The Hospital in Buwambo

by Anne Vinton

  So it had been night after night, a fitting prelude for lovers. The prelude only, Sylvia knew, and she trembled to know what was yet to come.

  The storm broke with sunset, though the sun had not been obvious for some hours. The dark steel of the sky was suddenly riven by searing light, and with her hands still over eyes Sylvia found herself hitting the wall, hard. She was choking with dust, when David scrambled through the wreckage to get her.

  “My God! Darling! Are you all right?”

  He would have swept her up into his arms, but Sylvia protested, and Sister Kineton was now also on hand, thoughtfully bearing a storm lantern.

  “What happened?” Sylvia asked, still dazed and shaking, clawing bits of plaster out of her hair.

  “It’s a tree—a mahogany—down. A giant, otherwise it wouldn’t have reached here. The top has taken half your roof off. Are you sure you’re intact—” he hesitated—“Dr. Phillips?”

  “Quite all right, thank you, sir,” she assured him. “Nothing hit me. I just seemed to be pushed out of the way.”

  “Thank heaven for that!” the superintendent said, rather too devoutly. “Well, come on over to my place and get cleaned up. You can’t sleep here tonight, that’s certain.”

  “Dr. Phillips can have a bed in my room, sir,” volunteered Sister, who had apparently called a welcome truce in her battle with Sylvia since her return from leave. “It won’t put me about. I sleep like a log.”

  “You know you snore, Winnie,” David teased. “You might put poor Sylv—Dr. Phillips about. No, she can have my place and I’ll sleep in the lab. We’d better have our dinner a little earlier and get to bed. This looks like it will be going on all night.”

  Sister Kineton went back into the hospital, snuffing unnecessary lights as she did so, and Sylvia accepted David’s arm and became part of the maelstrom raging outside.

  With the storm’s sudden ending, a silence had fallen between the lovers. It seemed to Sylvia as though the lull was a prompting for someone to make a speech in a play, but whether it was for her to speak, or David, she didn’t pretend to know.

  “I think perhaps I hit my head hard after all,” she said, a little ruefully. “I feel not quite of this world, David.”

  “I always feel like that when I’m kissing you, my sweet,” he said hoarsely. “Sylvia, let’s leave the world together, just once more tonight. It’s a cruel world, and it’ll be waiting for sure.”

  She responded to the demand of his arms, her head back on his shoulder, her lips parted. The tide washed over them, broke in a great wave and flooded fiercely through channels of reason. There only remained the ultimate demand, the certain compliance, when David drew away and said harshly, “It’s no use, Sylvia. I have no right to make love to you!”

  “But who has a greater right, David, my darling?” The last caress trembled on her lips like a sweet temptation. He looked at her yearningly, but held himself sternly in check.

  “You’re so—all I wanted of a woman, Sylvia,” he gasped. “I could be very weak at this moment. I must go.”

  She knew he must leave for his own sake. She rose to ask one last question.

  “David...”

  He stopped in the doorway, without looking around.

  “Why can’t we get married? There’s a parson in the village. I’m quite, quite sure of myself. Are you?”

  He turned and regarded her. In that moment she knew the reason for her foreboding.

  “Believe me, Sylvia,” David said, “it is not that easy. I have not even started to think ahead of the fool’s paradise I have been dwelling in this past week. Love is all when one is twenty. I am twice that, my darling.”

  “So old?” Sylvia smiled tremulously as he turned back into the room. “But I love you for every year of it. Surely age is no obstacle. Unless you mean you’re married already...”

  He glanced at her sharply.

  “... to your work.” she finished, and looked happier. “Well, isn’t it my work also? I wouldn’t want you to be anything else, David. Just let me be with you, wherever you are.”

  He began to pace, slowly at first, like one in growing torment. “You make me afraid, Sylvia. You’re so—complete. I know I could take you—I know I could crush you. I could lead you through hell and never once would you look back. It’s knowing all this, my darling, that makes me want to be so careful with you. I never want to see your tears—your pain...”

  “David—what is it?” she demanded, growing frightened. “Whatever is troubling you worries me because it’s the unknown. Tell me! It might not be so bad after all. Haven’t I the right to know?”

  “Yes. You have the right. But I would rather your final decision came after much thought, not spontaneously born of your generosity and your love. We’re both too emotional tonight to discuss it further. I have to go out with Kalengo for a day or two doing inoculations. I’ll put everything in a letter. Digest the contents, think carefully what it all means to you, then give me my answer when I return. Will you accept that?”

  “Yes, David. Anything to end this dreadful uncertainty. I think your mountain may really be a molehill. Nothing matters so long as we love each other, and I do love you!”

  “And I you, Sylvia. Never doubt that. But I can only make my own decisions, not yours.” He continued, as though to himself. “Sometimes when our actions affect another we have a great and terrible responsibility to shoulder. If we could make our own mistakes, endure our own punishments—and it ended there ... I wish to God you had never come to Buwambo, Sylvia Phillips!”

  She gazed at him, startled by his sudden vehemence, then the hospital night steward coughed gently in the open doorway.

  “Excuse please, sir. They are bringing in a man—a white man. A hunter. I understand a leopard—”

  “Would this man’s name be Blaine?” Sylvia interrupted in dismay.

  “That is correct. Miss Blaine much upset.”

  The distressed and worn-out Connie had finally been persuaded to go to bed in the bungalow and was now sleeping under the influence of a sedative. The two masked figures in the theater watched the patient being transferred to the trolley. He gave a low groan and then mouthed an unmistakable name.

  “Sylvia!”

  Sister escorted the trolley from the theater and the superintendent removed his mask.

  “He’s having a pleasant dream, it would appear,” he said sourly.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Sylvia said, rather shortly. David had been somewhat difficult all through the operation of cleaning wounds and stitching; he had had plenty to say about hunters who became the hunted and thought doctors had nothing better to do than to stay up half the night patching them up. “You had better go to bed, David. You’re not a bit like your usual self.”

  “As well for you to know, isn’t it?” he snapped, surprisingly. “Of course I’ll go to bed like a good boy and soothe myself off by remembering my girl’s name on another man’s lips, under dope or not!”

  “Why, David, you’re not jealous of...?” she stopped, intrigued, and smiled. “It’s the first time that has happened to me. I think I rather like it!”

  “You vixen!” he said, softening suddenly and tweaking her damp, dark hair. “If I don’t see you before I leave with Kalengo—remember me!”

  “As if I could forget!” she scolded him gently.

  In the morning Connie awoke stupid with the drug that had been given her, yet trying to continue with her hysteria where she had left off. She almost fell across Sylvia, who was still in her bed.

  “How is poor Kelso? Will he live? What have they done to him?”

  Sylvia rubbed her forehead.

  Thoughtless Connie!

  The young surgeon had been in her bed less than three hours. “Of course he’ll live, Connie. Now get back into bed at once! Kelso doesn’t look nearly so bad now that he has been washed and stitched up. We decided to give him a couple of pints of blood, too, to make up for what he might have lost. He
’ll be as good as new in a few days. We spent quite a bit of time on him last night, and I’m tired.” She turned pointedly on to her side.

  “You even grudge him a bit of time,” Connie said, bitterly. “My poor brother! To think that he—”

  “Now look here Connie,” Sylvia said, rising with a sigh, and drawing her wrap about her. “Doctors do not grudge the time they spend with their patients, but if I’m to look after Kelso today, don’t you think...?” She saw the other, girl’s obvious distress and relented. “You must have had a shocking time getting him here, Connie, and I do understand your anxiety. He’s your brother and you’re everything to one another.”

  “Not any more,” Connie interrupted. “He happens to be in love with you, Sylvia.”

  “Oh!” The other flushed suddenly. “I’m sure you are mistaken. I haven’t...”

  “I know you‘re not in love with him,” Connie said. “You’ve given him no encouragement, but there it is. I spotted the trouble our first day out when you didn’t come, and being me I couldn’t keep quiet about it. I kept on and on, nearly driving him mad. I wanted him to be so sick of hearing your name that he would never want to hear it again. But it all ended rather too dramatically.”

  Kelso became rather poorly as the day crept by, and rambled a great deal. Connie, who insisted on sitting with him, called Sylvia. “Sylvia! It’s you?”

  “It’s me, Kelso. You’re being very naughty and getting Connie worried. Now go to sleep and get better.”

  “Sylvia, kiss me.”

  She pressed her lips to his brow and he quietened, with a little sigh.

  Sister Kineton was smiling jauntily by the screen.

  “The full treatment, Dr. Phillips?” she asked, her lips twitching. “I don’t suppose I could substitute, could I?”

  Sylvia was blushing furiously.

  “He seems to be sleeping, anyway, Sister,” she said. “The end justifies the means.”

  “I can see you would be popular in any men’s ward,” the other went on relentlessly. “Oh, I’m only joking, Dr. Phillips, so don’t look so put out! I’ve even had my name called out by the odd patient under an anesthetic, but that’s as far as it went with me.”

  Sylvia noticed that she smiled on only one side of her face, but her amber eyes were merry.

  “I seem to be at your mercy, Sister.”

  “Not at all. I really came to say you must have had enough of that girl all last night and today. I want you to have a cup of tea with me in my room. You never seem to have anywhere permanent to go to, what with one thing and another.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Sister,” nodded Sylvia, “and I would love to join you for tea.”

  “In fifteen minutes, then,” said Sister breezily, and charged down the ward after a nurse who was dawdling.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “What a delightful retreat you have here, Sister!” Sylvia exclaimed, her feet up on a little mosaic leather stool, a crown derby china cup balanced on the arm of her chair. “So cool, too.” She was ingenuous and uncomplicated. Sylvia felt relaxed.

  “Have a biscuit, or rather a rusk,” Sister Kineton went on, rattling a tin under the visitor’s nose. “Sometimes they turn out well, but this is a poor lot. I apologize. The flour we get here varies so much, you see.”

  “I’m afraid I can only cook eggs,” Sylvia shrugged. “The kitchen is a closed book to me.”

  “We all have our secret vices, I suppose,” smiled Sister, who was in a merry mood today. “Besides my baking I have a weakness for American comics...”

  “No!” Sylvia laughed outright.

  “It’s true. I used to read all the classics when I was in the U.K. I remember I went into mourning when I finished the works of Dickens. When I came out here I had a program listed—Tolstoi, Jane Austen, Galsworthy. They’re all in my trunk at this moment. But I never read a single volume. It’s the climate, or something, and time and culture cease to be important. After duty I want to read trivialities like the cartoons in Punch, not anything intended to improve my mind. When Dr. Hogan joined us an aunt sent him these American comics, which he never opened, so I took them over. I find myself looking forward to Tarzan’s every adventure.” Tears were streaming from Sylvia’s eyes. She had never found Sister so entertaining.

  “So if you ever feel the need I’ll lend you my comics,” Sister went on, enjoying her visitor’s mirth. “I’ll fill your cup. Dr. Phillips, if you’ll pass it over. A joke does us good, doesn’t it? There seems to have been no fun in the hospital, lately. Dr. Carroll’s been almost morose. Anyway, we’ll all get a cheering up when Mrs. Carroll arrives.”

  “Mrs. Carroll?” Sylvia wondered if she had heard correctly.

  “Yes. Mrs. Velda Carroll. Didn’t he tell you she would be visiting Buwambo soon? Her letter arrived during all that bother about you, so I suppose he overlooked the news. Of course they don’t hit it off, you’ll see why when you meet her. But I like her— I suppose she’s all that’s glamorous to a woman like me—sophisticated, pretty, dyes her hair fashionably, wears nice clothes. I like to watch her playing everyone with her eyes, like a kitten. She can scratch, too, but she’s honestly devoted to him, I feel sure. She once told me Dr. Carroll was the only person she believed in. She said he was incapable of letting anyone down. Of course that’s true enough, as we all know at Buwambo.”

  Sylvia felt much as a drowning person must feel plummeting down into deep, dark water. David was married. His wife was coming here to Buwambo. This must be the information that the fateful letter was to contain, that she was to read, digest and test the quality of her love on. He had said she would be shocked. She was. She felt stunned, incapable of coherent thought. Sister’s voice droning on had filled the gap that would otherwise have been a hiatus of pure misery, but even Sister must finish speaking.

  As she did so Sylvia laughed once more, but it was a sound without silver in it this time. She rose and smoothed down her dress.

  “American comics!” she reiterated. “I’ll remember that, Sister. Most amusing. Thanks for the tea—I must go now.”

  “Goodbye, Dr. Phillips. Do come again.”

  “Thanks. I will. Oh—” Sylvia looked down at her shoes. “Are there any Carroll children?”

  “There’s one boy, David. He’s at school in England, safely out of his mother’s clutches. I think he’ll be guided into medicine. It’s all this family thinks about.”

  Around and around in circles of pain she dragged herself, the facts hammering themselves home into her brain.

  David was married.

  David had a son.

  David said he loved Sylvia.

  Sylvia loved David.

  David was married.

  Long after Connie was asleep and snoring with the contentment of mind brought about by her brother’s improved condition, Sylvia sat up in David’s chair looking straight ahead into space. In those first hours her hurt dwelled in retrospect; she remembered things David had said that now took on a new significance.

  “I wish to God you had never come to Buwambo, Sylvia Phillips!”

  As though the words rang out afresh; Sylvia started up, and walked about the room.

  I wish to God I hadn’t come either! she decided.

  Her face in the mirror looked grayly back at her, tortured, ravaged. Within her the surgeon spoke in a thin, incisive voice.

  “I feel we‘re going to be great friends.”

  This won’t do, you know. It’s not the end of the world. The patients mustn’t suffer. Only your own personal world is rocking. The hospital must go on.

  She felt she must weep or crack wide open. A sob racked her—another. Oh David! she cried in the darkness of the garden, as she blundered among the roses. What do you want me to do?

  So through tortuous paths that remembered the past, she found acceptance of the present and sought the future.

  David wanted an answer.

  Was there any answer?

  He obviously thought she
had a choice in the matter. He wanted her to be the one to choose.

  How long could they survive by stealing kisses? There might be the possibility of divorce for David, but not if it meant his losing the boy. Sylvia thought she realized what he had meant when he soliloquized, “If we could only make our own mistakes ... endure our own punishments...”

  Then I’ll live with him as his wife! Sylvia decided, grasping at this last reed floating past. I can’t lose him! I can’t!

  But in her heart she knew that in all there was to be lost, the esteem with which he regarded her she must keep. Love could be patient, love could lose in the game because it loved well enough. A physical passion was only one facet of the grand emotion, burning for a brief season.

  Among the English roses of the tropical garden, Sylvia made her momentous decision, and wept for the finality of it.

  The sun was beginning to shine more consistently on Lagos, and the wise ones were scanning the skies and forecasting the end of the rainy season.

  It was while walking down Victoria Street in Lagos that Martin Shale was presented with a problem, that problem being whether to speak to a certain pretty woman or not. The problem was not in the speaking—Martin was never averse to pretty women who wore lovely clothes—but in the dog the woman was towing along with her.

  He had decided against making his presence known to Mrs. Carroll, when the Pekingese, being bored, decided to go chasing a cat that crossed its path at that moment. It was Martin who gathered Mrs. Carroll—grief and all—to his manly chest and allowed her to weep all over him.

  By seven o’clock that evening Velda was almost herself again and bearing up quite well under her bereavement.

  The terrace was fan-cooled and the whiskey good. Martin only ever really enjoyed a double when it was at someone else’s expense, and the one at which he sipped, plus the glass of chilled beer, were strictly on his companion.

  Looking into the pansy-blue eyes, Martin was quite prepared to understand and accepted the drink cheerfully. He was also prepared to talk about himself, so long as the tale could be to his credit and at the same time suitably entertaining to the ears of a fair lady. She would not want to hear about the women in his life who were younger—if not prettier—than she was, so he dismissed them all with an airy, “I never really had time to think seriously about marriage. Sometimes, nowadays, I permit myself to wonder if...”