.

I try and keep my eyes open. There is a period at about three o’clock every morning when my body feels as if it is leaking away through the floor boards. I don’t think I will ever be closer to death until I am in a coffin. After that the system seems to pick up a bit and soon one is plunged into a whirlwind of activity as one prepares to hand over the patients to the day nurses.

      Once one goes on night duty one has joined the enemy. Everything that goes wrong is blamed on the night nurses. All those warning labels I copied out for Sister Bradley were intended to be read by night nurses who would otherwise plunge the whole system into chaos. Every broken thermometer or cracked teacup is blamed on the night nurses. The day sister who takes over from us practically runs into the sluice as if she expects to find the place knee deep in vulture droppings.

      Cilla and I are alone on the ward and expected to shout for help if something serious crops up. There is a night sister who is attached to a number of wards and our one reminds me of the ladies in that Wagner music you hear on Two Way Family Favourites—The Ride Of The Val Doonicans or whatever it is. She is a big lady and though she tries to be stealthy her size ten beetle crushers can be heard a couple of wards away. In full flight she looks like a How the West Was Won wagon carried away by the wind.

      There are also a number of house surgeons who apportion their presence according to the needs of the patients under their control—e.g. they go to the wards where the nurses are prettiest and provide tea and biscuits. Cilla has a number of admirers and when they are not hurriedly taking their feet off the table in the middle of the ward as night sister crashes into view, she goes and visits them.

      Nurse Cilla Bias—or Labby as I find she is called—is no prude when it comes to chucking out details of her love affairs and confides to me that she has indulged in what she calls ‘a stand up quickie’ in one of the private patients’ rooms—when it was unoccupied, I hasten to add. The fortunate recipient of her favours appears to be a houseman called Tom Richmond who plays for the hospital rugby team. He weighs about three tons and I can see why Labby does not want him on top of her—I wonder if she would have been the way she is if she had been called Enid Bias?

      The hospital is mad keen on rugby and brain surgeons are second class citizens compared to the likes of Tom Richmond. Medical students are selected more for the size of their muscles than their grey matter and the senior surgeons are more interested in Queen Adelaide’s carrying off the inter-hospital knock-out cup than performing the first underwater heart transplant.

      Cilla says that she used to think it was called the knock-out cup because it went to the hospital that knocked out most of the opposition. She says that there is blood everywhere and that before the game everybody parades mascots and pelts each other with bags of soot. It seems pretty daft to me but Cilla says that it is ‘absolutely soopah!’

      When Cilla and Tom Richmond start staring into each other’s eyes across the patients’ records I feel about as welcome as honeymoon cystitis and slink away to check the diabetic specimens or perform some other totally unriveting chore. It is even worse when Cilla slips away on one of her little visits because I find it very spooky when I am alone. The only light comes from above the table in the middle of the ward and shines in from the corridor and it is easy to confuse the figures turning in their sleep with somebody moving amongst the beds. Often I have been nearly asleep and woken with a start convinced that there is someone coming towards me. A cold chill will make me turn round quickly to discover—nothing.

      Once, when Cilla comes tip-toeing back from one of her trips and rests her hand on my shoulder I nearly jump out of my skin.

      Two patients who do not sleep all through the night are Mrs Tiger and Mrs Black. Mrs Black is white and Mrs Tiger is black as Christmas Eve in the coal shed. Mrs Tiger has a bed at the end of the ward by the French windows and Mrs Black sleeps next to her—or rather she does not sleep next to her. Mrs Tiger is a very restless sleeper and mumbles and talks all through the night. To hear her going on sometimes you would think there was actually someone there with her.

      “I can’t stand it,” complains Mrs Black, who must be about eighty and not exactly Bamber Gascoyne when it comes to getting it together. “It’s all Black Magic, you know.”

      “Giving her an upset tummy, you mean?” I say. “I didn’t think she was allowed chocolates anyway. I’ll tell—”

      “No, no, no, silly girl. I mean witchcraft. She’s talking to the spirits of her ancestors. Sometimes they answer her back.”

      “Can’t you tell her to talk more quietly?”

      “She can’t do anything about it. She’s not in control. She says she’s been taken over.”

      “I’ll see if we can give her a tablet,” I say soothingly. “Now you must try and get some sleep.”

      “I hope the man doesn’t come tonight.”

      “She talks about a man, does she?” I say tucking in the sheets.

      “She talks to a man. I saw him once, at the end of the bed.”

      Poor old thing, I think to myself. Definitely going soft in the nut. “I’ll give you a tablet, too,” I say.

      The next evening, when we come on duty, Sister Belter, the day sister, is bristling like a jelly pincushion. “I don’t know what you two were up to last night,” she says. “But I don’t expect my nurses to have to clear up your litter.”

      I don’t know what she is talking about. Perhaps Cilla left a tea cup unwashed. I can see Cilla looking at me and thinking the same thing.

      “Bones under the beds,” says Sister Belter. It sounds like the title of a detective story.

      “Bones?”

      “Chicken bones.” Sister looks us up and down disdainfully.

      “I suppose those large frames need some filling.” Sister Belter is a small pinched woman and whoever pinched her could take her back again without any fear of prosecution from me.

      “It must have been one of the patients having a midnight snack,” says Cilla. “It wasn’t us.”

      “Surely, if you were doing your jobs properly you would be aware of a patient munching chicken. Anyway, the patients all denied that they had eaten anything.”

      ‘Where did you find the bones, sister?” I ask.

      “Underneath Mrs Tiger’s bed. What’s so funny, Nurse?”

      “I was just thinking about tigers and bones,” I say trying to keep a straight face.

      “I don’t find it a laughing matter, and neither will you if I find any more litter tomorrow morning.”

      “I hope she cuts herself shaving,” mutters Cilla as Sister flounces off. “You didn’t have any chicken, did you?” Labby returned flushed and glowing from an hour with Doctor Richmond the previous night and so was not in the best position to keep abreast of all my movements.

      “Of course not! I’d hardly be likely to bung the remains under the bed, would I? Sister must be nuts.”

      Labby settles down to tell me what happened in the maids’ room on the third floor and I soon forget about chicken bones.

      “Aren’t you frightened of someone coming in?” I ask.

      Labby giggles. “I was last night. The floor polisher was still plugged in and Tom stood on the control. He said I nearly ruptured him when I jumped in the air. For a moment I thought that great whirring noise was him.”

      “How sexy,” I say. “What happened?”

      “I had to turn the light on in the end. Tom’s trousers were round his ankles so he couldn’t move and the cleaner knocked him on the floor. The buffing pads ripped his Y-fronts to pieces, so you can see what a good job it was that he was somewhere else at the time. I kicked over half the brooms in the place before I found the light.”

      What a boring life I lead, I think to myself.