Don was in his third year of nurse training when he started a stint in intensive care at University College Hospital in London. “You could choose whether to do it in your first year or third year, but most of us wanted to wait until we had some experience, because it’s quite a difficult job,” he says. In March 1987, he walked on to the ward, feeling anxious. “I heard someone shout: ‘Hey!’ and thought it was really rude,” he remembers. “I was a cocky student at the time, so I turned around and said: ‘I’ve got a name, you know.’”
That is when he spotted Tracey, a newly qualified intensive-care nurse who had been working on the ward for a month. “I’d actually been calling out to a colleague – ‘Jane!’ – and he’d misheard me.” But, as he was there, she asked him to help her prepare a bed for a patient who was due to be admitted from A&E.
“I remember my heart going pitter-patter,” says Don. “I’d never met someone like her before.” Tracey says she remembers he had “lovely eyes”, but she was too focused on the job to pay him much attention. Over the next few weeks, they continued to do shifts together and got on brilliantly. Despite their spark, neither of them thought it would become romantic. “It didn’t seem ethical to date a student. Although there were no rules about it, it just didn’t feel right,” says Tracey. Don felt the same way.
In May, his time in intensive care came to an end and he left the ward. Around the same time, Tracey was evicted from her house in Brixton and needed to find a new place to live. “I said: ‘I might know someone,’ and gave her my phone number,” says Don. “We arranged to meet for a drink to chat about it.” Before they met, Tracey’s boss found her a room in the specialist accommodation for nurses. “But we decided to go for drinks anyway,” she says.
They went to Covent Garden. Although they liked each other, neither wanted anything serious. “I was planning to go travelling and possibly move to Australia,” says Tracey. But, the next day, Don began to change his mind. “I helped her move house and she turned this white painted space into a great home. It made me think she might be a keeper.” Their relationship developed quickly after that and, six months later, Don asked Tracey if she would consider marrying him one day. “I said: ‘I might say yes,’” she says. “I felt so safe around Don and trusted him completely. His integrity is really strong and our moral compasses aligned.” A month later, Don popped the question.
In early 1988, the couple moved from London to Sawtry, a small village in Cambridgeshire. At the end of 1987, they had both nursed victims from the King’s Cross fire, which had been traumatic. “We needed to go somewhere else for a while, so we got jobs in a hospital in Peterborough,” says Tracey. They married in 1989 and their daughter was born in 1992. “She was born on my birthday, which was the best present ever,” says Don.
A year later, Don joined the air force as a theatre nurse and the family spent many years moving around with his work, including two and a half years in Germany. In 2000, he left the air force and began a second career in health IT. Since 2003, they have lived in Stubbington, near Portsmouth, where Tracey works as a health visitor.
“My grandfather always said you could see into someone’s soul through their eyes,” says Tracey. “Don’s kind eyes were the first thing I noticed and that stayed with me. He supports me and loves me no matter what and, now that we’ve been together so long, we can read each other perfectly.”
Don appreciates his wife’s sense of humour. “We’re always laughing. Even if I’m having a miserable day, she always makes me feel better.” As a result of their jobs, they take a “seize the day” approach to life. “Working in nursing and seeing so much adversity in patients makes you realise how precious life is,” says Tracey. “We try to always remember to be grateful for what we have.”
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