Nurse Ann Wood

by Valerie K. Nelson

  Sister stiffened as the doctor stepped forward. “I expect you’re feeling tired now, Miss Woods, after all this excitement. But first of all, you must have a really big meal. Sister...”

  He beckoned her forward and at the same time managed to convey to Iain Sherrarde that it was time for him to leave. The patient’s long black lashes were fluttering.

  “You’ll be here again. You won’t be just a dream,” she murmured, and was asleep almost before the sentence was ended.

  Outside in the corridor, Lievers nodded in satisfaction. “That did the trick. I’m very pleased.”

  Iain Sherrarde’s remote look sharpened. “She’ll be all right now, you think?”

  The other nodded. “Yes. She may even have forgotten all about you when she wakes up again. But you were the link between that nightmare of the crash and the light. Once she found you there again, she dared to come into the light. If she does remember you, and we tell her that you’ve gone to the United States, she will accept that readily. By the time you’re back again she will probably have left hospital.”

  Sherrarde said curtly, “Don’t hurry that ... her leaving hospital, I mean. Don’t hesitate to bring in the best people for consultation. The cost doesn’t matter. Dullanty of Bristol is particularly outstanding in the psychiatry of amnesia.”

  The S.M.O. nodded. “I agree, but when she improves physically, I think the amnesia will disappear without much need for treatment.”

  Iain Sherrarde turned to Sister and gave her one of his rare, charming smiles. “Thank you, Sister, for all that you’ve done,” he said.

  As he went out to his car, he reflected distastefully that he had better ring up Mrs. Woods. As soon as her daughter could leave hospital she should be taken to Fountains to be with her own people.

  Her own people! His handsome mouth twisted in a grimace. A good thing he was going to America. By the time he returned she would be in her own circle, reflected in their light, and he would be able to see her as she really must be and not in that soft rosy glow which had, on that night of their first meeting, placed her apart from any other girl he had ever met.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE grey, misty twilight no longer had any attraction for Ann. When she awoke again she opened her eyes immediately and looked at the door. All at once she realized she felt hungry.

  She also felt very, very happy. It hadn’t been a dream. He was real, that big man with the keen eyes who had looked at her with concerned tenderness and held her hands tightly when she had wanted to scream and scream against that nightmare from which she had run. But she mustn’t think of that any more. It was behind her, and now she was going forward.

  She stared eagerly at the opening door. It was Nurse Elliott with her wide, beaming smile. “Now, darling, how are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Hungry,” returned the patient, in a much stronger voice than anyone had heard her use till now.

  A few minutes later, when she returned to the private wing kitchen, Nurse Elliott was remarking, not very originally: “You could have knocked me down with a feather! There she was, nearly sitting up of her own accord and demanding food. I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  Sister, who was supervising “special diets,” looked at her sharply. “More to the point, nurse — is she eating her meal?”

  “She’s taken all her soup, Sister,” the nurse replied. “I propped her up in the pillows and she said she could manage, so I thought it was better to leave her to eat the second course without my helping her or watching her. She’ll know that she’s getting better if she manages it herself.”

  When the young nurse returned to the pleasant room at the end of the corridor, the patient’s plate was almost empty. Ann smiled at her. “I’ve really enjoyed that, nurse. Oh, how pretty!”

  For the nurse was setting before her an attractive-looking concoction which disguised a nourishing blend of milk and fruit.

  “Oh, I am pleased with you, darling,” Elliott said exuberantly. “My fiancé says I’ve got you on my mind. And I had, really. I could see you just fading away, starving yourself to death.

  “Of course, we shouldn’t have let you do that,” she added hastily, “but that’s what it kept looking like to me. I’m not a very experienced nurse,” she went on confidentially. “Now you’ve got your State...”

  As soon as she had spoken, she put her hand over her mouth and looked horrified. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Ann, propped up among the pillows, put down her spoon. “Oh, have I?” she asked blankly. “How do you know? I don’t seem to remember myself.”

  Nurse Elliott’s face continued to register concern. “Oh, please forget what I said,” she pleaded. “Sister has given me the strictest instructions...”

  “Nurse Elliott,” Ann said smilingly, “I want to know about that S.R.N. certificate. Since I’ve been here, I’ve watched Sister and the staff nurse and you and Nurse Tims and the others, and I’ve realized I must be a nurse, for it’s all a familiar routine. But how do you know I’m qualified, and where did I train?”

  But Elliott had fled to the door. “I’ll ask Sister to come,” she gasped. She was taking no further responsibility here...

  When she had gone, Ann lay with a puzzled expression on her face. Only now had she begun to wonder why she was here. Previously she had lain unquestioningly, drifting on that twilight sea, waiting indifferently until she finally submerged.

  Now she tried to think back as far as she could, but beyond the twilight was only the memory of darkness and flame and of herself running ... running ... running ... to get away from something and finding safety in the stalwart strength of Iain Sherrarde’s broad shoulder.

  Yes, she remembered that. She remembered being with him in his car and clinging to him in hospital after they had treated her in the casualty ward. It was after that that she had sunk into the dim twilight of indifference, because he had left her and had not come again.

  But how long ago had all that happened? And why was nothing about her earlier life in her mind at all? There was a dark wall and behind it — a blank. It hurt her even to think.

  She put a rather weary hand to her head as Sister came into the room. The older woman gave her a keen professional glance. “I hear that you’ve eaten your dinner like a good girl,” she said smoothly. “Now I can see that you’re quite tired. Wouldn’t you like a little sleep?”

  By the time she had plumped up the pillow and straightened the sheet Ann’s white lids were beginning to droop and her dark lashes were almost lying on her thin cheeks.

  “Yes, perhaps I am,” she yawned. “Yes, I am tired.”

  For the time being, she had completely forgotten about all the questions she had intended asking. Sister, watching her, gave a sigh of relief. It looked as if this was going to be a plain, straightforward case after all. The girl’s memory would no doubt be back to normal next time she woke up and then it would be only a matter of a day or two before she was on her feet. Sister supposed that the relatives would want to have her home immediately.

  As it happened, Sister Private Wing was, in this particular case, over-optimistic. For the next day, although the patient continued to take a little more food and was roused from her state of dreamy acquiescence, she showed no desire to ask questions.

  Her face went very white and still when she was told that Iain Sherrarde was leaving for America that day. She didn’t speak of him again for a day or two, and then, when Nurse Elliott was sitting with her, she enquired whether he had gone for a long time or even for good.

  “Goodness, no,” the young nurse returned, in surprise. “He often goes, just for short trips. Never for more than ten days or a fortnight.”

  Ann asked no further questions and Megan plunged into a racy account of her latest quarrel with her fiancé. They were both Welsh, both temperamental, and seemed to enjoy quarrelling for the joy of making up afterwards.

  “I should like to meet him. He sounds great fun,” Ann smiled.

>   Nurse Elliott rolled her fine eyes. “I don’t think I would dare risk letting him meet you ... a pretty thing like you,” she replied with laughing emphasis. “It took me quite a long time to manoeuvre into the position of being first in his thoughts, and I’m not willingly putting in front of him anyone prettier than I am.”

  “Pretty! Am I?” That sent the patient’s thoughts in an entirely different direction. By moving her head slightly, she could see her reflection in the mirror of the dressing-table, and now she craned her neck forward to do so.

  Nurse Elliott went quickly across to the dressing-table and picked up the hand mirror. “Have a good look at yourself,” she invited.

  Anne gazed at the reflection in the mirror as if she had never seen it before, and indeed she could not recollect having done so.

  “Why, I’m quite plain,” she exclaimed in a disappointed voice. Beside the rounded rosy cheeks and jet black curls of the Welsh girl, she looked thin and drawn and anaemic.

  “Plain!” ejaculated Megan Elliott. “Don’t be silly. You’re lovely, with those big eyes and that white skin. I never saw such eyes. They’re always changing color, as the mood takes you, sometimes lavender, sometimes nearly as deep as violets, and sometimes grey.”

  As her patient still continued to regard herself without any expression of satisfaction, she went on: “Don’t forget you’ve been ill. You’re thin, much too thin, because you’ve been half starving yourself. You’ve got beautiful bones and eyes. As soon as you’re well again, you’ll see. And with make-up...”

  “I don’t use much make-up.” Ann looked at Nurse Elliott, apparently seeing nothing odd in this recollection — this patient who had stood in Casualty and held out her hands gropingly, her wide eyes apparently unseeing. “Who am I?” she had called, agonizingly. “Where am I going? I can’t remember ... I can’t remember ... It’s only you whom I know ... only you.” Her big lavender eyes had focused then when she had turned to Iain Sherrarde, and she had clung desperately to him until her final collapse.

  It was a little later that Doctor Lievers came into Ann’s room, accompanied by Sister and another woman. The patient, who was sitting, propped up with pillows, smiled at them with equal impartiality, but her eyes flickered slightly when they rested on the handsome, assured face beneath the fashionable hat.

  She is the woman who has been here before several times, thought Ann. Once, when Sister went out of the room, she shook me and said I was impersonating her daughter.

  That had been during the period of drifting grey twilight from which only the voice of Iain Sherrarde had aroused her. At the thought of him, a light came into her eyes. She let her heavy eyelids droop, completely uninterested in her visitors. She drifted, not back into grey twilight, but into a dream that was lovely as the dawn, shot with rose ... the color of sweet anticipation.

  Mrs. Woods stood in a luxurious bedroom with a decor of cream and rose, staring at her elder daughter, who was lying among the tumbled satin cushions of a long couch at the foot of the bed.

  “I’ve just come from the hospital, Beverley,” she explained. “The girl is much better, but she doesn’t seem to have a clue as to who she is. At hospital, they still think she is Anne Woods.”

  Beverley Derhart gave a petulant yawn. “But, Mummy, why bother to go? Why don’t you tell the doctor, or the police? For all we know she may have stolen Anne’s handbag, and that would explain your letter being in it.”

  Mrs. Woods removed her cigarette from her thin, scarlet lips and flicked away the ash. “I’ve been waiting for Anne to write. She has left Queen Frida’s Hospital, apparently. I rang up last night. Of all the selfish, inconsiderable girls!”

  Beverley laughed. “For goodness’ sake, Mummy, be your age! Why should Anne come down here for our convenience? Burying herself in this dead-and-alive hole...”

  She stopped, her face all at once distorted by angry frustration, and tears began to well up in her big blue eyes. Mrs. Woods said, in quick alarm,

  “Beverley, please stop. You’ll upset yourself, and I shall have to send for Marchdale, and you know how cross she is today. Darling, do stop crying.”

  Her expression was concerned, as she bent over the slim shaking figure. “We shall have to send for the doctor. You’re ill.”

  “No, I’m not.” With a lightning change of mood, Beverley sat up and began to mop her eyes. “No, I’m not ill, or at least no worse than usual. But I’m bored, bored! So bored that I could scream and scream and scream! If we could go back to London, it wouldn’t be so bad. Sometimes I feel I could murder Iain Sherrarde with his long face about my having to take ‘great care’ and his talk about ‘the welfare of the children.’ ”

  “You know, darling, I believe he keeps you down here because he’s in love with you. All men are Turks at heart, and would like to keep the women they love behind bars, away from other men. And you’re lovelier now than you’ve ever been.”

  Beverley’s big blue eyes widened with delight, as she reached for her hand mirror. “Do you really think so, Mummy? It might be fun to have a love affair with the great H.E. — that’s what the students at the, Institute call him ... short for ‘His Excellency.’ I’ve been so busy hating him because he held the purse strings, but now ... Mummy, you’re a darling. You’ve made me feel interested in life once again.”

  Secretly, Mrs. Woods had no faith at all in the idea she had just put before Beverley. Iain Sherrarde was too proud and arrogant to fall in love with an ex-showgirl, no matter how lovely. Beverley hadn’t been good enough in his estimation, for his ward, Ray Derhart.

  “Thank goodness we’re having a spell of peace while he’s in America,” she said fervently. “If only Anne had answered my S.O.S., the wicked, selfish girl! With a trained nurse here, he wouldn’t interfere half so much, either with you or the children.”

  “So Mummy, you don’t in your innermost heart really believe that Anne gave that girl your letter and sent her down here?”

  Mrs. Woods looked despondent. Frankly, she couldn't imagine her younger daughter taking any such trouble. She wasn’t the sort of girl to be moved either by sentiment or family feeling. Her thoughts were diverted then, for Marchdale came into the room. She stared at Beverley, saw the sign of tears and rounded on the older woman. “She’s been crying again. What have you been saying to her?”

  She was a thin, wiry old woman, a distant relative, though no one ever remembered that now. She had been a theatre dresser in the days when Mrs. Woods had been a third-rate actress, and when she married had become her housekeeper and then nurse to the two girls. She had always been fanatically devoted to Beverley.

  “Don’t be so silly, March,” Mrs. Woods replied haughtily. “There’s nothing wrong.”‘

  “What about a little pick-me-up, my pet? That will soon chase away the blues,” the old woman said softly.

  Mrs. Woods’ eyes narrowed and she looked more closely at her daughter. “Beverley, March, you know what the doctor says. Oh, what’s the use?” She got up and left them. She had her own affairs to see to.

  Beverley’s suite of rooms was on the ground floor, and Mrs. Woods went through the hall and began to ascend the wide shallow stairway with its thick mushroom-colored carpet

  Everywhere in this house there was the luxury that she loved. In her own room, she trod on a thick, soft carpet of her favorite color — the tender green of newly unfurled leaves. On her wide, luxurious bed there was an ivory satin spread and eiderdown. Her furniture was of the very latest design.

  Mrs. Woods had been a small-part actress and sometimes a singer in dingy night clubs. Neither her career nor marriage had given her the luxury and security for which she craved. But they had come to her finally by Beverley’s marriage to the heir to the Derhart fortune, and she was grimly determined to hang on to them.

  She pulled off her hat, and ran her fingers through her smartly tinted hair. She moved over to the big windows, touching the ivory brocade curtains with caressing fingers. She had alwa
ys longed for a room like this, like a stage set in a sophisticated comedy, and now it was hers...

  Her thin red mouth that had softened slightly tightened again as she noticed a flash of bright red among the trees that stood at the very far end of the gardens. Then she saw another splash of the same color. Emma and Guy, Beverley’s two children, running wild, instead of resting, or doing their lessons, or whatever my lord Iain Sherrarde had laid down in their timetable.

  Oh, how she loathed that man! And though he might be in America, there was always his inquisitive old aunt or his snooty girl friend to spy for him. Then the same old complaints would go up. The children were in need of more care and attention than they were getting at Fountains. They would be much better living with Mr. Sherrarde’s aunt at Dainty’s End.

  In other words, thought Mrs. Woods grimly, he wanted the children taken away from her care and influence. Then they would grow up not knowing her, and if Beverley died, as well she might with this heart trouble, then...

  Mrs. Woods clenched her hands. She’d got to stop the children being taken away from her influence. If only Anne ... But it was no good going over that again. Anne had trained as a nurse, and you might have expected tenderness and consideration from her, but instead...

  Mrs. Woods recalled the last time she had seen her younger daughter. She had been wearing uniform, that marvellously attractive uniform of a Queen Frida’s nurse. She was pretty, too. Not so pretty as Beverley, but very attractive.