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for attention.

    Anxiety was well founded. The room was as full of snores as the bed was empty, its usual occupant located by a pair of bunions sticking out from under it.
    ‘Mrs Davidson! What on earth are you doing there?’ It was difficult trying to reach her and worrying that a snore was the only response.
    She felt cold and must be unconscious because she wouldn’t want anyone to see her with her fallen teeth grinning beside her and a nightdress hugging her neck. There wasn’t much point in ringing for action. I’d be ringing myself.
    It must be my fault she’d fallen out of bed. Even if she did complain, maybe I should have tucked her in better. Sister Gordon would be furious but I’d just have to find and tell her. I threw a blanket over Mrs Davidson and hurried to get help.
    Funnily enough Sister Gordon, with a patient looking a long way from cooperation, was having problems of her own. She seemed almost pleased to have a bigger better emergency on her hands.
    ‘There wis nae need for that bath. Look! Ah’m shivering. I’ll get ma death o’ cold.’
    This must be Miss Kerr. She was minute with a hook nose and the ferocious look of a trapped hawk. Black nails which must have escaped Sister Gordon’s attention curled over her fingers.
    ‘Leave me alane, ye brute!’ She pulled on her dressing gown cord with a force suggesting a strong free mind.
    Having seen the poor thermal quality of a flimsy nightie on a patient currently under a bed nearby, I thought that even if the dressing gown Miss Kerr was wearing was held together by grease, she should keep it on. But Sister Gordon, backing out the door, had other ideas: ‘After you’ve given her a cup of tea and tidied the bathroom, we’ll lend her a hospital dressing gown. That one needs a wash. Now I’ll see you later, Jane, but right now I’d better go and sort out this other problem.’ Her tone was grim.
    ‘An’ dinna come back,’ called Miss Kerr, looking pleased.
    I picked up some towels. Sister Gordon must have given Miss Kerr a wipe down before getting her near the bath for they were as black as flue rags.
    ‘Now what about something with your tea?’
    ‘Hiv ye bananas?’ Miss Kerr sounded hopeful.
    Compared to her alleged staple diet of week old porridge, maybe they held a touch of the exotic.
    ‘Pop into bed and I’ll see what I can do, but you’ll have to give me that dressing gown first.’

    Like a trophy, I carried it and the towels under my arm and hurried to the washhouse before Miss Kerr could change her mind. There was a pile of soiled draw sheets waiting to be sluiced down but they were left to the side as I filled the deep stone sink and added enema soap.
    Along with its usual use it was supposedly ideal for fragile fabrics, a fact disproved by the dressing gown, which, even if it was a sad cerise, leaked colour like a haemorrhage.
    ‘Mighty me! I came to put away my rake and what do I find but a bloodbath.’ Henry had arrived and sounded so shocked you wouldn’t think he’d been a war veteran.
    He stroked a lantern jaw. ‘Are you doing operations here as well?’
    ‘Blast!’ I lifted out the sopping heap. ‘Here, hold this please. I’ll need to change the water.’ I foraged for the plug but in haste tipped the sheets into the water.
    Their change to pink was immediate and could have been a magical transformation had their future not been so clinical.
    ‘Damn!’
    ‘A bonny colour,’ said Henry fatuously, laying down the dressing gown and beginning to edge away. Whilst it looked diminished, the other stuff soaked up the dye like blotting paper.
    ‘You can’t leave me now, Henry,’ I wailed. ‘This is an emergency. Who ever heard of pink hospital linen?’ But he’d evaporated and I was alone with only two singularly unattractive pink bundles for company.
    We could have had a shared joke about cabbage patches but with Henry gone after suffering an unusual attack of diligence, I’d to deal as best I could in a