Jim offered to help me install my shower.

Monday,

November 7th, 1960

Well, I am now officially in charge of Cas X-ray. Chris left last Friday after a little party organised by Sister Cas, who in the old days would have been weepy and crotchety, but kept up a cheerful face because she confidently hopes to follow Chris’s example next year. Constantin (a chef at Romano’s restaurant) is still very keen on her. When Chris announced that a Happy Event was on the way, the little gaggle of technicians and sisters gooed and gushed, squeaked and giggled. Luckily a couple of multiple emergencies broke the party up, and we all went back to our work.

I have a new technician to take my place—older and more experienced than me, but engaged to be married to a senior resident, so perfectly happy to be the middleman. Her name is Ann Smith and she’s facing a long engagement because Dr. Alan Smith (no name change necessary!) has to sort out his career preferences before they can tie the knot. But why me for the charge position?

“Your work is excellent, Miss Purcell,” said Sister Agatha to me as I stood at attention in front of her desk. “I have decided to replace Miss Hamilton with you because you are efficient, very well organised, and you can think on your feet—an essential for good casualty work.”

“Yes, Sister, thank you Sister,” I said automatically.

“Unless—” and she paused ominously.

“Unless what, Sister?” I asked.

“Unless you are planning to be married, Miss Purcell.”

I couldn’t help it, I grinned. “No, Sister, I can assure you that I am not planning to be married.”

“Excellent, excellent!” And she actually smiled. “You may go, Miss Purcell.”

It makes a difference to be in charge. Chris was a very good technician, but ran the place in a way I thought could be improved. Now I can do what I like—provided that neither Matron nor Sister Agatha objects.

What it does mean is that I now commence work at six in the morning, have the junior between eight and four, and Ann from ten onward in my old slot. I don’t think Ann was too pleased about that, but hard cack. If her hours mean that she will see less of her Alan, she’ll just have to lump it. See what a position of power does? I’ve turned into an unsympathetic bitch.

Friday,

November 11th, 1960 (My Birthday)

I overheard a wonderful little conversation between Matron and the General Medical Superintendent shortly after six this morning. God knows what the Super was doing in at such an hour, but Matron, of course, hasn’t got the words “off duty” in her vocabulary.

“I would never have believed it of Dr. Bloodworthy,” she said stiffly just outside my door.

Now what has Dr. Bloodworthy been up to? He is a pathologist whose specialty is blood—isn’t it odd how people with suggestive names espouse them completely? Like Lord Brain the neurologist.

“It’s flaming hysterical!” replied the Super, clearly in fits of laughter. “Maybe it will teach all those old chooks in the Sisters’ dining room to mind their own business for a change.”

“Sir,” said Matron in tones producing instantaneous icicles on all my equipment, “as I remember it, there were just as many old chooks in the Doctors’ dining room. I believe, in fact, that Mr. Naseby-Morton actually managed to lay an egg, which you put on your spoon and ran with all the way downstairs.”

There was a moment of silence, then the Super spoke. “One of these days, Matron, I am going to have the last word! And when I do, I will not be an old chook! I will be cock of the walk! Good day to you, ma’am.”

Oooooo-aa! And poop to birthdays. I went to Bronte tonight.

Wednesday,

November 23rd, 1960

I saw Duncan today. Professor Sjögren is over from Sweden, and gave a lecture on hypothermic techniques for contending with vascular anomalies in the brain. All of Queens above the domestic level wanted to go, but our lecture theatre only holds five hundred, so the competition for a seat was fierce. The old Swede is a great neurosurgeon with a worldwide reputation in pioneering this idea of freezing the patient to slow down heart and circulation before going in to clip the aneurysm or close the shunt or whatever. As technician in charge of Cas X-ray, I rated a seat, found myself wedged between Sister Cas and none other than Mr. Duncan Forsythe. Oh, it was agony! We couldn’t help but be in bodily contact, and my whole right side burned for hours after. He acknowledged me with a curt nod but no smile, then stared at the podium throughout when he wasn’t chatting to Mr. Naseby-Morton on his other side.

Sister Tesoriero, who runs Kids’ Bones, was on Sister Cas’s far side, and they were having their usual scrap.

“I really work,” Marie O’Callaghan was saying, “whereas you ward charges are pure decoration. You run around peeing in the H.M.O.s’ pockets and giving them tomato sandwiches for their cuppa instead of the peanut butter the rest of the poor mortals get.”

“Ssssh!” I hissed. “I’m sitting next to you-know-who!”

Sister Cas merely smirked, but Sister Tesoriero took a horrified look and shut up. Her darling Mr. Forsythe, chief of Kids’ Bones, might not approve of eating tomato sandwiches if he realised that the rest of the poor mortals got peanut butter. He was so nice.

For a while I debated whether I could clap my hand to my mouth and bolt pretending I was sick on the stomach, but as we were in the very centre of the long wooden bench, I’d earn more attention than I would if I just endured it.

I don’t think I heard a word of the lecture, and the second it was over I was up and ready to join the mass exodus. He’d leave with Mr. Naseby-Morton by the far aisle, thank God. But he didn’t. He followed me, with the chief of cardiac surgery following him to continue their chat. Then he put his hands on either side of my waist, the idiot! Isn’t he aware that half the feminine eyes in any crowd are riveted on him? The touch was a caress, not a squeeze, and it all came back in a rush, those big, well-cared-for hands that could crunch through bone in one swoop yet were so reverent as they roamed my skin, so shiversome. My head spun, I staggered. Which was the best thing I could have done, looking back on it now. He could keep his hands there, steady me, even turn me so that he could see my face.

“Thank you, thank you, sir!” I gasped, broke free and bolted to the Sisters Cas and Tesoriero, well ahead of me.

“What was that all about?” Sister Cas asked as I reach them.

“I tripped,” I said, “and Mr. Forsythe caught me.”

“Half your luck!” sighed Sister Tesoriero.

Half my luck, nothing. The bastard did it deliberately to see how I reacted, and I bloody obliged him.

Sister Cas, who knows me much better, simply looked thoughtful. What was wrong with my face?

Thursday,

December 1st, 1960

Incredible to think that 1960 is almost over. Last year at this time I was still at Ryde Hospital, had just completed my exams, hadn’t yet seen the Royal Queens booth at Sydney Tech, let alone contemplated working there. Didn’t know Pappy, didn’t know about Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz or The House. Didn’t know that my angel existed. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but I do not believe that. Ignorance is a trap which leads people to make the wrong decisions. Harold and Duncan notwithstanding, I am so glad that when I emerged from my chrysalis, I became a big, handsome Bogong moth, not a frail butterfly.

If it’s been a fairly decent sort of a day, I’m home by four or half-past. Today being only middling, I knocked off a bit after five, and so walked home with Pappy, who has just finished her exams. She thinks she scraped a pass, and I’m sure she has. There are never enough nurses, thanks to the grinding discipline, the hard labour and the obligation to live in a nurses’ home. It’s the last worries me the most; after all, as a nurses’ aide she’s been subjected to even more stringent discipline because aides are the lowest of the low. But how will Pappy manage to live in a weeny room if she’s at a hospital with a big home, or share a weeny room if she’s at a hospital less well endowed?