Bittersweet Page 6

  “I graduate as a registered nurse,” she said demurely, “and will be free to accept dinner invitations. Until then, I’m forced to study in all my free time.”

  He might have argued, but Sister Moulton was bearing down on them with her fifteen-inch guns loaded. Dr. Cranshaw vanished.

  “Ta, Sister,” said Kitty.

  “Unmarried doctors,” she said later to the other three, “are a pain in the bum.”

  “Tell me something I haven’t learned for myself,” said Edda.

  “Neil Cranshaw bothering you?” Tufts asked, and doubled up with laughter. “He asked me to dinner at the Parthenon the other day — caught me on the ramps doing a message for Sister Smith. So I stood there and stared at him, slowly sucked my lips together like a fish, and crossed my eyes. He ran away.”

  “Mind you,” Edda said, “Corunda Base doesn’t get the cream of the Sydney Med School crop. They go to Vinnie’s and RPA and North Shore in Sydney. We don’t get the worst, but they’re pretty awful.”

  “Where else would a Stan Laurel like Cranshaw be called the hospital heart-throb?” Tufts asked.

  “He does have that woebegone Stan Laurel look,” Kitty agreed.

  “He always reeks of cheap cigars,” said Grace, “and I can’t stand red hair on a man. In fact, girls, there’s not a doctor here I fancy. They all think they poop ice-cream.”

  Happily for Dr. Neil Cranshaw, he wasn’t privy to these remarks, nor was he aware that Nurse Treadby, who looked like a Botticelli angel, possessed a tongue salty enough to rival the Dead Sea. So he continued to make a nuisance of himself on the Children’s ward, free to plague Kitty because he was rotating through Dr. Dennis Faraday’s service at the moment; Dr. Faraday was Corunda’s child specialist, loved and respected.

  The ward was just emerging from a frenzied battle against an epidemic of diphtheria that had been imperilled by insufficient stocks of specially modified rubber tubing used to assist a child to breathe. A typical Frank Campbell false economy; Deputy Matron Harding had to take the morning express to Sydney, pay far too much for stocks from a medical supplier, then return on the night train to find that Liam Finucan had rigged replacements out of ordinary tubing that worked well enough to avoid what would have been two negligent deaths. As with all infectious children’s diseases, only the worst cases were hospitalised — over a hundred patients between two and twelve years of age with laryngeal diphtheria: a malignant membrane in the swollen throat expanded to block the airway, which this modified piece of rubber tubing kept open. It was a serious epidemic that saw seventeen children die and four require some months of hospital care due to heart complications.

  There were always two empty but absolutely ready wards at the end of a special ramp to serve as an isolation area for epidemics, but the last time they had been used so intensively was in the three years following the Great War, when influenza killed more people than the war had. It always seemed too that very lethal epidemics attacked children or younger adults; perhaps, thought Edda, if a body had survived everything to reach old age, it was tougher, far harder to kill.

  Kitty hadn’t nursed in the diphtheria wards. Sister Meg Moulton had preferred to keep her in Children’s proper, though Grace, Edda and Tufts all did duty on diphtheria. For Kitty it was double shifts and cancelled days off, but the crisis in available nurses was acute. Only a number of volunteers, retired West Enders, saw Corunda Base survive.

  In a private, unpublicised way, the diphtheria epidemic marked a victory for Kitty, a triumph she shared only with her sisters.

  “Dinner at the Parthenon any night you care to name?” asked Dr. Neil Cranshaw of Kitty while she was making beds.

  And suddenly it was all too much. If there hadn’t been a diphtheria epidemic — if the hospital owned a decent sheet — if Cranshaw didn’t have such a sloppy mouth — !

  “Oh, for Crissake, you dopey moron, shove your invitations up your flaming arse! Now piss off and leave me alone!”

  He would have been less surprised if a butterfly had savaged him during a walk in the garden; certainly he never thought of fighting back. A blaze of violet from those usually blue eyes had him scuttling out of the ward like a mouse evading a straw broom.

  7

  By the time that June of 1927 rolled around, the Latimer sisters had been nursing for fourteen months, entering their second winter under Frank Campbell’s administration, and had conquered all their foes and bogeys. How Grace had lasted the other three didn’t know, save that her streak of cunning stood her in good stead, and her nursing, now that she was more or less inured to messes, passed muster; it had come as a refreshing surprise to learn that not every day brought messes.

  They had rotated once through all the wards. When June dawned Kitty was back in Children’s, together with Tufts. Edda had been convinced someone would spot the likeness between the twins, but not even Sister Meg Moulton did; the uniforms concealed their bodies and the differently coloured eyes dominated their faces. It also helped that Kitty liked caring for boys, whereas Tufts preferred girls, so they were usually seen as individuals.

  “Report to me in my office, nurses, as soon as you return from lunch,” said Sister Moulton with unusual curtness.

  “What on earth is the matter?” Tufts asked Kitty over ham sandwiches in their house. “However, my conscience is clear.”

  “That was said with a smirk, Nurse Sanctimonious. Since I know Moulton far better than you do, I’m going to guess that we are about to be handed some sort of special job.”

  The correct guess, as they found out half an hour later in Sister Moulton’s office. Dr. Dennis Faraday was there too, both of them looking grave.

  “Because the case you will be nursing will also be a brief one, Matron has suggested that the four new-style trainees be assigned to it,” Dr. Faraday said in his deep, pleasant voice. A very big man who had been a famous rugby football player in his youth, he reminded those who met him of a benign, friendly brown bear — brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes — and possessed an indefinable magic in handling children.

  “Under ordinary circumstances,” he went on, “dying children are nursed on the ward as far as possible. However, the child you will be nursing cannot be subjected to curious eyes. Corunda is a hotbed of gossip, and child patients have many visitors. Your patient will be nursed in isolation, away from outsiders. The child’s name is Michael Vesper, but he responds to Mikey. He’s riddled with metastatic sarcoma and suffers terribly. A tiny dose of opiate liberates the most wonderful little boy — so cheerful and so grateful! He knows he’s dying, and he’s a hero.”

  The doctor’s eyes shone with tears; Sister Moulton sent a glare at Kitty and Tufts that warned them not to discuss Doctor’s emotions. “When I can, nurses, I’ll give you the police reports, the Almoner’s notes, everything I can find about Mikey.” Dr. Faraday blinked, drew a breath. “Mikey is two years old, but looks no older than twelve months. Until today, he has been undiagnosed and untreated. Were it not for the curiosity of our District Nurse, he would never have been noticed or rescued. I give him about two or three weeks to live, but I am determined that those paltry few days will be the happiest and most comfortable of all Mikey’s life.”

  Dr. Faraday moved to the door. “Sister, further explanations are in your hands.” And with a smile, he disappeared.

  The ensuing silence seemed to last for hours; in reality, a few minutes that saw Grace and Edda arrive, learn what was about to happen. In fourteen months they had never served together as a quartet, nor would they nursing Mikey Vesper, though he was their only patient. Kitty and Tufts elected to do 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. together, Grace did the night shift, and Edda was spell nurse.

  “Matron chose you,” said Sister Moulton, “chiefly because you won’t gossip to anyone. Why she’s so confident I have no idea, but I accept her judgement. What I personally want to say is that you retain some measure of detachment. Mikey Vesper is a heart-breaking case, but if you let him break your hearts, you�
��ll never achieve registration.”

  “We will survive, Sister,” said Edda.

  But Sister Moulton wasn’t finished. “How much of Mikey’s malnutrition is due to cancer metastases and how much to sheer neglect we don’t know, except that both have contributed. Worst of all is that Mikey has never mattered enough to anyone to develop an identity. He’s no more and no less than a nuisance underfoot. His mother is forced to work harder than most slaves — Vesper sells her services as a laundress. District Nurse doesn’t know if she’s mentally dull or the victim of a language barrier — the family is German, and has only been in Corunda eighteen months. Children are something the poor woman gestates, bears, and suckles until they’re old enough to eat and drink. There are three boys between thirteen and sixteen, then a gap followed by three girls between six and nine. And Mikey, aged two.”

  “Why the gaps, Sister?” Tufts asked. “Was Vesper serving prison sentences?”

  Meg Moulton’s blue eyes grew round. “That’s a clever deduction, Scobie. Sergeant Cameron could make police enquiries.”

  “Are the boys in school?” Kitty asked.

  “No, definitely not.” Sister Moulton sighed. “Well, you have to know, and you’ve been nursing long enough not to be shocked. The headmaster of the Corbi school has lodged a complaint with Sergeant Cameron. The three little Vesper girls have all been interfered with by their father and their brothers.”

  “The youngest is only six,” Edda said, mouth dry, “and none has reached puberty.”

  “So Vesper must be aware that trouble is coming from all directions,” said Grace, who had grown enough not to cry. “He ought to be hanged!”

  “They won’t do that,” said Tufts, “but he will go back to jail for a long time.”

  Junior Sister poked her head around the door. “Michael Vesper is here,” she said.

  Room One was too tiny to have contained a full-sized bed, but Mikey Vesper was in a cot that accommodated him spaciously. Though Kitty knew his age, he did indeed look no more than half of it, and the abdominal distension that went with malnutrition gave a false impression of substance. He had a fine fair skin and curly brown hair; immense dark eyes set in an oddly elderly face told his story, for they were stern, intelligent, composed. Not a beautiful child, save for the eyes. A highly experienced nurse, Meg Moulton knew Mikey was one of those children with the power to haunt even waking dreams.

  Overlooked and underfoot in his own home Mikey might have been, but his sarcomatosis had thus far spared his brain, as Tufts and Kitty, sharing a long double shift, soon discovered. Both of them understood that Mikey was one patient who would be given as much opiate as he wanted to stem the intractable pain; addiction was not a consideration for a dying patient. And he was so grateful for a tiny drop of opiate! What must his agony have been like, month after month as the cancer spread, without anyone attempting to ease his torments? Morphine had him beaming — thank God he wasn’t one of those it nauseated! Not that he begged for more opiate; he saved the injections for real need, explaining to Grace in the middle of a wakeful night that if he was sedated all the time, he wouldn’t know all his lovely nurses the way he did. Kitty danced the Charleston for him while he laughed and clapped, Tufts danced the seven veils with Frank Campbell’s darned sheets, and Edda played tunes on metal bowls and basins, singing nonsensical songs. Whatever his nurses did for him, Mikey loved.

  His only visitor was Maria, the middle Vesper girl, who would appear like a ghost out of nowhere to stand at the foot of Mikey’s cot and listen as he breathlessly regaled her with all the wonderful things his nurses were doing for him, from the needle pricks that eased his pain to the craziest Kitty song-and-dance. Not that Maria visited every day; perhaps one day in five. What she couldn’t possibly have mistaken was Mikey’s devotion to Kitty. Though he loved all four, Kitty held pride of place in his heart. What transpired between the two Vesper children remained private; the nurse on duty was almost inevitably Kitty, who respected their family ties by leaving them alone for fifteen minutes if Mikey was well enough; Maria’s visits always saw his condition improve.

  Sergeant Jim Cameron of the New South Wales Police Force had grown very interested in the Vespers, between Mikey’s neglect, the schoolteacher’s complaints that Bill Vesper and his sons were sexually molesting the Vesper girls, and his rooted conviction that Vesper was rustling fat lambs. Head of the Corunda branch of the police, Cameron had a feeling he ought to call in the experts from Sydney, but his streak of Scots stubbornness kept saying no to outsiders. The Vespers were his problem, and he could solve it.

  Pauline Duncan the District Nurse had been a kind of catalyst for Sergeant Cameron, who knew her well. On the day Mikey Vesper was admitted to hospital, Sister Duncan had been called out before dawn to help with the mopping up of a brawl in the gypsy camp under the West Corunda River railway bridge. Having dealt with bruises and stitched up a couple of knife slashes, she climbed into her Model T and headed back into town. The old house in which the Vespers lived was on her way, and the niggling doubt she sometimes felt about Bill Vesper caused her to slow down, then stop. Why not? she asked herself. I’m actually here, so why not take a peep inside? The male Vespers won’t be here at this hour, maybe I can have a talk to that poor woman…

  Mrs. Vesper was boiling sheets in a copper outside the back door, and the three daughters, home from school with black eyes, were helping her. A tiny boy hobbled between their legs, weeping silently, and from time to time one of the females would brush him aside. A single glance was enough. Pauline Duncan rushed forward, scooped the boy up, and ran to her car. With the child on the passenger seat next to her, she drove straight to Dr. Faraday’s rooms. An hour later, Mikey Vesper was in Corunda Base, and Sergeant Cameron was having a fuse lit under him by Dr. Faraday.

  As for Mikey’s nurses, warned not to become haunted, it was far too late.

  “How could anyone treat a little child so cruelly?” Kitty asked.

  “A man like Bill Vesper doesn’t even know what cruel means,” said Grace, wiping her eyes. “If people don’t want children, then they shouldn’t have them.”

  “Huh!” snorted Edda. “There’s no way to prevent having them.”

  “Then I’ll make sure I marry a man who can support them,” said Kitty, chin up.

  “Don’t tempt fate, Kits,” Edda said. “If any of us could see into the future, fortune tellers wouldn’t enjoy fat incomes. Look at the film stars Grace is always blathering about. They all consult clairvoyants. Yet, when you think about it, what can possibly worry a film star?”

  Tufts grinned. “An unwanted baby?”

  Under the influence of so much love and care, Mikey’s dying slowed. If his days weren’t always free of pain, Dr. Faraday kept that pain as bearable as possible without causing coma. Mikey’s favourite treat was to be towed up and down a disused section of ramp in a wooden pony-cart painted bright yellow, with his nurse playing a whinnying, stamping pony. Only Grace never experienced the joy of being Mikey’s pony, but Grace knew Mikey had some very bad nights, and that they were his time to talk.

  Pain and deprivation had pushed his brain into a precocious maturity, but anyone expecting enlightened wisdom from his lips would have listened in vain. His thoughts, albeit a trifle advanced for his years, were still very much the thoughts of a toddling boy. What earned him love was the sweetness of his disposition, and what earned him admiration was his bravery.

  “Or perhaps,” said Grace to Edda, changing shifts, “what really makes Mikey so lovably memorable is his refusal to complain. And I should know!” Her face puckered. “How terrible, to be taught that lesson by a two-year-old!”

  Wisely, Edda did not reply.

  As the milestone of one month loomed for Mikey, his pain grew suddenly even worse, which meant the pricks of opiate grew more frequent. He couldn’t manage to eat any more, subsisting on chocolate-flavoured milk shakes and barley sugar or butterscotch toffees.

  “Tired, Kitty,” the
child said just after he passed one month as a patient, “terribly tired.”

  “Then sleep, darling.”

  “Don’t want to sleep. Soon I won’t wake up.”

  “Oh, tiddly-pooh to that, Mikey! There’s always a waking up.”

  “Not for me. Too tired.”

  When Maria came on her visit, Sister Moulton told her to give her mother and father the message that Mikey would not last out another twenty-four hours; the little girl nodded and left. That afternoon a drunken Bill Vesper and his three drunken sons arrived at the hospital demanding to take Mikey home. Frank Campbell’s response was to summon the police, who, led by Sergeant Cameron, threw all four Vespers in the cells to sober up. Next morning, hung over but compos mentis, nothing was said about Mikey or his removal from hospital; the Vespers climbed into their ancient utility truck and drove away.

  At dawn of that same day Mikey endured a sudden shift in his spine, where the primary growth was, and began to scream. The shattered Kitty summoned Meg Moulton, who summoned Dr. Faraday from a sound sleep at home.

  Finally the screaming stopped; Kitty was holding Mikey in her arms while Dr. Faraday prepared his injection. The child’s eyes opened and he smiled at Kitty, let out a breath as if to start saying something. Smiling back, Kitty waited to hear what he would say, but no breath came.

  “Put your syringe away, sir,” she said to Dr. Faraday. “Mikey has passed from life.”

  “Thank you. You know what to do, Nurse,” Dr. Faraday said, and left the ward.

  She laid Mikey out, wrenchingly aware how quickly such a tiny body cooled. By the time she had prepared him for his final rest, Mikey’s flesh was cold, cold, cold…

  No one saw Kitty slip away, down the ramp to her private bolt-hole, where she had taken to retreating after Mikey arrived. It wasn’t raining yet, but the winter sky was lowering with dense grey cloud, a bitter wind was blowing, and the ramps were deserted. Her place was an old tree stump under a section of ramp bridged to let a streamlet trickle away. Groping blindly for the stump, Kitty sat down on it with hands clenched, and felt the tears pour hot down her face. Mikey, Mikey! Why put you on this earth at all if your only purpose was to endure two years of pain, pain you’ve done not one thing to deserve? How I hope there is a heaven full of yellow pony-carts and chocolate milk shakes!