Unknown (3 page)

'It's like a jungle in there; I think we'd better give it a miss,' Anna said, fearing for Simon's suit. 'You need jeans in there, as well as high boots and a scythe to hack your way through!'

'A slight exaggeration, but I get your drift,' he laughed, his shadow merging with hers as they turned and looked back at the house.

The garden was full of summer sounds—the hiss of a water sprinkler, the snip of shears from over the wall, the hum of a power mower. They could see Prue in the dimness of the hall, talking on the phone. Directly overhead, from the open windows of the first-floor flat, came the strains of the six o'clock news. 'My flat's at the top,' Anna said, well aware that she was repeating
herself, but in Prue's absence she had to keep talking hard.

'You'll get a fine view.' He looked up at the two sash windows, each one set under the slope of a gable, which gave the house its name.

'Oh, I do—the best.' She seized on that. 'I can see the sea between the piers. I've got two sitting-rooms, a bedroom and a bathroom, plus a modern kitchen. The previous tenant was an artist—he used the north sitting-room as a studio.'

'Interesting!' Simon switched his gaze from the upper reaches of the house to Anna. 'Which came first,' he asked her, 'the job or the flat?'

'Well, actually, the flat,' she admitted. 'Prue had told me it was empty. She knew I wanted to move out of London and then that very same week I saw the sister/charge nurse post advertised in the
Nursing Times.'

'Sometimes, just sometimes,' he said, 'life dishes out what we want—not exactly on a plate, perhaps, but it's there for the taking—providing we have the courage to grab it.'

'Yes, that's very true.'

'And you did, so well done!'

'Thank you.' He was saying all the right things and she wondered why he was bothering, but maybe she shouldn't be quite so suspicious of praise when it came from a male. 'Have you been in Charding long?' she asked, genuinely wanting to know.

'Three years.' He brushed a leaf from his sleeve and watched it flutter down. 'I took over the house from my predecessor, together with his private patients. My quarters are on the ground floor, the consulting-rooms over the top and over those are the attics, unused at the moment. I've far too much space, of course, although part of it's filled, during the day, by my secretary/nurse and by my housekeeper, Mrs Gill. It's a whole world away from my Kensington flat,' he added with a smile.

'Oh, you were in London... Which hospital?' Anna heard herself ask.

'I was a senior registrar at Queens',' he informed her, 'but like you I wanted a change. I'd also set my heart on a consultancy.'

'Which you got.'

'By the skin of my teeth.'

'Skin, or not, you got it,' she said, making him laugh.

'You make a good champion, Anna.'

'Which you're not, I think, in any need of,' she told him, smiling, just as her grandmother, having finished on the telephone, came hurrying back over the grass.

'It was Claytons Garage,' she said, 'going on and on about all they've had to do to the Renault to make it fit for the road. It's a load of nonsense, I'm quite sure; they're just giving themselves a job. Anyway, it's done and ready to pick up.' She looked hopefully at Anna, just as Simon glanced at his watch and said that it was time he was off.

'I've a patient due at seven,' he said, shaking hands with Prue again. 'Your garden is a credit to you, Mrs Gatton. Thank you for letting me see it.'

'You can have some cuttings off the clematis in the autumn,' she told him at the gate, watching him angle his long legs into his shiny cream car. He thanked her, said goodbye to them both and then drew away from the kerb, making for Andover Square and home via the top of the road.

'Nice man—beautiful manners,' Prue said a few minutes later when Anna was driving her to Severndean to pick up the car.

'His beautiful manners, alias his charm, are part of his stock-in-trade,' Anna said. The on-shore wind cooled her cheeks and she gratefully drew it in.

'Is he married?' Prue persisted.

'Divorced, so I'm told.'

'There's a lot of it about,' Prue asserted, as though it was some kind of flu. 'Looking as he does, I dare say he'd get plenty of chances to stray. Even so, he doesn't strike me as being the sort to cheat on a woman.'

'You can't possibly tell that on such short acquaintance.' Anna pulled in to let an ambulance pass in a blare of sound and, glancing at her face, Prue remembered Daniel Fellowes and changed the subject fast.

Coping
without Ruth Hilton's hovering presence next day was far more challenging and scary than Anna had thought. From the moment of taking the hand-over report from Night Sister Poole everything rested on her; became
her
responsibility.

It was she, Anna, who had to set the nurses on their various tasks. It was to her they turned for advice... 'Sister, Mrs Tooley won't let me shave her'...'Sister, there are ketones in Mrs Park's urine'...'Sister, we're low on sheets'.

The telephone never stopped ringing; one of the pharmacists—a disagreeable, know-all type—came to query a prescription. Added to this, it was the main operating day, which meant that Miss Tell, the SNO, came to do her round early—sweeping in and out of the ward flinging 'good mornings' right and left, asking Anna about the bed-list, and would she get hers up to date?

No sooner had she gone than Meg Brodie, the house officer, made her appearance. Jet-haired, Scottish and plump, with a white coat that didn't meet in front, she commiserated with Anna about the hassle of being new.

'Still, doon't you worry, Sister,' she smiled, showing healthy teeth. 'You'll not be bothered with the surgeons today; they've got a theatre list as long as your arm and back again, as of course you'll be knowing.'

'Yes, I know,' Anna said ruefully, watching Karen Miller being lifted on to a theatre trolley and wheeled away to the doors.

'She's nairvous, is that one.' Meg, with hay fever, sneezed very loudly, then blew her nose like a horn.

'She's nervous of the outcome, not of the actual op. Mr Easter...' Anna's voice altered slightly . .spent time with her yesterday, explaining what he was going to do and generally cheering her up.'

'He's a naice man—great to work for, explains things all the taime, and he's no too big for his theatre boots like some consultants are. Even Bill likes him.' Bill Corby, Anna knew, was Simon's registrar. 'And that's amazing,' Meg continued, 'for when the consultancy came up Bill hoped to get it—was
expected
to get it— but Simon pipped him at the post. Bill does most of the obstetric work, which is usually run-of-the-mill.'

'It's a rat race, like any other.. .getting on in the medical world,' Anna said, thinking that, quite aside from his considerable experience, Simon would sell himself well to a selecting panel, and she couldn't help feeling a certain sympathy for the more timid Bill Corby, still having to be number two.

The morning progressed. Karen came back from Theatre; Mrs Jacobs, in for a fibroidectomy, went down. Mrs Tooley, due for a total hysterectomy, had submitted at last to being shaved and would be next on the list. Lying there in her theatre gown, a white cap confining her hair, she looked fretful and unhappy with her pale eyes full of fear. 'My 'usband'll go right orf me, dear—' she caught at Anna's hand '—wot with no hair down below, and now 'arf of me about to be chucked in the rubbish bin, he won't fancy me no more.'

'Mrs Tooley—' Anna sat on the edge of her bed '—your pubic hair will grow again at the rate of knots, and as for half of you being chucked in the bin, that's not the case at all. What
is
being taken away won't show and won't affect the way your husband feels about you, nor the way you feel about him.'

'It won't be the same.'

'You may find it'll be a whole lot better,' Anna consoled, with her eye on Jean Ross, who'd arrived with the pre-med tray. 'It's all right, Jean, I'll see to this.' She took the syringe from the dish then, rolling Mrs Tooley onto her side, she injected the powerful drug into her buttock, giving it a quick rub.

'Do what they like with you 'ere, they do,' Mrs Tooley grumbled. 'Nothing's sacred for two minutes; even your backside's not yer own!'

Cautioning her not to try to get out of bed, Anna drew her curtains and left her to drift into haziness till the porters came for her.

Shortly before the big luncheon trolley was trundled into the ward Alex Marriner arrived to fetch Miss Rayland, who had been ready since ten a.m. Anna wheeled her out to the lift, which wasn't strictly necessary but the poor woman still had stitches
in situ,
which made walking hell. 'I can't wait to get back to normal living,' she said, as though she had been in hospital half a year instead of only three days.

Goodbyes and thanks were said at the lifts. 'I'll be in touch,' Alex called out to Anna just before the doors slid to. She wondered why and what he had meant, then he slipped from her mind as Miss Tell, who'd arrived by the stairs, asked her if she could make her remaining side-ward ready for a patient from Maternity.

'She gave birth to a stillborn child an hour ago,' she explained. 'Sister Webb is anxious for her not to have to stay in the postnatal ward, within sight and sound of the well babies, and I must say I agree.'

'Yes, of course. Oh, poor woman!' Anna said, then found that she was talking to Miss Tell's back, for already she had turned and was making for the stairhead again.

Nurse Cheng and Nurse Hall got the second of the side-wards aired and ready and a call from Maternity confirmed that Mrs Johnson would be coming down after lunch. Mrs Tooley was wheeled to the theatre suite, Mrs Jacobs came ~ up and Mrs Fotheringay developed breathing difficulties and was given oxygen. Her heart rate was slow and Anna sent for Meg, who wasn't happy about her. 'She needs specialling, but we haven't the staff. She should be in a hospice
now
,' she said, frowning, and hung her charts back on the end of the bed.

At last—at long last—it was time for Anna's own lunch. Resisting the temptation to skip it, as she had the day before, she made her way up to the fifth floor and the staff cafeteria. The immense dining-room, like a long hall, was divided into bays by partitions and fancy trellis-work, like the top of a garden fence.

Finding her way into the sisters' section, laden with her tray, Anna sat down with Rose Webb from Maternity and Carla Scott from the children's ward. Rose apologised for offloading one of her patients into Anna's ward.

'I've got a side ward free, so no problem,' Anna said, cutting into her portion of toad-in-the-hole and wishing she'd chosen salad instead.

'Her husband's with her—refuses to leave her—so you'll be lumbered with him as well. They're only eighteen and nineteen—-just a pair of kids.'

'Plenty of time, then,' Carla Scott broke in, 'for them to have healthy kids later on.'

'That isn't the whole of the story, though, is it?' Anna started to say, but didn't finish for Rose was asking her how she was getting on, and had she met Simon Easter yet, and wasn't she the lucky one to have him in her ward most days?

Carefully Anna agreed that she was, and equally carefully said that she had met him yesterday but forbore to mention that he'd run her home and been shown the back windows of her flat.

'He's not married, you know.. .at least, not now,' Rose mumbled through a mouthful of lettuce. 'He hasn't got any kids, either, so no encumbrances.'

'I see.' Anna took note.

'It's mostly work with him; he's the dedicated type, although he has a flip side—knows how to enjoy himself. He's been seen around with some pretty slick girls—the Sloaney, designer-clothes sort, long-legged and glossy— but never
one
in particular. Looking like he does, being who he is, he can probably take his pick. He never dates anyone from the hospital, though, so I guess he likes to keep work and play in separate spheres.'

'Considering the gossip, I don't blame him,' Anna said with an edge to her voice, not missed by Carla Scott who—looking slyly through her bifocals—made the remark:

'Of course he may relax his rule with Anna, looking as she does. Gynae hasn't had a sister under menopause age for many a long year!'

'I heed the compliment,' Anna laughed, but was relieved when Rose began to talk about Ellen Johnson who'd had the stillborn child.

'She was told in Clinic yesterday that the foetus was dead. The midwife couldn't get a heartbeat, and a scan confirmed the worst. She was brought in late last night, and was about to be induced when she went into spontaneous labour and gave birth two hours ago.'

'What time will she be coming down to me?' Anna asked.

'I thought, if it's all right with you, soon after we get back. She might have visitors this afternoon in the shape of her parents but at the moment, as I told you, her husband is being hyper-protective.'

'So he should be at such a ghastly time,' Anna said, and Rose agreed.

Soon after lunch, during the quiet hour, Ellen Johnson was wheeled into number two side-ward by her young husband and helped into bed. She had been washed and tidied in Maternity but still had the look of having been through the wringer, whilst her husband, Hal, was almost as ravaged as she was and equally prone to tears.

Theirs was a case, Anna decided, when sympathy conveyed by touch and a welcoming voice was less upsetting than a spate of words, which might come out all wrong. If Ellen wished to talk about it she could, but just now she plainly did not.

'You'll be quiet in here—private, too.' Anna switched on a cooling fan for the afternoon was hot and humid; it was difficult to breathe. 'If you want anything press your bell, and someone will be with you at once.'

They thanked her and she went out, quietly closing the door—which was against the rules but Ellen wasn't ill; all she needed was rest and quiet.

Simon came on the ward at four-thirty, mainly to see Karen Miller. Although changed out of his theatre clothes, it seemed to Anna that he bore traces of having hurried to do so—his hair was tousled in front, his tie didn't lie absolutely straight and he smelled of Hibiscrub. 'I hoped to catch you before you went off duty,' he said. 'I'd like to see Mrs Miller, and also Alice Fotheringay. Meg told me about Alice's breathing difficulties; I'm not happy about her at all.'