He had brown slightly curly hair that, while never exactly untidy, never looked smooth. That went for Johnny as a whole. He was very sunburnt after spending the long, hot summer in the country. His eyes were light. I was not sure of their colour though I had worked three months in the theatre with him, and in the theatre you learn to recognize everyone by their eyes. He was twenty-nine, three years older than Richard. He looked more, I decided, comparing them. Richard’s very fair hair and regular features gave him, to me, an appealingly boyish quality. There was nothing appealing or boyish about Johnny Druro.
Sonia had taken over the conversation and was behaving as if we were all her guests.
‘I wish you could have managed to be free tomorrow, Johnny. You know how well we dance together! And you did say you’d try and make it. Darling Guthrie’s going to be so disappointed. I know he particularly wants to meet you.’
‘Don’t blame me, blame my boss.’ Johnny looked at me, then Richard. ‘You’re going, of course?’
The telephone in the corridor rang at that moment. ‘Probably Cas for me.’ Johnny beat a houseman to the door, came back at once. ‘Lister for you, Richard.’
‘Oh, no! I’m supposed to be off until eleven. Hang on here while I find out the worst, Kirsty.’ He vanished, closing the door after him.
Sonia was getting restive. ‘Do let’s go out on the terrace. It’s too lovely to stay in. Bring Richard out if he doesn’t have to work, Kirsty.’
‘He’d told me to stay where I was, and as I was sure Johnny would follow the others out I was very happy to be obedient. Instead he produced a clean cup from a cupboard and helped himself to tea.
‘Much longer on nights?’ He sat facing me, cradling the saucerless cup in his hands.
‘Two weeks, approx.’
‘And then?’
‘Three months on days, and I’m finished.’
He set the cup on the floor, produced cigarettes, offered me one absently, lit up for himself when I refused. ‘What then?’ He glanced at the door. We could just hear the sound of Richard’s voice coming through. ‘Marriage, I presume?’
‘All things are possible.’
‘But some more probable than others.’ He looked deliberately at my bare left hand. ‘One does not need to have all the correct text-book symptoms to reach a correct diagnosis.’
I said, ‘I thought you didn’t approve of spot diagnosing, Mr Druro,’ and smiled at Richard as he came back to us. I was always glad to see him, seldom as glad as that moment. ‘Crisis over?’
‘All fixed. They don’t want me until my round.’
‘Richard’ ‒ Sonia was in the French window ‒ ‘I must show you something. You don’t mind lending him to me, do you, Kirsty?’ Her smile was enchanting. ‘But if he is going to meet darling Guthrie tomorrow night he must be able to say the right things about that new block going up across the river. Darling Guthrie helped with the design ‒’ and she swept Richard out without giving anyone else time to say one word.
Johnny watched with calm amusement as if he was the one adult at a children’s party and the children were beginning to behave rather badly. ‘Maybe it’s as well I’m not to meet darling Guthrie after all, or I might be tempted to say what I really think of his hideous plate-glass monstrosity.’
I agreed with him completely. I was not going to say so. I helped myself to more tea for something to do, and we sat in silence.
Some silences are companionable. That one was not. I wished Richard would come back and rescue me, or that I had the courage to get up and join the others. I stayed put since I lacked courage and did not want to give Johnny the satisfaction of believing I found his presence disturbing, or minded the way Sonia was oozing charm over Richard.
I decided to talk. ‘Surgical side busy?’
‘As I’m registrar on Cas call, would I be sitting here if it was?’
That’s dear Johnny, I thought. ‘We noticed Cas was unusually quiet just now.’
‘What the devil’s unusual about that at this hour and in this weather?’ he demanded. ‘No sensible person wants to waste a fine evening being sick.’
He stubbed his cigarette, promptly lit another. ‘That old pain in the back or never one in the knee can wait until the pubs, the palais, and the telly closes down, and the night closes in. We’ll have enough customers later, particularly with a moon like that one.’ He jerked his head at the window. ‘That moon’ll have the ton-up boys flogging the guts out of their machines on the bypass. They’ll start coming in from midnight.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Lister was an acute general surgical ward, but we constantly had to take the overflow from the male accident ward. I knew too much about the consequences to the young men who played ‘Chicken’ when the lights turned red and tried to get one-hundred-mile-an-hour speeds from their motorcycles.
‘Why not? When we both know it’s the truth.’
‘Such a hideous truth,’ I protested.
He took that up at once. ‘Since when has truth been an analgesic?’
I had no answer. The silence returned. It was as electric as before.
I looked out of the French window. Sonia and Richard were a few feet from the door. She looked up at him, said something that made him smile. That did not help, either.
Johnny got to his feet. ‘Can’t sit here all night. You’ll forgive me if I leave you?’
‘Sure.’ If I sounded as relieved as I felt I did not mind.
His grin was sardonic. ‘I’m obliged.’ He put his cup on the tray. ‘Hope you have a good party tomorrow night.’
‘I’m on duty.’ And I explained for the third time.
‘So your number didn’t come up? You seem to be accepting your bad luck with remarkable equanimity, Nurse Francis.’
I had worked all last night, had only three hours’ sleep that day. Suddenly I was as tired as all night nurses on their first night off. ‘Why remarkable, Mr Druro?’ I snapped. ‘We couldn’t all be free. There’s no point in throwing up my hands and crying woe, woe, because I can’t go to the party.’
‘I’m with you there. Which makes this a unique occasion.’
‘It does?’ I was doubtful.
‘The first time we’ve ever agreed on anything.’ He grinned again, walked out on to the terrace. ‘Sonia, if you really want a good look at that revolting building I’ll take you up to the senior library. But you’ll have to come now. I haven’t a lot of time. Coming?’
Richard and the housemen joined me a few seconds later. Richard was amused; the housemen were indignant. ‘Talk about bare-faced hi-jacking!’ one of them grumbled. ‘Why didn’t someone do something?’
‘With old Johnny an unbeaten ex-heavyweight champion and a senior registrar? Not ruddy likely!’ retorted Richard. ‘Besides, it’s darling Guthrie who should worry, not us.’ He held out a hand to me. ‘Sweetie, I am sorry to have left you to cope with your old pal Johnny. Come. I’ll take you home.’
We left the housemen disconsolately finishing the dregs of the teapot and walked slowly back via the terrace and hospital park.
Richard was unusually quiet and preoccupied. I had to ask him twice if he thought Johnny was interested in Sonia.
He shrugged. ‘He always enjoys being bloody-minded.’
‘But he did drive her up from the annexe. Nothing bloody-minded about that.’
‘Don’t forget this chap Guthrie.’
‘Johnny seems to have done that quite easily.’
He said that showed how little I really knew Johnny Druro. ‘He’s not a man to forget anything. And he knows how to care of himself.’ He was quiet again. Then: ‘Sonia one of your set? That why her name rings a bell?’
‘Not my set. A year senior. You’ll have heard of her.’ I explained about her father. ‘You surely heard she was one of our girls?’
‘Of course! Washing-machines and fridges. I just didn’t put two and two together.’
He kissed me good-night in the last patch of shadow in the hospital par
k. ‘Don’t let this kid you I’m not still narked with you, darling. You should have managed to have tomorrow free. Imagine having tonight. Crazy!’
‘I’ve only got tonight as an extra because I have to work tomorrow. But let’s not go through all that again. And you must go. Promise?’
He hesitated. ‘Maybe. I’ll see. Perhaps for an hour.’ He kissed me again. ‘That suit you?’
We walked on over the road to the steps of the Night Home. I watched him cross back from our front door. His walk showed he was still very peeved with me. It was an odd and rather irritating fact that the only person who seemed to understand my attitude to that miserable Ball was Johnny Druro.
Chapter Two
HUNCHES CAN BE RIGHT
Nurse Bernard, the night junior in Lister, waited for me outside the dining-room next night. ‘Feeling like Cinderella, Nurse Francis?’
‘Slightly. You?’
‘I’ll say. Every other girl on my floor’s going. You couldn’t see ’em for curlers and cold cream just now! We poor mugs who have to work could hardly get near the bathrooms. I suppose there’s no chance of Night Sister waving a wand over me?’
‘Afraid not, my dear.’
Bernard was a pleasant girl and moderately efficient second-year. I liked her very much. She made up in kindness what she lacked in efficiency, and had the equable temperament that was so important on nights, where you worked with the same person, and only that person, for up to three months at a time. We had got on very well together in Lister. She knew as much about Richard and me as I knew about her and the red-haired student who haunted Lister kitchen and corridor in the first few hours of most nights.
‘How was last night?’ I asked as we galloped up the stairs of the Surgical Block.
‘Ghastly! We had to take four accident overflows from Robert (the male accident ward). Place was a shambles.’
‘Where did we put ’em? We were full yesterday morning.’
‘Smedly and Davis went out yesterday afternoon. Their beds and two extra put up down the middle.’
‘Oh, Lor!’ I detested nursing patients in the centre of the ward. ‘What type accidents? Road, of course.’
She nodded. ‘Motor-bike. The lot. Night Sister said the police told her the crazy loons had been using the by-pass as a dirt-track. Mr Druro from the annexe didn’t finish in the theatre until after five this morning. I know the time because he came into Lister in his theatre clothes after the last case.’
I was remembering Johnny’s forecast last night. ‘He said the moon was too good. How were the admissions this morning?’
‘Not too bad. Which was a flaming miracle considering how they looked when they came in. Two of their girl-friends who were riding pillion died in Cas before they could get to a ward.’
I winced involuntarily. ‘The poor kids. No helmets?’
‘Just head-scarves. Night Sister told Nurse Brinkly (my standin). Mr Druro was so furious about that that she thought he’d explode.’
‘He’s a man with temper. On this occasion I don’t blame him.’ We had reached our changing-room and hung the cloaks we had not worn because of the heat. ‘One can’t expect these crazy kids to have sense, but they must have parents. Why can’t the parents realize a crash-helmet on a motor-bike is as important as having efficient brakes?’
‘If they ever do we’ll have a lot of spare time on our hands.’
That reminded me to look at my watch. ‘We’ve none now. Let’s go and report to Sister.’
Sister Lister’s detailed report took twenty minutes. It was more reassuring than I had anticipated after what Bernard had said. The beds down the middle of the ward had vanished, their occupants having been fitted into Robert Ward. The remaining two accident cases were already off the Danger List and on the Seriously Ill List. Sanders, in Bed 6, was, as on my last night on duty, the only man on the D.I.L., and he was making slow but satisfactory progress. The other men were going along nicely.
‘You should have a quiet night, Nurse Francis.’ Sister closed the report-book. ‘If Sanders has another good night we will have him on the S.I.L. tomorrow, as it will be his fifteenth day. Now’ ‒ she took a pencilled note from the blotter ‒ ‘two things still to tell you. Mr Druro is acting S.S.O. for the night. Mr Yates will be house-surgeon on call from ten-thirty, but Mr Bartney will be doing his own round.’
Sanders, the man in Bed 6 directly opposite the desk, owned and ran a small newsagent-cum-tobacconist shop in one of the side-streets near the hospital. He was a quiet, gentle little man in the early fifties, had served for years in the Royal Navy before settling down with his wife and three daughters. A burst tyre had sent a lorry skidding into his push-bike when he was delivering his evening newspapers two weeks ago. He had been sent to the theatre straight from Casualty, arrived in Lister as we came on duty. He had been very badly injured. Even the normally optimistic Sister Lister had been doubtful of his chances.
‘I don’t like the look of him at all, Nurse Francis.’
The Senior Surgical Officer had been more blunt. ‘Afraid the poor chap’s booked, Nurse.’
The word ‘death’ was seldom mentioned at Simeon’s. The dying were ‘booked’, the dead ‘lost’.
Sanders’ main injuries had been to the arm and leg, which had been badly wounded in the War. The S.S.O. had gone on to explain that his work had been hampered by the many steel splinters that still lingered in the old wounds. ‘I was fishing out bits of metal all the time. The poor chap was in no condition to tolerate a long anaesthetic. I shifted all I could, but old embedded shrapnel splinters are tricky things to locate. Once we get him over this ‒ if we get him over, I should say ‒ I’d like to have him down again and finish the job.’
I asked, ‘Why were they left in in the first place? And can one walk round with a leg full of steel without coming to any harm?’
‘Can happen’. People walk round with the oddest things inside ’em after every war. Sanders,’ added the S.S.O., ‘was originally patched up in some P.O.W. camp hospital in ’43. They did a good job considering what little equipment they had, or he wouldn’t have lasted as he has. According to his wife, the Navy wanted him to stay on in hospital and have it all cleared up when he was repatriated for discharge, but he had had enough operations and wanted to get home. He might have got away with it but for this.’
He seemed to be getting away with it. On paper he had had little hope. You cannot show on paper, though, the almost miraculous effect a determined human will can have over physical weakness. I had seen other patients fighting desperately for their lives. I never saw anyone put up a greater fight than that wiry little ex-Chief Petty Officer.
His pretty, plump wife had spent most of the last thirteen days and nights sitting by his bed holding his hand. ‘I’ll not listen to one more word against modern teenagers!’ she told us. ‘My girls, they’ve been that good! Doreen, she’s managed the shop and house like a grown woman, and she’s not seventeen! Linda and Mary ‒ the twins, see ‒ they’ve helped with the cooking, got themselves to school prompt and tidy, done the evening paper round for their dad ‒ and their homework. We’ve a lad for the mornings, see.’
Mrs Sanders was in her usual place when I did my first round after Sister left.
‘Here’s your Nurse Francis back, duck! There now, isn’t that nice?’ She smiled affectionately at her husband. ‘Don’t Tom look better, Nurse?’
‘Getting on a fair treat, I am, Nurse. Enjoy your spell ashore?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ I smiled with them, yet something about his appearance worried me. ‘How’s the leg? Plaster comfortable?’
‘Fits like a glove, Nurse. You’ll be handing me me ticket soon.’
‘Splendid.’
I stayed with them for a little time, watching him carefully as we talked. Either my night off had given me new eyes, or there was a change in him.
I reminded myself he was bound to look exhausted and pale after all he had been through. The progress on his char
t was as good as could be expected. He had been X-rayed in bed again that day. Sister had just told me the remaining visible splinters were all superficial, and the S.S.O.’s repair was making satisfactory union. Yet, despite all that, my immediate impression that he looked more ill than ever refused to be rationalized away.
I had a ward full of men to look after. Last night’s admission needed particular attention; several others had been operated on that day. I took Sanders’ pulse, checked his dressings and plasters, saw he was as comfortable as I could make him, then had to get on. His pulse, the most important point of all, was quite regular.
Bernard helped me turn pillows, straighten drawsheets, ease bedclothes over bed-cradles, smooth new wrinkles out of plastic undersheets, cut new-frayed edges off plasters, give out medicines, injections, and sleeping-tablets. Between all these jobs I kept going back to look at Sanders. He had dropped off to sleep while his wife was with him. She came over to whisper a good-night to us, then tiptoed out.
‘Is something wrong with Sanders, Nurse?’ Bernard asked when she could obviously bear my comings and goings no longer.
I signed my name in the Dangerous Drugs Book before answering, then did so with a question. ‘How do you think he looks tonight?’
‘Grand. He was in terrific form. He had two cups of milk. Why?’
I said slowly, ‘He worries me. No reason. He just does.’
She was a tactful girl. She did not tell me to stop fussing over nothing. ‘I often think one night off is more tiring than no nights off.’
‘I am a bit tired; expect that’s making me gloomy.’
Tired or not, I was still worried. I walked back to Sanders, took his pulse again. It was good. He was sleeping well and did not stir. I stood looking at him for a couple of minutes, then collected the bed-ticket from the foot-rail of his bed, returned to the desk and re-read his case and operation notes, despite the fact I already knew them roughly by heart.
I was so preoccupied I did not hear Richard come in, or look up until a shadow fell over the desk.
Flowers from the Doctor Page 2