Nurse Kitty's Unforgettable Journey

by Maggie Campbell

Genres: Family Life

Synopsis

An enjoyable read about love, courage and discovery during a time of change in post war Britain. A lovely story! KITTY NEALE

When Nurse Kitty becomes the NHS's poster-girl for its overseas recruitment drive, she swaps the grey post-war backstreets of Manchester for the palm-fringed island of Barbados. But will her determination to save the NHS lose her everyone she loves?

It's 1949 and nurse Kitty Longthorne is still hard at work at Manchester's Park Hospital. The one-year-old NHS is inundated by the nation's sick and dying, made worse by a crippling labour shortage.

Now engaged, Kitty and James adore each other, but once they marry, she will be expected to leave the job that means so much to her. When she is offered the trip of a lifetime - a voyage by sea to Barbados to recruit nurses to join Park Hospital's ranks - adventurous Kitty is desperate to go. Her brother Ned has been there for years, and she simply cannot resist an opportunity to track him down and see what exactly he's been up to.

But what of her beloved James? What of the baby she suspects she may be carrying?

Returning home, Kitty has more to contend with than she ever anticipated: a gravely ill father, a dejected fiancé and the close-minded views of her peers upon the arrival of Kitty's first, hardworking recruit - Nurse Grace. After paradise, will Manchester ever be the same again?

An uplifting, heart-wrenching novel based on the true story of the first ever NHS hospital, for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell.

***

Praise for NURSE KITTY'S SECRET WAR

A galloping read that conjures up life in a late 1940s hospital, complete with fierce matrons and handsome doctors. Nurse Kitty is a feisty heroine who sticks her neck out to protect her patients, while trying to resolve her own family problems and heal her broken heart. It's engaging and atmospheric. GILL PAUL

I'm sure readers will love Nurse Kitty as she struggles to find true love when everything is going against it. I loved the end-of-WW2 setting, which is vividly imagined, and the sheer energy of Maggie Campbell's pacy prose. A perfect escapist read. KITTY DANTON, author of A Wartime Wish

Release date: November 11, 2021

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 288

Sample

‘Mam, are you sure you haven’t got any vanilla extract?’ Kitty asked, dropping her spoon. She leaned her tired arms on the baking bowl full of margarine and sugar, disappointed that her efforts at creaming the contents together still hadn’t resulted in anything resembling ‘light and fluffy’, as the recipe suggested. Her fingers were slippery from greasing the cake tin.

There was no answer from the parlour. Small wonder her mother couldn’t hear her above the rhythmic click-clack of the treadle sewing machine’s mechanism as the belt revolved with every step on the footplate. Kitty could hear the needle thumping home, sending thread into the fabric of the garment her mother was working on. It was her father’s cough that truly drowned everything out, however – a barking cough that rattled ominously deep inside his chest.

With slippery margarine-fingertips, Kitty levered a kitchen cupboard door open. Even in June, the paint was sticky with cold in the perpetually icy maisonette. Damp was climbing its way up the wall at the back of the cupboard in peppery mildew blotches, claiming the contents of the cupboard over time and by stealth. The bag of flour, at least, was still untainted. Kitty’s mother was a reluctant baker, so Kitty had bought the flour herself only last week, on her day off.

‘This will put hairs on your chest, Dad!’ she shouted through to the parlour, chuckling to herself and anticipating some witty, lippy come-back. ‘Or maybe feathers on your bum!’ She cracked an egg into the baking bowl. ‘Real eggs, Dad!’

Her father’s answer took the form of a spluttering cough that turned into veritable rolling thunder.

‘Ooh, eh, our Kitty!’ her mother cried. ‘Your dad!’

Kitty wiped her hands on her apron and hastened into the parlour to find her father coughing blood into an inadequate white lady’s handkerchief, held to his mouth by her mother. The red was so vivid against the snowy white, it hurt Kitty’s eyes. ‘Oh, you’re kidding!’ She whipped the tea towel from her shoulder and gently pushed her mother aside. ‘Don’t worry, Mam. I’ve got him. Listen, do us a favour! Can you nip to the corner shop and ask them to phone for an ambulance? This isn’t right.’

Her father shook his head violently, trying and failing to speak. He grabbed the tea towel off Kitty and wiped his blood-stained mouth. The coughing fit started to calm as he breathed heavily through his nose. ‘I’m fine! I’m fine, Elsie! Don’t go calling the cavalry, for Christ’s sake.’ He coughed again, but this time, there was only blood-streaked mucus.

Kitty offered him his mug of tea. ‘Drink this. Come on, Dad. Wet your whistle.’

She smoothed his Brylcreemed hair from his furrowed brow, noting how grey and clammy his complexion was and how bloodshot and rheumy his eyes were – no longer attributable to the booze, since he had long since stopped trying to make it to the pub. ‘Let me see the back of your throat, Dad. Maybe you’ve ruptured a little blood vessel from coughing.’

Her father seemed encouraged by this and opened his mouth to reveal four lonely molars and three front teeth, all yellowed from smoking. There were no false teeth today, despite it being his birthday. He closed his mouth. ‘You’ve seen enough. It’s not a matinee. If you’re not careful, I’m going to start charging. Shilling a pop.’

Feeling the grip of her mother’s hand on her forearm, Kitty studied the expectant looks on her parents’ faces. ‘There’s no obvious rupture, but I suppose it might be lower down in the gullet. Honestly, Mam. We’re going to have to get him to a doctor.’

‘Not to-bloody-day, you don’t!’ her father bellowed, coughing anew, though it was a short-lived outburst. ‘It’s my birthday and I want this cake you promised me.’ He grabbed his walking stick and shooed her away with it. ‘Our Ned’s going to be here later. Your brother’s not going to want to get off a boat after weeks at sea and hold my hand in some doctor’s waiting room, is he? I’m fine.’

‘You’re not fine, Bert,’ Kitty’s mother said. ‘This has been going on for weeks.’

‘I’m all right, I said!’ He reached for his packet of Woodbines, tapped out a half-smoked cigarette and lit up the remnants. Red sparks dropped onto his prosthetic leg as the burning-hot tobacco shards fell from the end of the loosely packed dimp. ‘There we go. That’ll do the trick.’ He coughed and blew out a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, but there was no more blood, at least – just that ominous rattle and wheeze.

Kitty exchanged knowing looks with her mother. ‘Leave him to it, Mam,’ she said. ‘There’s no talking sense to him, right now. I’ll get James to give him the once-over when he gets here. He’ll be able to make arrangements for him to be looked over in clinic by the hospital’s chest man. Let’s pray it’s not TB.’

The crow’s feet at the corners of her mother’s eyes had deepened of late. What had once been a fine line between her brows was now a deep cleft. Caring for an invalid while working long hours at the sewing machine was clearly taking its toll. She nodded and treated Kitty to a weak smile. ‘Thanks, love. You’re a good ’un.’

Throwing open the window to let a refreshing blast of Salford air in, Kitty turned to appraise her father. A pale and shrunken facsimile of the formerly handsome, notorious jailbird Bert Longthorne was sitting in a second-hand chair that had belonged to a dead woman – fitting, since Kitty’s father looked like he was trying death on for size. He reached out to crank up the cricket commentary on the wireless. She felt a pang of sorrow for the happy life that her family could have had, if only her father hadn’t frittered away his prime years, stealing anything that hadn’t been nailed down and then paying his overdue taxes with his very liberty, doing stir at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Semi-legendary and well loved among the city’s criminal fraternity he might be, Kitty mused, but that was no compensation for the anguish he’d put his own wife and children through over the years.

She turned to her mother, who was standing at her father’s side, still clutching the bloodied tea towel expectantly. ‘And you’re nothing short of an angel, Mam. Putting up with his nonsense! I don’t know. Maybe our Ned should take you to Barbados with him, when he goes back. A month in the West Indies, listening to the breaking waves instead of Dad’s nonsense, would do you good.’

For a moment, the long-suffering Elsie Longthorne flushed pink, perhaps at the thought of feeling the sand between her fingers on a picture-perfect tropical beach. No disabled husband. No freezing-cold maisonette. No cramp in her fingers from tirelessly sewing the garments she’d taken in for piecework-pittance. The blush faded. ‘You’d best get on with that cake, our Kitty. And I’d best get back to my work. Flights of fancy won’t put bread on the table in my house.’

With a sinking feeling, Kitty returned to her baking bowl to find that the egg had curdled with the margarine and sugar.

‘Oh, I don’t believe it!’ she told the peeling wallpaper. ‘The only time James manages to get hold of fresh eggs, and I make ash and blotty of the recipe. Kitty Longthorne, it’s a good job you’re a nurse and not a cook!’

‘Pipe down in there!’ her father shouted. ‘I can’t hear what’s being said.’

Kitty pushed aside her worries about her father’s worsening health and her mother’s despondency to beat the mixture with renewed enthusiasm. Before long, the salvaged mixture was ready and the cake was in the oven. She could feel the fatigue tugging at her eyelids as the last week of gruelling shifts at the hospital reminded her that she was overdue a proper rest. There was no time for a catnap on the spare bed, however. At any moment, James would knock on the door, and Kitty wanted to be ready for him.

Peering in the cracked mirror that was propped on the mantelpiece of the tiled fireplace in her parents’ bedroom, Kitty carefully applied soot to her eyelashes with an old toothbrush. Then she put on a little red lipstick, smacking her lips together. She patted the tiniest amount onto her cheeks and rubbed and rubbed until she looked fresh-faced enough to pass muster as the fiancée of Park Hospital’s leading plastic surgeon.

‘You’ll do,’ she told her reflection. ‘You’re no Hedy Lamarr, but you scrub up all right.’

There was a knock at the front door. Kitty’s heartbeat picked up to a gallop. James. She held in her growling stomach, primped her hair one last time and fixed a smile on her newly reddened lips.

She emerged from the bedroom as her mother was opening the door. ‘Hello, love. Come in. We’re not proud.’

James locked eyes with Kitty immediately and grinned. He took off his trilby as he stepped inside and handed a parcel to Kitty’s mother. ‘Elsie, you look lovely, as ever. I’ve brought a little something for the table.’

Kitty’s mother took the large object, wrapped in newspaper. ‘Oh, get away, you rum pig! Now what’s this?’ She opened the wrappings and smiled. ‘A chicken! Hey! Look at this, Bert! A fresh chicken, big as a turkey!’

‘Dispatched, plucked and dressed this very morning,’ James said. ‘I’ve just finished treating the veteran son of a gentleman farmer in Dunham Massey. He dropped it into my clinic as a token of his appreciation, would you believe it?’ Reaching into the deep pocket of his camel overcoat, he took out a bottle-shaped gift, wrapped in tissue paper. ‘And this is for you, sir.’

He proffered the bottle to Bert, who tore off the wrapping.

He perched a pair of new tortoiseshell NHS reading glasses on the end of his nose. ‘Single malt? Well, I say! That’ll do nicely!’

‘Happy birthday, Bert.’

James then swept Kitty into his arms and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. ‘I’m afraid I ran out of pockets, so all I have for you is my heart. Will that do, Kitty?’

Kitty chuckled and batted him away, almost embarrassed by the uncharacteristic show of affection in front of her parents. ‘Pack it in, James! What on earth has got into you?’

Her fiancé shrugged. ‘Good day at work. I won a battle with Cecil at a board meeting and …’ He pulled an envelope from his inside pocket and waved it at Bert. ‘I got tickets to see the match at Old Trafford for me, you and Ned. How about it?’

Her father’s eyes brightened. ‘England versus New Zealand?’

James nodded. ‘Third test. Brian Close and Les Jackson are making their debuts. If I can’t treat my soon-to-be father-in-law to the best seats on his birthday, when can I?’

The excitement brought on yet another rumbling, rattling coughing fit, but this time, there was mercifully no blood. Kitty could see from James’s furrowed brow, however, that he could hear something amiss inside the old man’s chest.

Later, as she and James set off alone in his Ford Anglia and headed out towards Liverpool, Kitty broached the subject of her father’s health. ‘Do you think it’s TB?’

Peering through the windscreen at the flat marshland that flanked the Mersey to their right, James shook his head. ‘It’s impossible to know. I’ll arrange X-rays and blood tests for him, first thing on Monday morning. Get your mother to bring him in. I’ll have a word with Galbraith, too. He needs to see him as an emergency.’

‘He’s stubborn, my dad. He hates doctors. Especially after the printing press.’ She remembered seeing her father, pinned beneath the giant piece of machinery, in a deep pit made by a V2 that had come to rest beneath a bakery in Stretford. The unexploded bomb had just been waiting to decimate the entire district, and Bert Longthorne, Manchester’s coupon counterfeiter, had woken it from its slumber with his idiotic antics. Kitty sighed.

‘Leave it to me, darling.’

James drove the length of the Port of Liverpool to find where Ned’s boat had docked. The Tradewind had already arrived and its passengers were disembarking in droves, like a colony of ants spreading out to find new territory. Kitty’s breath came short with excitement as she searched for her twin brother among the mainly Black passengers, who were dressed in their Sunday best, all carrying cardboard suitcases and clinging to their hats in the stiff Merseyside breeze.

‘He won’t be hard to spot!’ Kitty said. ‘There can’t be anyone else on board with a face like that.’

‘Steady on, Kitty,’ James said, scanning the crowd of disembarked travellers. ‘I think I did rather a good job on your brother. He’s quite the handsome chap, these days.’

They waited and they waited, standing there on the dock until all the passengers had gone and Kitty had started to shiver. James tried to put his coat around her, but she pushed him away when she spotted a man in uniform making his way down the gangplank. She ran up to meet him.

‘Excuse me. I’m looking for my brother. Ned Longthorne. He was a passenger on this ship, but he’s not got off. I’m worried he’s still on board. Maybe he’s fallen asleep. Can you check?’

The man looked at her impassively. ‘Everyone’s off, madam. It’s only staff on board now.’

Kitty could feel tears stabbing at the backs of her eyes, but she willed them to dissipate. ‘That can’t be right. He’s coming home for my dad’s birthday. We’ve got a chicken in the oven. I baked a cake!’ The words of blind panic were tumbling out of her mouth at speed.

The officer agreed to check the roster, but when he returned, he was shaking his head. He spoke to James. ‘I’m sorry, but Ned Longthorne never sailed on this ship. He booked a ticket, but we have no record of him boarding in Bridgetown.’

‘Now, Longthorne,’ Matron said, reviewing her notes, attached to a clipboard. ‘I want you overseeing casualty this morning. We’re inundated with the Royal Infirmary’s overspill.’

‘What’s happened?’ Kitty asked, checking her starched nurse’s cap was securely attached.

Matron’s lips thinned. ‘They’ve sent us three delightful gentlemen, fresh from a bare-knuckle brawl.’ She gesticulated with her pen towards three occupied cubicles. In two of them lay two man-mountains, whose faces and knuckles were a mess of blood and swelling. In the third, a Black man lay asleep, or perhaps unconscious. It was difficult to see the extent of his injuries, as he’d been heavily bandaged. ‘Heaven knows why they didn’t keep them there, patch them up and kick them out.’

Kitty nodded. ‘I presume they’ve been sent for Dr Williams’s plastic surgery ministrations.’

‘It would seem so.’ It was unusual to see Matron so obviously disconcerted. Ordinarily, she was the swan of the nursing staff, gliding along, no matter how rough the waters, guiding her cygnets in the subtle art of swimming while all around them sank. ‘They need to be assessed and sent to a ward. And that’s all very well, but I’m three nurses short to begin with and Doris Bickerstaff is off sick. I know it was your father’s birthday at the weekend, Kitty, but you took half of Tuesday off to accompany him for some tests, didn’t you? Could your mother not have sufficed as moral support?’ She didn’t wait for a response. ‘Really, I’m going to have to cancel any time off from now on. Look at them! We’re overwhelmed.’ She peered over her heavy-framed glasses at the walking wounded of Davyhulme, Urmston and Stretford, who were packed into casualty’s waiting room. ‘This is what happens when you say, “Come one! Come all!” to Manchester’s sick and dying. The National Health Service is a free-for-all, in every sense of the word.’

‘Not before time, though, eh?’ Kitty said, eyeing workworn women in jumble-sale coats and undernourished children wearing clothes that were too big, or else too small. Everybody looked older than their years. The post-war period was proving quite a trial.

The Longthornes had problems of their own, however. Though Kitty had been plagued by worry about Ned since leaving the Liverpool dockside without him, she’d still not managed to send him an angry telegram. Working unbroken shifts, from sun-up to sun-down, and chaperoning her father to the hospital had taken precedence over any trip to the post office. Today, she would still have to wait until her break – if she got a break. ‘Leave it with me, Matron. If maternity’s quiet, I’ll get Schwartz to pitch in.’ Kitty knew she could rely on her old friend and nursing compatriot Lily Schwartz, who was one of the only nurses remaining from Kitty’s days as a trainee.

‘Good girl.’

Matron continued on her rounds, leaving Kitty to marshal the two junior nurses who were tending the patients in the worst condition. She sent for Lily Schwartz.

Within an hour, Lily joined her, and together they entered the cubicle with the first of the men who had been sent from the Royal Infirmary.

‘Good morning,’ Kitty said to the man on the narrow bed. ‘I’m Nurse Longthorne, and this is Nurse Schwartz.’

The man turned his bloodied pulp of a face towards them both. Though his left eye was nothing more than a slit in a swollen mess, his right eye was uninjured. He fixed Lily with a chilling stare. ‘Nazi or Jew?’ he asked, balling his busted fist, apparently feeling no pain. It was clear from his accent that he came from the other side of the Atlantic.

‘Nurse, since you’re asking.’ Lily seemed in no mood for verbal abuse, but she kept her voice friendly and even. She looked down at the man’s notes. ‘Yank?’

The man grimaced. ‘Canadian, and proud of it, missy.’

‘You’re a long, long way from home, then. The war’s over, Mr Morgan. Didn’t anyone tell you?’

The man was silent.

Kitty took over the conversational reins. ‘It says on your records that you and your compatriots were fighting at the Band on the Wall. But that’s a music hall, isn’t it? A note here says you were brought into the Infirmary, accompanied by two police officers.’

‘What’s it to you?’ the man asked, turning towards the curtain that separated his cubicle from that of his opponent.

‘If our plastic surgeon is to treat you, Mr Morgan, I think he ought to know the circumstances surrounding your injuries. Don’t you?’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong, ma’am. Police left, didn’t they?’

‘What were you doing at the Band on the Wall? These wounds have all the hallmarks of a bare-knuckle fight. Broken nose. Bust-up eye. It looks like your Black friend’s head has been used as a football. He doesn’t have any wounds to his knuckles at all, I’m told.’

The man sighed. ‘I work at the club. I’m a barman. Sorta. So’s Jim.’

‘Don’t make me fetch the police again, Mr Morgan. I’ve got other patients waiting. How about we start with a dose of the truth?’

Morgan rolled his good eye and gasped. ‘We sometimes have a fight. Lunchtimes at the club. There’s a bit of boxing, you know? The guys from the market come and watch. It’s no big deal.’

‘Bare-knuckle boxing. For money.’ Kitty turned to Lily. ‘Is that legal?’

Lily shrugged. ‘How should I know? Jews don’t box.’

Kitty stifled a grin. ‘So, let me guess. You and your pal, Jim, have stayed on since the war ended, carting barrels and crates for the club owner.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And you supplement your wages with a bit of bare-knuckle boxing in the backyard? The boss takes bets.’

Morgan shrugged.

‘So what’s the story with the Black man?’ Kitty had already read his notes. There was something that didn’t quite sit right with the boxing bout story. The third patient had artists’ hands, for a start, and was a good three or four stone lighter than the two white men.

‘I can’t speak for him. It was all good, clean fun, though. Boys being boys.’

Lily stepped on Kitty’s foot and the two retreated from the cubicle. When they were out of Morgan’s earshot, she whispered, ‘Those two have beat the other one up. I’d put money on it.’

Kitty nodded. ‘Bullying?’

‘Did you hear how he spoke to me? Nazi or Jew? That’s not a tolerant man, in there, and our Black patient only has defensive wounds. I’m going to take on Jim the giant. You see what the story is with their friend.’

With a deep intake of breath, Kitty swept aside the curtain that concealed the Black man. He seemed to be out cold, but he stirred when she touched him lightly on the arm.

‘Hello, there. I’m Nurse Longthorne.’ She took his notes from the end of the casualty bed. ‘And you’re Mr Chambers?’

The man turned towards her. Could he even see her? His bandaged head put her in mind of Ned, when he’d hidden in plain sight on a ward, masquerading as a badly burnt American GI. Was this man concussed? Kitty needed to shine a light in his eyes to see if his pupils dilated, but she couldn’t even see beyond the lacerations, bruises and swelling. His face was reminiscent of offcuts of stewing steak she’d seen in the butcher’s. She felt suddenly nauseous at the very idea.

‘Lloyd, miss,’ the man suddenly said. ‘Me name’s Lloyd Chambers.’ He spoke haltingly, as if he’d bitten his tongue. His Jamaican accent was still pronounced, though.

‘You’re in a bad way, Lloyd. Does it hurt?’ She looked for information about any analgesics he’d been given at the Infirmary.

‘Me face feel like I been trampled by the four horses of the Apocalypse. But me hand … I’m worried that it doesn’t hurt enough. Can’t feel it at all, nurse. Can’t bend me fingers.’

He reached out to her, and when she unwound the loose bandaging around his right hand, Kitty could see that there were no cuts to his knuckles from throwing a punch, but it was possible he had several broken fingers. Had his hand been purposefully crushed?

‘Were you X-rayed at the Infirmary?’

He shook his head. ‘I got to play trumpet, nurse. I’m in the house band at the club. It’s my livelihood. Please fix me hand up.’

‘What happened to you, Chambers?’ Kitty lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You can tell me. Did the men in the other cubicles – the men you came in with – did they beat you?’

Lloyd pursed his split lips and grimaced. ‘I got in the way. That’s all.’

She frowned at him, sensing that there was more to his story than he was letting on. What kind of a place was the Band on the Wall? Its notoriety had started during the war years, when drunken soldiers on leave – particularly Canadian airmen – would go there to dance and drink far too much. The place was in a part of the city that Kitty wasn’t familiar with. Oldham Road and Ancoats. That wasn’t a Hulme girl’s stomping ground and, in any case, her evenings off as a young nurse had always been few and far between.

‘Well, let’s clean you up first, so the doctor can see what he’s dealing with,’ she said. ‘Then we need to get you X-rayed.’

Kitty was just about to tell him that Park Hospital had an outstanding and renowned plastic surgeon on site, called James Williams, when a hue and cry erupted from the direction of the casualty entrance.

Drawing the curtain across the cubicle to shield her Jamaican patient from the hubbub, Kitty hastened to the double doors to find a woman trying to drag a man out of a black cab, single-handedly. ‘Help me! Help! He’s bleeding to death.’

‘Stretcher! I need a stretcher! Bring a wheelchair! Anything!’ Kitty shouted, hoping her cry for help would fall on her nursing compatriots’ ears. ‘Quickly!’ There wasn’t a single nurse or auxiliary free, however. She yelled at the cab driver. ‘Give us a hand, for heaven’s sake! We’re short-staffed.’

The cab driver rolled his eyes and nonchalantly opened his door. While he hitched up his trousers, Kitty and the woman cracked on with the task of manoeuvring the wounded man out of the cab.

‘What happened?’ Kitty asked, staring at the man’s midriff. His shirt was blood-soaked. There was a patch, about an inch wide, where a wound oozed blood that was almost black, as if all hell had broken loose inside him.

The woman’s cheeks were flushed. Her hair hung loose as she heaved at the man’s legs. ‘He was cleaning the bedroom window and he fell off the ladder, onto railings. The only set left in Stretford after the war, and my Tommy’s skewered on them!’ She let out a loud, anguished sob. ‘Will he live?’

The man groaned. His eyes rolled back in his head.

‘Stay with us, Tommy!’ Kitty said. She looked over her shoulder at the cabbie. ‘Are you going to help, or what? Get a damned wheelchair! Go and find a nurse or a doctor or both. Now!’

The cabbie adjusted his trousers again. ‘This has buggered my shift. I’ll have to go home and scrub the back of the cab out.’ He shuffled off into the casualty waiting area, grumbling about stained leatherette and lost earnings.

Kitty turned back to the injured patient, who started to slide off the back seat. He was out cold.

‘Look, I’ll get in,’ she said, gingerly trying to push the man back onto the seat so she could climb in beside him. He was a dead weight. ‘I’ll grab him under the arms and pass him to you. All right?’

The woman nodded.

‘Come on, Tommy. Let’s get you into the hospital.’ As Kitty grabbed the heavy man under the arms, she noted with dismay that the cabbie had not returned. ‘You pull. I’ll push.’ Shuffling forward, slipping more than once in the man’s lifeblood, Kitty and the woman somehow managed to get the wounded man out of the cab. ‘You take one arm. I’ll take the other. Wrap his arm around you, like this. Shove your shoulder into his armpit.’

‘It’s like the Marie Celeste,’ the woman cried, peering into the packed waiting room that was devoid of any medical staff. ‘I got a neighbour to ring for an ambulance and I waited. Not a soul turned up. Where’s all the flaming ambulance men and doctors?’ Her knees were almost buckling beneath the weight of her unconscious husband.

‘Don’t ask.’

Finally, the cabbie appeared, pushing a wheelchair. Lily was at his side.

‘What have we got?’ Lily asked, taking charge of the wheelchair and putting the brake on. She eyed the man’s wound with a raised eyebrow and gestured to the cabbie to relieve the struggling wife.

‘This is Tommy. He’s had a tumble onto iron railings.’ Kitty didn’t need to tell Lily that the man was haemorrhaging and had sustained terrible internal injuries. She turned to his wife, who stood, shaking from adrenalin and wringing her bloodstained hands. ‘You go and take a seat, love. Leave this to us.’

The woman shook her head. Her teeth clacked together when she spoke. ‘Not on your nelly. I’m staying with my Tommy. He came back to me from Normandy. I’m not letting him out of my sight now.’

‘Nurse Schwarz! Take Mrs …?’

‘Travis.’

‘Take Mrs Travis to the reception desk, will you? Mrs Travis, Nurse Schwarz, here, needs you to get your Tommy booked in. Please. We’re professionals. Let us look after him.’

Kitty locked eyes with Lily momentarily and then looked pointedly towards the sign that gave the directions to the emergency operating theatre.

Lily nodded. ‘Come with me, Mrs Travis. Let Nurse Longthorne take your husband to the doctors. No queuing for him!’

Without waiting to see if the woman would comply, Kitty whisked her patient off in the direction of the theatre, as fast as she could without breaking into a run. ‘Come on, Tommy. Stay with us, chuck!’ She was doubled up, leaning forward to put pressure on his wound while she pushed the wheelchair down the corridor. His pallor said he didn’t have much longer. ‘Don’t you leave us, Mr Travis! Nearly there.’

She pushed past ambling outpatients and visitors who ogled the sight of the bleeding man in undisguised horror. ‘Excuse me! Move aside! Make way! Coming through!’

On the way to the theatre, she didn’t pass a single nurse.

Finally, Kitty arrived at the doors to the theatr. . .