The Hive

There was a sense of uneasiness about this morning; it seeped along the shabby cream and green painted corridors, as real as the smell of breakfast and disinfectant and unemptied dressing buckets. It showed itself in the appearance of the staff, in carefully polished shoes and unusually neat uniforms, in scuttling hurry as they moved about the morning’s work.

The more junior the member of the staff, the more apparent was the uneasiness. The porter in the Main Hall carefully Sellotaping a newly written list of ward telephone numbers to the scarred wooden desk under the enquiry window; the first year nurses stacking bowls and bedpans in the sluices so that the cleanest were on top of the pile; even the scrubbing women in the corridors; all reflected an edged anxiety.

In the sisters’ dining room, the four tables were already being cleared, the floor was being swept and the sideboard laid for the midmorning lunch break. None of the sisters, not even Ruth Arthur, lingered over second and third cups of tea this morning. They went to their wards on the dot of eight, none of them making any comment about their unwonted earliness as they followed Dolly East, always the first to go, from their dark little dining room on the first floor.

Outside Matro’s office the Night Sister, a middle-aged woman with the thick greyish skin and muddy eyed look that comes from years of working all night and sleeping thinly by day, clutched her pile of report books and lists of bed allocations to starched apron, listening for sounds from behind the heavy door. In the ante-room next to the office, a typewriter clacked heavily as Matron’s secretary prepared the ward staff allocation lists for Matron’s attention, her back straight as she worked, her head slightly to one side as she too listened for sounds from the quiet office.

At eight fifteen precisely, the light on the indicator board over the door flashed green, and Night Sister took a deep
breath, and tapped lightly on the door before opening it to walk across the heavy green carpet towards the wide desk.

‘She’s moved it,’ she thought with hostility, as she paused in the middle of the room. ‘What did she want to do that for?’

Miss Biggs had had the desk in front of the fire, so that the hissing gas could warm her back as she sat, liking the sunshine across her blotter. But Miss Manton had put the desk under the window, and Night Sister, now standing in front of it, resented the flood of sunshine on her face, blinking a little as she looked at the woman behind it.

Miss Manton smiled and stood up.

‘Good morning, Sister,’ her voice was brisk, but warm, and Night Sister looked up at her, and again felt faint hostility.

‘Tall,’ she thought. ‘And she wears make-up——’

The discovery of lipstick and face powder startled her, and her own ‘Good morning, Matron,’ came after a slight pause, and not so slight that the younger woman did not notice it.

‘Do sit down, Sister. I’m sure you must be tired. I hope you had a quiet night?’

Night Sister blinked again. Sit down? She never sat down in Matron’s office. Every morning, for three weeks out of every four, she stood in front of the desk, presenting her night report to Miss Biggs, had done it for more than ten years.

‘No thank you, Matron,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m not tired yet. Though we were busy last night. Where shall I start? I usually begin with the Casualty Report.’

‘Then by all means start as usual.’ Miss Manton sat down again, and leaned back in her chair, her hands folded lightly on the blotter in front of her.

Night Sister recited her report, putting the individual books down on the desk as she finished with them, talking of the very ill, the post-operative cases, the discharges and admissions in the same flat unemotional voice she used to announce and describe the two deaths on the medical wards, the still-born baby on Maternity, the motor-cyclist who had filled Casualty with bustle and effort before he died.

‘Thank you, Sister,’ Miss Manton said, when she had finished, and stood with her own hands clasped on her apron front. ‘You were certainly busy. I hope tonight will be rather
less hectic for you. Now, if you don’t mind sparing another few minutes——’

‘Yes, Matron,’ Night Sister said, polite, but still feeling hostility tightening the muscles in the back of her neck. ‘Never mind my bed,’ she thought. ‘Sit down, but never mind my bed——’

‘I just wanted to ask you about your staffing situation. I gather you have three staff nurses, one on Casualty, one on Theatres and one float who relieves you.’

Night Sister nodded.

‘You find this adequate?’

‘Adequate?’

‘A total of four trained staff for two hundred and fifty beds is rather low, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve always managed very nicely. As long as I go on getting a third year for each ward, there’s no need for more.’

‘Oh, you’ll certainly go on getting that. If I can, I’ll increase the night student allocation. No, it was trained staff I was thinking about. If you want them.’

‘No thank you, Matron. In my experience, the more staff you’ve got, the less gets done. I’ve managed very nicely this past ten years on the allocation I’ve got. As long as you think I manage well enough, that is,’ and the emphasis she put on the word ‘you’ was slight, but an emphasis all the same.

Miss Manton smiled, her face shadowed because of the bright sunshine from the window behind her.

‘This is my first day, Sister! You must give me time. Though I have no doubt I will find you manage extremely well. However. We’ll leave this in abeyance for a while. Think about it, will you? Good morning, Sister. Sleep well.’

When the older woman had gone, Miss Manton rang her bell. The secretary appeared at the door promptly, her notebook well in evidence. Miss Manton smiled charmingly at her.

‘Miss Baker, isn’t it? We only met once before, I think.’

‘Yes, Matron,’ the girl said a little breathlessly. ‘The day you——’ and she blushed, and stopped.

‘The day I came for interview. Yes. Well, I hope we will work happily together. I shall need a lot of help from you these first weeks, Miss Baker. It takes time to learn all the day-to-day
details——’

‘Oh, I’m sure we will, Matron. And I’ll be only too happy to help all I can. If there’s anything—I mean, overtime, and all that—well, I don’t mind——’

‘I hope that won’t be necessary. Mustn’t keep you from your fiance, must I?’ Miss Baker twisted the ring on her engagement finger and giggled. ‘But I appreciate your offer. Now, I want you to do something for me. Will you telephone all the sisters, and tell them that for this morning only I must postpone the regular reporting. I’d like to see them all after lunch instead—between two and two thirty. Except for Sister Tutor. I’ll see her as soon as she gets here. No need to phone her.’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘And I’ll deal with the mail when Sister Tutor goes. Is there anything special this morning?’

‘Not in the mail, Matron. There’s just the Consultants at eleven o’clock.’

‘Ah yes. The Consultants. Very well, Miss Baker. I won’t forget.’

‘She’s ever so nice,’ Miss Baker told the head porter, who was hanging about in the ante-room ostensibly waiting for the internal mail tray, but eager for a report on the new matron. ‘Youngish, you know? And quite pretty, really. I mean, she must be about thirty-five, but after old Biggs——’

‘She was older than God,’ the porter said. ‘Pretty, is she?’

‘Well, in a way. I mean, she’s got nice hair—sort of reddish colour, and ever such a nice smile, and she wears make-up——’

‘Get away!’

‘She does, honestly! Not a lot—just lipstick and powder and that, but it makes all the difference——’

‘I’ll bet it does—imagine old Biggs with a bit o’ paint on her ugly old chops——’ He laughed. ‘Not that I minded old Biggs. She left you alone, like. This one—she’s the sort that’ll rush around stirring it up?’

Miss Baker became prim suddenly. ‘Can’t say, I’m sure. Now, you get on about the mail. It’s all there—yesterday’s lot. You’ll have to come back for today’s this afternoon. I’ve got some phoning to do——’ and she pulled the telephone importantly towards her and dialled the number of the Casualty
department, leaving the head porter to carry the letters and the small news he had gleaned about the new matron around the hospital.

As the morning moved on, the uneasiness that had been so much in evidence at half past seven slipped into the background, blending with the more usual worries of the day, with the rush to get wards ready for staff rounds, with the organised panic in the theatres, with the fight against time in the outpatient department as the waiting-room benches filled up and doctors in the clinics demanded attention.

The junior nurses forgot to think about the new matron and what she might say if she noticed unpolished shoes or laddered stockings or grubby aprons as the staff nurses and sisters chivvied them about as they always did. The staff nurses themselves, feeling the sisters relax once they knew they would not have to meet the new matron until after lunch, allowed themselves to forget their own anxieties about possible reallocation to different wards—something many of them were afraid the new matron would try once she really got going—and settled to their own enjoyment of their seniority. It was pleasant to be a staff nurse, to have the status and respect from juniors to which their black belts and frilled caps entitled them, without problems of complete ward responsibility.

As for the sisters—they carried on as they always did. A little more punctilious perhaps, more alert for signs of slipshod work, more irritated than usual by slowness on the part of a junior, but otherwise not showing any overt signs of their own fears for the future.

But they had them. There was not one of them who did not think a little about what might happen, now Miss Biggs had gone, Miss Biggs who had been content to let the hospital run itself, content to let the sisters organise their wards as they thought fit.

Josephine Cramm, the fat sister from women’s medical, was one of the first to put her fears into words. She found an excuse to go to the gynae ward to borrow a speculum as soon as her own ward was tidy; as soon as each bed had been straightened to unwrinkled whiteness, with the bed wheels Brassoed and turned into exact alignment with each other; as
soon as the flowered curtains hung in exact folds against the walls. Until this was done, until the long room with its thirty beds was in perfect order, with patients lying in neat rows, dozing or muttering vaguely at the ceiling in senile disorientation, until each nurse was busily occupied about tidying cupboards and scrubbing mackintoshes, she could not possibly leave her ward. Method and order—her own particular method and sense of orderliness—were Josephine’s struts in a disordered insecure world.

She had already had coffee and biscuits in her ward kitchen before going across the wide corridor that separated it from the gynae ward, but she did not refuse Ruth Arthur’s suggestion of another cup while a student nurse went to find the speculum she wanted.

Josephine, noticing the untidiness of Ruth Arthur’s ward, with patients moving about in dressing gowns or sitting gossiping over a radiator, thought with pleasure of the quiet tidiness she had left behind her in her own domain, and followed Ruth into her ward kitchen.

Ruth, her sleeves rolled up to show freckled arms, a smudge of blood on her apron, settled herself at the scrubbed wooden table and began to tidy her hair and apply make-up as Josephine poured the thick milky coffee into the china cups, each one with a scrap of adhesive plaster on the handle marked ‘Sister’s tray
only
.’

‘God, I look a mess.’ Ruth peered at herself with amused resignation in the mirror she had propped on the table. ‘Too many late nights, that’s what it is. I need a holiday. Roll on July. I’m going to Venice—all those luscious Italians—mmm!’ and she grinned a little wickedly at Josephine and applied lipstick carefully before beginning to back-comb her hair into a fluffy fringe.

Josephine was abstracted, sipping her coffee, and staring at Ruth over the edge of the cup.