NURSE ANN WOOD
by
Valerie K. Nelson
What was it in Nurse Ann Wood’s past which made her shrink from recovering the memory she had lost in a train crash?
She felt instinctively that to remember would make her unhappy. Yet would she be any happier staying where she was, under a name that was not hers, in a strange, hostile household, longing to be able to turn to Iain Sherrarde, yet knowing that he neither trusted nor liked her?
CHAPTER ONE
“ANSWER me! Why are you impersonating my daughter Anne? Who are you? Did she send you down here?” Ann moved her dark head uneasily as the woman shook her arm. She had a harsh voice and Ann wished she would go away. She knew she was in hospital, in a private room, but it hurt her head when she tried to think why she was there. It was far easier to lie there languidly and not worry about anything.
Usually, she didn’t take much notice of the people who came to her bedside. There was Sister, in her muslin cap and strings, who was kind and efficient, and a staff nurse who was inclined to be sharp-tongued. The junior nurses called her “Stiffy” and giggled about her, behind her back, though one of the first-year girls seemed to be terrified of her. There was another first-year girl who wasn’t afraid of anybody. She was little and dark and there was a Welsh lilt in her voice. She was very kind and her hands when she washed your face and combed your hair were very gentle.
Sometimes there were the masculine faces of doctors — a middle-aged one, and more frequently, a younger one, fair and quite good-looking. But they didn’t interest her.
The only face that could have sparked her into vivid, pulsating life never came. Perhaps it had been a dream — that face with the keen light eyes, eyes that had challenged her and brought the color stinging to her cheeks. His voice had been stimulating and encouraging. If he had spoken to her again, she wouldn’t still be lying here in this dim twilight.
She hadn’t dreamed this woman’s face, though. She had been here several times before, this woman who was now shaking her arm again, and repeating, “Answer me. Why are you impersonating my daughter Anne?”
“I’m not,” Ann said fretfully. “I don’t know you. Please stop staring at me.”
And then Sister was in the room, speaking smoothly. “Miss Woods is still very poorly, Mrs. Woods. We mustn’t worry her until she is feeling better. She must have been ill before the accident, you know, very tired and almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“The strain of nursing, I suppose,” the woman with the harsh voice replied. “Why she chose that profession, I could never understand ... I ...”
Their voices receded, and again Ann’s dark head sank back into the pillow. She ought to try to get well. Just lying here drifting wouldn’t ... If only ... if only ... No, she didn’t want to bother...
Downstairs in the S.M.O.’s room, Mrs. Woods was sitting near the desk, while the doctor stared at the file in front of him. “We shall have to find some means of rousing her,” he said.
Mrs. Woods stared pensively at the ceiling. A few minutes ago, when Sister had left her alone with the patient, she had tried something with just that object in view, but with no results.
Time and time again during the past week, she had been on the verge of denouncing the girl as an impostor to these hospital people, who thought they knew everything, and to that stiff-necked Iain Sherrarde who had brought the girl here in the first place, but she had always held back. Perhaps it would be better to wait to see if there was a letter of explanation from her daughter Anne — the real Anne Woods. It must have been Anne who had sent the girl down here, or how else could that last letter she had written to her daughter have been in this girl’s possession?
“I think I’ll get in touch with Mr. Sherrarde and ask him to come on,” the S.M.O. went on smoothly, reflecting. After all, it was Sherrarde who had brought the girl in, arranged for her to be put into the private wing and insisted that she should have the best treatment available.
“Mr. Sherrarde,” repeated Mrs. Woods disapprovingly, and a closed, withdrawn expression settled on her hard, handsome face.
The doctor ignored it. “I was in the casualty ward when your daughter was brought in. We had been alerted about the train crash, and warned to prepare for an emergency. As it happened, only a few people needed treatment, and hospitals nearer the scene of the accident were able to deal with them, so our services were not required, except for Miss Woods.
“She was conscious, though in a very shocked state. She clung to Mr. Sherrarde as if he were a lifeline. A lifeline,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Indeed, he remained with her for a long time that night when we had no clue to her identity.”
“I see,” commented Mrs. Woods, and her expensively gloved fingers drummed upon her equally expensive bag. “I don’t remember being told exactly what did happen that night.”
“Mr. Sherrarde found Miss Woods wandering in a country lane miles away from the crash,” the doctor explained. “She was in one of the carriages that wasn’t damaged, but she probably received a blow on the head from a piece of falling luggage. Evidently she just ran and ran and ran until Sherrarde found her in a state of near-collapse. If she saw him again, she might react sharply...”
The other’s expression was guarded. So far as she was concerned, the less Iain Sherrarde saw of the girl, the better she would be pleased.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, doubt in her voice.
“You want her to get well, to get back to normal?” Doctor Lievers’ tones held an uncomfortable rasp. He was a busy man. He did not like what he had seen of the patient’s mother, and all at once he felt irritable. Sherrarde had brought the girl in, and had requested that every service which the hospital could offer should be hers. Yet since that night, more than a week ago, he hadn’t bothered to make an enquiry, nor come to see her.
“Of course I want her to get well. Need you ask?” Mrs. Woods demanded in an indignant voice. “But Mr. Sherrarde is so busy. One hardly likes to take advantage...”
“It would be a matter of only a few minutes. Once she is roused, she is not likely to drift back. I’ll ring Sherrarde, unless you would rather do so.”
She got to her feet hastily. “No, I’d rather you did.”
The minutes ticked away very slowly in the pleasant private room on the first floor. It was time for lunch and Nurse Elliott was trying to persuade her patient to take some soup. “Just a little ... the tiniest sip...”
Ann turned her head away. No, she didn’t want it. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t interested in food.
“You’re not interested in anything, are you, my poor sweet?” Elliott said softly. “You’re a pretty thing, with your dark curly hair and those lovely eyes of yours. There must be some men — or one particular man — in your life. But there’s no engagement ring ... no ring at all.”
She took the tray, its contents almost untouched, out of the room, and Sister, meeting her in the corridor, stopped her and took the covers off the dishes. “This won’t do, nurse,” she said briskly. “I’ll go in myself this evening when she is having her meal.”
But before dinner was served that night, something else had happened in the pleasant private room.
Quite early in the evening a big grey saloon car drew up in the quiet road at one side of the hospital and a tall man got out. A few minutes later he was asking for the S. M. O. by name, and a little later still he was sitting in the chair where Mrs. Woods had sat earlier that day.
“You know, Lievers, I have no connection with this girl, whatever you may have assumed,” Iain Sherrarde said with a frown. “When I brought her in here, I hadn’t the faintest idea who she was. I was astonished when I learned later that she was the sister of Mrs. Der
hart, the widow of my ward, Raymond Derhart.”
The other man nodded, his eyes veiled. There was no mistaking the distaste in Sherrarde’s voice. Of course, everybody in this part of the world knew that Ray Derhart, heir to a large banking fortune, had married some obscure actress entirely against his family’s wishes. He had died a few months ago in a motor accident in which his wife had escaped with her life, but not without serious injury. And this girl, who was his patient and suffering from loss of memory, was young Mrs. Derhart’s sister. There’d been bad feeling at the start of the marriage, and presumably it still continued. But that was no affair of the S.M.O.’s.
“The girl is making no progress,” he said firmly. “She won’t eat and she is completely uninterested in everything. She had obviously already experienced a severe emotional shock before the railway accident. When you brought her here, you will remember that she clung to you as if you were the only solid thing in a fluid world. I believe that if we confront her again with that — forgive the phrase — solid thing, she may be roused sufficiently to take a grasp on life. Otherwise, we’re going to lose her.”
“It’s as serious as that?” Sherrarde had walked over to the window, so Lievers could not read anything on his face. “All right, I’ll go up and see her. She probably won’t remember me...”
He could still recall her, though. The feel of her soft hands as they had clung to his ... the dark silk of her long eyelashes as they lay on her rounded cheeks. And when that silk veiling was lifted, those astonishing eyes of hers — of the uncommon shade of lavender flowers in the light, but which in the shadows had seemed a deeper shade, almost violet...
She had clung to him, and something had stirred for the first time in his heart — a protective tenderness for a woman. Her voice, soft and appealing, with a kind of huskiness, had seemed to promise enchantment.
And for all his distaste and disillusion when he had discovered her identity, he hadn’t been able to eradicate her from his thoughts. An impatient expression crossed his face. He had acted like a fool that night, and he was still acting like one.
“I’ll go up and see the girl,” he repeated arrogantly.
The S.M.O. was neither amused nor irritated by his manner, as a stranger might have been. After all, most of the hospital in which they stood had been built by this man’s family of millionaire bankers. And in any case Sherrarde was eminent in the medical world in his own right. At an age when most men were still climbing, he stood at the top of his own branch of the profession.
Impatience was beginning to dawn in those fine, grey eyes, and Lievers said quickly, “Will you come this way then, please, Mr. Sherrarde?”
Some minutes later the girl who lay so quietly in the pleasant first-floor room heard the door open. Her eyes were closed, though she wasn’t asleep. She had been resting quite peacefully, feeling as though suspended in a kind of dim twilight. Yet it wasn’t approaching night-time. When she had opened her eyes a minute or two ago she had seen that there was the yellow glow of sunshine in the room. But she wasn’t interested in the sun. She wasn’t interested in anything ... ever ... any more.
Then she felt a hand touch her shoulder. “Miss Woods,” a voice said persuasively. “Miss Woods, open your eyes.”
She made an effort and closed her lids a little tighter. It was the doctor — the older man with the deep voice. When he came, he always looked at her so searchingly. Why did he put an “s” on the end of her name? Her name was Wood, not Woods. That thought was like a lightning flash and then it had gone. She didn’t want to think ... it hurt.
“Miss Woods.” The deep voice was still persuasive. “Miss Woods, come, there’s a good girl. Open your eyes.”
Her lids were not so tightly closed now, but the dark lashes still lay softly on her white cheeks like soft silk fans.
“Shall I try, doctor?” That was Sister’s voice, cooing and soft, as it always was when she stood by the bedside. Odd that, when all the nurses went in such awe of her.
“Sister will be here in a minute,” Nurse Elliott would say, and her pretty face would be all tense and anxious.
“If you don’t try to eat a little more, darling,” the tall thin Irish nurse would say, “I shall have to fetch Sister.” And her voice would fall to a whisper as if she couldn’t think of anything more dire to threaten.
But Sister’s smile for the patient in this pleasant private room was always very bright, and her voice soft and persuasive as now, when she urged, “Miss Woods, please open your eyes. There’s a visitor for you. Come along...” Those dark silky lashes lying so softly on the white cheeks fluttered, and then, with a little shiver, the patient again closed her eyes as tightly as she could.
It would be that woman with the smart hats ... She seemed to wear a new one every time she came. Sometimes they weren’t really very becoming, though they were always fashionable and they looked very expensive. She didn’t like the woman; her eyes were cold and hard. She had said ... she had said...
The tightly closed eyelids relaxed a little. It was too much of an effort to keep them like that. Oh, why didn’t they leave her alone, to float so dreamily in this grey twilight ... to think of nothing ... just to go on floating ... floating ... right away...
“Let me try.” It was as if the words had an electric current behind them. He had shouted them out at the top of his voice ... but no, he hadn’t. His voice wasn’t very loud, but it was magnetic. It had also, at some time or other, been amused and then concerned ... and he had called her “little lost girl.”
But she had been dreaming then. He had never come again, so she had known that she must have been dreaming.
He had given her such a wonderful sense of assurance — as if when he were there nothing could go wrong. He had seemed like a spar to cling to when she was alone on a wide sea of bewilderment. No, a spar moved, and he was fixed, solid ... more like a rock — that big, dark man with his keen light eyes and his lazy, amused smile. Odd that she should dream about him, when no one else ever came into that grey twilight in which she floated. Because it was a dream ... that magnetic voice...
A faint smile curved her pale lips, and the dark silk fans of her lashes fluttered a little. It was a pleasant dream. She would like to go on.
Then came another shock. “If you persist in being the sleeping beauty, someone will have to be the prince,” a deep voice said.
She couldn’t be dreaming. It was his voice, with that undercurrent of tender amusement which she remembered so well. The silky black eyelashes flew up and, wide-eyed, stared at the little group standing about her bed.
She had seen the doctor and Sister often enough and her glance flickered quickly over them, to fix itself on the third person, that tall, broad-shouldered, rock-like man to whom she had clung ... oh, so long ago that it seemed to be in some other existence. He had come to her in the darkness ... when she had believed she was completely alone in the world.
“You told me not to be afraid,” she said, in a whisper. “You said you were there and I must hold on to you, whatever happened. But you didn’t come again, and so I thought you were a dream.”
He looked down at her, a curious expression on his face. “So you were awake all the time. You heard what I said — about the sleeping beauty?”
A faint color stole into her cheeks and she laughed weakly. “Yes, I heard you, and you were much too flattering. At first, I thought I was still dreaming. Why didn’t you come before?”
She was greeting him happily, as a friend, this man who had been kind to her when she needed kindness badly.
“I didn’t know that you were waiting for me to come before you decided to get well,” Sherrarde remarked rather dryly. “But now you’re going to be a sensible young woman, I hope.”
Ann nodded her dark head and her voice was childishly eager. “Yes, I feel better already. Will you come to see me every day now? It will be something nice to look forward to.”
Sister interposed briskly. “I think Mr. Sherrarde wo
uld like to hear you say that you’re going to try to eat all your dinner tonight, Miss Woods. That’s the way you can thank him for coming to see you.”
Doctor Lievers said smilingly, “I’m sure our patient is going to be most co-operative from now on. Aren’t you, Miss Woods?”
Ann turned her wide lovely eyes upon him. “It didn’t seem to matter before about getting well,” she explained naively. “It didn’t seem worthwhile.”
The S.M.O. eyed her with a close professional scrutiny, but the tall dark man at the foot of the bed made an impatient movement. “That’s feeble,” he remonstrated. “I thought better of you than that, little lost girl.”
A smile flashed across the small pale face, lighting it up. “You called me that before, when you found me. And I believed it was a dream,” she whispered delightedly.
There was all at once an atmosphere of intimacy between them, so that the other two men were aware of being outside the circle. Doctor Lievers drew back slightly, looking pleased. His experiment was proving a success. Sherrarde had provided the stimulus which the patient had required, and now she had been roused she should make a quick recovery.
Sister’s face in no way reflected the doctor’s complacency. From the moment he came into the private wing she had been aware of a coolness in Mr. Sherrarde’s manner. Evidently he hadn’t liked being called in in this fashion, and you couldn’t really wonder at it now the patient had proved to be a member of that dreadful family into which poor Ray Derhart had married.
Sister’s lips tightened. What she had seen of Mrs. Woods had disposed her to think that none of the gossip about her widowed daughter was exaggerated. A baggage from all accounts, that’s what she was, or had been till that dreadful accident which had killed her young husband had made an invalid of her.
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