Hospital Circles

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Was he why you advised Margaret to come back to Benedict’s?’

  ‘He was one of the several reasons I had for giving her that specific advice. My main one came from my conviction that it was high time she did come back.’

  ‘She told me you said sometimes one had to raise ghosts to lay them. You were so right. She looked ghastly, her first day back. Then she started looking younger and so serene. Till yesterday.’

  ‘As she was labouring under a great personal anxiety and forced to maintain an outward professional calm, that’s hardly surprising.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  We were silent again. It was worse than before.

  Again I broke it. ‘You two weren’t my only moronic fixation. For a while I had one about Bill. Did you ever guess?’ He nodded, reluctantly. ‘It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know what he was saying. I knew that at the time. That didn’t stop my persuading myself I loved him, and in a way I did. I’ve loved other patients, women and kids, as well as men.’ I told him about Mrs King, Violet, and David Grant in Arthur. ‘I wept most of the next day after that boy died. Too emotional, that’s me.’

  He was watching me clinically. ‘Too soft-hearted.’

  ‘Or it could just be, too bloody childish.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve seen how you’ve worked in the Unit. It was most unfair and uncalled-for. I’m sorry I made that remark.’

  ‘You needn’t be. You did qualify it with “”occasionally”, and if that isn’t true enough I don’t know what is. Would you like to eat now?’

  ‘If it suits you.’

  ‘May as well.’ I had to push myself out of my armchair. My energy seemed to have drained away. My legs were heavy and my hands were cold. ‘I’ll bring the trays in here, as the kitchen’s so small. We generally use that table.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ He came closer. ‘You’re not feeling right. You’re far too pale. Sit down again.’ He stood over me as I flopped back into my chair. ‘Get your head over your knees.’

  ‘I’d much rather not, if you don’t mind.’ I lay back, half closed my eyes. ‘I hate the feeling of blood rushing to my head. I’m just a bit cotton-woolly. Shock, I guess.’

  ‘You were over that before I went to sleep. I watched your colour return to normal whilst we were talking.’ His concern was obvious and wonderful. ‘This is a reaction to something that’s happened in the last half-hour.’ He hesitated, then reached for my wrist. Directly his fingers touched my pulse he looked quickly at my face, then checked the beat on his watch.

  ‘Conflicting symptoms?’ I asked.

  He gave me a politely blank, professional glance. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because I can feel I’ve got a touch of tachycardia, and I’ve always been taught that in shock the rate goes down, not up.’

  ‘In general, yes. There are always exceptions to every rule. You must be one.’

  I watched him through my eyelashes. ‘Did my pulse go up that morning on the bypass?’

  ‘Not as I recall. The circumstances were, of course, very different.’

  ‘Yes.’ Someone had to say it, and since, being the man he was, his job, his being Margaret’s old friend, and above all his now being alone with me at night in this cottage would prevent him from saying it first, I said it. ‘I wasn’t in love with you, then. I was all set to have you as Uncle Richard. But please don’t turn yourself into him now, as you’ve been threatening to do ever since you woke up, and say, “There, there, little one”, as if I was all of eight years old. I’m not eight. I’m not waffling because I’m feeling rather lousy. I’m twenty-one, old enough to work in the Unit, old enough to have to cope with grief, mutilation, and sudden death, every day of the week. I’ve often felt lousy in the Unit, but I’ve still known what I was doing and saying. I know what I’m doing now. I know exactly why my heart probably shot up to one hundred and something when you touched me. As I’m in love with you, it would be very odd if it didn’t. And please,’ I added breathlessly, ‘don’t turn yourself into the Big Doctor you’ve treated me to recently whenever we’ve had to work together. I’m just not up to dealing with Old Red of Benedict’s right now.’

  He was very still. His expression nearly stopped my heart. ‘You love me, Jo? Since when?’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Honest to God, I don’t know. I discovered it in the Unit. I think it started before that, but I was so busy marrying you off to Margaret I hadn’t much time for my own problems.’

  ‘I’ve been one of your problems? Have you any idea of the problem you’ve been to me?’

  ‘Till tonight it never crossed my mind. I was quite sure that first you just saw me as a carbon copy of Margaret ‒ and later that you didn’t much like what you saw.’

  ‘And it was only when I turned up down here that you guessed my motives for coming were not purely altruistic? I did want to help you by breaking the news gently, but I did want to see you. I wanted to look after you and then take you back with me. For myself as well as yourself. To have you to myself just for once I’d have driven treble the distance from Town gladly. And then I wasted a precious hour and a half sleeping like a bloody log!’

  ‘It wasn’t quite such a waste of time as you think.’ I felt myself redden. ‘I’m not sure how you’re going to take this ‒’

  ‘Jo, from you, I can now take anything. Well?’

  I explained.

  ‘So I kissed your hand? That doesn’t surprise me. I was dreaming of you. I think I dreamt that kiss. When I woke to find you shaking me I thought it just another dream about you.’

  ‘You’ve dreamt of me, very often?’

  ‘Very, very often. My subconscious and you are well acquainted ‒ as I would have expected you to appreciate that afternoon in Waring’s office. It was the hell of a Freudian slip to make. Were you honestly that much fixated by your notion that I loved Maggie? You really thought I mistook you for her?’

  ‘Yes.’ His smile warmed me like a caress. ‘I know I’ve been bloody silly, but it’s not all my fault. You’ve been horrid to me lately.’

  ‘That bloody-minded bastard, Old Red?’

  ‘Just about. Why?’

  ‘As usual, mixed motives. The first time I met you I knew I wanted to see more of you. I knew, hospitals being the places they are, that wasn’t to be as simple as it would have been had I been a houseman, or even Registrar. I knew I’d only to take you out on one date ‒ that is, supposing you had accepted my invitation ‒ and Benedict’s would have us in bed together inside of twenty-four hours. I didn’t give a damn about that for myself. I gave several, for you. Then, as you know, we met again in Marcus, and you didn’t see me.’

  ‘Not then. No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Jo,’ he said unevenly, ‘after what you’ve just said to me you don’t have to apologize to me for one bloody thing. Want the rest?’

  ‘Please. Please.’

  ‘Maggie turned up in that car-park. You came here on holiday. I came down to lunch with the Remington-Harts, intending to call in here in the hope of seeing you during that afternoon ‒ and saw you sitting on the grass verge covered in blood. God,’ he muttered, ‘that did it ! I’ve never cared for the sight or smell of blood, and when I was a junior dresser it used to turn me as pea-green as your friend Charlie on his first visit to the Unit, and as you still go at the mere mention of a burns admission. I’ve long passed that stage, yet one look at you that morning and I could have done with a double brandy. That was when I discovered I was in love with you.’

  I had dreamed so many daydreams. Not one approached the wonder of reality. ‘You were very kind to me. You lent me your shoulder as a back-rest.’

  ‘You remember? I didn’t think you’d even noticed. When you began to notice me on the drive back here you were hard put not to call me “Uncle Richard”.’

  I smiled. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Didn’t I know it! It froze every attempt I made at getting closer to you in Benedict’s, in the nicest
possible way. You were so bloody sweet and so bloody keen to have me join the family ‒ as dear old uncle! I knew that had I tried to date you you’d have regarded the suggestion as a cross between disloyalty to Maggie and incest. So I had to wait.’

  ‘Until I discovered for myself about Margaret and her General?’

  ‘I hoped that would help, but that wasn’t why I waited. Bluntly, dear heart, I was waiting for you to grow up. You’ve done that in the last month. Everyone grows up in the Unit, and fast. Do you mind my saying this?’

  ‘No, since, again, it’s dead true. Though I’m still not clear why you’ve been so tough with me, in the Unit? Because you had to wait?’

  His smile was tender. ‘You’ve grown up faster than I thought. Yes, partly. It was also because before you moved out of the Hall I noticed you had begun to have a difficult time with Sister Cas, and it was about then that Michael Waring first tipped me off on the rumours circulating about us. Being a very old hospital hand, it occurred to me that my efforts at getting better acquainted with you could be doing you, personally, a lot of harm. So I restrained them so bloody pointedly that I wouldn’t have been too surprised had you refused to remove that chain tonight. I’ve never been clear just how those rumours started. I presume through my occasional chats with you?’

  ‘Yes and no. Richard, you may not like this ‒’

  ‘What have you done now?’

  When I explained about Charlie he grinned. ‘Fair comment.’ He tilted my face to the light. ‘You’ve recovered. Good. I can kiss you now.’ He drew me out of the chair and into his arms. ‘Dear Jo, do you make me wait!’ He caught his breath. ‘Dear Jo, do I love you! Have I loved you! Will I love you!’ He kissed my mouth, my face, my neck, and then, again, my mouth. He kissed so hard and he held me so tightly I could neither move nor breathe properly. Neither bothered me at all.

  He lifted his face a fraction to look at me. ‘Darling, have I hurt you?’ he demanded anxiously.

  I smiled. ‘I hate to think what my pulse is doing but I’m doing fine. Please kiss me again.’

  He did, but more gently.

  Afterwards, after supper, we sat on the sofa. We talked of John Francis. Richard said, ‘I think he’ll be up and out inside the twenty-eight days.’

  ‘And good to Margaret and Dickie?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. God knows the poor girl rates a happy marriage after her first go! She’ll get it, with John.’ He read my expression. ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘You’re saying she wasn’t happy with Simon?’

  He got up, took down the wedding photograph, and handed it to me as he sat down and lifted me back on his lap. ‘Take a good look at Simon Ellis.’

  It was years since I had looked at that photo properly. I gasped. ‘He’s not as good-looking here as the Francis men, but he’s the same physical type.’

  ‘The type that attracts Maggie, and vice versa. He wasn’t very like, just vaguely similar. But he had a lot in common with Bill Francis. You don’t remember Simon?’

  ‘Only dimly. What was he like?’

  ‘In small doses, very amusing and attractive, particularly to women. Fundamentally, he was more immature as a grown man than his son is at twelve. He always wanted his own way, but was incapable of accepting any responsibilities that involved. He wanted Maggie, so he married her, as she wasn’t a girl he could get any other way. He’d wanted neither wife nor kids, but having married her he did not want to let her go as she was his possession. Ever tried to take a toy away from a spoilt child?’

  I winced. ‘She’d no idea? Before she married him?’

  ‘Her Benedict’s friends, myself included, tried to talk sense into her ‒ and met with the usual response on such occasions. She was too much in love to see or think straight; she then had your quick temper and your independent streak, but not your strong vein of common sense that serves you so well in any crisis.’

  ‘She’s so sensible now!’ I protested.

  ‘Now, yes. Dick’s birth jolted all the sense she needed into her. I’ve seen childbirth transform a good many women, but none more totally than Maggie. She was a sweet, patient, but still bloody stupid girl, until she held her son in her arms. You knew Dick was born in our Mat Unit? I used to visit her. In those days mothers were kept in ten days. I saw Maggie grow up during those ten days. Simon was then an orthopod registrar. He was in the same hospital. He visited his wife three times.’

  ‘He didn’t want Dickie?’

  ‘A son? A rival in his own house?’ He shook his head and was briefly silent. ‘At the time I thought his attitude inexcusable. From this distance I realize he could no more help being what he was by then than Bill Francis could help doing what he did on Wednesday night. He was running round with a physio-student then. The hospital knew as the hospital always does. She was a nice kid. And so was the girl with whom he went off on what proved to be his last week-end. She was a fourth-year in the orthopaedic theatre. Simon,’ he added bitterly, ‘knew how to pick his women.’

  ‘Did Margaret know?’ He nodded. ‘Why did she put up with it?’

  ‘I asked her that about six years ago. She said she had loved him when she married him, he needed her, he was her husband, and she had been determined to make it work. It never would have worked. The baby was the last straw. Things after Dick went from bad to worse. Maggie knows that now, and that’s why she’s been so scared of any repeat performance.’

  ‘I never guessed! I should have!’ I explained why.

  ‘You might have guessed from that letter, had you been old enough to remember more of Simon, and had Maggie not taken such care for Dick’s sake that no-one outside of her old small circle in Benedict’s should guess. There are very few of us left, now. Matron, Bernard, myself, and a couple of pundits or so. As you know, Benedict’s is too large for anyone to know well anyone outside one’s immediate circle. Twelve years is a long time. If anyone ‒ take Sister Cas ‒ now remembers Simon Ellis it’ll be as a good party man who genuinely had a good brain and a talent for orthopaedics. Had he known how to use his many gifts he could have done very well. I’ve noticed Maggie’s stressed his gifts to Dick and left out the rest. She’s dead right. A boy needs to be proud of his father, dead or alive.’ His eyes softened. ‘Thanks to the climate of love and security Maggie has built up round him that child’s a normal, well-balanced, highly intelligent, dirty little monster. He’s going to enjoy having a Major-General for a stepfather. He’ll take all his pals through his stepfather’s wars and medals. He’s already got old Wix under his thumb. John Francis, being an over-indulgent father, will probably try and spoil him a little, but at Dick’s age that won’t hurt him. And thanks to Maggie’s early upbringing he’ll take for granted, until he’s much older, the affection and very considerable security John Francis will provide for his mother and himself. It’s only unhappy kids who are wary of affection. Those accustomed to being surrounded by it take it as their birthright, which, of course, it is. Unhappy kids,’ he repeated, ‘and emotionally scarred adults.’

  That thought was in my mind. ‘You don’t think Margaret’ll lose her nerve at the last minute?’

  ‘Though she has been looking so much happier, up to this afternoon I’ve not been too sure that wouldn’t happen. That’s why I drove her down to Dick’s school on Saturday, even though I knew she’d rather go alone, as naturally she wanted her son to herself. But I wanted a long, uninterrupted talk with her. I told her, in so many words, not to be a fool and chuck away happiness through cowardice. She kept protesting about the ethical position. I told her I thought on this occasion ethics could go jump in a bloody lake. Some of it got through. Not all. But after today she’ll marry him. She appreciates what the loss of a child must mean to a parent. Bill Francis may not have seemed to us the best of sons, but his father loved him for what he was, and not for what he didn’t possess. Remember how he sat out those long nights in Marcus?’

  I began to cry. I cried on his shoulder, and he held me gently and s
troked my hair until I stopped. Then he kissed me, at first gently, and then as when for the first time.

  Suddenly he lifted me off the sofa and stood me on my feet. ‘Jo, I think we should go back now.’

  ‘Richard, must we? Already? Of course, I’ll come back with you when you go, but must it be right now? And anyway, I haven’t got late leave. How’ll I get in? It’s midnight already, and the Night Super’ll be furious if I turn up at two in the morning and ask for a key.’

  ‘She won’t be furious if I turn up and ask for one for my fiancée and explain we’ve been delayed, unexpectedly. Naturally, I’ll apologize, though I won’t explain, and she won’t expect any explanation from me. There aren’t many compensations to being an S.S.O., sweetheart, but there are a few. My request won’t surprise her. The only people in Benedict’s who’ll be surprised by this turn of events are our two selves.’ He kissed me once more, then let me go. ‘Now’s the time, Jo. What with one thing and another, you’ve taken a tremendous emotional beating and look as if you’ve had as much as you can take for one night. In a rather different context, my darling, so have I. Understand?’

  ‘Now, yes. Sorry. I was being bloody childish again.’

  ‘No. Just a little dim and very, very sweet.’ He put his hands back in his pockets and smiled at me. ‘Right, Jo! Come along! Uncle Richard is about to do what he has always intended doing with you. Uncle Richard is going to take you home. Later, he’s going to keep you there ‒ and not much later. Uncle Richard has done the hell of a lot of waiting. And Uncle Richard, though you may not have realized this, is not by nature a patient man. It’s that red hair,’ he said. ‘It’s that damned red hair.’

  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  If you enjoyed The Light in the Ward, you will also want to read these other stories by Lucilla Andrews.

  The Print Petticoat

  A moving story of heartache and hope in the Maternity Unit of a busy 1950s teaching hospital.

  Joanna Anthony is a dedicated Nursery staff nurse at St Gregory’s Hospital. The nurses and doctors share laughter and tears as they tend to the mothers and babies in their care.