Nurse in Love (3 page)

Too late she realised her reticence had been a mistake. Adam Brand mocked bitterly: “You ‘had your reasons’! Well, I’ve always thought that a woman can rationalise anything she wants to. And you don’t even trouble to deny that you allowed Steven Carter to care deeply for you, only to reject him out of hand for your own ‘reasons’. That baulks me. I can’t forgive it.”

“Whatever I said, you wouldn’t understand—
”
Again he nodded agreement. He took his hands from his pockets, squared his shoulders and there was a new, indifferent note in his voice as he said: “Probably not. Clearly, in such matters you and I don’t speak the same language.” With which he gathered his own papers and left her.

At first finding herself alone, Kathryn had an overwhelming impulse to do something childishly primitive
—
to burst into tears, to drum her heels or her fists
—
anything that would vent in noise or destruction all the indignation she had held in ste
rn
check. But all she did was to stare again at the signature—“Adam Brand”—feeling a pulse of protest throbbing in her throat and fearing that here, to-day, she had made an enemy, and
did not know why.

How could the man believe that she had encouraged Steven to hope when she had not? And why should his misjudgment of her matter so much?

To neither question had she any answer which would serve.

CHAPTER TWO

When
Sara looked back on her first day on the wards she had to admit somewhat ruefully that none of it was as good as her pleasurable moment of waking to realise that this was indeed The Day, and that in her wardrobe hung her “real” uniform—green-and-white
-
striped, white-banded at neck and short-sleeved cuff and with starchy frilled cuffs for formal wear—fairly asking to be put on.

She could hardly wait to do so, and was up fully half an hour too early because she knew that her cap was going to be difficult. It was a fold of linen which had to be made up and pinned to the hair at a particular, precise angle. But Sara’s, as she had feared, was highly reluctant to be anchored to her short, straight cut, and she expended at least a dozen pins before it felt anywhere near firm. She went down to breakfast with her head carried at a high, unnatural tilt, hoping for the best, heartily envying the nurses whose curls gave their caps security and admiring more than ever Kathryn’s plaited coronet which so graced her Sister’s coif.

On the ward Sara felt shy and suddenly quite useless. Everyone but herself
—
the night staff doing their last half-hour, ward maids, orderlies and nurses—was dashing about on accustomed tasks, and no one seemed to have time even to notice her, much less welcome her or give her a job of her own.

Only the patients, their little world enlivened by
a
new face, eyed her critically or smiled in a friendly fashion. Sara smiled back, resolving that it would not be long before she had their names and
their various
ailments at her finger-tips. From there it was easy to begin to dream of a time when some world-famous physician would see fit to congratulate her upon her grasp and treatment of his cases, recommending her
particularly to Matron and
—

“Nurse, Nurse, have you nothing to do? You really must
not
stand idle upon the ward!” It was Sister Bridgeworth’s brisk voice which broke into the rosy dream, causing Sara to spring at once to guilty at
t
ention.

Sister went on, “We must find you something.—Ah, the patients’ flowers—the very thing. Take them all into the sluice, discard the dead ones and rearrange the others.
Don’t
get them mixed, because patients like their own and no one else’s. And remember that other work has to go on in the sluice, so don’t spread yourself all over it,
please
!”

Thankfully Sara sped to her task, though she was a little disappointed that it hadn’t a more direct connection with nursing. After all, just anyone who wasn’t a nurse could arrange a few flowers
...

At first she tramped back and forth carrying a vase in each hand, for she was to learn by experience that on the ward juniors were rare
l
y helped to labour-saving schemes—they were expected to think out their own. It was not until after her tenth double journey that she ventured to make use of a tin tray that she spotted behind the door of the broom-cupboard. After that she travelled considerably less often.

Everything went well until Sister Bridgeworth came into the sluice, whereupon Sara’s thrusting of flowers into vases became nervous and erratic. She spilled a lot of water too.

Sister said impatiently: “Tch, tch, Nurse!
That
one
isn’t too successful. Here
—
”

She thrust Sara aside, dumped the flowers from the vase and began to rummage for others in Sara’s carefully separated piles. Sara dared not remind her that the late roses were Mr
.
Canfield’s, the Michaelmas daisies Mr
.
Field’s; Sister seemed to sense which were which and arranged vase after vase with a speed and a deftness which left her junior speechless.

At last she stood back, saying: “There! All done
—
and in half the time you'd have taken, Nurse. Run with them to the ward now, and Staff Nurse will give you something else to do.”

Sara obeyed—though not literally, for running was forbidden on the ward or in any corridor. And after that she was glad to be asked to help a second-year nurse with bed-making, for that, she felt, was a step nearer to nursing and at least she might be able to find out something about the patients themselves.

But even bed-making was not the carefully, measured art that it had been in training school. Sara found herself momentarily holding sheets and draw-sheets and blankets, only to find them snatched from her grasp by her partner and even—yes, by Sister herself,
who said
again: “T
c
h, tch! Watch
me,
Nurse,” and took Sara’s place for the completion of three beds before handing the task back to her.

And the incident of the flowers and of the beds was, to Sara’s bewilderment, to be repeated often throughout the day. Whatever her task, Sister could be relied upon to appear at some stage, to utter her usual impatient exclamation and to complete the work herself before thrusting her baffled junior on to something else.

Sara, sent with scouring-powder and disinfectant to
clean a bathroom, thought de
lib
eratel
y
: “
I
wouldn’t put it past her to come in here, to roll up her sleeves and to show me how to put a higher polish on the bath
!”
And in her anxiety to be finished and
away before this could happen she cannoned from the room, straight into a male chest which resisted her firmly and quite painfully.

A pair of white-sleeved arms thrust her back upon an even keel and her nervous glance met two merrily accusing eyes in a round, fair-skinned face.

The young man said: “Hullo—a new young ’un? Why didn’t they tell me? And why didn’t they tell
you
that it’s etiquette to stand to attention to the medical staff? What’s more, is that the new official angle for caps since yesterday?”

“I—I’m sorry.” Sara drew herself up and made an ineffectual gesture towards her cap, only to find her hands full.

He eyed her amusedly for a moment. Then: “Oh, relax, do! I’m just a poor houseman—though I’ll be a registrar
and
a consultant one day. Meanwhile—allow me
—
” With an absurd bow he took the
scouring powder and the disinfectant from her and Sara’s hands went instantly to her cap.

“It’s my hair, you know. It won’t hold it firm,” she mumbled thickly, owing to the pins between her lips.

“What’s wrong with elastic?”

Sara stared, deciding that though his chest might be about as yielding as armour plate, she liked his face. “I didn’t know it would be allowed,” she said.

“Why not? Anyway, I thought girls couldn’t manage
to support life without it. And under
there
—
” he
flicked a forefinger towards the soft down at her neck
—
“it’d never be seen.”

“Thanks awfully. I’ll try it,” she promised.

“Don’t mention it
.
No char
g
e
,
”
he
said loftily. “Meanwhile I suppose we shall meet again?”

“If you work on this ward—I mean, visit your patients here—I expect we shall.” said Sara.

“Oh, that—yes, I’m practically
married
to Men’s Medical for the moment,” he said with mock bitterness. “But they give me an hour off duty now and again. What about you?”

“I expect so—I mean, yes, of course.”

“Then it’s agreed?” His grin was cheekily confident.

“What is?”

“That two off-duties equal one date?”

Sara flushed furiously. “No, of
course
not
!”

He remained unperturbed. “All right, have it your own way—for now. Meanwhile what’s your name? Mine’s Simon Glenn.”

“It—it’s Sara Spender. But you needn’t remember
it, because it doesn’t signify
—
” And Sara snatched
the ward’s property from him and fled, furious with him for his presumption and even more furious with herself for having told him her name.

She left Dr
.
Simon Glenn, house physician of six months’ standing, slightly abashed—but only slightly. “You rushed your fences, lad,” he adjured himself. “But if she’d really meant to slap your face she wouldn’t have told you her name. Sara—sort of old-world—Ah, well, there’s plenty of time
—
” And
he went upon his way, twirling his stethoscope and whistling “If You were the Only Girl in the World” just
off-key.

Sara’s
day
—
a
whirl of disjointed impressions which she was going to have to sort out later—ended at eight
-
fifteen, just when her feet, she felt, were about to utter
their own protest against running about ceaselessly and achieving very little.

But before she went off duty Sister Bridgeworth found time to say approvingly: “Well done, Nurse. You’ve worked well. That’s what I always say—a nurse who can work alone and completely without supervision will always be valuable to me!” Clearly Sister Bridgeworth had no inkling that she had snatched at least half Sara’s work from her and had done it herself!

At supper Sara compared notes with a fellow student
-
nurse who had been sent to Kathryn’s ward and who claimed that Kathryn was a “marvellous” Sister to work under. But all day Sara had not seen Kathryn until she was in her room after supper and a knock sounded at her door.

Kathryn came in, her dark eyes bright with eagerness to hear how Sara had “got on”.

Sara took a deep breath of despair. “I shall never learn
anything'.”
she declared dramatically. “You said Sister Bridgeworth was grand.
I
think she’s impossible
!”

“She
is
grand. Why, what happened?”

“Well, for all she allowed me to do, I might as well not have been there. But as I was there, she was on my tail all day, doing everything for me!”

Kathryn threw back her head and laughed. “Oh dear, has she been at it again? I warned her that you were intelligent and keen, hoping to fend her off! But it’s really her only fault as a Sister—that she is so capable and quick herself that she can scarcely bear to see anyone work at their own pace. Even then she never nags—she just falls to and helps.”

“
I’ll
say she falls to!” declared Sara with feeling.
“What’s more, she had the audacity to congratulate me on being able to work alone. Alone—I ask you
!”

Kathryn laughed again. “Poor Sara! You see, that’s another thing about Bridgeworth—half the time she doesn’t realise that she has to have her finger in every pie on the ward.” Privately Kathryn resolved to say a word to Sister Bridgeworth, but for discipline’s sake she would not tell Sara so. She added gently: “All the same, forgetting Sister’s oddities, how did you really like it?”

Sara sat down on the bed and stared at her fists c
urled
childishly between her knees. “I think I loved
it,” she said slowly. “Only
—
”

“Only
?
”

“Well, nothing really
happened.
And somehow I didn’t get the feeling—which I expected—that I was really nursing. Nothing I did—or Sister Bridgeworth did for me—seemed to add up to actually curing people or saving their lives.”

Kathryn understood. She said: “But Sara dear, nursing is like that. I’ve always thought of it as a gigantic pattern that is made up of bits—you and me and the other nurses, the patients themselves, the house surgeons, the registrars, the specialists and even other hospitals, when the patients come to us or ours go to them. It is a pattern that goes on and on ceaselessly. And it’s so linked together by everyone’s work
—all
their work—that I suppose that, almost any day on any ward, you could say ‘nothing’ happens. But for all the ill patients who come in, others are going out cured. So that
something
has been accomplished in between. And nursing is the ‘something’ that has.”

Sara said a little bleakly: “But don’t you ever have the satisfaction of feeling that you are
fighting
illness,
instead of just keeping it at bay?”

Kathryn smiled. “Not as often as you’d think, mainly because you aren’t fighting alone—only as part of a team. But the rare times that you do—believe me, they make all the rest worthwhile.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” said Sara.

“It’s only the way I look at it myself,” Kathryn reminded her.

“It’s good enough for me,” declared Sara loyally before going on to ask about Kathryn’s own ordeal
—
her first meeting with the new specialist to her ward.

“Dr
.
Brand? He’s—awfull
y
capable.
I
think.” Kathryn hoped she had sounded non-committal, but Sara’s quick ear had noted the brief hesitancy.

“Capable—but you don’t like him otherwise?” she queried. “Is he going to be cantankerous?”

“No, I’d say he’s much too controlled and sure of his own skill for that.” Again Kathryn paused. “Something I didn’t know is that he’s a great friend of Steven Carter’s.”

“The doctor who asked you to marry him and then went out to Africa?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” The news, to Sara had not much significance, and Kathryn changed the subject to tell her that as the following day was her day off duty she proposed to spend it with the Thorleys, asking Sara what messages she had for Carol.

Sara eagerly gave several, produced from a drawer a bar of chocolate for Carol, and warned Kathryn that she must on no account fail to enquire for Edward.

“Edward?”

“Carol’s teddy-bear. He’s been sickly—malingering,
I suspect, but
I
daren’t say so—ever since I began nursing training. Last night
I
took his temperature
—
under his arm, as his mouth doesn’t open.”

“I hope it didn’t give cause for alarm!” laughed Kathryn.

“No. I had to leave room for a bit of fluctuation, so I made it a hundred and one degrees and warned against shock to the patient. He may be considerably better
to
-
day
—or he may be worse.”

“Well, I’ll certainly ask after him,” promised Kathryn as she prepared to go to her own room.

But before they parted Sara asked with studied casualness: “I say, house surgeons and house physicians—do they visit the wards often?”

“Mostly every day, and one or the other of them must be always on call. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Sara indifferently. “I only wondered.”

When Kathryn reached Barbara Thorley’s house the next day she found that the unfortunate Edward had been put to bed in a doll’s pram on the sun-porch, but Carol, of course, was at school. She attended morning kindergarten at the grammar school where Victor Thorley taught, and Barbara chuckled as she related how the two of them set out together each morning, holding hands and usually in solemn conversation.

“From the time they both kiss me good-bye I’m made to feel that I have no share in the weighty matters that exercise them,” she laughed. “ ‘School’ claims them from that moment.”

“I daresay they make up for it when they come home,” suggested Kathryn.

“The hug I get from Carol certainly does. As for Victor, he adores his work so much that I’ve always said he has never been wholly mine since we married.” But the gentle contentment in Barbara Thorley’s tone belied her words. She went on: “As you know, Victor doesn’t get in until tea-time, and Carol has lunch at school, and I meet her bus after I’ve had lunch myself. She goes to rest in the afternoon, so if you won’t be bored, Kathryn dear, I’d planned just a quiet day for us both?”

“You know I’d like it more than anything,” Kathryn protested. “One of the things I’m most grateful for in being able to come here to you and Victor is that I need do nothing by the clock, whereas in hospital my day is positively ordered by it.”

Barbara glanced at her a little critically. “You look tired, Kathryn, I think.”

“Not tired ”

“Worried, then? Some difficult cases—or oughtn’t I to ask?”

“No, nothing in particular, I think.” Momentarily she was tempted to confide in Barbara, but she decided against it, mentally squaring her shoulders against yesterday’s unpleasant memory. For what, really, did it amount to? A personal clash between herself and Adam Brand, but one which certainly could not be allowed to affect the team-work of the Sister of the children’s ward and its specialist. And since that point of contact was likely to be the only one between them, what was there to worry about, after all?

Helped by the pleasant serenity about her, her spirits had lightened considerably by the time she and Barbara went to meet Carol, who flung herself dangerously down the bus steps and into Barbara’s arms.

Then she shook hands with Kathryn, demanding with a fascinating gap-toothed smile: “When is Sara coming again?” and: “Did you see Edward in bed? How did you think he was?”

Kathryn considered the question gravely. “Not quite
himself, perhaps. A little pale
—
”

“Could be. The other day we gave him a dry shampoo with fuller’s earth, after which he was
considerably
paler than before!” put in Barbara with amusement. “What did you do at school to-day, darling?”

Carol gave thought to her morning’s activities. “We sang,” she submitted at last. “And I made a mat.” The mat, duly produced, was a four-inch square of coarse rug-canvas laboriously cross-stitched in wool.

“It’s for Sara,” explained Carol hastily, lest there should be competition for its possession.

Naturally no one laid claim to it, and it went, with Sara’s chocolate, to join a strange assortment of treasures at Carol’s bedside when she went to rest. The other two adjourned to the sitting-room for a lazy afternoon; Kathryn amused Barbara with a spirited account of Sara’s losing battle for full employment on Sister Bridgeworth’s ward, and then they talked desultorily of other things until after a pause Barbara said thoughtfully:

“Kathryn, I’ve been wondering—have you ever had reason to think that you had made an enemy of Thelma Carter?”

“Of Thelma?” Kathryn’s brow puckered as she sought for time in which to answer the question.

“Yes. We were both at the same tea-party yesterday
.
Incidentally, how is it that she can always
manage to attend any social function whatsoever?
You have told me, but I forget. Doesn’t she have regular duty hours at the hospital like you?”