Northfield, Chapter 3.
In this AU story, Alec Jesmond does not die.
Listening
Timothy Turner enjoyed having a new audience; Shelagh was soon given many opportunities to see his new photographs and drawings. He visited Nonnatus House quite often, and Shelagh developed a good rapport with the sensitive, lonely boy. Working alongside Mrs. Fairfax in the Nonnatus kitchen, Timothy told Shelagh of his days at school and his Cub meetings. Shelagh had also been shown his treasured family photo album with pictures of a young Doctor Turner, Mrs. Jennifer Turner and other relatives in it. The family ties to Birmingham were now loose, but it seemed that before Mrs. Turner's death and their removal to London, the couple had belonged to a very close circle of family and friends. These friends were mostly old Doctor Parker's colleagues and their families. Below the pictures, Shelagh came across many familiar names, scribbled there apparently by Granny Parker, as Tim called his maternal grandmother.
"Doctor Bion and Mrs. Faulkes playing croquet." "Lydia Rickman having tea with Jennifer in the garden" "Uncle Trotter with his nephews and nieces".
For Shelagh, these were near-famous people whose articles she had read as a student nurse: Wilfred Bion, Siegfried Faulkes, John Rickman and Wilfred Trotter. In one group portrait, there was even Ernst Jones*, of whom she had heard quite a lot from Anna Freud.
At the surgery, Shelagh developed a similar rapport with Timothy's father. He liked to talk shop with her.
Through these conversations, a new world was opening for Shelagh. They talked of the cases of the day and new treatments –but that was not so unfamiliar to her. The man himself was a new experience. It seemed he had a deep interest in the history of medicine and that not many people in Poplar shared this interest.
He could still be blunt but he was no longer dour in those times when she let him think aloud, and he seemed to enjoy her popping questions or remarks at him.
On one spectacular day, they had one of these conversations.
"That was a close call."
Doctor Turner came back from the telephone clearly relieved at the news he had just received. Earlier that day, there had been a serious accident at a construction area. A young architect, Alec Jesmond, was badly hurt, and after Doctor Turner's first aid, Jesmond was transferred to the London. Now they got the news that the vascular surgery had been successful; his foot had been saved.
"That is good news, Doctor."
He sat down and stretched his arms above his head. "To think that only ten years ago this day would have gone quite differently. Without antibiotics, Alec Jesmond may well have died. And the progress of surgery has been enormous. During the war, we only dreamed of these things."
He chuckled with a hint of cynicism. "Do you know what my most desired diagnosis was in the war? Just four little words: No need to amputate. "
"Did you like serving in the army?"
"Yes, I liked to serve in the army. It was practical and you felt needed. Different from psychiatric cases, which can sometimes leave you helpless. The progress in psychiatry can be too slow for my impatient nature….".
He grinned a little. "Aha, you are smiling, Nurse Mannion? Do you admire my astonishing self-awareness?"
"Please go on, Doctor. The progress is slow in psychiatry…?" She had gained some resistance to his teasing.
He exhaled. "All right. Sometimes I am fed up with the poor resources we have. And there are not enough treatment options. We can give barbiturates, electric shocks or supportive therapy and that's it. Group therapy and other clinical experiments showed early promise, as did psychoanalytic research, but they are not fully feasible to all mental illnesses…."
His face turned a little melancholy. "I'd like to be of use, to be able to make things better. Just think that only forty years ago, a simple appendectomy was a great risk. Now it is a relatively routine procedure."
He looked at Shelagh with quizzical eyes. "I remember being told that Doctor Ernst Jones's first wife died during appendectomy. It is hard when a death comes so near. It makes our professional expertise seem futile."
He stared into the distance. "If something goes wrong…..you just have to bear it. Do you know what Jones chose for his wife's epitaph? 'Here the indescribable is done'."
He winced. "Sometimes I understand where he was coming from. What's the point? Someday we will all be food for worms."
Shelagh understood that he wasn't talking only about the Joneses. She had an inkling of how he may have dealt with his own losses. It was good that he didn't keep it all inside.
Yet on a day like this, there was no need to dwell on such memories. She decided some tough love was needed.
"Well, I am not ready for the worms yet, and neither was Alec Jesmond. Let that make us cheerful today. Cheerful enough to finish writing these prescriptions."
She put a pile of papers before him. He raised his upper lip in an ironical manner and rose up from his lounging position.
"Aye aye, sir. I mean mademoiselle. As you wish."
After filling in a couple of forms, he stopped for a moment and looked up at her:
"It is good that you keep me in order. You are the first receptionist to succeed in that. "
"Well, you are quite a handful, Doctor."
"Yes. I am. "
*A British psychoanalyst and a biographer of Freud