Tread Softly, Nurse

by Hilary Neal

  CHAPTER VII

  IT WAS long after midnight before the seniors were able to take any time off, and Fenella had no chance to talk to Mair at all until they met for their meal. She brought in the tray from the kitchen lift and heated up the covered plates of steak and kidney pie and the glass casserole of vegetables. She found Mair in Casualty, checking the penicillin supplies.

  “Where shall we eat?”

  Mair shrugged. “I don’t mind. The surgeons’ room? It’s about the most comfortable place, now that Sister isn’t here to hog it.”

  “All right. I’ll take the stuff through, then. The pros have had theirs, and Greatrex says she’ll eat later. One of us can relieve her when we’ve, finished.”

  “Yes, do that.” Mair closed the refrigerator door and rolled down her sleeves. “Ames is in better shape—his color’s improved no end. I’m sorry about Parsley. Rotten luck. You know, I can’t find any record of any relatives at all. It seems there’s nobody to notify except a solicitor. I must remember to ring him in the morning.” She followed Fenella into the ward kitchen and then into the surgeons’ room carrying the tea things, and they sat down in the armchairs by the low coffee table. “That reminds me,” she went on, “what did you do with that stack of letters from his locker?”

  Fenella laid down her fork and pulled out a handful of envelopes from her apron bib. “They’re here. There’s one for each of us—including Micky and the Chief, too. Do we open ours, or do they have to be tipped up to Matron?”

  “I should say we open them. Give me mine, and then we’ll know.” She slit open the square white envelope and unfolded the sheet of paper. Her eyes widened. “Well! The poor old pet. He’s worked out my horoscope for me. I wonder how long he’s been saving it up? Wasn’t that kind? Maybe he intended it for a parting present when he went home?” She read on, leaning her chin on her hand. “Hm! No tall dark strangers for me. And I’m to fight every inch of the way. What does yours say?”

  Fenella put the rest of the envelopes on the table and reluctantly fingered the one addressed to her. She frowned faintly. “I don’t think I want to open it. Besides, it may not be a horoscope, in my case.”

  “You don’t want to open it? Why on earth not?”

  “I don’t know. If it’s a prediction of any kind I might become biased. Start making things happen, if you know what I mean. People do.” She put the envelope back behind her apron and picked up her knife and fork again. “I’ll keep it a bit. Whether I would believe it or not isn’t the point. I might be influenced by wanting to, or wanting not to, mightn’t I?”

  Mair looked at her anxiously. “You know what I think? I think you take life too seriously altogether. You worry too much. Look at last night, for example, you...”

  Fenella got up to reach their trifle from the tray on the desk. “Last night? How do you mean?” She put Mair’s dish in front of her. “More tea, while I’m up?”

  “No, thanks.” Mair was spinning her spoon on the table top, obviously trying to make up her mind how to put her point. “Well—let’s face it. You saw me with David, I saw you with Mick. Neither of us has said a word about it—and it isn’t my fault, it’s yours. You’re shying away from nothing. Why not let’s talk about it? We’re not stiffnecked men, thank goodness.”

  Her dark eyes were veiled, and her thin brown face was serious. Fenella frowned, and gathered up the crockery in front of her before she spoke. “What is there to say? Except that it was rather embarrassing. Micky was upset. That’s why he drove too fast coming home, and we had to stop and get grit out of his eye because he wouldn’t wait and put up the windscreen. I hoped he wouldn’t see you, actually.”

  “I know. I saw the manoeuvre with the seats. That was kind. But Micky should know me better. Yet you—what was it to you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Mair sighed noisily. “Of course you do. Why don’t you ask me why I was there? Instead of thinking all the wrong things.”

  “Because I know why you were there. You’d been looking at the new house, hadn’t you?”

  “Who told you? He didn’t, did he?”

  Fenella shook her head. “Why should he? It isn’t my business, is it?”

  “It wasn’t mine, either, until yesterday. Look—this I must say: I just want you to know that there are things, things I’m not free to tell you at the moment. Otherwise I would. I like you, what’s more I have to work with you. I’d as soon be on good terms as not. But it isn’t just my secret. You see?” She looked up soberly to where Fenella stood stacking the tray. “I’ll tell you when I can. I swear I will.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” Fenella managed to say lightly. “I told you—it isn’t my business. You’ve far more right to ask me what I was doing out with Micky.”

  Mair’s little laugh relieved the tension. “Presumably you were metaphorically holding his hand because he was feeling out in the cold. Wasn’t that it?”

  “More or less. He’s got this new car—she’s really a beauty—and he was all set to take you for a run. I was the next best thing, I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. He thinks a lot of you, you know. I was quite jealous the way he talked about you when you first came here, out of his past.”

  “Then you needn’t be.”

  “I’m not, any more.”

  No, Fenella thought. Of course Mair wasn’t jealous any more. Her attention was no longer focused on Micky, that much was clear. She no longer cared what he did, or with whom he shared his interests.

  Hours later as she went round the wards taking temperatures and giving medicines and injections, helping Nurse Dennis with the heavier patients, her hand strayed often to the thick envelope in her apron bib. What message had Bernard Parsley left for her? And then she withdrew her mind from it and concentrated on the work of the moment.

  Stephen Ames was still unconscious, but he was in much better condition, and there were signs that the coma would soon lighten. Joe, the old scavenger, was improving rapidly. His eyes followed her from his end bed as she went round the medical ward doing the six o’clock charting before she finished writing her report. When she reached for his chart board he said thickly: “I’m better, aren’t I?”

  “You certainly are.” She smiled. “I’m glad.”

  “When c’n I goo back t’me wairk? Next wik?”

  “Not likely, Joe! We want to you have a jolly good rest, now you’re here. You deserve it.”

  He looked worried. “There’s me gutters. Th’ Council wun’t like it.”

  “Then the Council will have to do the other thing.” She finished marking up his temperature and hung the chart back on the rail. “You’ve worked hard for a long time, haven’t you, Joe?”

  “I’ll say. Man’n boy. They got me age wrong in them papers, ’n all.”

  She glanced up. “It says sixty-five up here—is that wrong?”

  He cackled feebly, and his hand, knotted with dark blue veins, crept over the sheet to tap hers with a shaking finger. “I’ll be eighty in the spring, my gal. Think o’ that. An’ still ready to work, given the chance.”

  “Good for you, Joe. But you could retire honorably now. Isn’t it time you had a holiday?”

  The old man sighed. “Wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he got out slowly. “Just let me keep me job, an’ I’ll be all right. Out with me boots on.”

  “Very well, Joe. But you’ll have to rest for a time so as to be ready to go back to work. See?” She felt very humble as she went across to Gilda Seymour’s room.

  Gilda, like Joe, was depressed by her enforced holiday. “They still won’t say,” she worried, “whether I’ll be able to go on dancing. Do you think I ought to be thinking about straight acting? Or what?”

  “It’s a thing you could think about, without the idea being something you have to stick to, isn’t it? But do try to rest, Miss Seymour. You’re worse than Joe,” Fenella told her.

  When she had finished, Gi
lda reached for her handbag from her locker top, and there were tears in her eyes. “I want to give that old fellow a present,” she said. “Think of it—nearly eighty, and feeling worried about his job.” She brought out a sheaf of notes. “Look. Here’s twenty pounds. Can you use it somehow to make things easier for him?”

  “It’s nice of you—but frankly, I don’t think money can make much difference to Joe. He doesn’t ask much from life. Only to have his little job, and to be able to do it.”

  People like Gilda, she thought bitterly, seemed to think that money could buy anything. She reflected that none of the things she wanted herself could be bought with hard cash. What did she want? She turned her mind with an effort from the temptation to admit to herself that all the things that meant most to her seemed to be inexplicably bound up with the thought of David Anderson.

  Gilda was still holding the notes out. “There must be something it would do for him. Some luxury that he wouldn’t normally spend on, perhaps? To cheer him up. Please take it, and see what you can do. Won’t you?”

  “All right. I’ll see whether I can find out if there’s something it will help with.” She took the notes and folded them into her pocket. “It’s really kind of you—but you see, for a man like Joe, who asks very little except the health and strength to go on working, money doesn't really solve many problems.” She paused. “For example, it doesn’t solve yours, does it?”

  Gilda’s blue eyes slid away, and she looked at her pink finger nails. “No, I suppose it doesn’t ... Is Stephen any better?”

  “A little. He’s coming towards consciousness now.”

  “Last night David said it was only delayed shock.”

  “Yes, but delayed shock can be pretty serious. When a patient is shocked his respiration and blood pressure are both very depressed. Sometimes dangerously so. We have to take great care of him for a while—keep him going with stimulants, and so on, until he can take charge of himself again. We’re doing our best for him.”

  “I’m sure you are. Forgive me—but I’m restless and I get miserable.”

  “You need a cup of tea, that’s what the trouble is. You’ll be having one soon. And thank you for the money for Joe. I wasn’t very gracious about it, was I? But you see the difficulty.”

  Gilda nodded. “Yes. I’m spoiled. Thank you for not reading me a sermon.” When Fenella reached the door she called her back. “Nurse Scott...”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t—you don’t have to worry about David, you know. Everything’s going to be fine. He’s got the whole thing mapped out.”

  “Good,” Fenella commented automatically.

  She went back to the office to finish her reports. What did Gilda mean, everything’s going to be fine? And what had David told her last night? Had he perhaps been talking about Mair, and Gilda had confused the issue? That must be it. “Everything mapped out” could not possibly apply to anything that concerned him and herself. And then she remembered the way he had touched her hand outside Mr. Parsley’s room, and the contentment with which his warm fingers had healed her depression.

  Some hours later, when she slipped gratefully into bed, she was still thinking about him. She looked back with timid joy to the brief happiness of the morning they had lain side by side on the Common. If only he could always be as he had been then. She fell asleep with her mental vision concentrated on his keen grey eyes, and the alert lift of his dark head, and when she woke it was as though he had been in the room a moment before. She felt she had been dreaming something very vividly in which he was involved, and that the memory of it was only just out of sight round the dark corner of consciousness.

  Before she went on duty she put Mr. Parsley’s letter, still unopened, in her writing case. Whatever it contained could wait, she felt, until she was in a more actively curious mood and less inclined to stave off the opening.

  When she glanced at the report over Mair’s shoulder, she went first to see Stephen Ames in Ward 4. The intravenous drip had been discontinued, and he was conscious, but dazed. He looked up at her, frowning a little. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Steve. You’re looking more like yourself.”

  “I feel very odd. I don’t know what happened. I seem to have missed a day out somewhere.”

  She smiled. “You didn’t miss much. You’d been getting ahead a little too quickly, it seems. And now you have to rest a little more. Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

  She helped him with the feeding cup from the locker. “Have a drink now, before I go to see Miss Seymour. Any message?”

  He sighed. “No. No, thanks. Tell me—has the old boy next door gone home?”

  Fenella was on her guard at once. It was considered highly unethical to inform one patient of the death of another. “Who, Steve? Do you mean Mr. Parsley? Why do you ask?”

  “Nurse Dennis said he was working out something for Gilda. I wondered if she’d had it yet. If it’s something that will give her a lift ... The nurses don’t go in his room any more, so either he’s gone home, or...”

  “I’m afraid it’s ‘or’, Steve.”

  “He died?”

  She nodded. “Unfortunately. But he left a whole bunch of letters. I didn’t see one for Miss Seymour amongst them, but I’ll look through them again, if you like. Or I’ll ask her, when I go to see her. Now you rest for a while until I come back.”

  There were still three letters in Sister’s rack—one for Sister Barclay, one for Micky and one for Steve, which he had not yet been well enough to have. But there was nothing for Gilda, and David’s had gone. She put Steve’s in her pocket before she made Gilda’s evening drink and walked along to Ward 2 with the tray.

  Gilda was sitting up in bed in a feathered bed-jacket, of turquoise silk. “Goodness, Nurse Scott! Are you making up for last night’s lost time? You’re very early, aren’t you?”

  “Am I? Well, I wanted to ask you whether you’d had a note from Mr. Parsley. Stephen was asking.”

  “What does he know about it, I wonder? Or was it a case of collusion?” Her blue eyes twinkled. “I’m almost prepared to believe that.”

  “Oh? What does that mean—that Stephen’s interests are concerned in it?”

  Gilda held out the envelope she had snatched up from her locker. Her lovely face was more animated than Fenella had ever seen it before. “Would you like to read it?”

  “If it’s one of those charts I wouldn’t understand it. You tell me.”

  “Well, the gist of it,” said Gilda, spreading the paper on her knees, “is that physically I shall win through in the end, and that I’m destined to permanent partnership with someone who sounds exactly like someone I know.”

  Fenella raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Who?”

  “Why, Stephen, of course. It must be. But don’t you see—he means my leg will improve? Doesn’t he?”

  It was difficult to resist her infectious optimism, but Fenella shook her head. “I don’t want to be a wet blanket, Miss Seymour, but don’t lay yourself open to disappointment through banking too much on that kind of thing, will you? It’s so easy to believe the nice things—it’s only human nature—but it’s a risky thing to do.”

  Gilda’s face clouded, and she sighed. “All right. Don’t scold me. But I do feel quite different tonight. It’s cheered me up after the negative way everyone carefully doesn’t say anything definite to me, ever.”

  “Then keep cheerful. That’s the thing that will do you good, I’m sure, whatever causes it. And now let me tidy your bed—you’ve wriggled it into a regular cocoon.” She smiled. “And that’s a change. It’s the first time you’ve bothered to wriggle, I think.”

  “That’s what I mean.” Gilda lay back and relaxed. “I told you I felt better. Don’t you think, that somehow people know how they are, more than nurses or doctors do?”

  “I think they often do. Let’s hope that Stephen’s has the same effect.”

  “Is there one
for him, too? I wondered how Mr. Parsley got hold of our birth dates? Did he get the nurses to look at the case papers, do you think?”

  “Perhaps.” Fenella drew a long breath. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you mean, about Sir David having everything ... planned? Something you said last night...”

  “Did I?” Gilda dimpled and shook her head. “But why do you ask?”

  Fenella lost her courage. She flushed, and turned away. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just don’t know.” She went out hurriedly.

  As soon as she was outside the door she heard voices in Casualty. Perhaps a patient had arrived before the front door was locked? Certainly she had not heard the bell. She pushed open the door and walked straight through, and realized at once that she had intruded upon a private argument between Mair and Micky. They stood staring at one another across the examination couch and Mair’s face was pale, so that her dark eyes looked almost black.

  They turned to Fenella almost gratefully, both relieved by the interruption. She stopped and drew back. “I’m sorry—I thought there must be a casualty in.”

  “You needn’t fly out again.” Mair’s look told her to stay. “You weren’t butting in on anything that mattered. I must go and feed the py.” She slipped out before Micky could say anything, and when she had gone across to the children’s ward he turned to Fenella and shrugged.

  “What’s wrong, Micky?”

  “Oh, Mair’s in one of her ‘I’ve got a secret’ moods. She just doesn’t make sense ... What is she up to, Fenny?”

  “I wish I knew.” She began to empty the steriliser because she could think of no other excuse to turn her face away. “It’s no use trying to find out, if she doesn’t mean to tell. She’s a clam when she wants to be—I’ve learned that much.”