Mr Chivers In Bed Seven

The class of 1983 with our tutor Mr Brint

Paula -Top row right, Mike Far right.

I am on the far left

It was in the late autumn of 1984 when Mike, Paula and I started our general nursing placement at the Royal Infirmary in Chester.
As second year psychiatric nurses not that long out of our teens, we were so out of our comfort zone as the trim general nurses bustled around with more purpose and vigour than we were used to. But , for the most part our colleagues were kind and the task orientated care  fairly easy to pick up.

The ward was a surgical one, with a busy turn over. But there was one patient that remained a sort of constant during our time there and that was Mr Chivers.
Mr Chivers had been a solid large man when young. He had, as far as we could make out, experienced several large surgeries on his bowel and bladder and had a daily hour long slot made for him in an afternoon where the most experienced of the staff nurses would change his dressings.
He now weighed the same as a ten year old girl.
He was single and had no family, but was a chatterer by nature, so it wouldn't have surprised anyone that we psychiatric nurses gravitated towards him
Like puppies do to a smiling face.
And so when I helped roll Mr Chivers for his dressings that smelled like rotting fish to be changed, he quizzed me about my family roots in Liverpool and we talked about his wartime experience in York with his best friend Knobby.
Before his teatime morphine kicked in to his system, he would hold Paula's tiny hand so firmly until her empathy tears were wiped away along with his and every morning he allowed Mike to shave him alongside the scouse banter Mike was well known for even though he was perfectly able to do it himself.
Mr Chivers was our go to man. He waved to us on arrival and on our departure with a skinny yellow hand and his locker drawer was constantly filled with liquorice allsorts which could be plundered by us in between observation rounds, post op checks and urine bottle washing.
He read the Radio Times and planned our tv watching for the evening and he held up his crossed fingers when one of us were taken aside for an assessment on our aseptic technique
.
The ward sister was , I think, well aware of our relationship with the old man but had bigger things to concern herself with. She did , however make a point of saying rather too curtly that "Mr Chivers would not make Christmas" in handover once after Paula had joked about taking him out Christmas shopping.

It was soon after this when Paula and I came on duty at 7.15am, we stopped at the nurses station
looking at an empty bed 7. The mattress was scrubbed clean with antiseptic and the locker was emptied of liquorice and pyjamas.
Mr Chivers had died around 6 am.
he had been alone as it was medication time.

Paula cried her way through handover with a blotchy face
I kept my eyes to the floor
and the ward sister, looking weary even at that early time called out "Nurse Bestwick, Mr Gray a moment please!" as the nurses filed from her office.
She was not unkind
"You psychi nurses really need to harden up a little" she told us carefully handing Paula a tissue
"This is about the patient and not all about you"
Paula and I must have looked a little bemused by her words so she explained
"Mr Chivers got a great deal of pleasure looking after the three of you these last few weeks. that's what helped him through. You made him feel useful and needed."
Then it all made sense.
The stories during a smelly unpleasant dressing change was a distraction for my benefit.
The unneeded wet shave and the hand holding.
Things designed to comfort  us and...not him......

"Now wash your face and get back on the floor" the sister instructed us her thoughts already on another 100 things to do.
and we both left her office a little older and a just a little wiser.