Free Home for Christmas by Annie Groves Page A

with great relief that she found Sister Casualty waiting to take over the minute they got inside the hospital.
    Sister Casualty’s sharp knowledgeable eyes took in the situation at a glance, her voice calm and modulated into the tone that Sally remembered being taught to use in extreme emergencies so as not to frighten the patients, as she instructed the porters, ‘Straight to the top of the queue for this one, I think, please,’ before giving Sally a brisk nod of her head and asking almost casually, ‘Would you like someone else to take over there for you, Nurse?’
    ‘I’ll hang on, if that’s all right, Sister. Might as well see it through,’ Sally responded in the same almost off-hand tone, as though there were no emergency at all.
    Despite the heaviness of the Casualty staff’s workload, within seconds – or so it seemed to Sally, who was beginning to feel slightly light-headed – Eric was in a hospital bed with her still holding both his arm and the piece of glass, the curtains had been pulled round the bed and the senior registrar was bending over Eric’s arm.
    ‘Did you see what happened, and if so, any idea how deep it’s gone in, Nurse?’ he asked her.
    ‘At least as far as the bone, I think,’ Sally responded. ‘Definitely deep enough to cut an arterial vein.’
    ‘Mmm. If you can hang on we’ll give him a shot of morphine and then take a proper look.’
    Sally nodded.
    ‘Not one of these nurses that is likely to faint on me are you?’
    ‘Nurse Johnson is a theatre nurse, Mr Pargiter. I doubt anything is likely to make her faint,’ Sister Casualty’s voice came to Sally’s rescue, leaving Sally to marvel at Sister Casualty’s knowledge – until she caught a glimpse of George standing behind her.
    ‘Come and have a look at this, Laidlaw,’ the senior registrar told George. ‘Damn near sliced the whole arm off, by the looks of it. But for the quick thinking of this nurse, the chap wouldn’t be here now.’
    ‘It was nothing. I just happened to be passing when the glass fell. He and some other men were demolishing a burned-out building.’
    Sister Casualty herself administered the morphine. She had arrived accompanied by a slightly green and very round-eyed nurse – still a probationer, Sally saw from her uniform – and a more senior nurse pushing an instrument trolley.
    ‘Heart’s beating a bit too fast for my liking,’ the senior registrar told George. ‘What we’ve got to hope is that we can get the glass out without it breaking. Didn’t happen to see what it looked like before it went in, did you, Nurse?’
    ‘Long and sharply pointed V-shape,’ Sally responded.
    ‘Mmm, well, at least that means that it isn’t likely to have splintered already on impact with the bone, but we’ll be lucky if the tip doesn’t break off when we remove it. What I want you to do, Nurse, is to keep holding the glass steady but move your hands up a little so that I can get hold of it.’
    Sally could see the look Sister Casualty was giving her. A look that said she would be letting all Barts’ nurses down if she misjudged things. George, on the other hand, was giving her a look of total reassurance. She just hoped his faith in her was justified. She could almost feel the silence in the small curtain-enclosed area as she very slowly and carefully moved one hand and then the other further up the glass. Her whole body felt as though it were trembling inside, but she knew she must not allow that tremor to get into her hands.
    Even when Mr Pargiter had placed his hands on the glass below her own, Sally hardly dare so much as exhale in case she jarred the glass.
    ‘Come over here, Laidlaw, and see if you can tell just what we’re dealing with,’ the senior registrar instructed George.
    Watching her boyfriend carefully exploring the site of the wound with one of the instruments from the trolley, his whole concentration on his task and the patient, Sally was filled with fresh admiration and