It Shouldn't Happen to a Midwife! Read Online Free PDF

to be. Crystal gazing, it is not. No, it’s the practice that’s going to do it, and we’ll make a start this morning after the coffee break when we go to the antenatal ward. Sister’s got a couple of very different patients for us to see.’
    The dining room was busy with staff crowding the long easy-wipe tables, some of which flanked a waterfall feature. It had the disconcerting habit of working intermittently.
    â€˜Makes it sound like a gents’ toilet,’ remarked Lorna as we queued at the self-service counter.
    â€˜Too right. Let’s not go near it,’ said Seonaid, loading up her tray with enough coffee and soda scones to feed an army. ‘It’ll make us all want to run at the same time.’
    â€˜That shouldn’t worry you, you’ve just been,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s where all the grandees are.’ I nodded at a table full of white coats deep in conversation. ‘They look just as self-important as our lot back in Aberdeen.’
    One of the Belfast girls laughed, ‘They’re just the medical students and probably discussing the best place to drink Guinness.’
    â€˜Doesn’t sound too healthy. Think I’ll settle for fruit.’ I smiled at the counter assistant.
    â€˜Pars?’
    I looked around. Her look was direct and she was definitely speaking to me.
    â€˜Pars?’ she repeated, beginning to sound exasperated and placing dumbbell arms on her hips. She was short and square and her name tag gave her the unlikely name of Daisy.
    â€˜Could ye make up yer mind? I haven’t all day.’
    â€˜Come on, Janet, we haven’t either. You’re holding us all up. She’s asking if you want a pear.’ The speaker was a young chap queuing behind me. In contrast to his colleague with his jingling change and foxy furrowed face, he had an open, cheerful, relaxed way and leant his back on the counter, hands in his pockets.
    Daisy sighed. ‘Youse medical students have no patience. Just hold on, would ye.’ She took a pear, dusted it on her overall then handed it over.
    â€˜Great.’ I wished I’d the courage to ask for one less battle scarred.
    â€˜Grrrreat! Och aye the noo,’ echoed both students, doubling up with mirth.
    I could have said they were a right pair but only thought of it when back and following Miss Harvey now taking us into the hospital proper.
    Smaller than Aberdeen’s Foresterhill, Belfast’s Royal Maternity felt like an antiseptic railway station where only a train arrival could bring excitement and galvanise the place into action. With its linoleum-grey floor menacing with glitter, the long corridor breathed carbolic whilst the odd notice broke up the putty-coloured walls with suitably improving health and visitor information notices. From a small corridor off the main one came the sound of clinking bottles.
    â€˜That’s where the bottle feeds are made up,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘In the absence of any mother’s home brew, it’s our very own dairy.’
    â€˜But only supplying to babies, I hope, and where’s the main entrance?’ I asked, hoping it was a little more welcoming than the back-door one.
    Miss Harvey said, ‘It’s one floor up beside the admission and waiting rooms and of course, as Matron made clear, her office.’ From the cool inference she might have said ‘dragon’s den’ before she continued, ‘People get to the hospital from Grosvenor Road. It’s just off the Falls Road.’
    There were wards leading off at the far end whilst nearer was a windowed area looking over a narrow corridor into a glass-enclosed room.
    â€˜That’s the Special Care Unit,’ explained the tutor. We stared into another planet where paper-capped phantoms in white dresses tended to tiny babies in incubators.
    Oblivious to all but the one wheeled in its little enclosed world to the corridor between there and the