It Shouldn't Happen to a Midwife! (12 page)

I was torn between guilt and outrage and a cold sweat gathered on my forehead. I had to swallow hard, eventually uttering, ‘She's not actually accusing me of theft is she?'

‘Well no, not really, ‘ Lisa sounded miserable, ‘but she couldn't have made it up about the locker. What were you doing with it?'

‘Returning it to Denise, and I think I need to see her now. I'm really insulted. I've had a few things thrown at me in nursing but this has got to be the worst.'

I had tried to keep my voice down but Oliver appeared as if at a reveille.

‘Something up then?'

‘Oh, not at all. I've just been accused of stealing, that's all. How dare they!' My voice trembled.

‘How so?' He sounded clinically interested.

Lisa held up a placatory hand. ‘I'm sure there's some misunderstanding and the ring'll probably turn up any minute now, but right now it's lost and Denise is really upset about it.'

‘Not half as much as I am.' I was grim. ‘Where's that bloomin' Sister?'

‘Not on duty till later which is why she wanted me to speak to you. She wants it sorted out before she comes on duty. Said in a thing like this, time's of the essence.'

‘She would and what does she think I have – a magic wand?' I figured a less disciplined person might have stamped her feet. I merely took a deep breath and gritted my teeth.

Plainly one for avoiding scenes, Oliver suddenly looked at his watch. ‘Excuse me, but I need to do something. I'll be back in a jiffy and hopefully in time for a delivery.'

‘You can have them all.' I was sour. ‘Certainly I won't be around to stop you.'

Oliver made a line of his mouth and said as he left, ‘Don't you be doing anything rash now.'

Lisa pulled on her curls. ‘Ah, Jane, now, we're not accusing you of stealing. Things are always going missing between wards. I'm sure it'll turn up.' She seemed almost relieved when Dr O'Reilly's voice, full of urgency, called from the corridor, ‘Prolapsed cord! Theatre! All Staff! Now!'

We poured into the corridor.

Had there not been an illustration in the midwifery textbooks I might have thought that this patient kneeling on a trolley on all fours and resting on her forearms was engaged in some form of Irish worship. Actually, this was the position needed to stop an umbilical cord coming before its baby. No wonder then that the mother was being whisked into theatre where a team was rapidly assembling, focussed on getting that baby out before the cord could block the life it had so far nourished.

In a previous existence I had been badly let down by the wilful vagaries of an operating table, determined to reach the ceiling despite my best efforts to get it do otherwise. I had learnt the hard way and now knew how to get instant co-operation as well as to do something clever and on the same lines as de-clutching. I leapt into theatre and got the table tilted before it had time to change its mind.

‘Good girl,' approved Dr O'Reilly, ‘nice light touch of feet there.'

I could have snapped, ‘To match my fingers?' but there was enough drama going on to put any old and missing ring on the back boiler. Why on earth had I thought childbirth was a straightforward affair?

The atmosphere round the operating table reflected the silent tension of people having to deal with lives in the balance. Still, and compared to normal labour, a Caesarean section was quick and quiet. One scalpel cut was enough to produce a dazed-looking baby with such a startling immediacy I looked for a zip whilst wondering aloud why Sister Flynn wasn't promoting Caesareans as necessary for fine tuning the assembly line that was labour ward.

‘It's dangerous. Needs a backup team,' Lisa explained, nodding at the anaesthetist and paediatrician, as engrossed in their work as a sewing bee. ‘Patient might haemorrhage, baby could be affected by the anaesthetic and then there's all the problems of post-operative care and the discomfort of clips.' We watched as Dr O'Reilly, appearing to have swapped needlework skills for those of a joiner, stapled the final layer of skin on a now-flat abdomen.

‘Just another wee miracle,' he said, pulling off his mask to allow a big beam to bring sunshine into the place. ‘Thanks, Staff. Great team. Couldn't have done it without you.'

The baby was put in the quiet of an incubator whilst I was left to look after the patient until she was ready to go to the post-natal ward.

‘Have you counted her jewels?' I had asked, but Lisa had just shaken her head and hurried away.

I was lying on my bed, considering the ceiling and hoping that, like this morning's patient, having my feet higher than my head would be beneficial.

There was a knock at the door, so timid it must be Marie.

‘Come in!' I shouted, incapable of moving.

Marie sidled in, leaving the door open. She was carrying a piece of paper and gazing round-eyed as if legs resting halfway up the wall had mystic significance. Since there was nothing unusual about her looking anxious I presumed all was well but felt maybe I should explain the prone position.

‘It's been a killer of a day. In fact, so bad that at one time I thought I should just pack my bags.'

Conversations with Marie tended to include some benign if unseen presence at her shoulder, since she usually kept darting her gaze over it as if to get reassurance before speaking. This time, however, there was no delay as she gasped, ‘Sure, and is that not what Seonaid's actually doing? She's been given a terrible dressing down from Matron and had a warning.' She plucked at my arm then ran to the door. ‘Come and see her, Jane. I've tried speaking to her but it's hopeless. She's one suitcase full already. It's a desperate situation so it is.'

I got up as quickly as throbbing corns would allow. ‘You're beginning to sound like a proper Belfaster, come on.'

She put the paper down on my bedside locker.

‘What's that?'

‘Just a wee map of all the nearby churches, all denominations. You never know when it might come in handy.'

‘Right now,' I said following her, ‘if we'd the time.'

Seonaid was sitting on a suitcase, trying to shut it. Normally chaotic, her bedroom had progressed to a war zone. Her uniform, screwed into a ball, was jammed into a corner whilst books lay in a jumble beside her suitcase. Underwear, papers and dresses littered the floor whilst her cap had been flung in the waste paper bin. The only neat thing was a pair of tap dancing shoes tidily placed at her feet.

‘I don't remember it being this difficult packing,' she said in a matter-of-fact sort of way, ignoring water overflowing from the hand basin. ‘Marie, you're not missing any babbies are you? I think I maybe packed one in by mistake.' She sat on the lid, bounced on it, then sucking her lip in frustration, said, ‘Come on and lend us your weight. I need to get it shut before midnight.'

‘Indeed, and we will not, and that's not why we're here.' Marie's saints must have knocked off, leaving her surprisingly forceful. ‘Jane, go and turn off that tap or we'll all drown. And would you look at the state of this room?' Tut-tutting, she started to pick things up from the floor, giving the proper respect to Seonaid's record book and a collection of shoes, the height of which made my sleeping bunion wake up and wince. If Seonaid was going to leave, she'd be better with walking shoes.

Outside these convent-like walls there was a different life, with the Falls Road traffic muttering about its business, whilst in the distance a recent fall of snow had covered the Belfast hills. Their forbidding countenances had been gentled into soft folds. When the weather was better we would have to go and explore them.

‘Marie says you've been given a hard time by Matron. What on earth's that about?'

Seonaid twiddled her toes, apparently a riveting sight. ‘That oulde yoke Father O'Patrick went to visit her. He told her about me seeing Mrs Murphy and said I was interfering outwith the hospital and had persuaded her to have a sterilisation. Well, and much as I might have wanted to, I didn't. Anyway, I thought the Doc. would do a better job of it.'

‘Did you tell her that?'

Seonaid shrugged. ‘There wasn't much point. Sure I couldn't have interrupted her anyway – she's used to holding the floor. Remember when that Stormont fella came to make us take that oath of allegiance ? I'm surprised she let him take centre stage and didn't knock him off his perch. Then, of course she wasn't best pleased either at a priest – a priest! – coming knocking and complaining at her door.' Seonaid scratched her head thoughtfully as if to prompt her memory. ‘Oh yes! Then she said I shouldn't have been out in the Falls wearing the hospital uniform. The way she said it you'd have thought I'd gone down it naked!' She got up off the suitcase and stretched. ‘Anyway, I could tell she was really pleased to get me into her office, gave her a chance to have a go about not buying her book as well.'

‘She never mentioned that, did she?' Marie was scandalised.

‘No. She just said she suspected I lacked application and would find the course difficult if I didn't use every learning tool available.' Seonaid's laugh was bitter. ‘Well, I'm going to make it easy for myself and for her so I'm just going to leave – I can't be arsed with the hassle.'

She picked up a pair of tights and slung them in a bin. ‘It's probably best this way anyway, saves time. There's plenty other things I could be doing. Now, would either of you have a spare suitcase there?'

‘You didn't actually say you were leaving, did you?' I asked, crossing the room to look down on the street where a double-decker was waiting at traffic lights. They were a dull red in comparison to the colour of the bus which carried a sign advertising the cheering qualities of drinking Red Hand Guinness. A pint of it might have done some good to the sole passenger, a man wearing a flat cap and looking as dismal as Seonaid.

Beckoning the girls to come and have a look, I tapped the window and pointed. ‘Quick! See him down there? He looks as if he's going nowhere.' Seonaid wrinkled her nose but came anyway. I nudged her. ‘And that's where you'll be going if you leave. Honestly, Fitzy, I've never thought you'd be such a coward, but one measly little row and you're off packing your bags.'

Seonaid, continuing to look mulish, stomped back to her packing but stopped when I added, ‘At least she didn't accuse you of stealing.'

‘Mother of God!'

At least I'd impressed Marie.

‘What happened?'

I told them about the pan and the ring and how Sister Flynn, coming on duty, had taken me aside.

‘And what did she say?' Marie had been rinsing a mug which was one of a pair Seonaid and I had bought in a small shop off Grosvenor Road. We'd wanted to own something with a homely touch. Being thick and having a florally design as busy as Seonaid's bedspread, it had fitted the bill. Marie was drying it as if in a trance.

‘Give that to me. You'll polish off the design and I want to pack it.' Seonaid stretched out a hand and looked surprised when Marie batted it away.

‘Go on with your wee story, Jane.'

‘On our way to the office she asked me what I was doing with the locker and I was just about to tell her about the blessed pan, in front of everybody 'cause by that time I didn't care who heard, when who should appear but Oliver.'

Seonaid looked up in surprise.

‘Oliver!'

Now she was interested.

I paused for a moment to look out the window again and smiled, thinking back to the arrival of someone so unused to the novelty of bearing good news he was only able to pass it on in a casual way. The traffic lights had changed, the bus had moved on and I had an attentive audience.

‘Come on, stop teasing us. What did he do?'

I blew out my cheeks as if recovering from a marathon, remembering Oliver whose leisurely entrance had been anything but athletic. ‘Well, he just strolled in and said as if to the world in general and nobody in particular that the ring had been found. Denise's husband had taken it from the locker and brought it back home, as he was frightened it'd get lost. Denise was asleep when he took it so of course she wouldn't have known anything about it.'

Marie gave a little glad scream, which is what I might have done at the actual scene had I not wanted to see Sister Flynn's reaction. I was more sorry than amused to see her stretching her collar so that she could breathe easier. She was never going to apologise but had managed, ‘That's good. Now carry on with your work. I think you should get the next delivery. It's due any minute.'

‘So what did you say to Oliver?' Seonaid's return to curiosity was almost worth all that trauma.

‘As soon as I could, I asked him how he'd managed to come up with the goods. He said he'd phoned Denise's husband. It was the logical thing to do.' I didn't feel the need to say that that moment had been in the unlikely setting of the sluice where he'd followed me and got so close we were at squinting range.

‘I knew you couldn't possibly have stolen the ring,' he'd said. ‘For one thing, it would've been too small for you, and for another, your fingers seem to come in pairs. I can't think why you got yourself in such a silly situation.' Then, and so unexpectedly I hadn't a chance to get away, and with a bed pan handle sticking in my back, he'd leant over and stopped all talk with a kiss which had more power but much the same effect, I imagined, as a spin drier.

‘I think you owed me that. Now we're even,' he'd said before walking off with the sly look of a successful poacher. Gratitude might be out the window but I thought people who stole such personal property might have some virtue.

‘Well, all I can say is, good for Oliver. He certainly put you out of your misery. Though, honest to God, he doesn't look very much like a saviour. A puff of wind would blow him away.'