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'We noticed you were in the best seats,' Rose grinned. 'Nice to have a rich fella!'

'I go out with Alex because I like him, not because he's rich. I'm no gold-digger,' Anna called down from
the top of the ladder in Clean Utility, where she was reaching for the sheets.

'Still, I bet he takes you to some fabulous plates. How did you come to meet him...? You haven't been here that long.'

'Actually,' said Anna, descending the ladder with a good deal of care. 'I knew Alex
before
I came here; I've known him quite some time.' This was stretching the truth and she knew it, for she had only met him once— just before she'd taken up her job—when she'd bought Prue's jug. Still, it would give Rose something to think about, and to spread about as well.

'Oh, I see, I didn't
realise
.' Rose looked intrigued but, on getting nothing farther from Anna, thanked her for the sheets and made for the doorway, only to find it blocked by Simon, who stood there, a hand on the jamb, looking in at them.

'You'll find Bill in Maternity, Sister Webb, waiting to do the round,' he said with a little edge to his voice, and Rose went off at a trot.

The utility room was just inside the doors leading out to the lifts, so he must have heard what we were saying, Anna realised, and this was confirmed when he said with little embarrassment and even less subtlety, 'I hear that your friend, Alex, would like to get married again.'

Anna got her breath back with difficulty, 'Yes, so he tells me,' she said. Julia Trafford would have let that slip, she was sure; she might even have hinted, for good measure, that she, Anna, might be in the running.

'He has a son, I believe?' Simon's face was inscrutable.

'A super little boy,' Anna said, with her tongue in her cheek and a smile on her face to cover the false description, for Tom was a child from hell. 'Perhaps we should get on,' she added, holding onto her smile with difficulty
and aching muscles. 'Have you come to do a full round?'

'No, only the latest post-ops, the two hysterectomies due for discharge and the perinotomy,' he said without smiling at all. 'I'll only need Mrs Cole's notes and perhaps the Pearson girl's, and I'm running late so if you wouldn't mind hurrying,' he had the cheek to add as he entered the ward, leaving Anna to stop off at the office to pick up the notes and to get rid of May Fenn, who was hanging about by the desk.

'Later, May,' she said, as the girl asked her what 'anastomosis' was, please, and did it mean joining up ends?

Simon was waiting, arms folded, at Mrs Cole's bedside. At little more than twenty-four hours post-op she thought she should be helped out of bed, and kept on and on about it. She had had an ovarian tumour removed as big as a full-term baby. She had a large wound and a lot of stitches, and she was eighty-one years old. Simon didn't want her mobilised for another full day.

'Tomorrow, maybe,' he was telling her as Anna caught up with him. 'You'd find it very uncomfortable moving about today.'

'Painful, you mean... Oh, I don't mind that; I can put up with pain. What I don't want is to drop dead from a clot, long before my time.' She had thick grey hair, which the pillows had pushed up in a bush all over her head—this and her eyes, bright with fever, made her look fighting fierce.

'We won't let that happen, Mrs Cole.' Simon was gentle with her. 'You'll have breathing exercises this morning from Miss Gunne, our physio. She's a dab hand at preventing clots. Meantime, I'd like you to rest.'

'I hope she won't be long.'

'She won't,' Simon promised, as they left her bed. 'Well, there's a first time for everything,' he remarked at the ward desk, 'but I don't think I've ever before known a patient so anxious to be up and about.'

'Certainly not at such an early stage,' Anna agreed, glancing back at Mrs Cole, who, with her head stuck rigidly forward, was anxiously watching the doors. 'Strictly speaking,' she added, 'she should have gone into Geriatrics.'

'I prefer to have her here,' was Simon's reply, and Anna said no more.

The two hysterectomy patients were checked and their discharges agreed for that afternoon, which delighted both ladies who made for the pay-phone to telephone their families.

Jill Pearson, the perinotomy patient, was a young woman of nineteen who had recently moved in with her boyfriend and was encountering sexual difficulties, due to a narrow introitus. Simon had performed a midline episiotomy long enough to provide an adequate vaginal orifice.

She had soluble stitches in place, which were giving her pain on movement. 'We'll keep you in another day, Jill,' Simon explained, 'then you can go home, and as each day passes the discomfort will grow less. Once it has completely gone, in about two to three weeks, recommence intercourse to prevent the new opening shrinking down.'

'All right.' She looked faintly embarrassed, and wisely Simon said no more beyond assuring her that many young women had the same trouble as she.

'Otherwise we'll be having her thinking she's a freak,' he said to Anna at the doors, then hurried away to a meeting with one of the paediatric team.

The consultant paediatrician, Paul Gee, was the doctor who had pronounced Baby Payne fit and well, and sanctioned his release to foster-parents ten days ago. His mother and grandmother never came back to the hospital to see him. 'They've washed the poor little kid right out of their lives,' Rose said as she folded up his blankets with a murderous look in her eye.

By lunchtime, when Mrs Cole had made two near-successful attempts to get out of bed, Anna decided that cot-sides were the only sensible step. It was difficult, if not impossible, to watch her all the time—especially as they were one nurse short, due to Janice Hall having left.

Nurse Cheng was sent to get the cot-sides out of Stores. 'But don't bring them in until I've had a word with Mrs Cole,' Anna told her, putting down her pen and going to sit by the old lady's bed. 'Mrs Cole, we feel your bed is a little on the narrow side,' she began, 'and, in case you fall out when you're asleep, we thought we'd put some rails up—little chromium bars, like pipes, which will keep you perfectly safe.'

'Do the other patients have them?' Mrs Cole looked suspiciously round at her near neighbours and across the aisle—not a rail to be seen.

'Some do, yes. The beds all vary a little in width.' Oh, what terrible lies, Anna thought, keeping her fingers crossed. 'In your case it really is necessary. We wouldn't like you to fall.'

By sheer luck her last sentence struck the right note. 'I did fall out of bed once, at home,' Mrs Cole confessed. 'I sort of rolled, and the next thing I knew there I was on the floor. So, do what you think is best, dear,' she conceded gracefully, making no protest when, a few minutes later, the sides were slotted in place.

The afternoon brought its usual spate of visitors, one of them being Jill Pearson's boyfriend who came in bearing carnations and fern. The two hysterectomy ladies went home, effusive in their thanks for everything that had been done for them as they were wheeled out to the
lifts. At teatime Miss Tell, the SNO, rang through to say that an agency nurse by the name of Shirley Dobson would be starting on the ward next day.

Anna had just put the phone down when, through the viewing window, she saw Simon in the ward... But he was coming out... Seconds later he was at her door.

'Why cot-sides on Mrs Cole's bed?' he demanded, not raising his voice but looking as though he would like to, his grey eyes glittering like glass.

'Because she kept trying to get out.' Anna shot to her feet. 'I haven't got enough nurses to watch her all the time, and she's got this fixation about clots!'

'You seem determined to treat her as senile!'

'That's not the case!' Just in time she stopped herself telling him that he was talking rubbish.

'Cot-sides are bad psychologically!' He came further into the room.

'So is falling on the floor and seeing your insides decorating the vinyl!'

'I very much doubt if that would have happened.'

'I didn't, and don't, intend...' Anna paused to catch her breath '.. .to put it to the test, and I prepared Mrs Cole before the sides were brought into the ward. Tomorrow, when she's less demented and when I have an extra nurse, she'll be able to sit out of bed for a time, which will satisfy her, I hope. In which case the cot-sides, which are psychologically damaging, can go back to Stores.'

Simon's mouth opened to deliver a broadside—of that Anna was sure—but right on cue Rosina appeared in the doorway with a tray of tea. 'Just managed to catch you in time, Mr Easter,' she said, all unaware of anything amiss till he turned on his heel and left without a word.

'He may come back; I'll leave it, just in case.' Rosina settled the tray on the desk. 'He was probably going to the loo, or something; he seemed in a bit of a rush.'

He wouldn't come back, Anna was certain. She sat down, feeling miserable. On points she had won their little battle, but it was a hollow victory. Keeping a safe distance from him was one thing but rowing with him was another, yet why had he been so nitpicking about those cot-sides, and why had he been in the ward at all.. .which patient had he come to see? She was still wondering when, a few minutes later, he loomed in her doorway again.

'I left my pen when I was here this morning.. .on the ward desk, I think... That's what I came for a few minutes ago, then I got a little...deflected.' He didn't smile as he spoke but the aggressive look had gone, Anna noticed with relief, picking up the internal phone and asking May Fenn, who was at the ward desk, to bring out Mr Easter's pen.

'It's a grey Shaeffer with a gold top,' Simon said over her head and she relayed this to May who appeared with the pen, handing it to him with a smile as broad as a toothpaste advertisement, remarking that she could see it was a classy job and didn't belong to one of the nursing staff.

He slipped it into his pocket and as May closed the door, shutting him in with Anna, he looked down at the tea which still sat there, both cups untouched. 'If that's still going perhaps I could stay and drink it,' he said.

'Feel free.' Anna pushed the tray to his side of the desk. The tea was all but cold and he took it down like a draught of beer.

'Sorry about earlier on, snapping your head off like that and being unreasonable. I'd like to apologise. You nurses know the patients best—we sturgeons just carve them up.' He didn't ask if he was forgiven or put on the charm. It was a straightforward,
real
apology and,
looking back at him, Anna felt all her defences melting— felt her insides melting too.

'It's perfectly all right,' she managed to say.

'No hard feelings, then?'

'Absolutely not.' She reached for her tea, lowering her lids for eyes could be a giveaway. He might see the relief in hers, and she didn't particularly want him to know just how glad she was to be back on
reasonable
terms... After all, a girl had her pride.

'The fact of the matter is,' he went on, 'I was in a tetchy mood. At a little before four o'clock Mrs Gill rang through to tell me that Miss Benson had gone home with a bilious attack. Naturally I'm sorry about it, poor woman, but her absence this evening has put me right on the spot as I've got three patients due.

'The last thing I want to do is put them off at such short notice, but it looks as though I shall have to. I can hardly have them turning up at the house when I've no chaperon nurse.'

'Oh dear, no, of course not,' Anna sympathised. Her tea was as tepid as his had been, but she sipped it as though it was hot. 'I suppose Mrs Gill wouldn't stay on?' she said, raising her eyes at last.

'She would, if I asked her—' Simon watched her replace the cup on the tray '—but I can't quite see her helping me with cultures... Two of the patients are coming for cervical smears. Besides, Mrs G. has a home to go to and a husband to look after.'

Almost any one of the off-duty staff would offer to help him out. Rose, from Maternity, would jump at the chance and so would Jean, or Nurse Cheng. Over my dead body, Anna thought, hearing herself say, 'I'm not doing anything special this evening. If you would like me to help you, I can. I could go home first and freshen up, then come round, looking the part!' She tried to joke, to be airy and flip, for supposing he turned her down?

She needn't have worried, however—there was no question of that. Her offer was accepted with such speed that she couldn't help wondering if telling her of his plight had been a means to an end. 'I can't tell you what a load that would be off my mind,' he said, then added, 'To be honest, I wanted to ask you but thought you'd have other plans.'

'None that matter this evening,' she said, just as her telephone rang.

He was getting to his feet as she lifted the receiver and, putting it to her ear, she heard him say, 'See you at six, then,' before he disappeared.

A feeling of excitement fizzed inside her as she drove swiftly home. There was disquiet there, too, which she wouldn't countenance, for going to his home as his locum nurse/receptionist would be a far cry indeed from going as his guest.. .and drinking coffee.. .and tripping over his dog. She was going there to work; she would be going in a professional capacity.

Strictly speaking, he ought to pay me, she thought, and smiled to herself, making the driver of the van drawing up beside her at the lights give an appreciative whistle and ask to be let in on the joke.

Once
back in her flat, Anna changed into a fresh uniform. It would hardly be the thing, she thought, to open the door to Simon's private patients in a creased and work-weary dress. A cap, she felt, wouldn't be necessary, but for absolute nearness she tucked her hair behind her ears where it hung, a silken tassel of colour above the shoulders of her dress.

She had plenty of time; she didn't need to start off for another ten minutes which was why—as she stood by the window, watching Prue oil the front gate—her thoughts strayed back to the evening before, when Alex had brought her home after their theatre date. He'd kissed her goodnight in the car then sat back, facing towards the front again. 'It's a case of "just good friends" so far as you're concerned, Anna.. .that's so, isn't it?' He still kept staring ahead.