The Nightingale Nurses
Read The Nightingale Nurses Online
Authors: Donna Douglas
Contents
‘Pay attention please, nurses. The next six months will be the most important of your lives.’
It’s the final year of training for three young nurses at The Nightingale Hospital . . .
Helen
is at a crossroads in her life and begins to reconsider her future in nursing as she battles with her domineering mother over both her love life and her future career.
Dora
can’t stop loving Nick, who is married to her best friend, Ruby. But Ruby is hiding a dark secret with the potential to destroy Ruby’s marriage.
Millie
is anxious about her fiance Sebastian, sent to Spain to cover the Civil War, and things only get worse when she encounters a fortune teller who gives her a sinister warning.
With war looming in Europe, and the East End of London squaring up to the threat of Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, the women of the Nightingale have to face their own challenges, at work and in love.
Donna Douglas lives in York with her husband and daughter. Besides writing novels, she is also a very well-respected freelance journalist and she writes for numerous women’s magazines and national newspapers.
The Nightingale Girls
The Nightingale Sisters
Donna Douglas
Acknowledgements
The Nightingale Nurses
would not exist without the help and support of a lot of people. First, I’d like to thank my agent Caroline Sheldon for encouraging me to take on the project in the first place, and my new editor Jenny Geras for taking me on and becoming a part of the Nightingale world. I’d also like to thank the whole Random House team, especially Katherine Murphy for keeping the production on track, Andrew Sauerwine and his great sales team for getting the book into the shops, and Amelia Harvell and Sarah Page for making sure people heard about it.
I’d also like to thank the Archives department of the Royal College of Nursing for their tireless help in tracking down facts, the Wellcome Library and the Bethnal Green Local History Archives. Not to mention all the brilliant nurses who have shared their stories (most of which are too shocking to include!) and the lovely readers who have taken the Nightingales to their hearts.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my long-suffering husband Ken, who has put up with more hysteria than any man should ever have to suffer, not to mention coming home every evening to find me wearing the Pyjamas of Doom as deadline approached. And my daughter Harriet, who read each chapter as I wrote it, cheered and booed and cried in all the right places, and whose comments and enthusiasm kept me going. Sorry those sad bits made your make-up run on the bus . . .
To Ken, Harriet and Lewis
‘
PAY ATTENTION PLEASE,
Nurses. The next six months will be the most important of your lives.’
The classroom instantly fell silent. Florence Parker the Sister Tutor stood on her dais and surveyed the rows of third-year students over her pebble glasses. She looked like a sweet old lady with her comfortably plump figure and white hair drawn back under her starched cap. But no student ever made that mistake twice.
‘You have almost completed your three years of training. But you mustn’t get carried away with your success,’ she warned, her Scottish accent ringing around the walls, which were lined with diagrams of the human anatomy. ‘There is still much ahead of you. In October you will take your State Examinations. Once you have passed those – if, indeed, you pass them –’ she eyed them severely ‘– you will qualify and be able to call yourself State Registered Nurses.’
Sister Parker allowed a brief ripple of excitement to run through the young women assembled before her on wooden benches before going on. ‘After that, you may choose to continue your training in another field, such as midwifery or district nursing. Or you may be invited by Matron to become a staff nurse here at the Nightingale. But I must remind you, this is a very great honour, and only the very best will be selected.’ Her gaze picked out Amy Hollins on the back row, twirling a strand of blonde hair around her finger as she gazed out of the window. ‘Those who are not invited will, of course, be free to apply to other hospitals.’
Not that anyone would want that. The Florence Nightingale Teaching Hospital might be in a humble area of London’s East End, but it had an excellent reputation. Every student wanted the chance to call herself a Nightingale Nurse.
‘And then, of course, there is the Nightingale Medal itself, which is given to the most outstanding student in each year.’ Sister Parker gave a nod towards the far wall of the classroom, filled with photographs of previous winners. ‘That is something for you all to aspire to.’
She looked straight at Helen Tremayne as she said it. Helen sat in the front row of the class as usual, slightly apart from the other girls, tall and ramrod-straight, not a hair on her dark head out of place. If she didn’t win the Nightingale Medal, Sister Parker would eat her cap.
‘And now, girls, I have your ward allocations for the next three months.’ She went to her desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers. ‘As this is such an auspicious occasion, I thought I would hand them out rather than putting them up on the noticeboard in the dining room.’
She started to move along the rows of benches, selecting papers and placing them down in front of each girl. As she did, she heard the whispered prayers from the other side of the classroom.
‘Please God, don’t send me to Female Chronics. I don’t think I could stand three months of Sister Hyde!’
‘I hope I get Male Orthopaedics. I’ve heard it’s an absolute riot.’
‘As long as they don’t send me down to the Fever ward,’ someone else sighed.
‘What about you, Hollins?’ one of the girls asked.
‘I want Theatre,’ Amy Hollins declared firmly.
Then you’d better buck your ideas up, Florence Parker thought as she placed the paper down in front of her. Hollins stared back, her blue eyes insolent in her doll-like face. The blonde curls that peeped from under the edges of her cap tested the limits of the hospital’s strict dress rules. Perhaps if she put as much energy into her studies as she did into her social life, she might have the makings of a good nurse. But the reports that came back from the wards made the Sister Tutor despair.
She made her way back to the front of the class and placed Helen Tremayne’s paper down in front of her. She didn’t make a grab for it like the other girls did but sat perfectly still, eyeing it warily as if it might bite her.
‘Female Medical!’ said Amy Hollins, screwing up her paper, her voice full of disgust. ‘That’s so unfair. Everyone knows old Everett is as mad as a bat.’
‘If you’re unhappy with your allocation, I’m sure Matron would be pleased to discuss the matter with you.’ Sister Parker glared across the classroom at her. Amy blushed, her expression still mutinous.
The Sister Tutor turned back to Helen, who had finally steeled herself to turn over her paper.
‘I hope you at least are satisfied with your allocation, Tremayne?’ she said, peering at Helen over her spectacles.
‘Yes. Thank you, Sister.’
‘Your mother told me you were very keen to work in surgery. She mentioned you might like to be a Theatre nurse when you qualify?’
Helen looked up at her, and Florence Parker caught a flash of dismay in her large brown eyes before her gaze dropped again. This was news to her, Sister Parker could tell. Poor Tremayne, always under her mother’s thumb.
‘I’m not sure I’d be good enough, Sister.’ Her voice barely rose above a husky whisper.
‘Och, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble. You are an excellent student, Nurse Tremayne. I daresay we’ll be seeing your picture up on that wall of Nightingale Medal winners, before too long.’
‘I daresay Mummy will see to that, too.’ Sister Parker picked up Amy Hollins’ spiteful whisper from the back row. ‘It must be nice, having a mother on the Board of Trustees!’
Helen must have heard it too. She ducked her head, the tips of her ears burning bright red under her smooth dark hair.
Sister Parker remembered her last meeting with Constance Tremayne, when she had marched into the classroom and demanded that Helen be allocated to Theatre. After more than forty years as a nurse, Florence Parker did not scare easily. But Mrs Tremayne had made her feel like a terrified probationer again, being hauled in front of Matron.
She glanced back at Helen, picking at her bitten nails. Whatever Hollins might think, Florence Parker couldn’t imagine it was very nice to have Mrs Tremayne for a mother.
Helen heard the squeals of laughter drifting down the stairs when she returned to the nurses’ home with her room mate Millie Benedict after their duty finished that night. It was past nine o’clock and most of the nurses were preparing for lights out at ten, unless they were lucky enough to have a late pass or brave enough to risk sneaking in through the windows.
‘Listen to that,’ Millie said, as they took off their cloaks in the gloomy, brown painted hallway, taking care not to let their feet squeak too much on the faded lino. ‘It sounds as if someone’s having a party.’
‘Hollins,’ Helen replied. ‘I heard her planning it during supper.’
‘I’m surprised Sister Sutton hasn’t heard them, all that noise they’re making.’ Millie glanced towards the Home Sister’s door. ‘That’s typical, isn’t it? Hollins and her gang can get away with having a party, but if I so much as drop a hairpin on the floor Sutton’s banging on the door, threatening to send me to Matron.’
Millie pulled an expression of disgust. She was every bit as blonde and pretty as Amy Hollins, but with none of Amy’s hard edges.
‘Perhaps she’s asleep?’ Helen said.
‘Sister Sutton never sleeps. She prowls the corridor all night with that wretched little dog of hers, waiting to catch us poor nurses in the act of enjoying ourselves.’
They climbed the stairs, taking care to miss the creaking step halfway up that always brought Sister Sutton out of her lair. The dark polished wood was uneven under their feet, worn down by the footsteps of generations of weary young girls just like them.
As they reached the second landing, they heard another muffled shriek coming from the other end of the long passageway. Millie turned to Helen. ‘Will you be joining the party later, as they’re your set?’
Helen shook her head. ‘I have to study.’
‘I’m sure it won’t hurt to give revision a miss for one night?’
‘Not with the State Finals six months away.’
‘The others don’t seem to care too much about that.’
‘Perhaps they’re more confident of passing than I am?’
Millie laughed. ‘Hardly! Everyone knows you’re one of the best students at the Nightingale. You should go, Tremayne. You know what they say about all work and no play . . .’
‘I told you, I don’t want to!’
Helen started up the steep, narrow flight of stairs that led to their attic room before Millie could argue any more. She didn’t want to tell Millie that she hadn’t been invited to join the party, or how humiliated she had felt, sitting at the other end of the dining table while the others made their plans. She knew she should be used to it after three years. But it still hurt, even though she tried not to show it.