At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse. Veronica Clark

ward, where I had the unenviable task of delousing young patients. Initially, I felt totally frustrated because I was treated like a country bumpkin, but after three months working in the children’s ward I transferred to the geriatric ward, where I made a real name for myself after mixing up all the patients’ false teeth. I’d spent three hours cleaning them, and once I’d finished I was delighted. I popped them back inside the sterilised bowl and made my way back up to the ward. However, the smile was soon wiped off my face by Sister.

      ‘Er, how do you know whose teeth are whose?’ she said, pointing towards the bucket.

      I looked at her and then down at the dozen sets of teeth, all spotlessly clean but now hopelessly jumbled up.

      ‘Oh,’ I replied as my heart sank to my knees.

      I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to match the rightful owner to each set, but it was an impossible and thankless task. Some of the patients were elderly and suffered with dementia, so, upon seeing a better pair of dentures, they claimed them even if they didn’t fit. At one point a fight almost broke out. In the end, it took me the best part of the day to try to fit each person to each set, but it taught me the importance of labelling.

      Shamed by the teeth débâcle, I transferred from geriatrics to the medical ward, where I worked a series of night shifts. But it wasn’t long before I made a name for myself again. One evening, I was asked to clean out the sluice. It was a horrible task, and as soon as I entered I recoiled at the stench of urine. It was so strong that it choked the back of my throat. I immediately spotted the culprits, a dozen half-full Winchester bottles of urine that had stunk the place out. Pinching the end of my nose and trying not to breathe in too deeply, I emptied each and every one of them, sterilised the bottles, lined them up on the side in a neat row and wiped down the surfaces. Exhausted but satisfied I’d done a thorough job, I returned to the ward, where the nurses on the day shift were just about to take over. Once I was off duty, I headed back to my room where I flopped straight into bed. I was so tired that I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, but moments later I was woken by the sound of someone banging furiously at my door.

      ‘You need to come to the ward – Sister wants to see you,’ a voice called from the corridor.

      ‘But I’ve just finished my shift and I’m in bed!’ I protested, pulling the blanket up over my head.

      ‘I don’t care. Get dressed and come to the ward immediately!’

      I didn’t know who the voice had belonged to, but as I heard their footsteps disappear off down the corridor I sat upright in bed. Even in my hazy slumber I knew it was an order rather than a request. I was thoroughly shattered but I dragged myself up, pulled on my uniform and headed back up to the medical ward. By the time I arrived Sister was waiting for me with both arms folded. She looked absolutely furious.

      ‘Is this her?’ a man’s voice called from behind. I dipped to the side to try to see where the voice was coming from, and that’s when I spotted them – the professor and a line of junior doctors. They were all staring at me.

      ‘Yes, this is the one,’ she snapped, her eyes not leaving me for a second. ‘When I asked you to clean the sluice, did you, er, throw anything away?’

      I remembered the dozen stinky bottles on the side.

      ‘Just some bottles of urine,’ I muttered.

      ‘Well, yes. And those bottles just happened to be 24-hour specimen samples that the professor and his doctors were waiting for the results from.’

      My mouth formed the letter O as I felt my heart plummet, because I’d done it again. Once more, my exploits had become legendary. My distinctive red hair had marked me out from the other nurses, but not in a good way. Everyone, it seemed, remembered the young redhead nurse who’d thrown away a dozen important samples. It was such a serious offence that I was called in front of Matron to explain myself. I felt my legs tremble as I stood before her.

      ‘In future, please would you enquire what is asked of you rather than take it upon yourself to decide what needs to be done,’ she said, scowling at me from her desk.

      ‘Yes, Matron. Sorry, Matron,’ I replied, almost curtseying my way out of the door. I was just relieved to have escaped an even worse punishment.

      In total there were fourteen nurses who, like me, had transferred from other hospitals. The other nurses had trained from scratch at Hammersmith and, because we were taught separately to them, they thought they were a cut above. In turn, there was a kind of camaraderie between the transfer nurses, who looked out for one another. At that time, the nurses’ accommodation was situated directly across the road from Wormwood Scrubs. We were told to keep our curtains shut to stop the prisoners peeping in at us, and the prison siren would often sound to alert us every time a prisoner had escaped.

      One evening, it’d just started to get dark outside when I heard the siren wail. I immediately went through the protocol of locking the fire-escape door in a bid to protect my patients and stop a would-be escapee from seeking refuge inside the hospital. But the latch on the door was broken and it wouldn’t lock. To make matters worse, my ward was on the ground floor and, with only my patients for company, I felt extremely alone and vulnerable. In a panic, I ran to the ward telephone to call a friend who I knew was working in the ward above.

      ‘I can’t lock the door, Joyce. The latch is broken!’ I gasped. ‘Can you come down here and try to help me secure it?’

      Joyce had already secured her ward and had a junior nurse working alongside her so she popped downstairs to see what she could do.

      ‘I can’t lock it either!’ she said in a fluster. ‘What shall we do?’

      By now we were both terrified that the ward would be invaded by a dangerous criminal. I looked around for a weapon to protect us with, and that’s when I spotted it resting up against the wall in a corner of the room – a long, old-fashioned umbrella with a big, heavy wooden handle.

      ‘This should do the trick,’ I said, sizing it up in my hands and gripping it like a rounders bat.

      We stood there, one of us on either side of the door, watching, waiting and listening out for the escaped convict. My heart thumped hard inside my chest as adrenalin coursed through my veins, and that’s when it happened. We heard a slight noise, then urgent footsteps on the other side. I held the umbrella aloft, poised and about to strike, when the door suddenly creaked open and a strange man stepped through. Joyce gasped out loud, so I shut my eyes and brought the weapon down with all my might. The force of the blow was astonishing as I struck the man bluntly on the top of his head, causing the wooden handle to reverberate through my hands.

      WHACK!

      ‘OWWWW!’ the intruder cried as he staggered inside. He tried to regain his balance and put out a hand to grab against something, and that’s when I noticed his bowler hat. It’d been smashed by the brolly and was sitting on top of his head like a squashed flat cap!

      ‘What on earth …’ I gasped. I realised that it wasn’t a convict at all, but a gentleman – and a well-to-do one at that.

      ‘You almost killed me!’ he wailed dramatically, still staggering. Joyce and I ran over and, grabbing him under each arm, sat him down in a chair.

      But I was still a little cross. He was right, I could’ve have killed him, but it was his own stupid fault for sneaking in through the fire exit!

      ‘You shouldn’t have come in through there,’ I said, gesturing towards the door. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’

      ‘There’s a prisoner on the loose!’ he gasped. ‘I knew the door was broken so I thought I’d get inside fast.’ He winced as his fingers bobbed gently across the top of his head feeling for blood. There was none.

      ‘I know there’s a prisoner on the loose! That’s why I hit you – I thought you were him!’ I huffed.

      But the more I looked, the more I thought I recognised him. I’d definitely seen his face somewhere before.

      ‘Anyway,