Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 2

by Various Authors

  She nodded. ‘Mr Bryce. I got a steward to keep an eye on him, but I’d like to go and see him myself.’

  ‘Let’s go together. Are the case notes handy?’

  He scanned the notes and she saw him frown. ‘If we were on shore, I’d send this man to hospital,’ he said.

  ‘So would I. But this morning I thought that shipping him ashore might be more of a risk than keeping him in his bed. That was when I thought that we’d dock tomorrow. And now, with the disease and the storm, it’s impossible.’

  ‘You still made the right decision. Let’s go and look at him.’

  So they went. And it was obvious that Mr Bryce was a very sick man indeed. Now his speech was slurred, he was much weaker. Maddy watched helplessly as Ed listened to Mr Bryce’s heart, took his blood pressure, talked gently to him.

  ‘You’ve enjoyed the cruise, then, Mr Bryce? Thinking of coming back on another one?’

  ‘If I’m alive, yes.’ Maddy saw a tiny smile on her friend’s face. ‘And if Maddy there is on the ship.’

  ‘Maddy is a star. I’ve only just met her but I can tell that.’

  ‘That’s a nice thing to say. Yes, Maddy is a star.’ Mr Bryce’s eyes closed.

  Ed changed Maddy’s prescription of aspirin for warfarin—a much more effective anti-coagulant. Then he shook Mr Bryce’s hand and told him that they’d be back to see him.

  ‘How is he?’ Maddy asked, knowing and dreading what the answer would be.

  ‘He’s an old man and I think there’s a danger of a stroke,’ Ed said. ‘But, Maddy, no one can tell. He has a fighting chance and he looks like a fighter. Was he a particular friend of yours?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Maddy said. ‘I’ve seen a lot of him. Ed, you were kind to him.’

  ‘I try to be kind to all my patients,’ he said. ‘When it’s possible.’

  After that cases came in with predictable regularity. Ed saw each one first, made an initial diagnosis—which was usually not difficult. More difficult was assessing the seriousness of the attack and deciding on the medication. This was a task Maddy was pleased to hand over. After Ed’s initial visit, Maddy took over the nursing duties.

  Here again, things weren’t as normal. Ed had to warn her. ‘Maddy, this is an emergency, you can’t give each patient the time you would in a normal nursing situation. You’re a specialist and you must learn to delegate. Whatever a steward can do, get him or her to do it. You’re needed for the special nursing jobs.’

  She didn’t like what she had to do, leaving patients who needed and wanted her skills. Needed her care. But she knew that Ed’s apparent ruthlessness made sense.

  As the day wore on the situation got worse. More and more people were falling ill. The captain came down to see them. He said, ‘I’m not going to stay, not going to interfere. Whatever you need, just ask for it. If it’s available, you can have it.’ And he was gone.

  ‘Good man, the captain,’ was Ed’s remark.

  They were coping—just. But they knew that they’d have to be up all night. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ed told her, ‘whatever happens, we’ll manage. We’ll manage because we’re a team, we’re working together.’

  She liked him for this. She wasn’t exactly enjoying herself—but Ed made her feel as if her work was worthwhile, he gave her a sense of purpose. She liked working with him.

  They worked together until the evening. Maddy was sitting in the medical centre, checking over the supplies. Ed had gone what he called wandering. ‘Just ambling about, dropping in here and there,’ he said. ‘Getting the feel of things.’

  Then after fifteen minutes, she was buzzed. ‘Hi, Maddy, Ed here.’ It had only been ten minutes since she had seen him. But she was surprised at how welcome his voice was. What was happening to her? Then she recognised the tone of his voice, quiet, regretful. This wasn’t good news.

  ‘Who is it, Ed?’

  ‘It’s Mr Bryce. He’s…very ill but he’s asking for you.’

  ‘Mr Bryce?’An old man but the one true friend she had made on the voyage. ‘How is he, Ed?’

  There was a hesitation, then the usual careful doctorspeak. ‘He’s very ill, very weak. There’s nothing more we can do for him. But he’s lucid—now.’

  Maddy got the message. Her friend Malcolm Bryce was dying. She had managed to visit him twice that day, though if she had not been so busy she would have stayed with him much longer. But she just hadn’t had time! And now he was dying. Maddy bit her lip, trying to stop the tears squeezing from beneath her lids. Why did it have to happen to her friend?

  ‘All right if I come to see him?’

  Ed understood what she was asking. ‘Of course. If you’d like to stay with him a while, I have other things to do.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  She only needed one glance at Malcolm to know that he didn’t have very long. To a trained nurse the signs were obvious. But he was still awake, he recognised her and smiled when she took his hand.

  ‘Something to say to you, Maddy,’ he managed to whisper. ‘I don’t think I’ll have the chance again. When I asked you to marry me—I know it was a joke, but I half meant it.’

  She smiled sadly at the old man. ‘I told you, Malcolm, just now I don’t want to get married. But if I did, you’d be the man I’d pick.’

  ‘I don’t think I can wait. But if I’d been forty years younger then I would have waited. But, Maddy, you’ll make some other man very happy.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied, and squeezed his hand. Then she watched as his eyes closed and he lapsed into unconsciousness. She knew he wouldn’t open them again.

  She was tired, she needed to go to bed. But Malcolm had been her friend, she did not want him to die alone. So she sat in a chair and listened to his laboured breathing. The nicest man she had met in a long time—and he was going to die. She couldn’t help it. Silently, the tears came.

  It didn’t come as a shock when there was a quiet tap on the door, and Ed came in. He said nothing, glanced at Mr Bryce then raised his eyebrows at her. She shook her head. Nothing could be done. But he was still a doctor, he made a quick but gentle examination—and apparently agreed with her.

  ‘I’m going to stay with him for a while longer,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’m entitled to a bit of self-indulgence. I’ll stay, too.’ He sat by her, looked at her as she sat there with her head bowed. ‘Was he a particular friend?’

  ‘Perhaps he was. He had to come to the medical centre quite a bit, he’d hurt his leg—and this morning he asked me to marry him.’

  ‘He what?’

  Maddy managed to smile. ‘It was only a joke. Or perhaps half a joke. But I liked him a lot.’

  Both of then looked up as the sound of Mr Bryce’s breathing altered. Cheyne-Stokes breathing. An alteration from very rapid to very slow breaths, with pauses between them. In a man of Mr Bryce’s condition it meant that death was near.

  ‘He was the first man to be nice to me for quite a long time,’ she said.

  Ed looked surprised. ‘The first man to be nice to you? I would have thought that there was no shortage of men interested in you. You’re very attractive, Maddy, you must know that.’

  She felt a small pleasure at hearing him say this, but at the moment she had other things on her mind. ‘Perhaps so. You know this morning—was it only this morning, it seems so long ago? I got a phone call. It was from my exboyfriend, ex-fiancé if you like. For a while I thought I was going to marry him. I wanted to have babies with him. Anyway, he wants to pick up with me again. And I don’t want to…I just can’t…Though I do feel guilty.’

  ‘Why should you feel guilty? Better to decide early that you’re not suited.’

  ‘I’m a nurse, I’m supposed to heal the sick. And he was sick.’

  She wasn’t surprised when Ed took her hand. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ll try to help if I can. Or help you to understand.’

  She laughed, without humour. ‘That might be possible. The two of you have thing
s in common.’

  He raised his eyebrows again, but all he said was, ‘I’d like to help.’

  She sighed. ‘We got engaged. It was a lightning courtship, he was a hard man to resist. He was a soldier, he went off on active service and he came home with PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. And after that things got so bad that I had to get away from him. It was classic mental abuse—but I suspected that if I married him the mental abuse would have turned physical in time. I was…scared. In fact, at times I still am.’

  ‘Did he have any treatment?’

  ‘He went to a clinic a couple of times at first. Then he said it was a waste of time and that he was cured. He wouldn’t take the medication he was prescribed.’

  ‘Tell me more about him. What had he in common with me?’

  ‘He was decisive like you. He knew what he wanted, was going to get it because he thought he was right. It’s good if you want to get something done. It’s not so good if you’re the one being done to. He just can’t or won’t accept that we’re finished. And we are!’

  ‘Have you a family to offer you support? Are your parents alive?’

  ‘I’ve got no one. My parents died a while ago now, before this happened, and they had no relations. You said I was attractive, well, apparently I am. And because of that, I found that too often men were out for just what they could get. I had a couple of rotten experiences. Then I met Brian. And at first he was different. At first.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. Then, with a small smile, ‘Maddy, you might not like it but I’m going to be decisive. Obviously your ex-fiancé needs treatment. I’m a doctor, I’ve had experience of army cases. I can make some phone calls, see that he’s picked up and given proper attention. He obviously didn’t get it before. But some of the army psychiatrists are very good indeed. They can help.’

  There was something odd in his tone, at first she couldn’t work out what. But then she realised. It was pain, the pain of memory. She lifted her head to look at him and said, ‘You say that as if you know it from personal experience.’

  There was a hesitation before he said, ‘I was sent for psychological assessment. I had to have a couple of consultations, whether I wanted them or not.’

  ‘Sent because you were showing signs of some kind of mental problem?’

  He laughed, but there was no humour in his laughter. ‘Just the opposite. It was thought that…that I had suffered things that ought to produce mental problems, but I showed no signs of them.’

  ‘What kind of things that ought to produce mental problems?’

  His reply was definitive. ‘I don’t talk about them.’

  But she still wanted to know more. ‘So why didn’t you show signs of them?’

  ‘I could say because I was tough,’ he said. ‘But I know that I was just lucky.’

  She thought she could believe that. ‘And you were given a clean bill of health? No psychological problems found, no irrational fears or phobias?’

  ‘None.’

  Just one simple, curt word. But for some reason it didn’t convince her. ‘Are you sure?’

  He lifted his arms, in a gesture almost of surrender. ‘Psychology isn’t like medicine. It isn’t true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. There are great grey areas. And if a psychologist digs hard enough, he’s bound to find something not quite right.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what they found that was not quite right about you?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what things you suffered that caused these problems?’

  ‘No.’

  Apparently he thought that the conversation had run its course. But there were more things Maddy wanted to know. She thought that she was getting close to the real Ed, and she wanted desperately to hear more. She started…

  It wasn’t a sound, it was a lack of sound. Both were trained, both knew what had happened. They turned to look at their patient. Mr Bryce had stopped breathing altogether.

  Neither Maddy nor Ed spoke or moved for a while. Then Maddy moved over to look at her friend, bent to kiss him on the forehead.

  ‘You’re tired,’ Ed said. ‘And there’s nothing more you can do. I’ll do the paperwork and see to everything, it’s better if you don’t do it. He was your friend, his last few minutes were made happier because you were here. Just go back to the centre, try to close your eyes, relax a little.’

  She looked at him through tear-shrouded eyes. ‘You’re a kind man, Ed.’

  ‘I’m just doing my job,’ he said gruffly.

  It was eleven o’clock at night, and they were lucky—there was a slight lull in things. She made herself a mug of tea and sat and thought about Ed. He was like her. There was some burden he was carrying—and she wanted to know what it was. She’d only known him a few hours, but during that time she’d seen enough of him to know he was a caring and sensitive man. She could even come to…No, she couldn’t. The fear was still deep inside her.

  He walked into the medical centre a few minutes later and smiled at her, a weary smile. ‘We’re getting there,’ he said.

  ‘We’re getting there because we’re working together.’ She stood, walked up to him, touched his arm. Just a gentle indication of her liking. ‘I couldn’t have managed without you.’

  ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that you could.’

  Afterwards she wondered, didn’t exactly know how it had happened. They were both tired, of course, perhaps not entirely certain of what they were doing. Perhaps it was a purely spontaneous act, something that happened without either of them knowing why.

  He looked down at her hand on his arm. Very slowly, he slid his other arm round her waist. It was warm, comforting, she leaned back against it.

  His eyes were very blue. She could see them clearly, they were looking down at her with a half curious, half intent expression. Beautiful blue eyes. Why hadn’t she noticed how beautiful they were before?

  His lips touched hers. So tentatively she knew that she could break away in a second. But she didn’t want to. In fact, she reached up, slipped her arm around his neck. At first a gentle kiss. Then it deepened. It turned into something much more than she had anticipated. His body pressed closer to hers. But she was only half-aware of it, all she could think of was the kiss and how it made her head spin, and how Ed was like no man she’d ever met and—

  The phone rang and they sprang apart.

  Ed picked up the phone, no sign of emotion in his face as he listened intently. ‘You’re sure? Yes, that sounds right. OK, I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  ‘Work calls,’ he said to Maddy. Then he shook his head, looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry that happened,’ he said. ‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have kissed you. We’re working hard, we’re stressed, we daren’t get involved with each other. Emotion and this kind of situation…I’ve been here before and it’s…it’s bad.’

  Things were different now, but Maddy was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Above all, make sense of how much she had enjoyed it.

  ‘You might be right,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know why we did that. It must be because we are both tired. I don’t usually kiss—I mean, kiss like that—people who I’ve only just met.’

  ‘And I don’t go around kissing people like that either,’ he said. ‘But this is a time apart. And it’s a world apart—being on a cruise ship is fundamentally unreal. We’ve both got lives to go back to. Then we’ll forget this.’

  ‘Of course we’ll forget it,’ she agreed. But as she looked at him, she wondered if either of them believed her. The kiss had been so wonderful.

  There was one thing she had to add. ‘But, Ed, whatever it was, it wasn’t bad.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS at half past eleven that they were called in to Mrs Jones’s room. She had fought valiantly, but now her body was weary. The steward observing had called Ed, and Ed took Maddy with him.

  Ed thanked the steward, then nodded for her to go. Then he examined Mrs Jones
and then said to Maddy, ‘She still has a chance. A small one. All we can do is wait.’

  They sat together in silence. Then she thought that this was the man who not fifteen minutes ago had kissed her. And had apparently enjoyed it. Where had he gone now?

  He moved over to Mrs Jones, leaned over her and checked her condition. ‘Perhaps a bit of an improvement,’ he muttered, ‘but we’ll see.’

  Maddy realised that he was calming himself by acting as a doctor. But there were things she wanted to know, he couldn’t just leave her with half a story.

  ‘So is all this extra-hard for you?’ she asked. ‘Does it bring back memories?’

  ‘No. It’s not extra-hard. But it is hard. The memories I can deal with, I have to deal with. Now I’ve got a job to do, I’ll do it.’ He walked over to their patient, studied her for a minute. ‘Maddy, it looks as if Mrs Jones might have rallied a little. I’m going to check on a couple of our other patients, you stay here a while.’ He was gone before she could object.

  So her chance of questioning him, of learning more about him, had disappeared. She suspected he had left so he didn’t have to answer any more of her apparently innocent queries. But when he’d left she found herself wondering. This sudden interest in a man had never happened before.

  She had met him for the first time only about twelve hours ago. And twenty minutes ago she had kissed him. Or he had kissed her. Whatever, she knew she had enjoyed it. And this was just not the way she normally behaved. With the departed Dr Coombs and the other nurse she had got on well enough. She’d been popular among both passengers and crew, and she’d enjoyed the dancing in the evening. But she’d only really made friends with Malcolm Bryce, who had been no threat to her heart. And being aboard ship made it easier for her to be pleasant to people and yet be safe. She was never any distance from help, the ship protected her.