THE NURSE

After his injury at football, Oliver finds himself briefly in hospital

Nurse Elly Saunders, dressed in a blue and fragrant crisp uniform that showed, in her own opinion, her best features almost as successfully as her favourite summer dress did, made her way to the boy’s bed.

She hadn’t been a nurse for very long. A university course lay behind her, one that had taught her a great deal about medicine and even more about men, and she was building quite an appreciated reputation at Saint Gwen’s, the hospital local to Brumpton.

She had yet to learn that patients could trap a young woman if she was tender-hearted enough to be bothered with them as people. It wasn’t that they tried to … though some more elderly males certainly had taken leering verbal pot-shots at her with no success, but that she had a warm and cosy empathy for her fellow creatures.

There was a new boy on the ward and the very fact that he was in hospital annoyed the frayed edges of her neutrality. After all she had been taught, it wasn’t up to the nurse to apportion blame for some of the things that dragged her patients before her. But sometimes she couldn’t help it, and this one boy was one of those sometimes.

Hasn’t he suffered enough already, raged a voice inside her emotions. Wasn’t it enough for him to be in that coma for goodness-knows how long? And wasn’t it up to that darned school to protect him and not launch missiles at his recently-recovered head? What were they thinking of? Poor boy…

And when he opened his eyes and smiled at her she knew she was right.

She looked at his board for what seemed like the zillionth time and made a brief note that he was conscious and aware of his surroundings. Not that she wasn’t expecting him not to be. This wasn’t like his weeks in a coma.

But he had to be aware: she knew that for a fact he was. It was in the smile of his. And the way his eyes kind of zoomed in on her own face when she smiled back at him.

“Are we well, Daniel?” she asked softly.

She could tell the way he relished the sound of her voice because he swallowed and looked momentarily awkward. It was a look that went straight to her heart like quite a lot of things did in the diurnal course of her life. She was, if nothing else, a wonderfully sensitive human being as well as a fine nurse.

“I feel good,” he told her, then: “when am I going home? There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“You were knocked out cold,” replied nurse Elly, “you were still unconscious when they got you here in the ambulance, and Doctor is concerned because of your history.”

“You mean I failed “O” level this time round?” he grinned.

“Pardon?”

“The exam. History,” he explained.

She giggled and shook her head.

“You are a one,” she laughed. Then she noticed the way his eyes were softening as he looked at her, and she guessed some of the things whirling around inside his head. He may have been knocked unconscious, but his basic appetites seemed to be functioning perfectly well. She remembered a few things about teenage boys from her own school days when several had made it quite clear that they would do anything for her.

Or to her!

They had been good days, on the way home from school with this or that lad carrying her bag for her and making the kind of comments about her and to her that would have infuriated her parents had they heard them.

Those lads had been feeling their way in the world and provided a great deal more interest than older lads, at University, who had already felt their way and thought they know everything about the opposite sex.

Some of them had been pretty good, though, she sighed to herself.

“A penny for them!” demanded Oliver.

“A penny for what?” she asked.

“Your thoughts. A penny for your thoughts. It’s a saying, you know. You were looking sort of … I don’t know, wistful? As if something inside your head was tickling your best memories...”

“Tickling my best memories? What a lovely thought! Yes, it was something like that. I was remembering being with boys like you when I was a younger girl...”

“I bet you were pretty back then,” he said bravely.

“Meaning I’m not pretty any longer?” she teased him.

“You are,” he vowed, “so pretty someone’s going to gobble you all up one of these days.”

“Even if I don’t want them to?”

“You’re really pretty,” he almost stammered.

Then she did something she knew she shouldn’t do, but what harm could there possibly be in it? The poor lad had had a rotten time … she’d read his notes … and he deserved something more than headaches.

“I’ll just take your temperature,” she said, “hold this is your mouth and stay quiet for a moment...”

She gently slid the thermometer between his lips and bent down so low she knew he would be able to see right down the top of her uniform to what lay beneath … and there wasn’t a bra to interfere with his view. She was a New Girl and had cast her bra aside along with the chains that had so long bound women to the hearth and home.

“Just hold it still for a moment,” she whispered.

Why am I whispering? There’s nobody likely to hear even if I speak normally, and anyway I’m not likely to say anything remotely wicked. Am I?

“Do you think I’d say anything wicked?” she asked as she pulled the thermometer out of his mouth and peered closely at it.

“What sort of something?” he asked and, yes, he was blushing. He’d seen more than he’d ever hoped to see and she knew that her bosom was the kind of bosom boys and men had a fetish for because she’d been told it enough times. And anyway, back in her quarters she had a mirror, didn’t she? And mirrors were good when it came to adding to a girl’s self-confidence.

“I wouldn’t, then young man. I wouldn’t say anything wicked. Would you?”

Still blushing, he shook his head. He was lost in a conversation that was more innuendo than sense. But it excited him, and he had no idea why. Maybe it was that glimpse down the nurse’s uniform to the wonderland that lay within its crisp, blue depths.

Or maybe it was fun being lost. Maybe that was the chief mystery of life.

Nurse Elly Saunders gave the thermometer a final shake and smiled at him again.

“Quite normal,” she said, “the doctor will probably let you go home tomorrow. Until then...”

“Until then?” he asked.

“Close your eyes and dream of fairyland...”

And she trounced off, smiling and, to his yes, quite beautiful.

And he knew the particular fairyland he was going to dream about. He hadn’t been there, but he’d seen it shielded by stiff blue cotton, and it promised all sorts of adventures one day soon.

© Peter Rogerson 03.01.17