Good manners, my adoptive father used to say, were a very handy as well as very tough armour. Dispense with them through ignorance or conceit, he said, and you dispense with one of the best weapons of self-defence.
George’s defences were in good shape. I couldn’t tell how he felt about our meetings but, after those unguarded remarks following his op, could make a pretty fair guess.
The more I saw him, the more I shared his anti to ghost-raising, and the guiltier I felt over his professional interruption. My flat had never been so clean, nor my mind so well-informed of current events as during that time. Sewing, my favourite hobby, was out, since it always encouraged me to think. When not unnecessarily cleaning or polishing, I read word for word, advertisements included, through the stack of daily and Sunday papers that generally accumulated for weeks before I got beyond the headlines. Alistair’s occasional postcards from Brussels I received with mixed feelings. This was not just because he was George’s cousin. I had had to realize he was another reason for my new restlessness. I didn’t like feeling restless, or guilty, or ungenerous, or the disturbing sensation of being on the brink of becoming emotionally involved ‒ and on past showing for me that meant totally ‒ with another man.
My temper on my own was so frayed that more than once it struck me it was just as well I was alone as any man who had to put up with my moods would either have thrown something at me, walked out, or both.
Coronary Care was being no help. Mrs Higgs had moved to convalesce in a general ward, we had two empty cubicles and for days the Brigadier was our only very ill patient. On the following Thursday afternoon, Dr Lincoln Browne strolled into our corridor unannounced and unaccompanied, as was his long-established unorthodox custom, and settled his very tall, elegant, dark-suited figure on the high stool between Shirley and myself. ‘This department frequently reminds me of my army life in the last war.’ He propped his elbows on the counter, his chin on his locked hands. ‘Bursts of frenzied activity interspersed by periods of waiting and watching for something to happen in the uncomfortable certainty that happen it will, and when it does will probably prove very unpleasant and, possibly, fatal for some.’ He studied the Brig’s monitor. ‘Real improvement at last. If he can maintain this, we may be moving him on shortly.’
‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘that’ll be splendid and I’m delighted for the Brigadier, and wish no-one any cardiac problems, but with all these empties, I’m beginning to feel guilty about drawing my pay.’
He was in the late fifties and his still thick hair was now nearly all white, but for the last thirty years, at any given time, he had remained amongst the top three most attractive men in Martha’s. He smiled slowly, delightfully. ‘You are very young, Mrs D. and I am very old. When the guilt threatens to overwhelm you, just sit down and pass the quiet hours working out how many months, if not years, of unpaid overtime you’ve put in since you came here. And you’ll do a great deal more before you leave us.’ He looked all round. ‘This lull won’t last. There’s a lull throughout this Wing. Most extraordinary the way every Unit’s quiet together, or rushed off their feet, together. Don’t ask me why. It’s merely a fact of hospital life the years have taught me to accept. Have you found our military friend more cheerful?’
‘Much more so these last two days. He now seems really keen to get home.’
He looked at me, thoughtfully. ‘That could be a good sign. His wife gone off to her bridge?’
‘A few minutes ago, Doctor.’
‘Gooood.’ He spun out the word as top physicians so often do. ‘Cards relax that good lady. Knitting relaxes others. Well, I’ll just take a look at him. Pray don’t disturb yourselves, Nurses. Just taking a look. I won’t wake him.’
Shirley watched him standing at the foot of the Brigadier’s bed. ‘I know everyone told me he wandered in and out at all hours. I just didn’t believe it. I’ve never known another pundit who’d dream of setting foot in a ward without at least one registrar and houseman in tow, and didn’t automatically expect the nurse running the shop to drop everything and rush up to him. And our L.B.’s top pundit.’
‘Used to shake me when I first started here. I had to hold on to my chair till it sunk in that if he wants an escort, or anything, he’ll ask for it. The one thing that really annoys him is any sort of fuss. He’s my pin-up pundit and ‒’ I broke off as Dr Lincoln Browne had come out of the cubicle. He didn’t say anything. He took another long look at the live monitor, waved absently our way and drifted off looking very grave.
Shirley was puzzled. ‘What’s got him? The Brig’s heart’s going like a clock on that and he’s so much brighter. He even told me I looked like a healthy Ophelia when I gave him his lunch. And like you’ve said, he now wants to get home.’
‘That could all be a good sign, but, at this stage, not always.’
‘That’s what L.B. meant?’
I nodded as one of our telephones was bleeping. The switchboard wanted Dr Lincoln Browne. ‘Outside call, Staff. Know where he’ll be? I’ve got some hotel doctor ringing him in a right state. Try Sister Cardiac’s office?’
A few minutes later Sister came in with the girls back from tea. She glanced into C.1. ‘Off to yours, Nurse Carter. Nurse Dorland, a word before you disappear.’
I went along to her day office after my very brief handing over report to Janet Anstey who had returned to us on Monday. ‘Admission, Sister?’
‘Possibly. Shut that door a moment, Anne.’ I did so. ‘Have you got any shares on the stock market?’
‘Not even one. Why? Mr Big in the City collapsed?’
‘Mr Big from Wall Street over on a four-day visit. Only flew over last evening. Just keeled over in his hotel suite. Not too well, the hotel doctor told L.B., but presumably still breathing or he wouldn’t have sent for him.’
‘Why haven’t they sent him straight in, Sister? Not on our territory?’
‘Our territory all right, but aside from that I don’t know the details. L.B. rang me from his car.’
‘Do you even know his name?’
‘Yes, indeed. Mr Clive B. Renner.’ She produced an evening paper. ‘If his meeting this morning rates a headline this size, one can imagine what this latest’ll call for. Keep it to yourself until we know more. Time enough to deal with hordes of reporters when we have to. If he reaches us, he can go into C.l.’
There was no need to warn Janet on the quiet, as our empty cubicles were always left set to admit a cardiac emergency. In addition to the individual electrocardiograph, pacing machines and monitors, every cubicle had its own piped oxygen supply, carbon monoxide cylinder, masks cupboard, blood transfusion and drip infusion settings, mechanical sucker, and crash trolley with scarlet instead of white legs, set with the sterilized packs containing everything necessary for dealing with the most major of cardiac emergencies, cardiac arrest. After any telephone call warning us to expect an admission in or out of collapse, all that had to be done before the patient arrived, was turn on a few switches.
Shirley was still on the landing talking to the dark-haired houseman from Heart-Lung who had taken to haunting our main entrance since she joined the Cardiac Unit. He vanished up the stairs directly I appeared.
‘Sorry, Shirley. I didn’t mean to frighten the lad off.’
‘Wasn’t really you. Sister Heart-Lung’s been buzzing for him for the last ten minutes. Canteen?’
‘I think so.’
We were usually on the same shift since Sister liked to tie new juniors with regular seniors and for tea much preferred the staff canteen to the boarding-school atmosphere that pervaded our dining-room despite potted palms and small, hotel-type, tables.
‘As a sex,’ said Shirley, ‘I think we’re absolutely splendid. But rows of young women en masse ‒ just not on! All that girlie what Sister said ‒ what I said to Sister ‒ and, my dears, you’ll never guess what he did to me next! I’m too young for such corn and porn.’
‘And I’m too old.’
She was twenty-two
and beneath a deceptively languorous exterior, a reliable, cheerful girl with a very literal mind.
As she couldn’t remember me as anything but a staff nurse, she either called me Mrs D., or nothing, though most of our Unit used Christian names away from the patients, unless the latter were unconscious. Remembering how aged perennial staff nurses had struck me at her stage, I suspected she mentally had me in Sister’s generation.
‘L.B. doesn’t think you’re old. You don’t look it. I know this is frightfully rude, but how old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘That’s nothing! Three years to your glorious peak. All our glorious peaks. Englishwomen only reach that at thirty.’
‘There’s a happy thought!’ We wove our way through white coats, starched dresses, donkey jackets, velvet suits, grubby sweaters and jeans to an empty table. ‘Where’d you pick up that one?’
‘From a dolly, dolly blonde who’s twenty-nine. Called Ruth Hawkins.’ She misread my expression. ‘No, you wouldn’t know her. Not one of ours. Benedict’s. Got Membership and now works somewhere in Scotland. She’s this George Farler’s tame doll. I met her my first week in Heart-Lung. She’d dropped in to see him, but, of course, she couldn’t get in, and anyway he was in the theatre. Sister had sent me up to watch from the gallery so she came with me and we sat together.’ (The entrance to the Heart-Lung gallery stairs lay well away from the Unit itself.) ‘My dear, it was hysterical. Apart from the few crummy female medics feverishly writing notes, I’ll vow she and I were the only people watching what was going on below. And a right problem we had trying to see through all that steamed-up glass! I was quite worried for the poor lads panting down our necks. When they trooped out down the gallery stairs they looked as whacked as the team, only they couldn’t cool off under the showers. She stood me tea in here whilst her loved one was getting changed. I thought her jolly sweet. Such a relief as I like her guy and it’s so much less traumatic when sexy men hitch up to sexy women. When it’s one-sided, all that frustration wrecks my vibes.’
I wondered if we were talking about the same people, or else, if there was something seriously wrong with my vibrations. ‘You think George Farler sexy?’
‘My dear, but yes! Those silent sub-blond men who brood around keeping themselves to themselves always are the most! Maybe it’s because one can only guess at their potential. So much more exciting to have to guess than have it ladled out by some randy guy who thinks he’s slipped if he hasn’t laid anyone since lunch. Haven’t you noticed?’
I drank some tea. ‘Not with George Farler.’
One thing I had noticed was that neither Shirley, Joe, nor Jilly Smythe, appeared to have any idea George and I had met previously. Whilst Shirley went on about the invitation her houseman’s mother had given her for this week-end, I thought of another of my adoptive father’s pet maxims. ‘The only possible way to keep a secret is to keep it secret, but as that demands great self-control, few skeletons turn to dust in unopened cupboards.’ I thought of the control in George’s face. It figured.
‘Start meeting their mums,’ said Shirley, ‘and unless you watch it, everyone’s crying bride-to-be.’
‘You’re agin marriage?’
She grimaced. ‘Have to settle for it, eventually, I guess, but there’s a lot I intend doing first. Anyway, Paul’s far too young to lumber himself with a wife, yet. Silly yobo’s so immature, he talked marriage our first date when he knew from nothing about me! Can you imagine a guy being so infantile?’
I thought of my first date with Dave. ‘It happens, but I’m with you ‒ bit daft.’
Sister was running the desk when we got back and the door of C.1 was screened. ‘Sit down whilst I tell you both about your admission, then Nurse Carter can take over here. Only just in.’ Sister glanced up at the blank monitor over the screened door. ‘Drs Mathers and Jones, Nurses Anstey and Richardson are with him. They should have him connected up, directly. Right ‒ name; Clive Birkdale Renner; age, forty-six; religion, Lutheran; nationality, U.S. citizen; divorced; childless; no relatives in the U.K.; named next-of-kin, patient’s Personal Assistant, Mr Thomas Jenkins Delahay, temporary London and permanent home addresses in Admission Book. Cardiac emergency admitted by Dr Mathers under Dr Lincoln Browne.’
Shirley caught my eye and rolled hers as Sister gave Mr Renner’s medical condition and immediate treatment in detail, then looked demurely at her folded hands when Sister looked up. ‘This next bit, Nurse Carter, is mainly for your benefit as you’re still new to us. Only this Mr Delahay may see Mr Renner or enter this corridor. No other visitors, in any circumstances, for any reasons, until further notice. Any trouble with visitors, or the Press, refer instantly to Nurse Dorland, Dr Mathers, or myself. And you’ll have trouble.’ Placidly Sister explained why. ‘I’ve already been told Mr Renner’s condition will make news throughout the financial world. I informed the eager young man St Martha’s is in business to save lives, not make news, and rang off. Of course, he’ll ring again. The switchboard have been warned to vet our incoming calls with extra care, but that won’t stop any enterprising reporter from discovering the names of our other patients and claiming to be inquiring for them until put through here. Remember the problems we had with our pop singer last spring, Nurse Dorland?’
‘Do I not, Sister!’
‘At least now we should be spared distraught young women with hair hiding behind the potted palms in Admissions Hall. But be very careful with white coats, Nurse Carter.’
Shirley was entranced. ‘Oh yes, Sister.’
‘Anyone who wants to pass unnoticed in any hospital has only to don a white coat. So unless you recognize the face, direct the wearer to my day office or summon a senior, but do not let him or her into C.1. Understood? Good.’ She paused as Mr Renner’s monitor flicked to life. ‘Dear me. Yes. Well, one couldn’t expect more in his present condition. Just one last thing, Nurse Carter ‒ give no information on Mr Renner to any phone callers. Ask them to wait whilst you get a senior. And be on your guard for the smooth gentleman who’ll compliment you on your voice, tell you his mother, wife, sister, or girl friend just happens to be a nurse, and tries to date you. If necessary just say you’re going steady with the current inter-hospitals heavy-weight boxing champion. Or one of the backs in our First Fifteen.’
Shirley beamed. ‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Right. Then you’d better go and take a closer look at him, Nurse Dorland and free Nurse Anstey for the Brigadier.’
The burly unconscious man looked almost too big for the special cardiac bed, and a good twenty years older than his age. He had a huge head of iron-grey hair, a jowl that hung in fleshy folds beneath his transparent oxygen mask, and his colour was so bad there was only one way it could be worse. That nearly happened an hour later.
Later still, Joe Mathers took off his glasses to mop his face and blinked at the bedside monitor. ‘A right tough bastard we’ve got here.’
Dr Jones readjusted an electrode. ‘A right tough bastard he looks.’
‘I meant his heart.’ Joe replaced his glasses and studied the sedated face under the mask. ‘Though I doubt you can make millions without a good streak of the bastard. I’ll say this for him. He wants to live to make more.’
‘Too bad he didn’t remember that earlier. Stones of extra flab, obviously no exercise in years, heavy smoker ‒ how in hell’, demanded Dr Jones, ‘could he expect his heart not to pack up?’
‘Probably thought himself immortal.’ Joe took another blood-pressure reading. ‘Most people do. Coronaries are things that happen to other guys. How’s he feel to you now, Anne?’
My fingers were on the thick, flabby wrist. ‘Fighting back. I’m getting him quite well.’
Joe smiled across the bed. ‘Think they’ll give us a Congressional Medal of Honour for saving the almighty dollar?’
Dr Jones flexed his aching shoulders. ‘Isn’t it a trifle too early for optimism?’
Joe and I looked at each other. We had worked togeth
er so long, we knew how each other’s minds worked on the job, and had stood by enough seemingly moribund patients to separate those determined to fight like tigers from the rest. Sometimes we lost a tiger. Not all that often.
Joe said mildly, ‘Possibly, if not probably, Tom.’
Dr Jones frowned as Shirley’s head reappeared round the screen. ‘I’m sorry but it’s another reporter. He asked for you by name, Mrs D.’
Alistair, I thought impatiently. Hell. ‘What’s his name?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Just his paper.’
It was Alistair’s paper. End of beautiful friendship. ‘I’ll get rid of him. You stay here.’
‘Thanks. Oh ‒ Mr Delahay’s still outside.’
Mr Delahay had haunted our corridor for the last few hours. He was a slight, neat, New Yorker, with a London-tailored suit, white crew-cut and the face of an elderly intelligent monkey. We exchanged resigned smiles as I picked up the outside phone. ‘Staff Nurse Dorland speaking.’ A man’s voice I was infinitely relieved not to recognize apologized very nicely for bothering me when so busy and explained having heard of me from his good friend Alistair Cameron. ‘I know exactly what you’re now thinking, but please, before you hang up on me do remember I’m only trying to do my job as you are doing yours. Now, about Clive B. Renner ‒’
‘Excuse me, but you haven’t told me your name.’
‘I’m sure it won’t mean anything to you. However ‒’
It wouldn’t have meant anything, had I not read all those papers, lately. ‘Oh, yes. I know your column. Most amusing.’
‘How very sweet of you to say so. But you have such a sweet voice ‒ I’m sure you’re a very sweet person. Perhaps we can get together when Alistair gets back from Brussels ‒ or better still, why wait?’
‘Thanks, but I’m rather busy and must go now. If you want Mr Renner’s condition ‒’ I looked at the monitor ‒ ‘he is comfortable and getting on as well as can be expected.’
‘Dear Staff Nurse ‒ couldn’t you give me a little more? I want a story, not a medical bulletin.’
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