Amy's Touch (23 page)

David’s concentration was diverted when the double swing doors to the ward opened. In strode Ben and Dot Quinton, jointly supporting their teenage son, George. The boy’s face was flushed, he could hardly walk, and there was a telltale blueness around his mouth, evidence that he was having trouble breathing. Ben’s features were pinched tight with worry, and his wife, renowned for her toughness, looked as if she were going to burst into tears.

As Patsy guided George to the one empty bed, David approached with his stethoscope in hand.

‘He’s pretty crook, Doctor,’ Ben stated the obvious. ‘We’ve been looking after him at home for several days, but he isn’t getting better.’ He glanced sideways, almost accusingly, at his wife. ‘He’s getting worse.’

‘I thought we could manage, but…’ Dot murmured, wringing her hands together in her anxiety.

‘Well, he’s here now. Let’s see what can be done. Patsy, find a hospital gown while I check George over.’

‘He’ll be all right, won’t he, Doctor?’ Dot asked in a fearful whisper. ‘I’ve heard…’ She stared hollow-eyed at her and Ben’s only child and her hand clamped over her mouth.

David sounded the boy’s chest and felt his forehead. George was burning up, his fever reaching its peak. Experience told him that the next twenty-four hours would be critical. ‘He’s young and he’s strong, Dot. Once the fever breaks he’ll improve dramatically.’ So long as the flu didn’t degenerate into pneumonia, he thought.

‘Come on, Dot, let the doctor and nurses do their work,’ Ben said. Taking hold of his wife’s arm he tried to shepherd her from the ward.

Amy came up to them. She looked at George and his parents, recognised the anxiety in their faces. ‘Go on home and try to rest,’ she advised. ‘We’ll look after George.’

Dot Quinton studied Amy in her nurse’s uniform. It was one of the few times she had seen her in her official capacity at the hospital. Her anxious gaze roamed around the long hospital ward, studying the women seeing to patients, the neatness and cleanliness, the hospital’s overall efficiency. A raised eyebrow preceded her question to Dr Carmichael, ‘Who’s in charge?’

‘Amy,’ Dr Carmichael answered. ‘She’s been appointed matron by the hospital governors and me.’ And then he verbalised his earlier thoughts. ‘The state nursing authority has recognised her as being suitable to be matron, because of glowing reports from medical authorities in Britain about her work during the war and at the time of the Spanish Flu.’

Dot’s eyebrows lifted another quarter of an inch and the expression in her eyes was a mixture of scepticism and surprise. ‘Really? But…isn’t she too young for such a responsible position?’

‘The hospital board doesn’t think so. Neither do I,’ David replied.

Amy was helping Patsy get George into a hospital gown, making up his bed and positioning him high on three pillows to assist his breathing. She almost smiled as she heard her father’s firm tone. David Carmichael was a gentle man who rarely criticised anyone, but she knew he didn’t have a high opinion of Dot Quinton. Still, whether one liked her or not, she was obviously concerned about her son.

Dot looked at Ben. ‘You go home. I—I want to stay here to help look after George.’

‘There’s no need for that, Dot.’ Amy’s tone was firm. ‘Someone—me or Sister Osborne or one of the nurses’ aides—will watch George around the clock until his fever breaks. It would be best for you to go home and rest.’ She glanced at her father, who nodded in agreement.

Dot Quinton gazed at her son. His eyes were closed but his breathing was wheezy and laboured. ‘Promise you’ll let me know if there’s any change…’

‘Of course,’ Amy assured her. She almost sighed with relief when Ben led his wife out of the ward.

‘Amy, I want you to go home and get a few hours’ rest before you fall flat on your face,’ David ordered his daughter.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t. Sarah’s been on duty longer than me. I’m sending her home for six hours’ rest. When the ward settles down I’ll grab a little sleep in the operating room.’ She and Sarah were the only senior, fully trained nurses at the hospital, and they took separate ten-hour shifts so that for twenty out of twenty-four hours of each day one of them was on duty. For months Amy had been petitioning the board for another fully trained nursing sister, but they kept postponing making a decision. And while Therese, Rosemary and Rebekkah, the aides, were progressing well, it would be years before they became qualified nurses.

‘That’s not good enough,’ David criticised, his forehead furrowing in a frown. ‘Your devotion to duty is admirable, my dear. However, I don’t want you coming down with this dreadful flu because you’re run-down.’

‘I’m fine, Father. I survived the Spanish Flu.’ She gave him a tired smile, and her shoulders squared determinedly. ‘I’ll survive this.’

David Carmichael threw up his hands in defeat. Experience told him that further argument was pointless. ‘All right.
I’ll
go home for a couple of hours. Call me if you need me.’

Amy barely waited till he was half a dozen steps down the centre aisle of the ward before she beckoned Patsy and Valda Smith to George’s bedside. ‘Patsy, get a bowl of tepid water and several washcloths. We’re out of aspirin and sulphur and won’t have a supply till tomorrow. We’re going to sponge-bathe George to try to lower his temperature. The tepid washes should be done every two hours throughout the night.’

And that was what the three women did, but by six a.m., when a worried Dot Quinton sneaked into the ward to check on her son, his
fever still hadn’t broken. His breathing was worse, shallower, and he looked exhausted from the effort of trying to drag air into his lungs.

‘Oh, dear God…’ Dot Quinton had to grab the metal bed-end to support her weak knees when she saw George. ‘W-why isn’t he better? He’s been here all night, he should be getting better,’ she whispered fearfully to Amy, who’d been sitting at his bedside, wiping his arms and torso with a cloth to bring his temperature down.

Amy didn’t want to tell Dot that her son was bordering on developing pneumonia. She didn’t think the woman’s nerves could take that. ‘He should be, but sometimes the fever persists. When it breaks you’ll see a marked improvement in him.’

‘Where’s your father?’ Dot demanded. ‘Why isn’t he here, looking after my boy?’

‘Dot,’ Amy was so tired she was almost seeing double, ‘there’s nothing more the doctor can do. We have to wait. I know that’s a hard thing to ask of a worried parent, but until the drugs arrive there’s little more we can do for George other than keep him comfortable.’

Dot stared at Amy, and the businesswoman’s tough exterior crumpled. ‘Don’t let him die, Amy.
Please.
’

Past differences of opinion between the two women were swept aside as Amy rose, walked to the end of the bed and put an arm around Dot’s weary shoulders. What could she say? In all honesty she couldn’t promise that George would get better, not at this point. The flu had a strong hold on him and he was getting weaker by the hour. Then, through the veil of tiredness dulling her thoughts, came the image of someone she’d known several years ago when she was in Britain. Her friend Jessie Mills. Amy had fought with all her being to save Jessie’s life from the Spanish Flu, but in the end the illness had claimed her. It had taken a long time to come to terms with Jessie’s death and to realise that sometimes understanding why some survived and others didn’t was beyond a person’s capacity: it was just fate.

‘I promise to do everything possible to save George,’ she said quietly to Dot. Even if she wore herself out in the process, she vowed.

‘I—I’d like to stay and help, like Patsy and Valda. Can you find something for me to do?’

Amy blinked, surprised by Dot’s offer. To the best of her knowledge, Dot Quinton never did anything unless there was a sound business reason or a financial gain behind it. It was amazing what the illness of a loved one—and, Amy believed, a slightly guilty conscience—could do.

‘Of course. Go to Valda, she’ll give you some tasks and be pleased to do so.’ Amy watched Dot give her son another glance then go over to where Valda was assisting a patient to take fluids to avoid becoming dehydrated.

By mid-morning Byron Ellis had delivered the aspirin and sulphur and patients were given their doses. In some, a rapid improvement occurred, but not for George Quinton. His condition continued to deteriorate despite Amy and everyone else’s best efforts.

‘He’s drowning in his own mucus, isn’t he?’ Valda said quietly to Amy, who’d never left the boy’s bedside. ‘Fred and I have seen horses die from similar problems.’

Amy didn’t answer but she studied George closely. He was going in and out of delirium due to his high temperature. Sometimes he threshed about in the bed, and at other times he lay so still she could barely see his chest rise and fall as he struggled to breathe. As she watched, an article she had read in one of her father’s medical journals, the
Lancet
, came back to her. If the mucus, or at least some of it, could be excised, in this case by vomiting, the patient could be expected to improve. But how was she going to make George vomit when he was battling to breathe—and there was the added risk that he could choke while vomiting.

Amy took a calming breath as she weighed up the worthiness of trying a radical procedure. Her father had been at the hospital for a while, but was now at his surgery in Primrose Cottage, where he didn’t like to be disturbed when seeing patients. Sarah Osborne hadn’t come on duty yet so there was no one of real consequence to debate her idea with. Besides, if she decided to risk the procedure she had to give George an emetic of some kind that would make him readily vomit. Warm water and mustard or salt would probably do the trick.

As if sensing the mental debate Amy was having, Dot came over to the bed to check on George. She patted his hand and looked at his hospital gown, which was damp with sweat. ‘Isn’t there something else we can do, Amy?’ she pleaded with the nurse. ‘He seems to be getting worse.’

Amy couldn’t claim otherwise and Dot knew it, just as she knew that George was dangerously close to slipping into a coma; if he did, the chances of saving him were not good. If only the hospital’s suction apparatus hadn’t broken down. Being able to suck the phlegm out might have helped. ‘I’m going to get him to take some water. If he can keep that down, it’ll be a good sign,’ she said slowly. What she
didn’t tell Dot was that she intended to put salt in the water in the hope that it would make George vomit. For several moments Amy debated whether she should advise Dot of her intention, but finally she decided not to. The woman was worried out of her mind about her son, so why add to her troubles? Her chin tilted determinedly: it would work, it had to. But if it didn’t and…
No
, she wasn’t going to think about that, she was trying to save the boy’s life.

Amy prepared her ‘mixture’. She had to spoon-feed it to George slowly as he dropped in and out of delirium. His temperature was hovering at 103.2 degrees Fahrenheit and she knew his body couldn’t take much more of that, and that his internal organs would soon start to shut down.

She didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. Watching George closely, she saw his eyes pop open and widen, and one hand grabbed his stomach. As he began to heave, she sat him upright and grabbed the bowl she’d placed near the bed. He made a gurgling, choking sound in his throat and brought up a mouthful of vomit, which was mostly yellowish-green mucus. She helped to support him as he continued to bring up the remaining contents of his stomach and a percentage of what was clogging his bronchial tubes and lungs.

Dot and Sarah Osborne, who had just come on duty, rushed over to George’s bed. ‘Oh, God,’ Dot exclaimed, ‘what’s wrong? Why is he being sick?’ She was rarely ill and had little idea of what it was like to be around or to tend to sick people.

‘This is good, Dot. George’s body is fighting the infection, getting rid of the phlegm,’ Amy fabricated and gave Dot a tentative smile. ‘With a little luck, once he’s settled we might see a drop in his temperature. If we do, I’m hoping that another dose of sulphur will have a positive effect.’

Sarah was looking at her strangely, but made no comment as she passed Amy another bowl to catch the phlegm George was disgorging. She picked up the glass Amy had been using to spoon-feed the patient and brought it to her nose, which wrinkled as she inhaled the faint odour of salty residue.

‘I’ll get clean sheets and give George another sponge-bath,’ Sarah said. She looked at Dot. ‘You can help with that, Dot.’

An hour passed and George’s temperature didn’t spike upwards on the chart. He began to breathe more easily and rest comfortably. Amy was happy to let Dot sit with him and sponge his face, neck and forehead. She was so tired she could barely walk, and she knew that if she didn’t lie down soon she would fall down. She made her way to
the operating room, aware that it wasn’t being used, where she found Sarah talking to her father.

‘She took a risk, Doctor, you can’t deny that,’ Sarah said quietly, and flushed with embarrassment as Amy came up to them.

Amy was not so tired that she didn’t understand what Sarah was telling her father about the emetic she’d given George Quinton.

‘I’m not denying it, but it worked where, quite probably, nothing else would have,’ David defended his daughter.

‘There was a risk,’ Amy admitted, ‘but I’m not sorry I took it. If you want to report me to the hospital board, do so.’

‘N-no, Amy, I don’t,’ Sarah stammered. ‘Still, you know as well as I do that you shouldn’t make such decisions without consulting your father.’

Amy shrugged one shoulder. ‘There wasn’t time. George’s condition was deteriorating rapidly. If I had to make the same decision again, I would.’

‘All right,’ David cut in. ‘Let’s agree not to discuss the matter further, and what occurred does not leave this room. In George’s case the treatment worked, but it should not be tried again without referring to me.’ David gave his daughter a meaningful look, which said as clearly as words that she should curb her tendency to act independently. ‘Now, young lady, you are going home for at least eight hours’ rest.’ He saw that she was about to query his order. ‘No buts, no objections. Off you go.’