A Mother's Gift by Maggie Hope Page B

breath as she hurried round the rest of the patients. She took the trolley in to the ward kitchen and cleared it. There would be the washing up to do later for the maid had the day off on Christmas Day. The nurses and housemen were the only ones working today. All the nursing staff was because, as had been explained to Katie, it wasn’t fair for only some of them to have the day off. So it was decreed that there should be no off-duty at all on this special day. With the number of patients down and empty beds on the wards it meant that the nurses spent a lot of their time avoiding Sister who was of the opinion that a good nurse could always find something useful to do.
    Consequently, Katie was lurking in the sluice when the consultant, Mr Hobson, came sweeping into the ward, booming heartily. His cotton-wool beard and moustache clung precariously under his nose, rather in the way his theatre mask so often did. His red gown, the hospital’s second best, for the best one was doing duty in the children’s ward, barely fitted his rotund figure but the few patients hardly noticed. As usual they were struck with awe at his august presence.
    The nurses were in a row with Sister at the head, ready to do Mr Hobson’s bidding. All except Katie, that is, she was coming into the ward behind him. When she did manage to sidle round him and attach herself to the end of the line, she was rewarded with another of Sister’s black looks.
    She hadn’t time to be apprehensive, however, for Mr Hobson was fishing in his bag and bringing out small parcels and handing them to the nurses to give out. So for the minute it was all bustle. And when the surgeon went off down the corridor, having done his duty so that he could go home to his own Christmas, it was time for the visitors to be allowed in.
    Altogether, Katie thought to herself as she trailed off-duty at half past eight in the evening having been on the ward for thirteen hours, her first Christmas on the wards had been long and hard. For in the middle of the visiting hour there had been an emergency patient to be prepared for theatre who turned out to be a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Mr Hobson had been called out to operate and he was none too pleased about that. Then old Mrs Turner, who had an prolapsed uterus sticking out between her legs, had had a touch of diarrhoea from a surfeit of Christmas cake her daughter had brought in for her. The daughter had also brought a quarter-bottle of navy rum to wash the cake down and the old lady had kept it under the bedclothes so she could take an occasional sip.
    By six o’clock the odour of rum had begun to permeate the ward and Mrs Turner was complaining that she was feeling badly and a body could die in this hell-hole of a place. And other, worse smells got mixed up with the rum and there was a great deal of shouting when Staff Nurse found the almost empty bottle and tried to take it away. And Katie and the third-year nurse had the job of cleaning up Mrs Turner and stopping her from climbing out of bed. Then they had to make her comfortable which wasn’t too difficult because the old lady fell asleep halfway through her bed being re-made.
    The bed had to be made up for the patient returning from theatre and Sister wasn’t satisfied with the way Katie had done her hospital corners and pulled them out so they had to be done again. Staff Nurse was doing the round of dressings and douches and when she woke Mrs Turner up to do her, once again there was pandemonium.
    ‘What is all this racket?’ demanded Sister coming out of her office, report book, in which she had been recording the happenings of the day, in hand. Her voice was so thunderous even Mrs Turner was cowed and peace reigned for a while.
    Katie was too exhausted to eat much supper. In any case she had promised Billy she would pop out to see him if she got the chance. Billy Wright was staying in Middlesbrough over the Christmas holiday. He was staying with his aunt and uncle who had