to soothe her by gently stroking her face with her fingers.
And then Sunday felt pain, a searing pain which engulfed her entire body from head to toe. Inside her head, she could feel a thumping sensation as though someone was pounding her with a sledgehammer. But most of all, it was the sudden feeling of intense pressure deep inside her ears that really scared her; it felt like someone’s fingers were pushing hard into them, tearing through her temple and almost touching her eyes. The only release she had was to scream out in pain at the top of her voice.
Her panic was so great, she hardly felt the needle that was being pushed into her arm.
It was several days before Sunday had regained enough strength to be transferred to the Ear, Nose, and Throat Ward which was in a separate wing of the Royal Northern Hospital. Once the bandages around her head had been removed, she was immediately subjected to a series of exhausting tests which would determine the extent of the injuries to her ears. For Sunday it was a painstaking, depressing experience, for since that first moment of regaining her faculties, she had had to come to terms with the agonising reality that she was unable to hear anything more than low, distant humming sounds. The flying bomb explosion had not only perforated her eardrums, but had also caused serious infections to both her middle and inner ears. And despite a specialist’s assurances that there might be the possibility of an operation to partially restore the hearing in one ear, Sunday was shrewd enough to know that the prospect was bleak. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was getting more and more concerned that no one could tell her anything about what had happened to Pearl. It was finally left to Madge to break the news. Pearl was dead – killed in the flying bomb explosion together with five other ‘Baggies’. Ma Briggs was amongst the dead.
Sunday was devastated. Pearl was her friend, her very best friend. They were like sisters, always laughing and joking together, always standing up for each other whenever Ma Briggs tried to throw her weight around. For at least a day after she was told, Sunday had refused to believe what had happened. Not to Pearl. Not to
her
friend. It had to be a mistake, it just had to be. OK, so Pearl was chubby. But she was strong. She was really strong. If she’d been buried under that wreckage, she’d never have just given up – and died. As she lay in bed, her pillow soaked with tears, all Sunday could do was to keep repeating Pearl’s name to herself over and over again. ‘Pearl. Pearl. Pearl. Pearl. Don’t do this to me, Pearl. Don’t leave me. Don’t
ever
leave me.’
The trauma of coping with Pearl’s death, together with the prospect of being deaf for the rest of her life, was too much for Sunday. Even though she was full of drugs to combat the pain in her head and ears, her mind was in turmoil, and, despite the strenuous efforts of her doctors and nurses, she refused to cooperate in trying to learn even the most basic ways to communicate, such as reading and writing messages on a note-pad at the side of her bed. She spent most of the time sitting in a chair in the day room at the end of the ward, with a fixed stare at all the activity around her – movement, doctors and nurses talking to their patients, a WVS helper serving tea from a trolley, exchanging a comforting word with a seriously ill air-raid victim, patients sitting up in bed listening through earphones to the Home Service on the wireless. Nothing different about any of it, except that she couldn’t
hear
the voices, couldn’t
hear
the laughter, couldn’t even
hear
the shuffling of feet on the bare lino floor of the ward. She was living in an alien world, a world that was stark and unreal, like the nightmares she was now having every night. She wanted no part of it. She wanted things to be like they used to be, when she and Pearl went dancing up the Athenaeum every Saturday night. She
And then Sunday felt pain, a searing pain which engulfed her entire body from head to toe. Inside her head, she could feel a thumping sensation as though someone was pounding her with a sledgehammer. But most of all, it was the sudden feeling of intense pressure deep inside her ears that really scared her; it felt like someone’s fingers were pushing hard into them, tearing through her temple and almost touching her eyes. The only release she had was to scream out in pain at the top of her voice.
Her panic was so great, she hardly felt the needle that was being pushed into her arm.
It was several days before Sunday had regained enough strength to be transferred to the Ear, Nose, and Throat Ward which was in a separate wing of the Royal Northern Hospital. Once the bandages around her head had been removed, she was immediately subjected to a series of exhausting tests which would determine the extent of the injuries to her ears. For Sunday it was a painstaking, depressing experience, for since that first moment of regaining her faculties, she had had to come to terms with the agonising reality that she was unable to hear anything more than low, distant humming sounds. The flying bomb explosion had not only perforated her eardrums, but had also caused serious infections to both her middle and inner ears. And despite a specialist’s assurances that there might be the possibility of an operation to partially restore the hearing in one ear, Sunday was shrewd enough to know that the prospect was bleak. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was getting more and more concerned that no one could tell her anything about what had happened to Pearl. It was finally left to Madge to break the news. Pearl was dead – killed in the flying bomb explosion together with five other ‘Baggies’. Ma Briggs was amongst the dead.
Sunday was devastated. Pearl was her friend, her very best friend. They were like sisters, always laughing and joking together, always standing up for each other whenever Ma Briggs tried to throw her weight around. For at least a day after she was told, Sunday had refused to believe what had happened. Not to Pearl. Not to
her
friend. It had to be a mistake, it just had to be. OK, so Pearl was chubby. But she was strong. She was really strong. If she’d been buried under that wreckage, she’d never have just given up – and died. As she lay in bed, her pillow soaked with tears, all Sunday could do was to keep repeating Pearl’s name to herself over and over again. ‘Pearl. Pearl. Pearl. Pearl. Don’t do this to me, Pearl. Don’t leave me. Don’t
ever
leave me.’
The trauma of coping with Pearl’s death, together with the prospect of being deaf for the rest of her life, was too much for Sunday. Even though she was full of drugs to combat the pain in her head and ears, her mind was in turmoil, and, despite the strenuous efforts of her doctors and nurses, she refused to cooperate in trying to learn even the most basic ways to communicate, such as reading and writing messages on a note-pad at the side of her bed. She spent most of the time sitting in a chair in the day room at the end of the ward, with a fixed stare at all the activity around her – movement, doctors and nurses talking to their patients, a WVS helper serving tea from a trolley, exchanging a comforting word with a seriously ill air-raid victim, patients sitting up in bed listening through earphones to the Home Service on the wireless. Nothing different about any of it, except that she couldn’t
hear
the voices, couldn’t
hear
the laughter, couldn’t even
hear
the shuffling of feet on the bare lino floor of the ward. She was living in an alien world, a world that was stark and unreal, like the nightmares she was now having every night. She wanted no part of it. She wanted things to be like they used to be, when she and Pearl went dancing up the Athenaeum every Saturday night. She
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