bother asking. I knew that I had to make it on my own, and I was utterly determined to do so, no matter what it cost.
4
Hospital life is all about disease, birth and death, so I knew, sooner or later, I would have to be dealing with all these things first hand. I was quite trepidacious, but also curious. Plus, after my disgrace of fainting away in the morgue, I had begun to get used to seeing all sorts of things on the wards, although we were usually given very menial tasks to do, which were still mainly about scrubbing everything in sight with carbolic and Dettol, or rolling up bandages, emptying bedpans, folding linen and mopping the floors. However, after a few months we were being given more challenging, albeit still fairly basic, tasks to do. Fairly soon after I started, I was on a stint of night duties, which was also all very new to me. In charge was a horrible woman, whom we nurses called ‘the Beetle’. She was small, dark, with a tight bun, and she scuttled around, keeping us in check. We were terrified of her, and Sister Morten became ‘the Beetle’ thereafter: someone we always had to keep our eyes open for, but who would often surprise us by appearing and scaring the life out of us.
It’s often the way that people die in the early hours of the morning, something to do with our bodily rhythms, whereby people reach a low ebb in the middle of the night. Thus it was I was confronted with handling my very first dead body one dark mid-winter night. It was three in the morning, and I was already feeling exhausted, when Sister came and told me that Mr Johnson had died. He was a retired ex-policeman, a nice old man with a big handlebar moustache, rather like Jimmy Edwards, the popular entertainer. That night I was on the ward with twenty patients, all of whom needed things like bedpans, fresh water jugs or more medication. The nurses would sit at the end of the ward at a little table with a light on, doing paperwork and keeping watch. It was quite a quiet night, until Sister came up to me and whispered, ‘Nurse Powell, go and lay out Mr Johnson.’
The flowery curtains were already pulled round Mr Johnson’s bed when I arrived on the scene, jittery as a kitten. I felt quite spooked by what I might see, and hesitated for a moment, feeling anxious. Luckily, the twenty other patients on the ward were snoring away, but I was alone, as the other nurse had gone on her ‘lunch break’ (which was a meal in the middle of the night). I was very nervous as I drew the curtains and saw him lying there, in the half light. I sort of half expected he might sit up and start talking, like in a horror film, so I watched him to see if he was really gone for a minute or two. There was no breathing, so that was it. Next, I had to wash him down, so I got a bowl of soapy water and a sponge, then starting at the top of his head worked my way down all the way to his toes. This turned out to be a very long way as Mr Johnson was about six foot five, with his huge bony feet hanging over the end of the hospital bed.
I felt so sorry for him having died that I started crying. I was uncontrollable. Poor old Mr Johnson, I was thinking to myself, dead and gone. His life was well and truly snuffed out. What would his family be feeling? Would they miss him? As usual the tears were flowing, and mixing with the soapy water as I washed and wiped away at his poor old body. I actually felt quite horrified by what I was doing. I’d never touched a dead body before, although I’d seen the headless monster in the morgue. I was curious at the icy marble texture of his skin and how his face had begun to sink in as his jaw slackened. I saw his eyes had sunk into his head and I shook involuntarily, feeling quite spooked out by it all. He now looked very different from the Mr Johnson who had sat up in bed while I took his temperature and pulse, only yesterday. There was an eerie silence in the ward around me as I washed my way down the poor old man’s body. I noticed, slightly squeamishly, that he had started oozing from his orifices and I had to plug them with cotton wool as I worked. It felt so weird to do this to what had been a warm human being only a few hours earlier: he had been a sentient being, with a history and feelings. Now he was like a waxwork, although he’d never be an Araminta, I thought wryly.
Anyway, the worst part was to come, when I got to his middle, or rather, to his ‘private parts’. I had no idea what to do at all. The poor man had a catheter sticking out of his penis and I had absolutely no idea how to get it out. There was no one around to ask, and I couldn’t bear the idea of going to ask Sister, in her hidey-hole office, who would bite my head off as soon as look at me, so I got the rubber tube and started yanking, then pulling, then wrenching, trying to get the damned thing out. Poor Mr Johnson’s body was going this way and that, and his head was bobbing up and down, in a very undignified way, as his willy was yanked hither and thither by me. I was desperate to get that tube out. I could feel my heart racing, while my mouth was dry, as panic was rising. I bent over the poor man’s penis, and was examining the tube close up, yanking and pulling all the while, when I suddenly heard a fierce whisper hissing behind me, ‘Nurse Powell, what on earth do you think you are doing?’
I stood up, red-faced, tube in hand, and Mr Johnson’s body did a ghastly jump, led by his willy (which was still firmly attached to his catheter). I must have looked a total sight, tears still pouring down my panicked face, with my hands going all over his private parts. Sister stepped forward and got out her scissors on their little chain and neatly snipped the rubber tube and the catheter slid out, nice as pie. I stood open-mouthed, feeling such a fool. ‘Next time, use your common sense, will you, Powell,’ was all Sister snapped as she turned and left me alone again with the battered body. So undignified. I said sorry to Mr Johnson right there and then for all I had put him through, and cried some more tears of sympathy. I said a little prayer for his soul … and, of course, the other parts that had got a rude walloping from me.
Then I had to lay him out, which is what all of us nurses were taught to do, as preparation for being taken to the morgue. When he was finally finished, I called Staff Nurse to check him over. It had taken me an absolute age, since I had had to keep stopping to blow my nose throughout as I had found the whole thing traumatising. Staff came along briskly and emptied his locker of his worldly goods. There were a couple of packets of Woodbines in there, packs of twenty, which, amazingly, patients were allowed to smoke on the ward. Back then it was thought that smoking calmed their nerves … there was no thought of cigarettes being a health hazard; in fact, quite the opposite. To my horror Staff said, ‘Let’s take these Woodbines. His relatives won’t notice,’ and with that she pocketed them. I was amazed at her attitude, but I didn’t object. I’d been in enough trouble for one night. However, I thought it was a very bad thing to do, and I didn’t feel comfortable being ‘party’ to our crime. Yet, once we were on our break, and Staff got the fags out, I smoked a couple. I really needed a smoke after all that – I was gasping.
I think during that first year I was often naïve about the rules, or I failed to follow the strict regulations, as I was used to always trying to skirt round them back home. It was force of habit for me to be a bit rebellious, I suppose. Also, a means of survival. I tried to be good, and tried to be the best trainee that I could possibly be, but I had a mischievous streak and often acted on impulse or said things without thinking them through. However, I was still really desperate to prove my mother’s prediction about me being hopeless and a quitter was wrong. I was not going to be sent home, tail between my legs. I was going to succeed: I had to, as it was a matter of life and death. Thankfully, some of the more experienced nurses took pity on me. Sometimes we spent hours hunched over the sinks on night duty scraping poo and vomit off sheets with our scrubbing brushes and bare hands, which got sore and rough. We were scrubbing and cleaning endlessly; one of my more experienced nurse friends, Beryl, used to joke that pushing the enormous floor mop would increase her breasts, so we all sang a comical ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust’ with every strenuous bush stroke across the floor.
We would also spend hours folding linen in the linen cupboards, and if I was on nights it would get very warm and soporific in there. I had a pal, a third-year nurse, Sandy, who surprised me one night by clearing a space on the enormous second shelf (which was about ten foot long and two foot deep) and telling me to get up on the shelf, and lie down to take forty winks. ‘No,’ I protested. ‘If the Beetle finds out, she’ll have my guts for garters.’ ‘Go on with you,’ Sandy encouraged. ‘You’re all in. Have an hour. I’ll wake you up.’ I could see she meant it, so