The Gentle Surgeon

by Hilda Pressley

  THE GENTLE SURGEON

  Hilda Pressley

  Everything seemed set fair for Christine. Now that she was proudly wearing her staff nurse’s bonnet and badge, there was nothing to stand in the way of her marriage to Rob Marston. But the arrival at the hospital of a glamorous patient, Sandra Dutton, brought many changes with it—not the least of them Rob’s attitude to Christine, for in a very short time she had been supplanted by Sandra in his interest and affections. It was not until the new surgeon, John Taylor, began to be attracted to Christine that Rob started to realise what he might be losing.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Treading softly, as she had learned to do in her three and a half years’ training, Christine walked up one side of the sleeping ward and down the other, listening for the quiet breathing of her patients as she passed each bed.

  The day sister was a sensible sort. When patients had passed the critically ill stage she moved them on the top of the ward, putting ill patients and new admissions nearest the door—a boon on night duty, particularly for a night relief nurse as Christine was. She was one of the latest batch of finalists, proud of her staff nurse’s bonnet and strings and the badge symbolizing her status.

  A pneumonia case near the door coughed painfully. Christine shone her flashlight, but directed its beam away from the patient’s face.

  “Your cough troubling you, Mrs. Johnson? Will a drink settle it for now, do you think? Your linctus isn’t due yet.”

  Mrs. Johnson moved restlessly. “Hospitals! Everything’s done by the clock,” she muttered irritably.

  She gave another series of short, dry coughs. Christine picked up the glass of fruit juice and glucose from the locker.

  “Have a drink, my dear. It will help, I assure you.”

  The patient drank, then leaned back on the pillow, her head turning restlessly.

  “Better?” asked Christine. “See if you can go to sleep now. I won’t keep you waiting any longer than I can help for your medicine, but it’s a sedative mixture, you know. It would be dangerous for me to give you more than the doctor has prescribed.”

  The lines of irritability creasing the patient’s forehead smoothed out a little.

  “All right, Nurse.”

  Christine adjusted her pillows and then moved on, hoping the patient would be able to sleep a little. She had been given a sedative earlier and dozed off, but insomnia in these cases was always most difficult to treat.

  The ward junior appeared in the doorway, having been to supper.

  “I’m back, Nurse,” she said unnecessarily.

  Christine nodded and moved into the ward corridor, out of earshot of the patients in the end beds.

  “All’s quiet at the moment, thank goodness. Mrs. Johnson seems a little restless, but I’m hoping she’ll settle down soon.”

  The junior nodded. “I’ll go and butter the bread for morning now.” She glanced swiftly at her new senior. “Shall I make us a cup of tea, Nurse Townsend? The brew we had in the dining room was awful.”

  Nurse Harvey was in her second year, a Yorkshire girl, born just outside the town where her father was a miner at a local colliery. Christine’s father was a colliery manager.

  “Yes, do that,” answered Christine. “Ours was pretty horrible, too. I don’t know what they do with it.”

  It was half past twelve. Christine went back into the ward again and sat down at the table to write the midnight report.

  The shaded reading lamp cast a small pool of yellow light, intensifying the darkness of the rest of the ward, in spite of the center lights, though these were dimmed to a minimum. She pulled a sheet of paper toward her headed “Ward Reports” and took out her pen, then paused for a moment, chin in hand and a soft, dreamy smile on her face.

  Now she had passed her finals Robert and she would be able to go ahead and make plans for their wedding. They had been in love for almost a year now and had found the waiting difficult. But at that time, Robert was still only junior registrar, and they had decided—after much discussion—to wait until he reached at least senior registrar status before they plunged headlong into marriage.

  But an opportunity for advancement had come sooner than they expected. The post of senior medical registrar had become vacant in the hospital six months later, and Robert had successfully applied for it.

  “Well, darling?” he asked her when, almost wild with delight, they had met to go out and celebrate. “What about it? We can get married just as soon as you like. It can’t be too soon for me. Of course, financially, things will be difficult for a while, but...” He took her swiftly in his arms and kissed her with pent-up, passionate longing. “Darling, I love you so, and I want you terribly.”

  “I love you, too, Rob,” she whispered, smoothing back his dark hair and holding him tightly.

  She knew so well how he was feeling, and she wanted him in the same way, but somehow she felt they should wait just a little while longer until she, too, had gone further in her career. She was studying hard for her finals, spending most of her off-duty poring over textbooks.

  “Won’t it be lovely?” he said presently. “No more saying good night, no more hanging around that dreary common room in the residents’ quarters...”

  Christine touched his cheek. “But, darling, nurses are not allowed to live out until they’ve passed their finals.”

  “But you’ll have to.”

  “Rob,” she said soothingly, “don’t you think we could wait just a little bit longer ... until I’ve taken my finals? It will only be for a few more months. In the meantime we could start looking around for somewhere to live, and it would give us a better chance to save some money.”

  At first he protested. “But I could help you with your studies. And at least we’d be together.”

  “Darling, it just wouldn’t work,” she told him gently. “There’d be the housework and the shopping. I wouldn’t have either the time or the energy for study.”

  She knew, too, the demands their love would make, particularly in the early days. So at last he had agreed to wait until the results of the finals had come through.

  Christine smiled now as she proudly fingered the new bows under her chin. Soon Rob and she would be married. She didn’t have to give up nursing right away, of course. After her six months’ staffing she aimed to take her midwifery, and Robert was himself aiming quite a bit higher than senior house physician.

  Nurse Harvey appeared. “Will you come into the kitchen for your tea, Nurse Townsend, or shall I bring it to you?” she whispered.

  “Better bring it in here, thanks,” answered Christine in a low voice. “I’ll drink it while I’m writing the report.”

  But as she spoke the telephone began to ring in the duty room, as the day sister’s office was called.

  “Lord! Wonder who that is? Hope it isn’t Night Sister wanting you to go somewhere,” Christine said to the junior, as she rose to her feet. “I have the feeling that quite a few of the patients will be waking out of their first sleep soon, and once that happens the whole ward is likely to wake up.”

  Christine lifted the receiver and announced her name. To her surprise it was Robert who answered.

  “Christine? Thank heaven it’s you. I’m sending you an admission, and I want you to put her in one of the side wards. She’s dangerously ill.” He sounded unusually agitated.

  “Will she need a—” began Christine.

  “Look, Chris, don’t stop to ask questions now. Get the bed ready. I’ll be along myself almost right away.”

  He hung up, making her ears ring. With a puzzled frown she replaced the receiver. What on earth was the matter? It wasn’t like him to snap like that. Normally, he was one of the most placid people in the entire hospital. “The sky co
uld fall and Robbie Marston wouldn’t turn a hair,” was often said of him.

  She got two warm blankets from the linen cupboard and asked Nurse Harvey to fill two hot-water bottles.

  “An admission,” she said briefly. “She’s to be put in a side ward. Somebody should have warned you,” she added with a rueful grin. “Emergencies follow me around when I’m on relief.”

  The small ward was quite warm and the bed already made up. Christine loosened the bedclothes and put the warm blankets in position for the patient to lie between, wondering as she did so what the case would be. Pneumonia, most likely. Though spring was gently nudging winter out of the way the weather was slow to change, and the health of people in general was at a low ebb.

  There was the sound of the stretcher trolley in the ward corridor and Christine went to guide it in. She glanced down at the patient and almost gasped. She was quite young—and incredibly lovely. Christine had rarely, if ever, seen anyone so beautiful. Though her cheeks were flushed with fever, her skin was flawless and her blond hair was shining.

  Together, she and the porter lifted the girl into bed, scarcely feeling any weight in the slender figure. As Christine pulled up the bedclothes and deftly removed the receiving ward blanket she noticed the filmy nylon nightdress the girl wore.

  “That thing won’t keep her very warm, will it?” observed the porter. “No wonder some of these girls get pneumonia. Ah well!” Having made his diagnosis, he wheeled his stretcher around and propelled it out into the corridor. “She’s got a suitcase. Dr. Marston’s bringing it up.” He gave Christine an odd look. “By the way, Nurse Townsend, if I were you...”

  But whatever it was he was going to say he left it unfinished as Robert himself turned off the main hospital corridor and came toward them carrying a cream-colored suitcase.

  Robert set the case down outside the side ward door.

  “In here, is she?” he asked, scarcely glancing at her.

  Mildly puzzled by his unusual attitude, Christine followed him into the small ward. People as experienced as themselves normally took any emergency in their stride. At any other time Robert would have at least managed a smile or touched her shoulder with a cheerful: “Let’s see what we’ve got,” or, “Let’s have a look at the poor devil, Chris,” depending on the time and circumstances.

  “I haven’t had time to take her temperature or anything yet,” she told him.

  Nurse Harvey hurried in with the hot-water bottles.

  Robert glanced at her irritably. “Those should have been in the bed ages ago, Nurse.”

  Christine thanked her hurriedly and took the bottles, placing them in position.

  “The blankets are quite warm. We’ve barely had time to do a thing,” she murmured as the junior went out again. She looked at his anxious expression. “Is anything the matter, Rob?”

  He took a deep breath and put the stethoscope to his ears without answering. Christine pulled up the flimsy nightdress out of his way and turned the flushed face aside as Robert bent to make his examination.

  The girl’s eyes were closed, but her expression was anxious. The fine nostrils were dilated and her respirations short and rapid. It looked as though the porter’s diagnosis was correct. Robert slipped the stethoscope round his neck and warmed his hands on one of the hot-water bottles before beginning his palpation and percussion.

  “Take her temperature, will you, Christine?” he asked without looking up.

  Christine slipped a thermometer under the girl’s arm and put her fingers on the slender wrist. The pulse was full and bounding, and Christine counted sixty in the half minute. The thermometer registered 104.2°.

  “Did anyone come in with her?” she asked of Robert. “Her family or—”

  “Her family are miles away. They live in my home town. I know them, as it happens.”

  “You do? Good heavens! Then of course you—”

  But he cut her short again, rather impatiently this time. “Fetch me a case card and let’s get cracking with her treatment. It’s pneumonia all right, poor kid.”

  Christine hurried to the duty room where the ward stationery was kept. So that’s why Rob seemed upset. If he knew the girl’s parents, presumably he knew her, too. All the same...

  But this was no time for conjectures. Whoever the girl was, she was in need of urgent treatment. Explanations and personal details could come later.

  She went back to the side ward. But in the doorway she halted, feeling a mild shock. Robert was holding the girl’s hand. Her eyes were now wide open arid though bright with fever were gazing up at him appealingly.

  “Don’t leave me, Rob,” she whispered.

  “Just relax now, Sandra,” Robert returned softly. “You’ll soon be all right again, I promise.”

  Christine advanced into the room. “The case card, Doctor,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  With a kind of caress almost—or so it seemed to Christine—he put the girl’s hand gently down, then straightened up.

  “Sulphathiazole?” queried Christine.

  He nodded. “The usual initial dose. And a couple of Dovers.”

  She went to get the required drugs from the medicine cupboard, and when she came back she was relieved to see the girl’s eyes closed and Robert writing in the treatment.

  “Two grams of sulphathiazole and Pulv. ipecac. Co., grains ten. All right, Doctor?”

  He gave a slight nod, and Christine went to the bedside and touched the girl gently on the shoulder. The heavy lids opened and a pair of vivid blue eyes looked up at her.

  Christine smiled. “Think you can swallow these tablets? It’s more comfortable than having an injection.”

  The girl stared for a moment, then said huskily, “I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  Christine held out the tablets and a glass of water, then, when all the tablets had been swallowed, made her comfortable with several extra pillows.

  “There you are. Now I’ll bring you a hot drink and a warmer nightie and you must try to get some sleep.” Robert was still in the room, standing at the foot of the bed. “Is there anything else, Doctor?” she hinted.

  He looked startled for a moment as though she had intruded into his thoughts.

  “Oh, just oxygen, Linctus Codeine P.R.N. and fluids. Goodnight, Sandra,” he said to the girl in the bed. “Nurse will look after you, and I’ll be along to see you again in the morning.”

  Outside, Christine said, “Would you like a cup of tea, Rob? Nurse Harvey has just made some. I’ll get her to bring it into the duty room for you, then . you can give me the girl’s particulars—save my asking her so many questions.”

  “Yes, all right,” he said rather absently.

  Christine made some fresh tea, however, and took it in herself, giving instructions to Nurse Harvey to change Sandra’s nightgown and shade the light.

  “She doesn’t need oxygen at the moment, but get out a mask in case. There is a cylinder of oxygen already in there. Keep on the ward, will you? I’m going to have my cup of tea in the duty room while Dr. Marston gives me the patient’s history.”

  She ignored the grin on her junior’s face and took two cups of tea into the small duty room. Robert was seated at the desk. She gave him his cup of tea and sipped her own, standing.

  “Well, what’s it all about?” she asked after a moment or two. He gulped his tea quickly, then glanced up at her from under his dark brows.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  Her lips twitched with amusement. “I mean, who is she? Somebody special, from the effect she had on you. Not that I blame you. She’s quite beautiful.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wouldn’t you be surprised if somebody you used to know—and whom you thought miles away—suddenly appeared on a stretcher, dangerously ill?”

  “Surprised, yes. But I wouldn’t necessarily hold hands with her or him.”

  “Be your age, Chris. Anyway, I wasn’t holding hands with her. S
he was holding mine. She was scared, that’s all, poor kid.”

  “How old is she, would you say?” asked Christine.

  He lifted his shoulders. “Oh, somewhere around eighteen or nineteen. I’ve filled in most of her particulars for you on the case card. Her name is Sandra Dutton, single; occupation, grammar school teacher; next of kin, parents; address—”

  “All right, Rob. I can read,” she broke in, laughing. “How well did you know her?”

  Robert rose to his feet with a sigh. “She wasn’t much more than a child when I knew her. Look after her, Chris, won’t you? But then I know you will. Her parents are very good friends of mine.”

  “Has she got friends in Dunston?”

  “A friend she shares a flat with came in with her.” He yawned and moved toward the door. “Must go and get some shut-eye. I’m whacked. Be seeing you, Chris.”

  “I’ll see you out.”

  He turned then as if suddenly remembering something. “I love you, Chris,” he said, and dropped a swift kiss rather lopsidedly on her mouth. “I can see myself out. Don’t you bother.”

  A warm glow of happiness in her heart, Christine went back into the side ward and looked down at her new patient, whose eyes were now closed. If she had been little more than a child last time Rob had seen her, she was very much more now. She was a very beautiful and desirable woman. Rob would be less than human if he failed to be attracted by her, and she could be a most formidable rival to any woman.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sandra responded to treatment very well, and though she was still quite ill, her condition had improved considerably by the end of her second night in hospital.

  “You’ll be having another nurse tonight,” Christine told her as she gave her her sulphathiazole tablets just before going off duty. “I shan’t be here. I’m only the staff relief.”

  Sandra swallowed the tablets, looking lovelier than ever in a dainty pink bed jacket. She smiled slightly as she handed the glass back to Christine.

  “You’re a friend of Rob’s, aren’t you?”