Karen was musing or so Beth's sharp analysis told her as she came out of the kitchen. There she sat at their polished dining room table, head in profile, elbows resting on the table, her chin cupped by her hands and staring into outer space after they'd tidied up after dinner. The dark-haired woman had washed her hands after she'd given the kitchen the once over and so she doubled round and gently placed her damp hands on her partner's shoulders. She knew that this wasn't her comedown after the joys of the weekend but more was at stake.
"What's up darling? I can tell there's something troubling you," she asked gently.
Karen's eyes started to come back into focus away from her nebulous dark worries which contrasted with the golden haze out of the window. She reached her partner's slim right hand and squeezed it fondly.
"I'm getting confused about work. I sometimes wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew with my new job. I'm no longer clear who's my enemy and who's not," Karen said slowly and uncertainly."That sounds like a load of crap, doesn't it," she added shamefacedly.
"Are you ready to talk or do ytou want to think some more about it?" Beth asked gently. She knew that things had been building up inside her partner and was it an illusion but she could see stress lines on her face that hadn't been there before? She'd got to know that Karen sometimes didn't find it easy to talk and pushing her was not moral and was counter productive. The time and place had to be right for her. For her part, Karen was immensely glad that her partner was generously giving her a free choice.
"I want to talk but I'm not ready. When I'm ready, I really want to bounce some ideas off you," Karen said softly. If Beth hadn't already been persauaded by logic, the look in those big blue eyes would have melted her anyway. She came up behind the blond-haired woman, kissed her lightly on the top of her head and reached out for some sofrt music to round off their jagged edges.
The next day, a series of events happened which firmed up Karen's ideas into tangible shape. As soon as she got to her work station, her fury rose when she read the message that, once again, her duty roster had been buggered up as one of her nurses was to be detached to Keller Ward. This wasn't the first time it had happened as two weeks ago, she'd moaned under her breath but put up with the situation, rejigged the schedule, apologised handsomely to the nursesand pulled in a bit of the extra work herself. That was the only way that Jane as RCN rep very reluctantly agreed to the deal but made it clear that she wasn't going to be so soft in future.
"What the hell's happened this time?" she swore to herself as her job description had glowingly described how she was empowered, as unit manager, to organise things accoirding to her ideas. She was on the point of phoning Chrissie Williams as her first instincts were bluntened by the knowledge that her friend and mentor wouldn't do the dirty on her.
"Hi Karen, it's Chrissie. I know you were going to phone me to ask what the hell's happened but I thought I'd be the first to tell you what's really going on. One of my nurses has jacked in her job without notice and another two have gone short term sick. I've been on to management about it and some bright spark came up with the notion of 'sharing the pain.' "
"The answer's obvious. We need a bank nurse to cover the resignation at the very least, possibly a second as well. I know because that's how I first started here years ago," a very overheated Karen replied rapidly, becoming highly conscious of Jane's questioning expression as her sharp ears picked up the sounds of trouble in the wind.
"Times are changing Karen," explained her friend patiently, conscious that her subtleties had been overlooked."You can't have forgotten the talk we had about managing our staff?"
The blond-haired woman remembered all too vividly. She'd been put out in getting a short notice message to be hauled away from her tasks to attend with all the other sisters a meeting in an impossibly sterile room, sit on hard-edged chairs and hear this smart-suited young men who was wet behind the ears drone on about nothing in particular. The stream of syllables slung together urged them all how to think, act and behave as managers to be empowered with blue sky thinking to make their choices. The language was unpleasantly reminiscent of her one time boss, Neil Grayling when she was wing governor. The phrase 'unit manager' grated on her in particular.
"When I became ward sister, I didn't think that death by boredom was part of the job description, snorted Karen derisively.
"You have to learn to read between the lines," explained her friend as her patience ran out on her."What that devious man was getting at was that we can no longer automatically get bank nurses as backup if things go wrong but we're responsible for managing staff shortages, not them. Because we scraped through the problem two weeks back, we're expected to get them out of the mire as a regular thing and they get Brownie points for saving their budgets for them.".
"Sod this for a game of soldiers," snapped Karen. What infuriated her was that, once again, sopme smooth talking man had taken her for a ride and she hadn't spotted it."we need help and fast."
"I've already had an argument with hyim and I haven't shifted him. Just how much time are we prepared to spend to hammer away at him while we've got wards to run?" pressed Chrissie back at Karen. This made Karen feel highly uncomfortable and hesitate as contradictory arguments, all very valid, pressed for her allegiance.
"So what do I tell the nurses?" Karen said faintly.
"What other option have we got?" Chrissie parried, feeling lousy about the situation.
Karen paused for a very long time while her thoughts and emotions were churning around. This is shit, ashe thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she senses that half the conversation was being overheard and the rest being deduced.
"OK, this is my deal. You should know that news is flying fast around my ward. We'll cover for the sickness if it is no more than a daqy or two but we won't cover for the resignation. No matter how you swap the staff, the good running of wards will suffer pretty quickly. Once your two nurses are back at work, we need a bank nurse to cover us. We both go down and tell this manager guy, what's his name that we're not miracle workers and we kick up a stink. Got it Chrissie?" The woman on the other end of the phone paled before this verbal forcefulnesws and she could see how Karen might act as a prison governor. What she couldn't do, the two of them might crack the problem.
"All right you guys," Karen said in her strong commanding voice having walked halfway down the ward so everyone could hear her."I've decided that we're lending out a nurse to Keller Ward where two nurses have gone sick and another has handed in her notice. It's the least we can dop to help. After the two are back at work me and Chrissie Williams will talk to management to lay hold of a bank nurse to cover for however long it takes to replace the third nurse. "
"This isn't good enough Karen,.For a start, you don't know what the nurses have gone sick with, a bad cold, broken leg, bronchitis cholera or black death and for how long. For another, we've always had a bank nurse to cover us when Chrissie Williams was sister," interjected a furious Jane who also felt that she had a position to uphold.
"It was Chrissie Williams on Keller Ward that I was speaking to. She'd already tried that one and didn't get very far," shot back Karen in precise level tones and glaring at her friend. While she was hyper-conscious of her own divided loyalties, Jane was beginning to regret shooting her mouth off so readily.
"I'm not getting at you personally, Karen. If I appeared to, I regret it. The problem is that if we give an inch, they'll take a mile and I'm not talking about you or Chrissie," an embarrassed Jane answered, doing her best to dig herself out of a hole.
"No offence taken Jane but I get your point. All I'm asking is to give it a day for us to muck in and I'll talk to Chrissie first thing tomorrow. I'll check out the situation further and I'll see what mood I'm in as to how long this will drag on for," Karen answered as the slow burning anger rankled because of the position she'd been landed in. It crossed her mind that management hadn't been bothered by the time taken by the lecture she, Chrissie and the other nurses had been subjected to. Jane caught the meaning look in Karen's eye and her raised eyebrows.
"All right, we'll muck in but under duress," she said, judging the mood and was rewarded by a murmur of general agreement.
Suddenly, a well known voice called out sharply from behind Karen's back to break the silence. This was the last thing she needed, groaned Karen to herself.
"What the hell is going on? A town hall meeting? I've got a heart transplant operation booked so why is everyone still gathered around?"
"We've had it dumped on us that we'll be obne nurse light today, Jac Naylor, so my duty roster is buggered up. You might not care a toss but you would be if you were one scrub nurse short," Karen stormed back at Jac with considerable energy.
For a full minute, there was dead suilence. Karen didn't often lose her temper and the nurses gathered the strain she was under. For the first time in her career, Jac realised that the other woman was equally stressed and angry and she decided to back off gently.
"So can you get me a couple of scrub nurses? she said in flat, level tones and a neutral ezxpression on her face.
"Give me a couple of minutes and I'll sort you out while I'm changing the rota," Karen said quietly and she turned to the workstation where she printed off a duty roster.
"I'll go to Keller ward if you want," Jane volunteered.
"Thanks for the offer but Jac Naylor will need your experience in theatre as one of the scrub nurses. This is the new duty roster," Karen pronounced after she'd scrawled the changed duties and marked out the nurse to be detached to Keller."Is everyone happy now?"
"What about the second scrub nurse?" enquired Jac.
"That's me. I'm sure you'll all cope for an hour or two without me to hold your hand. My admin work's going on the back burner but, hey that's life. We get the essentials done. It's about time the two of us see what the other can do," Karen replied with forceful purpose which drew everyone in after her.
"Sounds fine by me," Jac said with as much respect as she dared let into her voice. She'd been mildly surprised and pleased to be cut a good deal and this time, she waited politely for her two helpmates to be ready without cracking the whip to make a move.
In late afternoon, Beth was rattling out the final paragraphs on her computer on her theatre review before scanning it rapidly and knocking it into final shape. She'd just come back from the matinee performance in one of the row of theatres along Shaftesbury Avenue and chatted to the producer and some of the friendly actors in the cast after the show. She'd enjoyed the experience on a nice sunny day and this was the better part of her role as a reporter on the Independent. Nevertheless, she felt exiled from her true calling in life which was the political section to where she'd had been a featured journalist. Her pride and joy was her feature on Nikki Wade's expose of conditions in Larkhall Prison and when she'd gone on to cover a particularly controversial Howard League of Penal Reform, the article had been spiked and she'd been shunted sideways. However, while she had liked the old school socialists in that department, she had hated the up and coming opportunists who couldn't get it through her head the nature of her sexual preferences as it were such a big deal. She bumped into one ot two of her old friends in the corridors but that was as much contact as she had with that way of life. Suddenly, her mobile bleeped and a message flashed on her mobile screen- Back late knackered but good day- luv K xx. Beth smiled to herself. This was a good sign and maybe Karen was ready to talk. She brushed back a lock of dark hair which crept over her cheekbone as part of her elegant bob cut and carried on working.
"Not bad eh? Everything went pretty smoothly," Jac Naylor pronounced with satisfaction as she, Karen and Jane led the way back to the ward with rapid strides down the endless corridor. She had to admit that she felt confident and her assistants were up to scratch. She'd held back for a moment while Karen had fished her mobile out of her pocket and sent off a quick text but figured out that this was private business and not her concern.
"You do blow your trumpet but you know what you're doing. That's what matters," a weary but satisfied Karen answered. Her pager had been silent all this time so all was well while she'd been away from her ward. Jac gave way to a slight smile as Karen was only telling the truth.
"For a couple of lesbians, I could have had worse help than you gave me," she said in not unfriendly tones. The two other sharp-witted women took this as words of praise.
"Do we have the makings of an armistice?" pursued Karen as they crossed the central spur of St. Mary's hospital. She was reevaluating just who her enemies were.
"So long as I get cooperation and no smart alec backchat," Jac said a little waspishly.
"That's fine so long as you knock off the homophobic cracks and digs about unions," Karen retorted before venturing a slight hint."We've both got bigger fish to fry in getting along with our jobs."
"Then we've got an agreement," Jac answered, a faint flicker of her smile passing her lips before she dived down another corridor.
"You get your break Jane while I get back to the ward and see everything's OK," Karen said with a warm smile on her face. She'd felt comfortable as their working together in a common cause had smoothed over their earlier conflict.
"I'll take your order so long as you get yourself a break later on. You're not quite Superwoman," Jane grinned as they came up to the canteen and the temporary parting of the ways.
Beth got herself home first but wasn't feeling too hungry so she sat down and took it easy in the peace and quiet of their flat. She stuck on her favourite cool jazz album and let the rhythms ease out the pressures of a day's work. Suddenly, another text winged its way through the wavelengths and into her mobile. -Finishing work 6. Fancy fish and chips tonight. Will get them if u want. OK? K xx- The idea seemed suddenly irresistable to Beth as a let go moment in their life. She texted back -Yippee. Love it. B xx- as quickly as he fingers could type. She normally took care of what she ate and studied her calorie intake but she loved Karen's sudden impulses to do something different.
"Here I am darling," called out Karen through the door fiddling with her key as she managed a carrier bag full of goodies, wrapped up in white paper. Beth laid out two plates as the golden chips and deep fried cod tumbled out of the paper. A bottle of chilled wine lay on the side with two glasses. For the first time, Beth caught a good look at her partner. The blond haired woman looked tired but the stress lines that had marked her face had faded and her grin and sparkling blue eyes were irresistable.
"Thank God, no washing up. That's the best part of it," Karen exclaimed with satisfaction as she threw the scrunched up papers into the wastebin and topped up the wine glasses."I suppose you want me to carry on the conversation where we left off last night," she added as she put her feet up on the table.
"Of course I do darling. Your problems are mine and vice versa," Beth said softly and Karen turned and gave her a big kiss for that. Beth grinned at the faint taste of greasy chips on her lover's lips.
"The answer's simple," Karen continued blithely as she tossed off half a glassful of wine."I'm up against the same load of wankers I was up against at Larkhall Prison but Jac Naylor isn't the problem?"
"She isn't?" questioned a wide eyed Beth. She had never met the woman but she struck her as sheer poison and enough trouble for anyone.
"She's a bitchg but at least she's a professional bitch and Jane and I worked as scrub nurses and proved our worth to her and she saw what we can do. We made an armistice on equal terms. The real enemies are the suits and they're bullshitters which Jac Naylor isn't," commenced Karen as she explained lucidly the office politics in the National Health Service as she saw it. like a good reporter, Beth drank it all in and opened her ears and eyes. Her only regret as she admired her partner's durability in standing up incorruptibly to these insidious pressures was that she wouldn't get the opportunity to report on this any more than the situation she was stuck in.