was even younger than Davie and only seventeen. Her mother had been moved to tears for them, like Grace herself worrying about what kind of future they would have.
Sister had said that since Davie was good with his hands he might be able to manage a factory job if he could work from a wheelchair.
Staff was just coming out of Harry’s room when Grace walked on to the ward.
‘He’s had a bad day today,’ she explained quietly. ‘Sister’s asked Dr Lewis about increasing his medicine and he’s said yes.’
Grace said nothing. Harry was on morphine, and sometimes he got the shakes so badly when the effect of it was wearing off that it was pitiful to see and hear him, but Grace acknowledged those things didn’t fill her with the fear and panic she would have felt at the beginning of her ward training, because now she not only knew the cause of them she also had the nursing experience to know how to deal with and alleviate them.
She may have learned a lot but there was a great deal more that she still had to learn, she knew. In another week or so the next lot of trainees would be coming on to the wards, and Grace and her set would be moving up a step, provided they were given good reports. She hoped desperately that she would be. She loved nursing even more than she had thought she would.
Jean had just finished drying up and putting everything away when she heard the knock on the front door. Since she wasn’t expecting anyone, and Sam and the twins were out, she wiped her hands carefully on her apron and then removed it before going to see who it was.
They weren’t back on daylight saving yet and because of the blackout she switched off the hall light before opening the door, but even though she couldn’t see her visitor’s face clearly, she knew she would have recognised her voice anywhere as she heard her younger sister, Francine,