The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives Read Online Free Page A

a.m. prompt for lectures with Mr Tate, to whom we were briefly introduced. I scarcely took in a word he said because I was too busy taking in his demeanour. He had huge lips, wore a terrible green knitted tie and ill-fitting glasses, and had the worst comb-over you could ever imagine, with skinny strands of greying hair stretched desperately across his bald scalp. Odd, I thought. A very odd-looking man indeed.
    We would spend our first eight-week ‘block’ based in the schoolroom, and classes would be punctuated with tours of the fourteen wards in the 400-bed hospital. I didn’t even know what some of the names of the wards meant, such as endocrinology and thoracic, let alone how to navigate my way through the three-floored maze to find them.
    That first evening I sat on my single bed at the nurse’s home with all my day’s thoughts and fears clattering around inside my aching head. As students we all had to live in the nurses’ quarters adjacent to the hospital; there was no choice in the matter. The money for our board was taken out of our student wages before we received them, leaving us first years with £27 a month – not a bad sum to live on, I supposed.
    This was the first time I had been alone all day, and I gulped as I sat on the unfamiliar bed, trying to absorb the huge step I was taking. I surveyed my new bedroom warily and felt my throat tighten. It was a large room with a wooden floor and a big fitted wardrobe, which was painted the same drab, off-white colour as the bare walls and had three hefty drawers underneath. I got up and tried to pull one of the drawers open, but found the task almost impossible. Puffing and panting, I eventually managed to heave the drawer free, feeling like a feeble little bird struggling to build a nest. I wanted to cry.
    There was a stark white ceramic sink in one corner and a small dressing table with a chair in the other. My bed had two grey woollen blankets, and a starched counterpane lay across the top. I plumped my pillow and it felt stiff and scratchy to the touch, which made me even more miserable. To make myself feel better I took my John Lennon poster from my suitcase and stuck it on the wall above my bed. I knew it was against the rules to decorate the walls but I couldn’t really see what harm it could do, and I made a mental note to be careful not to damage the paint when I took it down in the future.
    ‘New linen will be left outside your door once a fortnight,’ the home sister had instructed. ‘You must strip your bed and leave your dirty laundry outside your door, in your laundry bag.’
    She’d given us a brisk guided tour of the nurses’ accommodation earlier. ‘There are wooden blocks fitted to the inside of all of the windows,’ she told us in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘This is to stop intruders getting in.’
    Sitting on my bed that evening, I looked over at the one small rain-smeared window and felt a film of tears mask my eyes. I was used to living in relative luxury, sheltered at my private convent school and cosseted by my parents in our comfortable suburban home. This was the first time in my whole life I had felt vulnerable – afraid, even. I’d imagined that after spending a month abroad in the summer I’d be absolutely fine living in Manchester. I was less than ten miles from home, but everything here seemed so alien to me.
    Sue and I had stayed at my brother’s apartment in Beirut for two fun-filled weeks. He worked for United Press International and had a wonderful lifestyle. A cleaner came in every morning while Sue and I sunned ourselves by the pool. Afterwards we met John for lunch at the plush St George’s Hotel, and in the evenings he took us to fancy parties. I remembered how he smiled when we asked for Ovaltine at bedtime on our first night. ‘Why don’t you try a gin and tonic instead?’ he suggested. We did, and we never stopped giggling for the whole holiday.
    Sue and I both felt so grown-up. We booked ourselves on a