The Dilemma

by Abbie Taylor

  Will looked away. ‘I heard about that.’

  So he did know. ‘My father,’ she said, ‘died there and then but my mother lasted a week. I saw her in the hospital every day.’

  Will said quietly, ‘And you were inspired by her care.’

  ‘Well, in a way. The ward she was on was terrible. Absolutely filthy. And the noise. Like a tube station at rush hour.’ She’d been ten years old but she could see it. The bloodstains on the floor beside her mum’s bed that weren’t cleaned for days. The constant banging and clatter of trolleys, the shrill of unanswered phones, the cackles of laughter from the nurse’s desk. And when she had gone to beg them to do something to help her mother because the pain was literally preventing her from breathing, the endless litany of excuses: ‘I’m busy at the moment’, ‘I’m on my break’, ‘I’ve just come back from my leave’.

  ‘On my mother’s last day,’ she said, ‘a new ward sister started who I hadn’t seen before. The ward was a different place with her there. Quieter. Cleaner. And she found the time to come and sit with me and my mum. She was with me when … I was only a child but I saw it: the difference proper nursing could make.’

  She shut herself up. Why on earth was she saying all this? She didn’t normally talk about herself in this way. The Importance of Not Being Earnest. The situation had flipped like a coin from Will being too open and intense to her sitting here blabbing like a child. He had sat across from her and listened and she had blurted it all out. Probably he had revealed more than he’d meant to as well.

  She stood up from the bench.

  ‘We should go,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late.’

  She covered her confusion by walking around the table, looking underneath. ‘Milly,’ she called. ‘Milly, it’s time to go.’ As she reached Will’s side of the table, he stood up too. His large, solid frame brought her to a halt.

  ‘You saved a life,’ he said. ‘The other day. Most people will never do that.’

  Dawn heard her own breathing in her ears. This was the closest she had ever been to him. In the light from the sky Will’s face was gold-pink. The air was filled with the smell of frying onions and the heavy scent from the trees. Maybe it was the wine – it was a large glass and she’d had nothing to eat since lunch – but Dawn became suddenly aware that she was standing inches from, not just a person but a man. Not, perhaps, a man who would turn heads in the street, with his hunched posture and square face and too-serious expression. But with eyes that were keen and grey, and with a quiet intelligence like the rocky bed of a river, deep and unshowy but there. Distracted, she gazed down at his heavy brown boots. She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Your limp is gone.’

  ‘My limp?’

  ‘The one you had that day. In the café.’

  Will maintained a puzzled silence. It was only when Dawn looked up at him again that the frown cleared from his face.

  ‘My ankle,’ he said. ‘Boris crashed into me on the common that morning. It’s an old injury that keeps coming back. But it was so slight … I’d forgotten all about it … the pain was gone by the next day. How on earth did you—?’

  She’d been showing off, of course. Showcasing her nursing skills, playing up to his idealism. And it had worked; that look of admiration was back in his eyes which, she had to admit to herself now, was the reason she’d made the observation in the first place. But the look was different this time. More intent. For the first time, more … male. Dawn felt powerful. Reckless. Not lumpy and sensible and navy-clad, but floating from her clumpy shoes. Her body was moving, leaning into him of its own accord, as if drawn by some strange magnetic field.

  Then, abruptly, the field switched itself off. What are you doing? Too much sun, too much wine. This was all wrong. She didn’t fancy him. He was too shy for her, too odd. She hardly knew him.

  She stepped back.

  ‘We’d best call it a day,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  She didn’t look at Will again but walked ahead of him, calling to Milly to join her. ‘Did you have a nice time? You did, didn’t you?’ By the time they had reached the car, her pulse and breathing were almost back to normal. She was even able to make some light-hearted comment to Will about the brighter evenings these days making it difficult to keep track of the time. He made some reply in return but the earlier easiness between them was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Have you done something to yourself?’ Mandy stood in front of Dawn with her hands on her hips.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dawn looked up from the sterile dressing packs she had been checking. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mandy was still studying her, her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe it’s your hair. It seems longer. More natural. Or maybe it’s not your hair but you do look different in some way. Healthier or something.’

  The clock over the desk read five to five. Almost time for the ward round. Dawn began to stack the remaining dressing packs back in their boxes.

  ‘How’s Jason?’ she asked.

  ‘Doing really well,’ Mandy said proudly. ‘Got another medal for football the other day. But he’s just told me this morning they’ve got another school trip coming up.’

  ‘More money?’

  ‘They must think I’m made of it.’ Mandy rolled her eyes. She had returned to nursing three years ago after her husband, Claud, had scarpered with the receptionist at his garage, leaving Mandy as the single mother to nine-year-old Jason.

  ‘Oh look,’ Mandy added, ‘Prof’s arrived. We’d best get our skates on.’

  Professor Kneebone was at the chart trolley, his team gathered concentrically around him; registrars in the inner ring, house officers around them, medical students orbiting in the outer reaches. He was like the planet Saturn, or a stone that had been dropped in a pond.

  Walking up the ward with Dawn, Mandy looked at her again and clicked her fingers. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I’ve got it. It’s not your hair. It’s your face in general. You’ve got a sort of glow about you. Healthy-looking.’

  Dawn glanced into the mirror over a sink they were passing. Then she stopped. Mandy was right – she did look better. Was it just the light in here? Or what had happened to that woman of a couple of weeks ago with the pallor and the purple bags under her eyes? This woman looked younger, plumper, her nose and cheeks flushed from the sun.

  ‘I was in the countryside,’ she said. ‘A couple of days ago. In Sussex with … with a friend.’

  ‘Well, you should go more often. It suits you.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’ Somewhat self-consciously, Dawn touched her face. ‘You’re right, it does seem to have done some good. I do feel a lot healthier these days.’

  ‘No more trouble with that headache, then?’ Mandy asked as they approached the medical team.

  ‘Headache?’

  ‘The one you had that afternoon,’ Mandy said. ‘When you took the rest of the day off?’

  ‘Oh, no. No more trouble with that.’

  Mandy smiled. ‘Good.’

  Jack Benson, the thyroid patient, was out of ITU. After the ward round, Dawn returned to check on him. He was sitting up in bed, dressed in a new pair of paisley pyjamas, tucking into his tea. The wound in his neck was closed, the silver necklace of Frankenstein staples back in place. His neck was back to its normal size, tucked well in under his chin where a neck should be. His breathing was effortless and relaxed.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Dawn asked.

  ‘Very well, Sister. I’ve got to say, though, I don’t know why so many people complain about hospital food. Tastes pretty bloody good to me.’

  His wife, sitting by his bed, said, ‘But, Jack, you’ve been fed through a drip for the last few days. That’s why you’ve got such an appetite now. It’s a good sign, Sister, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Dawn said. ‘A very good sign.’

  ‘They don’t give you much, though,’ Mr Benson said through a mouthful of gammon and mashed potato. H
e tried to reach under the wheeled tray-table to pat his belly but there wasn’t much space between the two. He leaned towards Dawn in a furtive way. ‘Any chance of an extra slice of toast?’

  Dawn murmured, mimicking his conspiratorial air, ‘I’ll take a look.’

  In the fridge in the kitchen, between the yogurts and boxes of nasogastric feed, she found a loaf of bread. She took two slices and put them in the toaster. The sun came through the window, sparkling on the taps, the fridge door, the steel racks of patient trays. Once again, the day in Sussex was with her. Even with the slight awkwardness over what had happened with Will at the end, the memory of the afternoon – the fields, the lambs, the bluebells like purple smoke under the trees – still lay like a sweet in her pocket waiting to be unwrapped.

  Since the outing a week ago, she had heard nothing from Will. What had happened between them had been so subtle, so indefinite. Had he even realized what was going on? She hoped she hadn’t hurt his feelings. But pulling back had been the right decision; she was quite clear about that now. Looking back, it was obvious how it had almost happened. The day had been so lovely – the sun, the countryside, the pink sky – and all of those things she had ended up confusing with Will himself. He was such a nice man, but he was so odd. Those peculiar pauses before he spoke, as if he needed time to work out what to say; the way it always took so long for him to unstiffen enough to have a normal conversation. How could you possibly have a relationship with someone as awkward and intense as that? Anyway, what was to say he even liked her in that way? He was so guarded and reserved, so difficult to get to know. Now and again she had caught glimpses of something underneath, something more complex than the simple, rather dull man he chose to reveal, but every time she thought she might be getting somewhere with him, down slammed the shutters again with her firmly on the other side. Either he was choosing, for some reason, not to open up to her – or there really was nothing else there.

  Dawn thought she knew what the problem was. Will was still grieving over his fiancée. He might think he was over her, but he wasn’t. The moment outside the Black Hart had been an impulse for him as much as for Dawn. Walking together through the fields had reminded them of their childhoods. Meeting each other out of the blue like that – Dora having died recently and Will’s fiancée – it was only natural that they should have turned to each other for comfort. Will was lonely here in London. He had come to idealize nurses a little, and who could blame him for that? Dawn’s rescue of the child in the café had made her seem heroic and glamorous in his eyes. But if he got to know the real her, with her nylon uniform and sensible shoes and piles of paperwork, it would be a different story.

  If he got to know her. He had no intention of staying in London. He had applied for that job in Cumbria, 300 miles away. So there was no sense in her wondering about what some vague moment outside a country pub might or might not have meant, or developing a guilt complex about Will’s feelings, because in a very short time he wasn’t even going to be here any more.

  Mr Benson’s toast popped up. Dawn took the slices and put them on a plate. Searching in the fridge for some butter, she found herself remembering something. Once, years ago, at the school in Buttermere, a hedgehog had wandered into the playground, blinded by a plastic fast-food cup which had become wedged over its face. Several of the girls had screamed; one of the boys had tried to kick it under the climbing frame. Then an older, taller, fair-haired boy had appeared from nowhere and shoved the other boy out of the way. He had reached down and eased the cup from the hedgehog’s nose, then gently lifted him back over the wall into the field. Afterwards he had walked away without a word so that some of the girls had giggled and whispered how strange he was. ‘That’s Will Coombs,’ Jill Arscott from Year Six had said. ‘Total oddball. Only ever talks to his dog.’ Shortly after that, Dawn’s parents had died and she had moved away from Cumbria and never seen any of those people in the playground again.

  She took the toast out to Mr Benson.

  ‘There you are.’ She placed the plate on his tray. ‘Hope that does the trick.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’ Mr Benson rubbed his hands together.

  When Dawn went to leave them, his wife got up and came a little way down the ward with her.

  ‘Sister, may I talk to you for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’ Dawn stopped. She led her in behind a nearby curtain for some privacy.

  ‘I just wanted to say …’ Mrs Benson was twisting the thin gold chain on her glasses between her fingers. ‘My husband is being very casual about all of this, but we both know what … what could have happened that day.’

  ‘Well, that’s all in the past,’ Dawn reassured her. ‘He’s doing very well now. We’re very pleased with his progress.’

  ‘Professor Kneebone said … he said if it wasn’t for you—’ Mrs Benson looked down, fiddling harder with her glasses.

  ‘It’s all part of the job,’ Dawn said. ‘Really. I was happy to be able to help.’

  ‘But you … I’m sorry.’ Mrs Benson dropped the glasses and took a deep breath. She touched her finger to her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. This is very silly of me. I’ll let you get back to your work.’

  She turned to leave but Dawn reached to touch her arm.

  ‘Mrs Benson,’ she said, ‘as I say, it was a privilege to be able to help. I was very proud and happy to do it.’

  Mrs Benson nodded, unable to speak. Dawn squeezed her hand. She smiled at her and watched as she returned to her husband.

  Before her shift ended, she toured the ward, checking that the stock room was filled, the defibrillator plugged in, all patients comfortable and stable. She passed down between the rows of beds, her keen eye missing nothing: the empty hand-wash dispenser over the sink, the bag of saline that would soon need changing. All the little things that kept a ward ticking over. It was when she heard herself humming aloud that she realized. She was happy. She loved this, all of it. The soft, steady bip-bip of the monitors, the lemon smell of the polished floor. Over the past few months, for some reason, the work had lost some of its joy. She had gone about the job as efficiently as ever, but abruptly, bam bam bam, head down, not pausing to pass the time of day with anyone or gain any enjoyment from it. In the mornings she had walked up to her staff and said, ‘What was bed ten’s temperature last night?’, not even bothering to preface the query with a simple ‘Hello,’ or ‘How are you?’ She had become disillusioned with the patients, begun fighting with people like Clive.

  And now. One day in the sun and everything seemed different and possible again.

  Over the past few days, an idea had been building in her mind. Why not go to Cumbria for her holiday? When Priya came back from her maternity leave, she would take a proper break – a full fortnight, even – and spend it at the Lakes. Talking about them with Will had given her a longing to see them again. She had never been back there, not once, since she had moved away. There had been school, and then her nursing training, and when she had gone on holidays with Kevin or her friends they had hopped on a plane and flown abroad. And in the last couple of years, because of Dora, she hadn’t been able to leave London at all. But now … now she felt an urge to see all her childhood haunts again. The farm, the school, the broad, Canadian sweeps of water. Milly would enjoy it too. The day in Sussex had shown that she still had plenty of pep left in her. It was so simple and easy; she couldn’t believe it had all seemed so difficult before.

  ‘It’s like toads,’ Francine had once said. ‘If you put a toad in a pot of water and heat it up slowly enough, it’ll keep on sitting there until it boils to death. If it happens gradually enough, the toad never realizes how bad things have become.’

  Toads indeed!

  Still humming, Dawn went to collect her bag from her office. The sun through the blinds cast stripy shadows like bars across the thank-you cards and the Disaster Plan guidelines on the walls. These past few days she’d hardly done any work on her Disaster Plan. Tomorrow she would take the red fo
lder out and give the contents a good going-over. For now, she would just run a final check of her work e-mails before she left.

  She keyed her password into the computer and clicked on the icon marked, ‘Internal mail’. The screen lit up with her account. One new message.

  Important, the subject line read. For the attention of Matron Torridge, Forest Ward.

  Dawn clicked on the e-mail, searching at the same time in her bag for a pen. The message flashed up on the screen. She glanced at it, still half-concentrating on her bag.

  Then she lowered the bag and looked at the message again.

  She sank on to the chair. Her bag slid sideways off her knee. She barely noticed. Her entire field of vision was taken up by the screen. For the third time, she took in the opening lines of the e-mail.

  Dear Matron,

  Well done. You killed Ivy Walker so discreetly.

  If it wasn’t for me, no one would ever have known.

  Chapter Ten

  Dawn’s first instinct was to shove the computer away from her as if the keys were contaminated. Dear God! This was a joke. Some kind of sick, tasteless joke. Any second now, someone was going to leap up from behind the filing cabinet and shout, ‘Gotcha!’ She spun in her chair, searching for the swivelling cameras, the sniggering faces at the window.

  The office door was open. Instinctively, Dawn leaped up to close it. ‘Custard with that, love?’ Becky from Catering was shouting somewhere out on the ward. In the nearest bed, a pair of feet wiggled from behind the curtains. A woman’s voice was saying, ‘Yes. No. They said I’d get done tomorrow.’ Dawn shut the door, blocking out the sounds, and turned the key. As a final precaution, she yanked the blind down over the glass.

  Then she sat at the desk again, her heart hammering.

  Calm. Stay calm. Read this through properly.

  She went through the e-mail again, her shoulders hunched, her eyes narrowed so as not to miss a single word.

  Dear Matron,

  Well done. You killed Ivy Walker so discreetly. If it wasn’t for me, no one would ever have known.