‘Pity we can’t get the Thames to give us that kind of pressure for our pumps,’ another of the firemen who had now gathered around joked in that way that men do when they are desperately concerned.
‘I’ll be all right, Nurse, if you can just take this glass out of me arm,’ the injured man assured her in a thready thin voice.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to do that. Doctors all over London will go on strike if a mere nurse takes over their duties,’ Sally responded. ‘We need an ambulance or, failing that, stretcher,’ she told the other men without turning her head.
She was already concerned that her patient might lose his arm, and she dare not risk trying to remove the glass in case she caused even more damage. Her comment about doctors, though, seemed to reassure them because they started telling her that they’d rather have a nurse treating them than a doctor any day. Meanwhile Sally had seen some men hurrying away in search of an ambulance, and the nearest ARP post.
Two of the firemen were back, one carrying the fire engine’s first-aid kit, which was placed on the ground and opened for her.
‘I’ll need a nice short straight piece of wood for the tourniquet,’ she told them, and almost before she had got the tourniquet bandage in place, exactly what she needed had been produced.
It was a relief to get the tourniquet on. The man had already lost a serious amount of blood, and was now unconscious. Sally didn’t like the colour of him, or the weakness of his pulse, now that his body had gone into shock from the accident. She hoped that an ambulance turned up soon, because she didn’t hold out much hope of his surviving for very much longer without proper medical attention.
‘Here comes the stretcher.’
Sally turned to see two ARP wardens hurrying towards her with it.
‘It’s going to be a while before we can get an ambulance to you. The ambulance service has been overwhelmed with calls,’ one of the wardens told her.
How long was ‘a while’? The man desperately needed hospital attention. Sally looked towards the empty flat-bed lorry belonging to the salvage crew and made up her mind.
‘We can get him onto the stretcher and then, provided he wasn’t the driver of the lorry . . . ?’ She paused.
‘He wasn’t, miss, I mean, Nurse,’ one of the men told her. ‘John here is the driver.’
John, bashful and very young, removed his cloth cap as he was pushed forward by the others, and rubbed a hand over his dust-covered face before confirming that he was indeed the driver.
The main problem, as far as Sally could see, was going to be the piece of glass firmly embedded in her ‘patient’s’ arm and which must stay there.
‘I’ll need enough men to get . . .’ she paused and John the driver supplied her patient’s name, as ‘Eric’, revealing two missing teeth as he did so.
‘. . . We need to get Eric onto the stretcher and then into the lorry as carefully as possible. I’ll stay with him and hold onto his arm and the glass. We need to keep both as still as we can,’ she explained to the men.
If one of the many newspaper photographers recording the devastation left by the bombs had been around, he would have got a photograph like no other, Sally thought ruefully when, in order to carry out her instructions, the salvage men, along with the firemen, formed a group to lift not only their workmate, but Sally herself, bodily into the back of the flat-bed truck.
Not that any of the men took advantage of that intimacy – far from it; their reluctance to look at Sally as they lifted her assured her of their respect.
Instead of an ambulance siren to speed their progress, an ARP warden rode with Sally and the four men who were holding down the stretcher, and the warden blew his regulation whistle to clear the way.
The only time they were stopped was when a policeman stepped out into the road in front of them, tilting back his helmet as he demanded to know why the warden was blowing his whistle when there wasn’t an air raid on. However, as soon as the situation was explained to him they were waved on their way with great alacrity.
Although Sally’s amateur stretcher-bearers had made a Herculean effort to keep the stretcher steady, when she could see the entrance to Bart’s casualty department ahead of them Sally felt very relieved. Eric was still unconscious and his breathing had become worryingly shallow and fast. Her own fingers were practically numb from holding his arm with one hand and the glass with the other, and she was praying that she could continue to keep hold. At least he wasn’t losing blood any more, thanks to the tourniquet.
The very moment they came to a halt an indignant ambulance driver came rushing over to the lorry.
‘You can’t park here, mate. This is for ambulances only.’
‘This is an emergency,’ Sally could hear the ARP warden telling him from the passenger window of the driver’s cab. ‘Take a look in the back and see for yourself.’
The next minute an ambulance driver’s head appeared over the side of the lorry, his eyes widening as he took in the scene at a glance.
‘Cor blimey,’ he exclaimed, then called out to his partner, ‘Frank, get some porters here, will you, mate?’
Once again all the men studiously avoided looking at Sally as she was lifted out of the lorry along with her patient, and it was 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