Almost in a dream, I heard my own laughter getting shriller and shriller. I felt Sister’s hand on my shoulder, and felt her strength as she pulled me towards the door of the theatre. And still I laughed, choking as I tried to explain why.
“First you - then me - now me - then you - “ I heard my own voice, muffled and distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Sister’s hand stung my face sharply as she pulled my mask down and slapped me.
“Stop it,” she cried. “Stop it!” and stop I did, but only because I was now crying, tears running down my face, mixing saltily with the perspiration of the morning in the humid theatre.
Dickon suddenly stood beside me, out there in the ante room, holding my arm in a fierce grip as the trolley with the boy on it trundled past, the kidney machine being manoeuvred along beside it by the theatre porter. But I didn’t see it reach the outer door.
Because, for the first time in my life, I fainted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I sat and stared glumly at the cage at the foot of my bed. Under it I could feel my feet, still throbbing slightly, still stiff, but not nearly as painful as they had been. From the window beside my bed I could feel the cool spring breeze as it stirred the net curtains lazily. It carried a faint smell of daffodils and hyacinths from the Nurses’ garden, and I moved irritably, restless and disturbed by my forced inactivity when all the world except me seemed to be busy and happy. I wanted to throw a boot or something at an idiot bird, singing its heart out on the tree just outside the window.
I had been in the Sick Bay for nearly a week, now. The phenol burns on my feet and legs had been pretty bad, because by the time my shoes and stockings had been removed, and treatment started, the skin had been pretty severely burned - not enough to need grafting, thank Heaven, but bad enough.
I still felt pretty sick when I remembered what had happened. Sister had been surprisingly kind. As she said herself, “I can’t castigate you for carelessness when I did something much the same myself, can I?” Matron, too, had been kind, though I sensed a degree of annoyance behind her enquiries, when she came to visit me on the first day I was in Sick Bay. And she had every right to be annoyed, I had thought hazily through the mist of pain and drug-induced drowsiness, after she had left me.
I could remember how it had happened so clearly. Not only had we all relaxed after Sir Jeffrey left the theatre - I had been feeling very cock-a-hoop with myself. I had scrubbed for the dreadful Sir Jeffrey, and it had been all right! I hadn’t made any mistakes, and it was this self congratulation as much as anything else that had made me so careless in my movements, a carelessness that had sent the tray of phenol crashing to the floor.
And now I sat in the Sick Bay, bored and miserable. Dickon had come to see me as soon as I was allowed visitors, which had only been yesterday. I had tried to argue with Sister Fraser, the elderly Sister in charge, but she had been adamant.
“You had a nasty shock,” she said in her soft Scots burr “and then you go and start an upper respiratory infection on top of it. What you’re needing now is rest, and lots of it, not silly chatter with a lot of daft people who ought to have better things to do with their time than hang around here. Visitors on Friday and not before.”
Dickon had been sweet, I thought, stretching my feet gingerly down the bed. He had put his tousled head round the door of my room, his face ludicrous in its anxiety.
“How are you, Avril?” he had asked. “Does it hurt a lot? Poor kid - it must be awful.”
“Not a bit of it,” I had answered, with all the gaiety I could muster. “I’m having a lovely time. Nothing to do, and lots of time to do it in.”
“That’s my girl,” he had said, perching on the edge of my bed. “Never lets the side down. Any other girl would have wept all over my shoulder at the first sight of a friendly face after a week. But not Avril!”
I had been annoyed. Because in fact, that had been just what I had wanted to do. He had looked so familiar, so friendly, and I had been so lonely and depressed. But the fact that he realized this only made me more determined to be self controlled - although a good cry would have been a delightful luxury just then.
“There’s nothing to cry about!” I had told him brightly. “I did a stupid thing, and I’ve got to put up with the consequences. Never mind me - how are things around the hospital?”
Dickon had taken the hint, and talked easily of hospital affairs, passing on the bits of gossip and information I had missed, incarcerated as I was in the ivory tower of the Sick Bay. Ward Seven was to be closed for redecorating. Jenny O’Malley had been sent temporarily to the theatre until I was fit to return to duty, a new batch of nurses had arrived on the wards from P.T.S. - and then Dickon said, “Do you remember young Barlow - your junior on night duty?”
“Of course I do. What about her?”
Dickon had looked at me consideringly, and then he had said, “I’ve been acting as her father confessor and confidant - and as a result, she quit the hospital two days ago. Walked out - just like that.”
I had stared at him. “Why? What happened?”
“I found the poor kid in tears in the garden one evening - I’d just been over here to ask after you, as a matter of fact. And she poured the whole thing out on to my shoulder. She seemed to like it - my shoulder, I mean.”
I had ignored that. “The whole what, for Pete’s sake?”
“Boy friend trouble,” Dickon had said laconically. “She wanted to marry him, he wanted to marry her - but what about the hospital? That was pretty well the problem in a nutshell.”
“Billy in Bed Seven,” I had said, comprehending suddenly. “That romance certainly blossomed quickly! But why has she walked out?”
Dickon had examined his finger nails as he answered.
“I told her to marry the boy. That that was just about the most important thing that would ever happen to her. I told her not to get confused about things like a career - and that she’d be much happier, and probably just as useful, if she married and had children.” He had looked at me then, his face serious. “I said it because I believed it. And she took my advice - a little precipitously, I must admit - and left. I’ll be sending her a wedding present, Avril. And I envy Billy - very much.”
I had lain there silently for a minute, and then I had said, “Look, Dickon. I know what you’re trying to tell me. But what’s right for Barlow isn’t necessarily right for me. Don’t you see that?”
And he had sighed sharply, and then grinned. “I won’t nag you, Avril. But I want you to know how I feel - that’s all.” Then he had sheered right away from the subject, and pulled a couple of paper-backed books from his pocket, together with a rather battered box of chocolates.
“I’m sorry they’re so crumpled,” he had said. “I bought them the first chance I had after you came in here, and then Sister Fisher wouldn’t let me come in to see you. So I’ve been dragging them around with me all week.” He had rubbed his nose shyly.
“I could have left them for you, but I wanted to give them to you myself. Silly, I suppose.”
I had laughed teasingly. “Not silly at all. I bet you kept them so as to be sure no one pinched ‘em instead of bringing them in to me. Parsimonious old Dickon!”
He had shaken his head in mock despair.
“I can’t win! I try to be sentimental, and you put it down to meanness!”
And then we had talked about hospital affairs again, and laughed a lot, just as we always used to. And neither of us mentioned Peter, much as I wanted to hear news of him.
When he left, he had held my hand for a moment.
“Look after yourself, poppet. I hate to see you laid up like this. You look so - fragile, lying there.” He had touched my hair briefly. “Pretty. Like sugar floss, all gold in the sun.”
Then he had leaned forward to kiss me. And suddenly, his tenderness, his obvious concern, were too much for me. I turned my head away, not to avoid his kiss, but because I didn’t want him to see the silly tears that had sp
rung into my eyes.
He had stood there for a moment, and then, very quietly, he went. I tried to sit up, to call him back and tell him I hadn’t really tried to avoid his kiss, but it was too late. He had gone.
The opening door pulled me out of my thoughts, and Sister Fraser bustled in.
“Now, Nurse Gardner. How are you this evening?”
“Quite comfortable, Sister,” I said. “But I’m awfully bored. Can’t I have some more visitors?”
She shook down the thermometer she had taken from the little rack at the head of the bed, and popped it into my mouth.
“You lasses,” she said, with an imitation of severity. “Can’t relax for a moment, can you? But you’ve been a good girl. Maybe someone will come to see you this evening. I’ve given my permission, anyway.”
My face lit up, and I tried to speak round the thermometer.
“Now just you keep quiet, my girl. I’m not saying who it is, in case you’re disappointed if they don’t turn up. And a surprise will be nice, won’t it?”
She tidied the room quickly, and drew the curtains on the spring dusk, while I sat and sucked the thermometer. Could it be Peter? I hoped so, more than I could say. All week I had thought about him, re-enacting our few precious meetings, re-living our only kiss, remembering everything he had ever said, over and over. I knew now beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I loved him. The mere thought of him made me feel weak.
Sister took the thermometer, and made a little face as she read it.
“Still up a bit,” she said. “I’m not certain you shouldn’t just settle to your sleep early after all - “
“Oh, no, Sister!” I begged. “It’s just that the room’s so warm, really it is! I’ll get a much higher temperature if I’m on my own, really I will. I’ll be so bored, it’ll work itself up, won’t it?”
She smiled, “Och, away with your nonsense! But, there - it’s only ninety-nine, at that. You can have your visitor. But see you don’t get over-excited, now!”
I spent the next half hour putting on my make-up, and brushing my hair till it shone. Chick had collected some things from my room for me, and I blessed her for including my prettiest night things and putting all my make-up in my case.
All the time, I tried to tell myself it mightn’t be Peter - it could be Chick - but it was impossible not to hope it was Peter.
My supper tray came and went. I ate as much as I could, afraid that Sister Fraser would think I was ill again if I didn’t eat something, and forbid my mysterious visitor. Then I settled down to wait.
I looked round the room, shadowy in the corners, illuminated only by the light at the head of my bed. We are lucky at the Royal. Sick staff have rooms to themselves, instead of a bed in an open ward. If it was Peter who was coming, I thought, a little sleepily, we’d be on our own. Perhaps he would kiss me again. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the memory of that moment when he had kissed me before, like a child recalling a visit to a circus.
It was the dimming of the light behind my closed lids that made me open them again.
Peter was standing beside my bed, his head bent so that it came between the light and me. I stared up at him in disbelief. I hadn’t heard the door open. Was I dreaming? But I was awake.
“Hello, Avril,” he said softly. “You look - rather lovely lying there. Not ill a bit.”
I smiled up at him, too happy to see his smooth fair head and vivid blue eyes to attempt to hide my delight at seeing him.
“I’m just a fraud,” I said, equally softly, my eyes on his mouth. “I’m fine now.” I wanted to put my arms up, to hold on to him, to feel his head beneath my fingers.
He didn’t move. He just stood there, looking down on me and smiling faintly.
Almost without thought, I did put my arms up. I linked my hands behind his neck, and smiled.
And then, his head came down to mine, and he kissed me, tenderly at first, and then more urgently, while I clung to him with all strength I had.
I was breathless when he released me. He sat on the bed close beside me, and stroked my face delicately.
“Have you missed me?” he asked, his eyes following his finger as it traced the shape of my eyebrow.
“Very much,” I said, softly.
“I’ve missed you, too. First the date we didn’t have, then you shut away for a week. But now - “
He kissed me again, holding me close, his arms hard against my back. And again, I held on to him desperately, not trying to pretend any more - if I ever had - that I didn’t care about him as much as I did. I loved him. And I didn’t care who knew it. All that mattered was to go on like this for ever, kissing him, feeling him close to me.
We talked very little. I can’t even remember what we talked about. We just stayed close together, kissing each other, murmuring foolishly, and then letting our lips meet again - and again.
It was nearly ten o’clock when Peter stood up.
“I’ve been here two hours, my sweet. Sister’ll have a fit if she sees me - throw me out on my ear, probably.”
“She went off duty at eight,” I said, trying to smooth my hair, and pulling at the rumpled counterpane. “Peter - “
“Mmm?” He was pulling a comb through his hair, using the mirror over my washbasin.
“I’ve never done anything - like this - before,” I said, stumbling over the words.
He turned and stared at me, and then threw his head back in real amusement.
“Never spent an evening necking before?” he said. “Darling! What you’ve missed!”
I made a face. “We haven’t been - necking. At least, that isn’t what I’d call it. Necking - well, that’s something people just do with anyone, isn’t it? It isn’t necking when it’s someone you - like.”
“Dear little Avril,” he mocked tenderly. “Call it what you will. I couldn’t spend an evening like this with someone I didn’t - like,” and his mimicry of my hesitation was so exact I laughed too.
He came over to me, and held my face between his strong brown hands, looking laughingly into my troubled eyes.
“You’re trying to tell me you’re a Nice Girl - is that it?” I nodded. “Of course you are. Anyone as pretty as you are couldn’t be anything but nice.”
“I wanted you to know - “ I said foolishly. “It matters to me - “
“I do know. You don’t have to protest so much.”
“I’d hate you to think I went around being - like that - with anyone at all - “ I persisted.
“You really are much too intense, darling,” Peter said lightly. “You shouldn’t be. Life’s too short.” He kissed me again, caressingly. “Sweetheart, I must go! I’ll see you again as soon as I can, I promise. Keep yourself beautiful for me!”
And he was gone, leaving me in a state of mind much too disturbed for sleep. I lay awake for hours, long after the night nurse, who had so diplomatically left us alone all evening, had turned out the light for the night. When I did fall asleep, in the small hours, it was to dream about Peter and Dickon, both operating in the main theatre, both with their backs turned to me. I tried, in my dream, to call to them, but my voice wouldn’t come -
I woke miserable and unrefreshed, and somehow unwilling to think about the night before. It had been heaven, to hold Peter so close, but somehow -
The night nurse, making my bed, said casually, “Lucky old you! Two men to visit you!”
“Two?” I said, puzzled.
She tucked in a corner with a practised twist of her wrist.
“Dr Bartlett and Dr Chester. Nice.”
“But only Dr Chester visited me last night,” I said.
She went to the door, carrying the water jug and glass from my locker. “I must change this,” she said abstractedly. “It’s dusty. Didn’t Dr Bartlett come in last night, too? He certainly asked for you. About nine, it was. I was too busy with Staff Nurse Bedford to escort him to the door - poor girl had a cholycysectomy yesterday, and I couldn’t leave her for long. Still, maybe he changed
his mind, or his call lights went up, p’raps. Coffee or tea for breakfast?”
“Coffee, please,” I said automatically. What had happened last night? Had Dickon come to see me? And if he had, why had he gone away again? I remembered the way my door opened and closed with such efficient silence. I hadn’t even heard Peter come in, and I’d been expecting him. Had Dickon opened the door - and then gone away?
I felt - grubby. It’s one thing to kiss someone when you’re alone together, and quite another to do so if you are watched. I tried to visualize what Dickon might have seen when he opened my door, and I felt worse than ever. Peter sprawled across my bed, our arms locked tightly round each other. It was horrid. If one of the nurses had come in I’d have been horribly embarrassed, but Dickon - I remembered the way I had turned my head away from him when he had wanted to kiss me, and how often, in the past, I had pushed Dickon away when he had wanted to be romantic. And I knew, too, that although I had often kissed Dickon, had been held in his arms, it had never been anything like what he must have seen last night.
“Don’t be an idiot!” I told myself angrily. “You weren’t doing anything you shouldn’t! Just kissing!”
But I knew there was more to it than that. When I had kissed Dickon, it had been friendly, more than passionate. But with Peter, it was different.
Sister came into my room at the same time as my breakfast tray.
“Nurse Gardner!” she said. “The R.M.O. will be along to see you in a wee while, but I’d better tell you now that you’ll be away to your home today.”
“Home?”
“We need this room, lass. There’s a small epidemic of strep throats around the hospital. You can walk a little now, can’t you?”
I nodded. I had been out of bed two or three times during the past day or so.
Final Year Page 11