The call of Louisa Jordan

Prologue: waiting for the call. Easter Sunday, April 12 2020

THIS Easter Sunday feels different. The Covid-19 lockdown is no respecter of sleep patterns or religious rituals. There is no need to jump out of bed, and no need to rush up the Brown Carrick Hill for a dawn service. This Easter might have been a bit more relaxed, a ‘stay at home’ occasion, had it not been for the message I received late on Wednesday night: “Just to ask for your prayers and to let you know that I have been redeployed back to frontline work and have started as the Lead Chaplain at the new NHS Louisa Jordan emergency facility in Glasgow, for up to 520 Covid-19 +ve patients”, Iain Macritchie.

I’m conscious that I have been waiting for a call. I just wasn’t ready for it to come this way. Maundy Thursday, while walking the Brown Carrick, I shared my thoughts with my wife, Mandy: “I’m wondering about whether to give Iain a call…” And then on the way home came the call, from Iain: “Can you join the team?” Out of the blue, serendipity, a lightning bolt. A summons.

The team: “how on earth have I arrived here?”

Sitting with [fellow chaplain] Linda Dunbar, in the lecture theatre, along with several members of the Scottish Interfaith Council, we listen rapt to David McArthur, the lead nurse, introduce snippets of Sister Louisa Jordan’s story.

Louisa was born in Glasgow’s Maryhill. She served with 30-40 fellow nurses in the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Serbia during World War 1. Leaving home in December 1914, she died from typhus in March 1915. “Louisa”, said David, “Is a person who has been better remembered in Serbia than in Scotland. The new Nightingale hospital in Glasgow is named after her, and is a fitting tribute to her service and her courage.”

Sitting there, I heard her voice across the ages summoning me, and Linda, and the Royal Engineers who in a fortnight, along with a massive civilian effort, pulled together in a common cause to create the facility. A message from HRH Princess Anne describes the build as a ‘successful team effort’. And how the facility provides spare capacity to the whole of the NHS Scotland. “Covid-19 affects every single person,” she said, “…even if it’s not used, I’m grateful that it exists”.

I was struck by the image of a young Louisa Jordan heading out with her colleagues into Serbia. Into the unknown. So, for a moment, I sat thinking about her sense of call and courage to be a nurse, and to face the risks that lay ahead of her, her sense of vocation so much at the core of nursing.

None of our spiritual care team were anticipating a call or imagining any cost, but believe me, when the call came, it hit home, struck deep, and continues to affect us all, albeit in different ways.

Iain Macritchie, our lead, was the first of us to hear and respond to the crisis call. On April 7, the scenario described to him was of multiple deaths and body bags. We needed to open on April 13. After only a slight hesitation it dawned on Iain, “It’s me!” And although not a good time, and although tired, he found the energy to call together a team within a week. Other members of the team describe the call:

• David Mitchell remembers saying ‘yes in an instant’ but then putting the brakes on, worrying about the impact on his family. After that, on seeing the other members of the team, he gained some solace by thinking, ‘this is a dream team’.

• I had skills to offer the NHS, says Paul Grant, and had already offered to return to the NHS in some capacity. He describes Iain’s call as ‘a beckoning, not a seeking, to which I instinctively said yes.’

• Blair Robertson conveyed the positive feeling of being valued and wanted, that it was ‘really nice’ to be asked by Iain. Then he took time checking it out with his partner and his supervisor. He was hesitant of the risks, but not overly so; concerned about what it would be like to deliver pastoral care while wearing masks, but the most important factors in deciding whether or not to become part of the team were the practical issues.

• Janet Foggie got Iain’s call ‘in the middle of a birthday dinner, a reminder that ‘chaplaincy interrupts life’, but is so grateful that in asking her, Iain was appreciating her skills at a time when there was an element of anger at the Church for being put on furlough.

None of our spiritual care team were anticipating a call or imagining any cost, but believe me, when the call came, it hit home, struck deep, and continues to affect us all, albeit in different ways.

• Linda Dunbar, who amongst us was the only person already working within the NHS, describes her ‘head already being there’. And, having already worked in a Covid-19 setting, she was feeling confident that ‘people have your back’.

• Carrie Applegath describes herself as being fed up during lockdown, and knew’she would say yes to Iain despite being scared and conscious of the vulnerability of her family.

Induction day, Thursday April 16.

There is a layer of fog hanging over the fields as I drive up the M77 in the early hours. This is the first time I’ve been away from home in a month!

In Glasgow, after a false turn, I eventually make it into the Hydro car park. It feels so good to meet up with members of the team. This is a task and a challenge to do together. Induction day is tiring. It’s a day of learning for all of us. There are plenty of things we had not thought about. For many this is the day that the fear looms. Walking through doors and into the vast halls, the lead weight of reality bears down.

For me the impact is during mask-fitting: “Fold the metal strap over your nose, pull the lower fold under your chin, ties behind head. Rub down and check there are no air leaks. This mask fits for you and fits now… it’s up to you to get it right” It’s up to me! I remember the times during my life when I struggled for breath. The mask covers my fear. And then later we think, ‘how can you be a chaplain without a smile?’. More seriously, Carrie speaks of her angst and the invisibility of women.

Carrie and I are walking around the halls along with other members of the nascent multidisciplinary team. We pass the entrance, where patients are to be welcomed from all over Scotland, past beds lined up like a thousand dominoes. A dry atmosphere and noisy from air conditioning.

Inside NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital

A clean shaven Iain Macritchie

Working in PPE

Training day

Entrance to NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital

I ask David, chief nurse, fresh from an Ebola military hospital, “What’s most surprising about the NHS Louisa Jordan?” He replies, “The most welcome… is folk stepping up to the mark”.

Back home and the news is full of uncertainty, and unknowns. Looking back on the induction day, I see many dangers and opportunities looming as we respond to the call to the Louisa Jordan.

Liminal space: a time to wait and learn

Over the past few weeks, while waiting for the NHS Louisa Jordan to open, the team has felt as if we are living on a threshold. A cliff edge we never teetered on before. Being on a 48 hour standby, I am bearing a load. We are also located in some sort of liminal space. Betwixt and between, who we are and who we may become. Where we are and where we may find ourselves. This is somewhat energy sapping and unsettling.

Over these months, there are so many learnings for the team. There is a danger of information overload. We examine new territory, moral injury, trauma theory. And re-visit psychological well-being and bereavement theories. All to help us make sense of the non-sensical.

We strive to bring a collective wisdom to the task before us. For me the team is responding to a call rather than a job description. For while we’ve all stepped up to the mark, none of us want the Louisa Jordan to open.

A theological response to Covid-19.

I’ve just listened to Heather Walton, from the University of Glasgow, offering a glimpse into the nature of pastoral care, as it is, for her, in lockdown in Leeds with her mother. Heartbreakingly honest. Describing the contradictions and complexities we are living through.

She speaks of looking into darkness, of not wanting last year’s Easter, of the nonsense of ‘staying in touch when you cannot touch’, of the need to re-imagine life in new ways. And so Heather finds a hope in dancing a samba in her mother’s kitchen, and finds comfort in a bluebell wood, familiar to her from childhood.

But she also rages at the absurdity, ‘the careless disregard of our pain by relentless loveliness’ which was our springtime. She finishes by seeking a new theology that speaks to our times. A Francis Bacon painting, Magdalene, leads her to a theology ‘that is a cry, an open mouthed cry’. I sit in silence. And open my mouth to cry. A silent cry, sounding my lament and rage and longing. Surely this too will pass.

But I wonder how a theology of ‘an open mouthed cry’ being comforted at her mother’s breast, can work for us in the Louisa Jordan. As patients lying on hospital beds are ventilated, as air-conditioning deafens any conversation, and as staff are muffled by visors, the tight 3m1873v masks that stifle every last breath. We have to discover our own theology.

David speaks of falling back on the familiar, the comfort of Psalm 23 and the Lord’s Prayer.

A Louisa Jordan team call

Carrie speaks of the image of Jesus coming down to ‘a level place’ (Luke 6:17). Being alongside folk; this is where chaplains and indeed all the team, ‘carry nothing other than human compassion’.

Janet turns to poetry. She’s spent much time in her garden. But she says, her text would be Matthew 24:36: ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’ A theology of living in uncertain times.

But she is also yearning for a theology that can embrace our thoughts about lack of funerals and the difficulties with those funerals which did take place. Why? “My friend who died was called Glenn Jordan, and he was the programme manager at the Corrymeela Community. The loss of a commemoration, memorial or service, makes it harder to accept the sudden or untimely death of a friend, that’s a real concern for me.”

I find myself bamboozled by the image I took of Iain relaxing in the sanctuary at the Louisa Jordan. It is a picture of contentedness, a relaxed man, and a bluebell woodland in the background. What you cannot see in the picture is the room behind the wall. The donning and doffing station, where staff prepare to put on their protective gear, and walk through the doors of Hall 5. Which image informs my theology? Bluebell woods or a sparse room with guidance for donning and doffing?

I resist dangerous comforts, and relentless loveliness to mask the pain and suffering. A theology of Covid-19 seems to demand both light and dark.

Text message from Iain, April 26: “So travelling with the thought of those Emmaus disciples getting up ‘in that very hour’ and going back to Jerusalem with the good news that they have known Jesus in the broken bread. That very hour would have been well past dark by then. So I’m thinking of what it means to travel in the pitch dark with the good news of the resurrection still setting our hearts on fire.”

Travelling in pitch darkness in one moment and then travelling with hearts on fire the next, is how we have often felt as a team. Iain’s new theology needs to hold together in tension ‘the blatant contradiction of travelling in pitch dark with resurrection hope still setting hearts on fire’.

I wonder how on earth we can hold such tension and paradox. Iain’s interpretive thread weaves a pattern. The original resurrection hope is ‘a dawning reality’ that grows from ‘an empty space’. The darkened tomb. My thoughts are dancing between these images; empty space, darkened tomb, rustic barns and Hall 4 in the Louisa Jordan.

Stepping through the doors of the Louisa Jordan, I feel a tense sharp silence. Above me, the ceiling clad with air-conditioning vents, oxygen pipes and electric wires. I ask ‘Is the £42 million worth stopping for?’ Instantly I know its worth. The value of the Louisa Jordan is priceless. Her call and her legacy.

What will linger of the memory? Perhaps we will build a garden, an oasis, where she once stood. I’d like that. A marker of healing, of peace, and of inspiration to future generations. Thankful that so few dead lie around. Grateful to all the people in Scotland who stepped up to the mark when the call came.

Epilogue Sunday June 28

It seems the doors to the Louisa Jordan are closing to us for now. I can feel the relief of the team after Iain’s message on Thursday June 25, ‘Just to confirm that the Health Minister announced today that NHS Louisa Jordan will be available for outpatient orthopaedic appointments as these services resume’. The facility is to remain available as a hospital until next year.

The call of Louisa Jordan still echoes. The suffering of Covid-19 still exists. The fears linger. The vocation of chaplaincy beckons. But to our collective relief, the door and dark corridor we had been gazing down, the vast nightingale wards of NHS Louisa Jordan, does not seem, for now, to be opening.

Sitting in my low chair, gazing out at our uncertain world, for a moment I rest. I am grateful for the journey, and I am grateful for the call that came when I was walking the Brown Carrick. I am grateful for the team and the learnings. But more than all of this, I am grateful that the summons is no longer there.

The Call of Louisa Jordan is an autoethnographic research study which captures the story of the formation of the Spiritual Care and Wellbeing Team at the NHS Louisa Jordan, Glasgow. One Nightingale hospital of many, set up across the UK, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, in spring 2020. Ian Stirling is minister at Fisherton and Kirkoswald in the presbytery of Ayr.

This article appears in the October 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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