The Mistress (Alison)

- a story by Darcy Moore

"Please God, let Alice go to the toilet." Alice Rudgell sat on the edge of her hospital bed and crushed her knobbled fingers together, her eyes shut tightly. Nurse Hurley waited patiently in the aisle. "Ready nurse! Where are you Nurse, Alice wants to go now. Now!"
       Nurse Hurley stepped quickly to her side. "I'm here Alice. Put your arm over my shoulder." Alice looked at the young nurse to see if she could detect any wilfulness. She hated wilful girls. But the freckled face was expressionless. "You're a little thing! You're too small to be a nurse. How old are you?"
       "I'm diminutive," said Nurse Hurley, smiling, but it still hurt.
       "And where's your nurse's uniform? You sould be wearing white, and a white hat."
       "No Alice, that was changed years ago. We wear pink now."
       "Pink! That's ridiculous." Nurse Hurley thought it was too. In a cupboard at home hung the nurse's clothes she'd worn for her first two years. A romantic relic.
       "That's the way it is. Now Alice, you mustn't let God forget."
       "No. I'm sorry God." Alice pushed forward.
       Her incontinence, when it came, was humiliating. The bed pan, the nurses with the brusque manners and disapproving faces were the images of death. She saw herself slipping out of the world, a barely tolerated object. Not Alice any more. To fight it, she set herself by the clock. At regular three hourly intervals, through the night as well, she rallied her entire consciousness to focus on her bowels and bladder, even if her body wasn't interested. That was where God came in. The nurses on night duty, who had to wake her or endure a ferocious tantrum and soiled bedclothes in the morning, joked that at least it kept them awake. Besides she was a very light sleeper.
        Her other lifeline was her name. She repeated it, constantly. Sometimes it sounded foreign, like a name given the new born and not quite fixed. But, like a times table, it kept popping up just the same.
       It was a slow trip - along the aisle, left around the ward door, first door on the right. But Alice was such a wisp that it was not difficult even for Nurse Hurley. No one tried to hurry her. A sudden change in pace or rhythm destroyed her tenuos reality and she panicked, locking her nails into the closest flesh.
       Nurse Hurley waited, toilet door open in case Alice slipped and struck the porcelain bowl or the tiled floor. Although she averted her eyes she could not avoid the sounds and smells of senility, they were a battle Alice had lost. Nurse Hurley often told herself and her friends she would never let herself get that old, and she smoked cigarettes and had that extra glass of gin just to make sure. Yet she respected Alice's tenacity. What kept her going? Why did still want to live? She didn't understand that Alice came from a background that gave her two great handicaps or, depending on one's perspective, assets. Alice's sense of conscience was such that she had amassed considerable guilt. She also believed in eternal damnation.
       They scraped back along the corridor and the aisle, Alice whispering the whole time to ingratiate herself. "God has been good to Alice. God listened to Alice. God loves Alice." Nurse Hurley thought of her mother. Mid-fifties, plump, and apparently thriving on a new husband; but she had seen them come in, younger than that, with no more than a shortness of breath, and die through the night. Better that than this cantankerous skeleton.
       When Alice felt the bed under her again, she completed her ritual, in a loud voice. "Thank you God. Alice thanks you God."
       "Nurse Hurley, you are needed in Outpatients. Please go there immediately."
       She ignored the Matron's voice over the intercom, smoothed Alice's pillow and making her comfortable.
       "Nurse Hurley, you are wanted immediately. I repeat immediately."
       She bristled at the Matron's officiousness. None of the nurses liked this Matron as she made no attempt to treat them as equals. She ignored their qualifications, their extra years of study. Pieces of paper that put you above your station, she called them. She had begun her career during shortly after the war, was sent to Kasper a few years later. End of story. Matron had a particular dislike of Nurse Hurley. There was the matter of the Doctor.
       The hospital had been built during the Great Depression and extended several times since. Patients often got lost in its long dark corridors and confusing turns, and so did new nurses. So did Nurse Hurley when Doctor Robert Liver was on duty. This morning he was in his room reading a patient's chart.
       "Hello Robert." He was rather scrappy looking - balding in a Mohican sort of way, with the aftermath of severe teenage acne. Although barely forty he'd decided food was a greater sensory delight than exercising, or seeing a flat stomach in the shower. Nurses had never complained.
       "Alison." She loved his smile, he made up for everything with that. "We've hardly seen each other this week." He walked to the door where she waited, looking either way along the corridor. She stepped inside quickly. They kissed and she felt him press against her. "I miss you, boy do I miss you Al."
       "I'd noticed." She was pleased and answered his pressure.
       "Outpatients is overflowing with the sick and the lame and the lonely."
       "I wouldn't know Robert, I'm on my way. Matron's breathing down my neck."
       "Sounds like a good idea. He bent down, she was much shorter than he, at the same time undoing an upper button of her uniform and slipping his hand over her bra."
       "Shit Robert." She leant back, but there was no one outside. "I don't think you'd care if someone caught us." Then she giggled nervously to soften it.
       "Nope. I've got it all worked out. Suspected breast cancer wasn't it."
       He pulled away as she hit him on the chest. "That's not funny. Brenda Morgan died of it last year."
       That sobered him. He'd known her, very well. "Yes Al. That's why you make the most of it. Ok. To work. I'll be lucky to be finished with them til 1:30 today. Jesus. I wish all I had to do was to touch them."
       "You could charm most of them better. But maybe they just come to see you."
       "You overestimate me Al. Doesn't work so well with civvies."
       Alison was annoyed when he referred to his history of infidelities, though she felt she had no right to be. Three months, her three months, was longer than most. She hid it. "I finish my shift at twelve, and I'm not back on til tomorrow afternoon."
       "That's great. I'll be over about five. Will have finished the afternoon rounds by then. And Alison!"
       "Yes."
       "I'm looking forward to it."
       "So am I." And at least, she thought, I don't have to lie about that. Off duty Alison spent most of her time in the nurses' quarters beside Kasper Hospital. She had her own unit. Robert's visit were no secret. When you consented to Doctor Liver you forgot the meaning of discreet. Robert would talk of his children, but rarely his wife. They must have come to some arrangement long ago; she was either a very tolerant or helpless lady.
       Alison sincerely liked most of the patients who responded with gratitude and affection, but being a nurse was so much drudgery. She was nearly thirty, and did want a husband and children. Not knowing what else to do about it she took whatever came along. Now it was Doctor Liver.

Do you want to read more Kaspar Stories? Click on a link below.

The Lover (Cuppa)

The Heretic (Shirley)

The Thief (Gracie)