She wasn’t the best nurse in our student year, but she was the one we all wanted to copy for style. Dee would have been more at home on Carnaby Street than the world of a hospital training school. It was 1962 and with her geometric hairstyle fitting under her nurse’s cap like a polished helmet, she could have been the cover girl for ‘Seventeen’, the magazine that often had Twiggy on the front.
She was fashionably slim, moving through the hospital looking vaguely disdainful and the few patients who dared to ask Dee for anything as basic as a bedpan, were usually disappointed. That was left for the rest of us who were in perpetual motion, ever leaning forward in the vain hope we could arrive at the next job quicker. Dee glided. After being lectured by Sister Tutor that nurses never ran, we moved as speedily as we dared. Seeing a nurse running could create in patients the kind of panic we all experienced daily. No emotion could show that might disconcert others.
Worried? Smile. Tired? Smile. Our trained reaction to everything was a useful tool that helped through many scenarios. It was an implement Dee never utilised. Her face spoke silent volumes.
She only went out with wealthy males with cars. We were eighteen and the rest of us were simply happy to have someone to call a boyfriend. They were usually students as poor as we were who used buses and shared our fish and chips. Dee ate in restaurants.
Dee discarded. many suitors, but when she told us she was no longer with Tim we were stunned. MG-B Tim had looked and sounded perfect, but she’d discovered a flaw. On their last date he’d spent ages trying to kill a spider he’d found in his car, and she’d later discovered it was one of her false eyelashes. It must have fallen off in a moment of passion, before being battered with his shoe. Those eyelashes had cost her money.
Dee’s nonchalance was lost that night, but by morning, it had returned, and she was once again sublimely impervious to bedpan requests!
Burnside Writers Group 