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hasn’t been the best start to the day. Have a coffee, courtesy of Joe, and let’s work out how we are going to manage the rest of the day. There is one thing we know: it can only get better.’
    Fionnuala wasn’t happy drinking coffee in the office, with the doctors present. It made her feel uncomfortable. However, the staff canteen was closed, because it was Christmas and she now discovered it was quite usual for the nurses to eat with the patients on the ward on Christmas Day, just as though they were a family.
    ‘I have managed to purchase plenty of treats for the ward, with the donations we have had over the year,’ Sister Joyce said. ‘Let’s start with this one, shall we?’
    Out of the cardboard box on her desk, which appeared to be full of chocolates, she extracted a bottle of Scotch whisky and, without further ado, poured a small measure into each coffee cup.
    Fionnuala dared not speak. She had never even tasted whisky, but she did want to look as though she had. Then, to her surprise, she noticed something quite unexpected. Helen and the junior Doctor Brookes were smiling at each other over their coffee cups, and Helen was blushing. Fionnuala wasn’t surprised. Helen was the prettiest and most glamorous nurse in the hospital, with a personality to match.
    ‘We have the consultants arriving, with their wives and families, at twelve,’ said Sister Joyce. ‘They will take a sherry with us all, including the patients, in the day room. We will then take the sherry in to those who cannot leave their beds. The consultants and their wives will visit the patients at their bedsides, to wish them Merry Christmas. When they have left, we will serve lunch on the table in the centre of the ward for us all. It should be an easy day from here on in, nurses.’
    Sister Joyce had probably never got anything quite so wrong in her thirty years as a ward sister.
    *
    The hospital choir had returned to the wards, to sing to the patients, while they ate their lunch. They sang two carols on each ward, which meant they could cover most of the adult wards in an hour and a half. The nurses in the hospital choir were those on duty. Making Christmas Day a better one, for patients who needed to remain in hospital, was their calling and they had all been slipped on to their ward rota as extras, to ensure the tradition survived.
    Fionnuala and Helen had finished serving lunch to the patients, with Joe’s help, and had just sat down to tuck into their own, when the choir singers began to arrive through the ward door. It was only two thirty in the afternoon, but it was already becoming dark outside. The sky was heavy with yet more snow-filled clouds and the wind lifting up from the river was fierce.
    The end of the ward looked out onto the front of the hospital through large glass windows, and they all noticed as an ambulance, with blue lights flashing, hurtled up the drive.
    ‘Let’s hope it’s not one for us,’ said Sister Joyce. ‘Let’s say grace, shall we, before the carol singers begin. Doctor Brookes, if you would be so kind.’
    They all bowed their heads and closed their eyes, as the sonorous voice of Doctor Brookes boomed out the grace. Fionnuala opened her eyes to look around her. Everyone was sitting around the table, with hands clasped before them and eyes tightly shut. The Christmas turkey was steaming on the table, along with hospital kitchen aluminium tubs, filled with roast potatoes, vegetables and as many trimmings as could fit onto the regulation white and bottle-green trimmed plates.
    Fionnuala noticed she wasn’t the only person with her eyes open. Helen was staring dreamily at Dr Brookes and what was more, as he spoke the grace, he was looking equally dreamily at Helen. Helen caught Fionnuala’s eye and they both grinned. Well, well, well, thought Fionnuala, and I spotted it first.
    As the choir singers began, the pager in Dr Brookes’ pocket beeped. He jumped up from the table and ran to the office to pick