‘Give it some welly, Stephanie,’ Kenny said. ‘No need to be so miserable.’
I tried my best, but the mood in the lounge was sombre despite the residents quacking for “two little ducks” and whistling at “legs eleven”. It seemed I’d ruined bingo too, like I’d ruined everything else.
When the game was over, I gloomily packed it all away. Joyce was deep in conversation with Mr Yin, her hand resting on the book, and I hoped she was trying to persuade him to write a message. Goodness, if he was worried about privacy, he could write in flaming Chinese and none of us would be able to understand it anyway.
‘Stevie?’ Blessing stood next to me. ‘I’ve just had a call from the dementia unit. Apparently your nan’s asking for you.’
Well if anyone deserved to write in my book, it was my grandmother. ‘Is it okay if I pop over?’ I asked Blessing. She nodded, so I walked over to where Joyce and Mr Yin sat. ‘Could I take this?’ I said, putting my hand on to the book.
‘Absolutely,’ said Mr Yin.
I picked up the book and clutched it to my chest. Then I went to talk to my grandmother.
Chapter 35
Elsie
1941
It was a strange feeling to go to work the next day, knowing that as well as helping my patients, patching them up and possibly saving their lives, I would be taking a life.
My footsteps were heavy as I went towards the hospital, thinking that when I returned home, Nelly would be gone. But my heart was strangely light. Deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing. Nelly would no longer have to suffer the excruciating saline baths, or be forced to lie awake at night thinking about how slowly she was going to die. I was helping her – I knew that. I was helping her to avoid a terrible, painful, awful death. And I had made my peace with that. Almost.
The thought of putting the morphine into the syringe and pushing it into Nelly’s vein made me wince. It was so … physical. It was why I’d wanted to put it into her fluids at first, and why I’d been going over and over in my head if there was anotherway for her to take the drug. But there was nothing. It had to be morphine, and it had to be an injection.
I was working the night shift and I planned to go to see Nelly as soon as I finished. I thought that among the hustle and bustle of the morning rounds and the nurses handing over, I could do what I had to do and be gone again before anyone noticed.
And in the back of my mind was the knowledge that Jackson tended to wait for me beside the main entrance after a night shift. The last thing I wanted was him lurking in the corridors, getting in the way of me doing what I’d decided to do.
As it happened, though, events got away from me. The early part of my shift was quiet because the planes were coming in from the east tonight, following the river to their targets instead of the railway line. We could hear the anti-aircraft guns booming and our planes roaring overhead, but the bombs weren’t dropping so close to us. That meant that while we would no doubt have patients arrive in their buses later on, for now things were, if not calm exactly, then calmer than they’d otherwise have been.
And then I had a stroke of luck, if you could call it that. One of our patients, a sweet woman called Mrs Chalmers, took a turn for the worse. She had lost a leg in a raid, a few nights earlier. She’d been recovering but now she was going into shock and things were so bleak for her, that her doctor thought she would do better on ward 2 where there were more nurses to give her more concentrated care.
Matron phoned down to see if there was a bed available and when the ward confirmed they had space, she phoned for a porter to take Mrs Chalmers away. I wanted to make sure she’d had a chance to write in the book, before she got too poorly. I had a bad feeling that she wouldn’t be returning to our ward. But I didn’t want to ask her outright, because she looked pale and afraid and I didn’t want to make things worse for her.
‘She wrote a message you know,’ one of the other nurses saidout of the corner of her mouth as we gathered Mrs Chalmers’ possessions. ‘You did right by her.’
Pleased that the book was working exactly as I had intended, I made myself scarce in case Jackson arrived to take her, skulking at the back of the ward where I was unlikely to be spotted. But it was Frank who came and I was relieved. It was silly how I had started planning my days around whether I was likely to see Jackson, but he just made me feel so on edge, I couldn’t help myself.
Frank took Mrs Chalmers down to the other ward, and we went about our business. But then, just as the phone rang to tell us casualties from the East End were on their way, Frank came back from ward 2.
‘Elsie?’ he hissed. ‘Come here.’
With half an eye on Matron, who was on the phone looking grim-faced at whatever news she was receiving, I went over to where he stood.
‘Your Nelly’s not looking good,’ he said. ‘Nurse down there said she was suffering bad with the pain tonight. She thought you might want to go and see her.’
‘Now?’
He nodded. ‘If you can spare five minutes before the buses arrive.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Nurse said she thought she was giving up. Like she didn’t want to live anymore.’
Well, that was true enough.
Matron had hung up the phone and was briefing the other nurses. I nodded to Frank. ‘I’ll pop down now,’ I said. ‘Thanks for that.’
The buses were on their way, Matron said. And they were full to the brim. It was going to be a difficult shift – that was clear. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the bottles of morphine I had in there and I made a decision.
‘I’ll go and bring the patients in,’ I said. ‘But could I go now and pop in on Nelly on the way? Frank said she wasn’t great.’
