Seize The Day

They unlocked the trolley from the wall, then unlocked the first section, then the section within which contained the Schedule ‘B’ drugs. Jenny flinched a little when she saw how disordered the latter drugs appeared—bottles dumped haphazardly into the small space, not into the neat alphabetical lines which she favoured. She wondered who was responsible, but she suppressed a small click of disapproval, not wanting to seem overly critical of her staff. There might have been a perfectly good reason for such oversight—an emergency taking place during the drug-round, for example—when all the bottles might have had to be put back quickly and locked, so that the staff could run to the aid of a patient.

With experienced fingers she swiftly realigned the bottles, then glanced up at the student nurse.

‘Do you know why hospitals are so obsessed with neatness and order, Nurse Galloway?’

Nurse Galloway cleared her throat. ‘Er—I think so, Sister.’

‘Yes?’

‘Er—it’s because hospitals are run a bit like the military.’

Jenny laughed. ‘And why do you say that?’

Daisy looked less shy. ‘My dad used to be in the marines, and he told me.’

Jenny nodded. ‘Well, you’re right! Like the services, we tend to have lots of rules, but there are reasons for those rules—we don’t devise them just because we want to make more work for the students, or to be awkward.’

‘Yes, Sister?’ asked Daisy interestedly. She loved Sister Hughes—even though she was a ward sister, you felt you could ask her anything.

‘Well, if I shouted for you to get me something urgently—a drug, for example, and we always kept our drugs in alphabetical order, you’d be able to find it immediately, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Alternatively, if a patient was having a cardiac arrest and I wanted the defibrillator, it would be of no use to us if the last person to use it had left it lying at the bottom of their ward instead of returning it to the corridor between Rose and Daffodil, now, would it?’

‘No, it certainly wouldn’t, Sister!’

‘There is “a place for everything, and everything in its place”, to quote the old saying, because the most orderly way of doing things is also the most efficient, and we need hospitals to be efficient. Not, of course,’ here she paused and smiled at the junior nurse, ‘that we must ever forget that we are dealing with people first and foremost, and therefore if a patient was depressed or worried about something then I’d expect you to find the time to sit down and talk to them. I wouldn’t bite your head off just because you’d missed a bit of ward-cleaning!’

‘No, Sister,’ said Daisy Galloway, and she tipped two ampicillin capsules into the top of the bottle and showed them to Jenny.

‘And why don’t we tip the tablets on to the palm of our hand,’ queried Jenny, ‘which would be the most natural thing to do?’

‘Because the patient’s drugs don’t want to be covered in the sweat from our hands,’ answered Daisy.

‘Even though, as a nurse, you should make sure your hands are thoroughly clean at all times?’ teased Jenny, and the junior laughed.

Jenny stood and watched while the patient took the tablets before neatly signing the drug chart. They moved along to the next bed, a new admission—a woman of fifty who had come in to have a hip replacement. Her operation was scheduled for the following morning, and she would probably only be written up for routine pre- and post-operative drugs, but Jenny pulled out the drug chart to check.

She bit her lip in annoyance to see that Leo Trentham’s large, untidy signature was scrawled all over it, but what was worse was the fact that he had chosen to write up the drugs in the most lurid shade of violet that she had ever seen.

Nurse Galloway noticed her frown and peered at the chart. ‘That’s certainly unconventional, Sister!’ she exclaimed.

‘It’s an eyesore,’ said Jenny curtly before shutting it swiftly. Why couldn’t he behave a little more responsibly? That kind of behaviour was more typical of a medical student than a qualified surgeon!

As they moved down the ward, Jenny discovered that Dr Trentham also had a penchant for writing in emerald green and turquoise—anything, in fact, other than the usual black or blue. Unconventional? He was that all right.

After the drug round the morning staff returned, and Jenny was given the report by the agency staff nurse.

The girl’s pale eyes glanced at her slyly. ‘Are you feeling better now, Sister?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Staff,’ said Jenny briskly and smiled, her eyes on the Kardex, showing that she wished to proceed.

‘Fancy fainting at the sight of Leo, although I can’t say that I blame you—he’s bloody gorgeous, isn’t he?’

Jenny was not standing for that. ‘I did not faint at the sight of Dr Trentham; I had received some very bad news, and I would prefer it if you refrained from using first-name terms with the medical staff—it confuses the students.’ Her voice was not unkind, but the firmness of it indicated that she meant what she said.

‘Yes, Sister,’ answered the girl sulkily, the emphasis on her title steeped in sarcasm, and Jenny’s heart sank. What was happening today? She seemed to be falling out with everyone. She knew a moment’s longing for the days before her holiday, for the easy camaraderie with Judy Collins and Dr Marlow. But she stifled her sigh. Those days were gone now, and she was going to have to work with these new people, like it or not. She attempted to inject a note of friendliness into her voice.

‘Of course, we can use first names in the office.’

‘Of course.’ The sarcastic reply was one of thinly veiled insolence, but Jenny decided to let it pass.

‘And what is your name, Staff? Doesn’t your agency provide you with a name-badge?’

The pale eyes lacked any warmth. ‘All they provide me with is a cheque at the end of each week—and that’s the way I like it.’

Jenny’s heart sank once more. She hoped that this girl was going to fit in. Most agency staff nurses she had worked with were fine, but she had known of one or two who had very odd personalities, girls who were interested only in the higher rates of pay which agencies provided. Girls who had been unable to find a permanent job elsewhere, for one reason or another. Some had been lazy so that she had had to chivvy them into doing work; they had never found work for themselves—and there was always something to do on a ward—but had had to be asked to do it.

Yet what choice did they have but to employ agency nurses? Nurses were in great shortage and the conditions were to blame. The pay was still appalling compared to many other jobs which required a fraction of the skill which nursing demanded. No wonder that nurses were leaving the health service in droves, to take on boring but highly paid office jobs, their professional qualifications wasted. And other dedicated nurses, such as Ella, Mary and Kingsley—fine nurses she had trained with—had been forced to seek work in Australia, where nurses were respected and highly rewarded, as they were in America and most other countries in the world. Only in Britain were they treated like paupers and second-class citizens, unable for the most part to even manage to buy houses on their meagre salaries.

Jenny smiled again at the moody-looking girl on the other side of the desk. Perhaps she had been a little abrupt—there was nothing wrong with the girl admiring one of the doctors, after all, though ‘bloody gorgeous’ was hardly the way she would have chosen to describe him!

‘So what is your name?’ she asked.

‘It’s India,’ answered the girl reluctantly. ‘India Westwood.’

‘India! What a pretty name! And so unusual.’

There was a slight hesitation. ‘I hate it!’

Jenny gave up. ‘Well, at least it’s not boring, like Jennifer!’ She glanced at the Kardex. ‘Now, then. What’s been happening to the ward while I’ve been away?’

Staff Nurse Westwood gave the report competently enough, although her voice lacked any real warmth when talking about the patients. But then she hadn’t been working there very long, and perhaps it was difficult to become involved when you were doing agency work since you never knew how long you were going to stay in one particular job. She could, in principle, be moved to another ward tomorrow, though Jenny knew that Sonia Walker would avoid this unless absolutely necessary—she attempted to provide some degree of continuity by sending agency staff to the same ward.

When the report was finished Jenny took the Kardex. ‘Thanks very much indeed, Staff. I wonder if you’d like to send the evening staff in to me, and I’ll tell them what’s going on?’ The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up. ‘Hello?’ She listened for a moment or two. ‘Right. I’ll do that. Thanks.’

She looked at Staff Nurse Westwood. ‘Mrs Curran is ready to be collected from Theatre—she’s had a bit of a nasty reaction to the anaesthetic, so I’d like a trained member of staff to collect her. Could you go—and ask two of the staff to move the beds round so that she’s right next to the office? I noticed that it hadn’t been done on my way round.’

‘I didn’t have time to do it,’ answered the blonde defensively.

No, but you had time to stand in the office in close cahoots with Leo Trentham, thought Jenny, but she said nothing. ‘I was just stating a fact, Staff—it wasn’t intended as a criticism. By the way—just before you go could you tell me what’s happened to my red ward-book? It seems to have disappeared.’

‘Oh, that!’ India’s voice was triumphant. ‘We don’t use it any more.’

Jenny had difficulty in keeping her voice calm. ‘Oh? Don’t we? Says who?’

‘Leo—I mean Dr Trentham. He says that those books went out with the ark. He hasn’t thrown it away, though—he’s put it in the top cupboard by the door.’