by Hilary Neal
“Do you think I haven’t? I wonder all the time whether she just does it to tease...”
Mair marched through to collect a jar of clean swabs. “She only does it to annoy because she knows it teases,” she mocked. And then she bit her lip, slammed the cupboard door, and marched out again.
Fenella tried to change the subject. “Micky...”
“Well?” He scraped one foot moodily and didn’t look up.
“Mr. Parsley left some sort of horoscope or fortune for each of us. Yours is on Sister’s desk in the office. But look—do you think I ought to let Steve have his? In view of his condition, I mean.”
“No. And if I had my way I’d burn it. Pernicious rot!”
She passed him Steve’s envelope. “Then burn it. I don’t want to be responsible for it. On the other hand, it is Steve’s.”
He swung it by one corner. “Then I’ll keep it until he’s fitter. But I shan’t open mine. Did you have one?”
She nodded. “Yes. But I haven’t opened it. And I’m rather intrigued because mine is thicker than the others.”
“Just as well you haven’t. It’s plain silly, Fenny. If it’s good, you bank on it and stop using your own initiative; and if it’s bad you fret about it. So, either way, it’s a bad thing, this fortune-telling lark.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’m going to look at my pneumonia woman now. And then I’ll make Steve a drink—and I suppose you want one, too?”
“No. No, thanks. I’ll go along and look at that pneumonia, too. Unless you think Greatrex will shoot me, at this time of night?”
“She’ll be glad of the diversion, no doubt. Nurse Minner isn’t very stimulating company, and they’re probably still doing the big ward beds together. She doesn’t leave Minner to do much on her own—she’d be at it half the night if she did. So you go, and then I needn’t bother to.”
When she had finished settling Steve, who was drowsy again, and helped Nurse Dennis with the heavyweights, she sought out Mair in the office.
“I wouldn’t tease Micky too much,” she told her. “He takes it hard.”
“Who’s teasing?” Mair looked up from the drug book. “He asks too many questions, that’s all. What right has he...”
“The way he feels about you he does have a right. I don’t think you’re being awfully fair to him.”
“You don’t?” Mair looked away again. She began riffling idly through the anaesthetic consent forms on the desk. “I told you—there are things I’m not free to talk about. To anyone. And that includes Mick.”
“All right. It’s not my affair. Only I’m fond of him, and I...”
“Listen, there’s someone at the door. You go. It’s probably the blood van—there’s some plasma to be delivered for tomorrow’s theatre cases.”
But all the way across the hall she was looking through the glass panel at David. When she let him in he leaned wearily against the inside of the door. She had never seen him pale before. His grey eyes looked huge, and his cheeks seemed sucked in. He nodded gently. “Good evening.”
“Good evening, sir. Are you—are you all right?”
“Not too good. Tired. Is there any tea going?”
If she said, “I’ll make some” he would wave the suggestion away, she knew that. So she simply said: “Yes, sir. I’ll bring it into the surgeon’s room.”
“N-o. Don’t do that. I’ll come to the kitchen.” He jerked himself away from the door and followed her slowly down the corridor. His step had none of its normal spring, and, once in the kitchen, he sat down heavily in the scrubbed wood chair and leaned on the table with his arms folded under his chest, watching her warm the teapot and beginning to set a tray for him. He lifted one hand slowly. “Don’t go to any trouble. I’ve drunk out of saucerless cups before now.”
His voice was so quiet and thin that she swung round in alarm. “You’re ill, sir!”
He chose that moment to pitch sideways from the chair. He was too heavy for her to be able to do more than break his fall, and she found herself somehow sitting on the floor with his head in her lap.
Already the faintness was passing and his forehead was damp. He opened his eyes vaguely, and then struggled to sit up. She pushed his head down again gently. “Stay where you are for a minute,” she told him. “It’s all right. Just lie still. You’ll feel better in a moment.”
He managed a small quirk of a smile. “Fenella ... you sound like an experienced mother ... I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to pass out like that.” Then he winced, gritted his teeth, and rolled over on her lap to bend his knees momentarily.
“Pain?”
He nodded, and then straightened and sat upright, releasing her. She got up and held both hands out to him, but he stood up without taking them and leaned back in his chair again. “Sorry, Fenella. All right now. Or I shall be when I get that tea. Hurry up with it, there’s a good girl.”
While he drank it she stood anxiously watching him. “Dr. West’s here, sir. Do you think...”
He laughed then, and looked her full in the eyes. And once again she knew the heart-lifting quality of intimacy that his long looks had brought her before. Neither of them spoke, and he put the cup down beside him without taking his eyes from her. “Come here,” he said, in a queer new voice. “Come here to me, Fenella, this minute.”
In a daze, she moved towards him. As if in a dream she bent her head to watch him take her hands and turn them over. It was only when she felt the sudden hard warmth of his lips moving on her palm that she could speak. “David,” she whispered. “Oh, David!” They heard Mair coming along the corridor, and he gave her hands back to her and stood up, still pale, his eyes still on hers, and said softly: “Bless you, my dear.” Then he raised his voice and went on: “Thank you for the tea. I needed it.”
When Mair came in they were two yards apart and Fenella had her back to the open door, washing his cup and saucer.
“Needed it?” she said. And then: “Aren’t you well, sir?”
“I’ll confess to you, Nurse Lewis,” he said lightly, “but don’t tell a soul. I’ve a grumbling appendix. Do you think I should operate?”
Mair looked at him seriously. “I don’t even think you could, sir. But someone should, don’t you think? How often have you been...”
“Not often. Now forget it, will you? And come and let me out—I’m going to bed, and I’m not going to do a round. That should satisfy you. Good night, Nurse Scott.”
Fenella turned round. “Good night, sir. I hope you’ll feel better.”
He gave her his brilliant smile. “I’m sure I shall—now.”
And then she watched Mair walk beside him to the front door, and pressed her hands together, feeling his kiss between her palms. With Mair on her way back to the kitchen, she suddenly saw his handkerchief lying on the floor in the shadow under the table. She picked it up. When Mair walked in she was humming softly: “Now forget your heart, if you’re really the kind who loves...”
Mair shook her head. “Doctors—they’re as bad as the patients! Why doesn’t he get that appendix done? He’ll go on until it is an emergency. Listen—did I tell you about Mr. Parsley’s solicitor?”
“You said you were going to ring him up.”
“Yes. Well, when I did, he said had we found Mr. P’s will. You didn’t, did you?”
“His will? No. There were only the letters, and his books, and a lot of calculations. Nothing legal-looking. Wasn’t it in his hands, then?”
“It seems not. Apparently the old boy had made a new one, quite recently, and it was left here with him because that was the way he wanted it. Of course, the solicitor has a copy and all that—but it’s a question of the signature and so on. He can’t very well prove it.”
That was when Fenella remembered the unopened envelope lying in her writing case, the envelope that was thicker than the rest. She got up to go and fetch it, but as she did so the door bell rang again.
CHAPTER VIII
THIS time, David’s housekeeper,
sturdily determined, was holding his arm. Underneath her raincoat she was wearing a thick flannel nightdress, and her feet were thrust into flapping tartan felt slippers. After a brief glance at his grey face Mair pulled one of his arms across her shoulders, and put her own firmly round his waist. Fenella ran for the wheelchair, parked in the lift.
“No more brains than a child of five,” puffed Mrs. Hackett. “I thought you’d have the sense to keep him here, Nurse Lewis, when he came over before. He certainly hasn’t a grain of it himself.”
She followed, grumbling, as Fenella pushed the wheelchair along to Ward 5. “Been bad all the week,” she maintained. “But of course he won’t give in! Never would, even when he was at school.”
David moved his head restlessly. “Do drop it, Hacky,” he murmured weakly. “Stop treating me as if I were a kid.”
“That I won’t. I’ll see you into bed, Mr. David, and then I’ll be satisfied.” She flung back the bedclothes in the private ward, and pushed her sleeves up. “You can leave him to me, Nurse. I’ve got his pyjamas here. I’ll see to him for you. He knows I’ll stand no nonsense from him.”
As Fenella took the chair back down the corridor, Mair came flying down the Home stairs. She nodded, “I’ve told Mick we want him. He won’t be two ticks. I fetched him out of his bath.” She hurried along towards the male wards, and Fenella let her go, without comment. She felt helpless.
There was nothing she could do for David at the moment. Mrs. Hackett was very much in control of Ward 5 at present. Mair was in charge; Mick would be there is in a moment. There was nothing for a junior staff nurse to do but to get on with the job that was nearest—and hope. She went into Casualty, leaving the door open so that the light would tell Mair where she was, and began to pack the dressing drums for morning.
As she stacked gauze and wool and ribbon packing she heard Mick come through twice to the office telephone. When he left the wards the third time he hesitated outside Casualty, and then came in, in his striped dressing gown. With his hair ruffled, Fenella decided, he looked too young to be a medical man. She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “How is he?”
“Not so good. Just about ready to perforate.”
“I thought it was supposed to be just a grumbling appendix?”
Mick laughed shortly. “If that’s grumbling, the average acute one is pretty rapturous, then! This is acute if I ever saw one. The fathead—he must have known.”
“What will you do—operate?”
He shook his head. “Not I. Not on him. I’d be afraid he’d project his astral body to do a bit of back seat driving, or something. I’ve rung for Mr. Glanville Duncan.”
“You have?” Fenella’s eyebrows went up. To ring for a consultant of Glanville Duncan’s calibre in the small hours of the morning was something not lightly to be contemplated. “And he is coming?”
“Right away. Dash it all—what else could I do? He has to have the best we can get, doesn’t he?”
“Definitely,” Fenella nodded. “Yes, definitely. Shall I get the theatre people up now?”
“Better wait until he comes, and see what he says. But you might begin to set the theatre as far as you can, will you?” He reefed in his girdle again, and pushed his fingers nervously through his hair. “All right?”
“All right, Micky.” Fenella finished filling the gauze drum, folded the lint lining neatly and clipped the lid down before she opened the louvres. “I’ll get the sterilisers going, and shove the things in, and light the radiators. Then there won’t be a lot for them to do, except to scrub up and do the ligatures and things.”
“Good. Mair’s seeing about plasma and so on. Don’t know if we can manage a whole blood in the time. The man’s Group O, unfortunately.”
Fenella’s heart stood still. “That’s all right,” she said slowly. “I’m a universal donor, too.” Her cheeks burned. “Do you need whole blood?”
“Preferably, of course—but—” Mick blinked at her through his glasses. “You mean you’ll give?”
She took a deep breath, and there was a queer warm, proud feeling rising somewhere in her chest. There was something she could do for David, after all. “Naturally,” she told Micky loftily. “What else?”
“Oh, grand! I’d better do a check agglutination, though. Half a tick.” He went over to rummage in the drawers below the instrument cupboard, and came back with a capillary tube and a large needle. When he had drawn a drop of blood from the lobe of her ear she went through to the theatre and put the basic set to boil and began to prepare the trolleys. As she fished out the last bunch of Spencer-Wells artery forceps and laid them on the sterile towel she heard Mr. Glanville Duncan’s deep, rich voice in the anteroom, talking to Micky, and a few moments later Micky came through into the theatre. He held up his thumb.
“He’s going to do it straight away,” he announced. “But he thinks a direct transfusion first, if you don’t mind?”
The long bowl forceps clattered as she dropped them back in the Dettol jar. “All right. Has Mair prepped him?”
“Sure,” he nodded. “And that somnolent Minner girl has alerted the theatre gang. So—when you’re ready, and the sooner the better.”
“Here? Or in his room?”
“In his room, I think. We’ll put him on the theatre trolley, and you can lie on the bed. Right?”
“Right.” She rolled her sleeves right to the shoulders, loosened her collar and unhooked her silver belt buckle, and went down to David’s room swinging her belt in her hand. Nurse Dennis had the trolley in there already, and was waiting to help. The transfusion gear stood ready on the wide window sill, under a sterile towel. David looked up at her under his thick lashes.
“Now what?” he whispered.
“Nothing much, sir. We’ll get you on to the trolley in a moment.”
“I can get on it myself.” He tried to sit up. “Let me...”
“Let me,” corrected Mair Lewis. She came in with a spare blanket on her arm, and nodded to Fenella and Nurse Dennis. Between them they swung him across from bed to trolley. He was heavy, and he was dead weight in their arms, but it took only a moment when the three of them lifted together. Fenella, one arm supporting his shoulders, felt the feverish heat of his skin through his thin pyjama jacket, and saw the cold sweat break out on his forehead as they moved him.
Nurse Dennis straightened the empty bed, and when Micky came through the door in his theatre singlet and rubber apron he jerked his head for Fenella to lie down. A little nervously, because David was watching her with a strange expression in his grey eyes, she took off her cap, climbed up on the high bed, and stretched herself out. Her head lay in the warm hollow where his had been, and she felt her cheek burning where it touched the pillow.
“What’s the idea?” he protested thinly. “Blood?”
“Blood,” Micky confirmed. He pushed the head of the trolley to the head of the bed and rolled up David’s sleeve. Fenella could hear David’s jerky breathing close to her ear, and as Micky’s cold swab ran over the inside of her elbow she closed her eyes and went on listening to the painful rhythm. She heard David draw a quick breath to speak, and then Micky said: “We’ll have the arguments for and against afterwards, sir, if you don’t mind! Right now, I’m the doctor. Or rather Mr. Glanville Duncan is.”
David didn’t try to say anything else then. There was just the faint hiss of breath between his teeth when Micky swabbed his arm.
It was over very quickly, and Fenella, sitting up to reach for her cap, feeling a little giddy, watched Nurse Dennis and Micky pushing the trolley out to take David to the theatre. “Please God!” she murmured involuntarily.
Mair touched her arm. “He’ll be all right, girl,” she said gently. “Not to worry.”
“I know.” Fenella bit her lip. “He ought to be, with G.D. operating.”
“That’s the line. Feel O.K.? Sit still a bit if you want to. The bed can wait.”
“I’m all right now.” She slipped off the bed, fastened
her collar and belt, and began to fold the blankets. “He’ll have to be specialled, of course?”
“But of course!” Mair picked up the loaded tray and smiled across the top of it. “Nip round the wards and see if Dennis can get a cup of tea and then come back, as soon as you can.”
“Me?”
Mair stared. “Who else?” He’s your patient, isn’t he? I can’t put a junior on the job. Not with him. Matron would have a blue fit! She’d throw a set of jugs, as Micky would say, if I didn’t do my best for him.” The front door bell shrilled in the distance, and she turned to go. “That’s the blood van, I’ll bet, thank goodness. We can’t keep emptying you!” She hurried out.
David was back from the theatre in less than half an hour, and he was very pale and still as they lifted him into bed and fixed up the drip with the fresh bottle of blood they had sent over from the central bureau. Nurse Dennis wheeled the trolley away, and Fenella got out her watch and took his pulse, to begin a halfhourly chart.
She was concentrating on the fluttering beat and on the quick red second hand of her watch, and heard nothing until Mr. Glanville Duncan, at her elbow, said: “Everything all right, Nurse?”
She was startled. “Yes, sir, I think so.” She glanced across at the transfusion apparatus and noted the constant speed of the drip through the glass connection. “Shall I keep it at about that, sir?”
His eyes followed hers. “That’s about right. He should be very grateful to you, Nurse.”
“To me, sir?” She looked up, puzzled, into Mr. Glanville Duncan’s dark, distinguished face, that the nurses always likened to that of an Indian brave. “Why?”