A Match For Sister Maggy. Betty Neels
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his signature on an X-ray form before replying.
‘Yes, he is. But not conceited with it. I’ve known him since he was a small boy—his parents were great friends of mine; his mother still is. He’s clever, and he’s made a successful career for himself.’ He coughed. ‘He knows exactly what he wants, and gets it too.’ He looked so knowingly at Maggy that she went scarlet; surely Dr Doelsma hadn’t told Sir Charles about the regrettable incident in her office? She realised that she hadn’t forgotten it at all. Her brows drew together in so fierce a frown that Sir Charles allowed his vague manner to become even more vague, and pursued the topic in an even more ruthless fashion.
‘Can’t think why he’s not married. Heaven knows the number of young women who have angled for him; still, as I said just now, he knows what he wants, and he has the patience to wait for it. But there, Sister, I mustn’t waste your time boring on about someone you’ve no interest in.’ He blinked rapidly and smiled disarmingly, while his elderly perceptive eye bored into hers. She met his gaze steadily.
‘Aye, Sir Charles, I’ve no’ the time to think about a man I’ll not be seeing again.’
He nodded, and plunged into the highly technical details of the treatment he proposed for the patient whose bed they had reached. Mrs Salt greeted him as an old friend, gave him a colourful and most inaccurate account of her condition and asked what he’d done with the foreign doctor he’d had with him on his last visit.
‘Nice, ’e was,’ she reminisced. ‘Now there’s a man any girl could fall for.’ She turned to peer at Maggy. “Ere’s one ’ose just right for ’im, too, eh?’ She cackled with mischievous mirth. ‘Pity ’e ain’t coming again—leastways, not until me birthday—that’s if yer don’t let me slip through yer fingers first.’
The remark was greeted with the derision she expected, and with a brief appeal from Sister MacFergus to be good, they left her bed, and passed on to her neighbour. This was a Belgian woman, Madame Riveau, she had been admitted ten days or so before with a suspected gastric ulcer. She was a silent morose woman who only answered Maggy’s basic schoolgirl French when it was absolutely necessary. She was visited regularly by her husband and her son, two equally sour and dour men, who demanded at each visit that Madame Riveau should be sent home. So far Maggy had persuaded them to let her stay, but their demands were becoming so persistent that she realised that they would soon have their way—after all, no patient could be forced to remain against their wish, although she had noticed that the woman did not seem to share her menfolk’s desire for her discharge—Maggy thought she seemed frightened of them; indeed, they gave her herself an uneasy feeling of menace, which was heightened by their secretiveness when asked even the simplest of questions.
She stood looking at Madame Riveau now as Sir Charles bent over the bed to examine her. She looked ill, and surely her face was swollen? Maggy waited until Sir Charles had finished and was conferring with his houseman before she asked in her rather halting French,
‘Have you got the toothache, Madame Riveau?’
The result was electrifying. The sallow face on the pillow took on the greenish white of fear; the hate and terror in the dull black eyes sent Maggy back a pace.
‘No. no! There’s nothing wrong.’ The woman’s voice was a harsh whisper.
‘There must be something wrong.’ Maggy spoke gently; the woman was so obviously terrified—of the dentist perhaps? ‘Supposing we get you X-rayed just to make sure before you go home?’
She was rewarded by another look of venom. ‘I refuse. My teeth are sound.’
Maggy ignored the look. ‘I’ll talk to your husband when he comes this evening; perhaps he can persuade you.’
Sir Charles had moved on, but stopped and listened to what Maggy had to say. When she had finished he nodded, and said,
‘Dr Payne can sign an X-ray form, Sister. Probably she’ll be better without her teeth—she’s an unhealthy woman and I should suppose she’ll need surgical treatment for that ulcer…’
They became immersed in the diabetic coma in the next bed, and in the ensuing calculations of insulin units, blood sugar tests, urine tests and a great many instructions concerning the intravenous drip, Madame Riveau’s strange behaviour was forgotten, and when much later Maggy remembered it, she decided she must have imagined the woman’s fear and anger.
She was due off duty at six o’clock. She gave the report to Staff Nurse and then waited for the visitors to arrive. She had two days off, and she wanted to see Monsieur Riveau, and get the question of his wife’s teeth settled. She felt the usual thrill of distaste as she approached the bed. The two men were seated on either side of it; neither got up as she approached, but watched her with thinly veiled hostility. She wasted no time, but explained her errand and stood waiting for a reply. The men looked at her without speaking, their faces expressionless, and yet she had a prickle of fear so real that she put her hand up to the back of her neck to brush it away. At length the elder man said, ‘No X-ray, no dentist for my wife. She refuses.’
‘There’s no pain involved,’ Maggy replied doggedly. ‘Her jaws are swollen; her teeth may be infected and it may make the ulcer worse.’ He said ‘No’ in an ugly voice, and she damped down her temper and persevered in a reasonable way, struggling with her French.
‘The teeth are probably decayed; she will be better without them.’ She managed to smile at the unfriendly faces. ‘It’s very likely that in time they will make her condition worse.’
Their silence was worse than speech—chilling and unfriendly and completely uncooperative. She could feel their dislike of her pressing against her like a tangible thing. She gave herself a mental shake, asked them to reconsider their decision, and said goodnight. Her words fell into silence like stones, and as she walked away, she could feel their eyes on her back; it was a most unpleasant sensation.
Maggy spent her two days off with a former nurse who had trained with her and then left to get married. She came back to St Ethelburga’s refreshed in mind if not in body, and with a strong desire to get married and have a husband and children of her own. She thought this unlikely. She had never met a man she wished to marry; but as if to give the lie to these thoughts, a picture of Dr Doelsma, very clear and accurate down to the last detail, came into her mind’s eye. She shook her head, reducing his image to fragments and said something in the Gaelic tongue with such force that Sister Beecham, sitting opposite her in the sitting room, put down her knitting and looked at her.
‘I don’t know what it meant, Maggy MacFergus, but it sounded as though it was a good thing I didn’t, and if you are going to make the tea—I’ll not have milk; I’m dieting.’
Maggy got up obediently. Sister Beecham had been at St Ethelburga’s for so long that her word was law to any Sister under forty, and Maggy was only twenty-four.
As she crossed the landing the next morning, she sensed an air of suppressed excitement, although there was no one to be seen. Staff was waiting for her in her office, standing by the well-polished desk, adorned by a vase of flowers. Funeral flowers, delivered at regular intervals to the wards and hailed as a mixed blessing by the unfortunate junior nurse whose lot it was to disentangle them from their wire supports and turn the anchors and wreaths into vases of normal-looking flowers. Maggy noted with relief that Nurse had achieved a very normal-looking bunch. She detested them, but had never had the heart to say so; she guessed that some nurse had taken a lot of trouble to please her. She exchanged good mornings with Staff Nurse Williams, and thought for the hundredth time what a pretty creature she was—small and blonde and blue-eyed—everything Maggy was not and wished to be. She had discovered long ago that there were few advantages in being six feet tall. It was, for a start, impossible to be fragile or clinging; it was taken for granted that she would undertake tasks that smaller women could be helpless about, and there was always the problem of dancing partners.
Staff’s eyes were sparkling; she appeared to be labouring under some emotion. Maggy sat down, saying nothing. Whatever it was could come after the report. It took fifteen minutes or so, each