Nurse in Love (15 page)

“Well, do you suppose I should have accused you as I did if you’d been at all my conception of the woman who had thrown Steven over? Don’t you understand my need to blame you came from nothing but my shock at finding you to be the person you really were. You seemed to have everything Steven needed in a wife, and I blamed you for first encouraging him and then withdrawing—possibly because you didn’t want to go abroad with him. That was my first impression of you.”

“Not a very happy one.”

“Well, there it was. As I saw it, you had power over Steven which you were refusing to use, after letting him believe he could rely on it.

“I don’t understand? Power? What power?”

“Surely? The subtle power a man confers on a woman, when he loves her. In my experience a man in love has only the frailest of armour against that.” Adam paused. “But you think I’m generalising, don’t you? That I’m merely spouting theories about the man-woman thing? Nothing more important than that?”

“Was there anything more important to say?” (How long must she find words of her own with which to parry his?)

In a gesture that was foreign to him he passed a hand across his brow as if he were suddenly wear
y
. “At one time I thought there might be,” he said. “It seems that there wasn’t, after all.”

Sara sat alone within the arc of light thrown by the green-shaded lamp before her. She added a note to the treatment chart and drew her cloak more closely round her. How cold even a late spring night could be
before dawn! And how lonely and aloof you were, awake while other people slept all round you.

Her senior on night duty, a third-year nurse, had gone to the midnight meal, leaving Sara in charge of the ward. There was nothing she could not handle
—
the routine round which she had just made, a two
-
hourly feed to be given, and a watch to be kept upon Daddy Fosdick, to whom the house physician on call would be coming presently.

Daddy had taken a turn for the worse lately, and everyone missed his plaintive quaver demanding drinks. Now he lay weakly, muttering and grumbling a little, and somehow, in Sara’s troubled dreams of Carol during the long days since her name had been upon the danger list, Daddy’s case sometimes got mixed up. Daddy Fosdick must recover, or Carol wouldn’t
...
That was silly, of course, and unworthy of her reason. But the muddled fears that haunted sleep seemed to take no account of reason.

She was thinking of Carol when the light of a powerful torch swept across the glass of the ward’s swing
-
doors. That would be Dr
.
Mason, she thought, and letting her cloak slip from her shoulders, she stood up to receive him.

With the torch lowered, but remaining in the obscurity behind it, the figure approached her desk. The torch was switched off, and in the light of her own lamp Sara found herself confronted, not by Dr
.
Mason, but by Simon.

Their eyes met and held. Then Simon said: “I’ve come to see Fosdick, Nurse.”

“Yes.” Sara added nervously: “We were—that is, Sister was—expecting Dr
.
Mason.

“He is taking a night off, so I’m deputising for him.
If you are ready, let’s go.”

Silently they moved down the ward together.
Both of us in white, like a couple of ghosts out for a walk,
thought Sara. If she had been on speaking terms with Simon she would have whispered it to him, and they would have laughed, as at a tremendous joke. Unshared, it was not funny at all.

At Daddy Fosdick’s bed they stopped. And when Simon had taken his pulse and respiration he ordered: “Bring screens, will you? Then the saline stand. I’m going to cut down for an intravenous. He’s lost a lot of strength since I saw him last.”

At their inevitable movements Daddy’s neighbours stirred, but did not fully wake, and as they worked within their own little circle of light, Sara found a strange satisfaction in their isolation. Here, taking Simon’s orders, she was at one with him again, and the moment—which would not last—was very sweet while it did.

At first they had trouble with the apparatus, but they righted it together after a whispered consultation, and then they both stood back to take satisfaction in the steady drip entering Daddy’s veins, taking over his healing.

At Sara’s table once more, Simon took his torch
from his pocket. “Well
—
” he began, then thrust
back the torch and faced Sara compellingly.

“You may as well know the truth,” he said. “I bribed Mason to let me take over his round to-night. I had to see you, and without Sister’s eagle eye upon us. But first, have you heard about Carol?”

Sara’s heart leapt, then tightened again within the familiar clutch of fear. “Carol? Oh—what?”

“She’s responding at last. I rang the ward. Kathryn had stayed on duty to watch the result of her latest transfusion, and answered the phone. She could hardly speak for exultation, and I asked her if I could tell you, and she said yes. Sara—Carol is out of danger
—
”

“
Oh, Simon
!”
She breathed his name in the
merest whisper, but it was loud enough for him to hear. She swayed a little on her feet so he drew out her chair and pushed her gen
tl
y into it. She leaned her forehead on her hand, murmuring: “It’s not a dream this time, is it? I’ve dreamt so often that I was hearing it, and always when I woke it wasn’t true.”

“It’s not a dream.” Simon paused, seeking an argument that would convince her. At last he produced: “I’ll bet no dream ever forecast that
I
should bring the good news!”

“No, but
—
” She looked up at him wonderingly.

“Simon, do you realise something?”

“Only that I’ve been able to make you happy.”

“Yes, but don’t you see? They—they wouldn’t let
me
do anything to help, and I suppose they were right, though I was dreadfully hurt at the time. But
you
—
you’ve helped to save her life!”

“My sweet, I had nothing to do with it
!”

“But you had! Don’t you remember that your blood was AB negative? And so is Carol’s—Kathryn said so. So that you have given her something that I couldn’t. Oh, Simon, I love you so much. But not
—
not just for that!”

Simon looked at her wondering just how worthwhile it might be to try to explain the unlik
e
l
i
hood of his particular pint of plasma having been selected from a vast blood bank for Carol’s transfusion. He decided it was not worthwhile at all. Sara, bless her, wanted to believe
it, and so she should. Meanwhile, they had other things to discuss
...

He said hesitantly: “We were a couple of idiots that night, weren’t we?”

“Yes, Simon.”

“
And
since?”

“Worse since. But there have been times when
—
”

“I know. I’ve had them too. But we’re not going to quarrel on that score any more. You must finish your training, Sara. I see that.”

“I didn’t try to see your side of it,” mourned Sara.

“No, and having screwed myself to the point of asking you to marry me, I admit I thought you might have done! But in my heart I knew you were right, which was what made me so mad.”

“And yet you called
me
illogical!” murmured Sara
.

“Well, so you are. But I said I loved you for it, and so I do.” Simon broke off to thrust his wrist-watch towards the arc of lamp-light. “Look, what time is your senior due back?”

“About now.”

“Then I’d better hop it. We’ll talk later, my sweet. What a lot of time we’ve wasted, haven’t we?”

She walked down the ward with him. At the door she whispered: “What did you bribe Dr
.
Mason with?”

“My new rugger boots.”

“Was it worth it?”

“You’re fishing for compliments, girl, but the answer is in the affirmative.”

“Oh, Simon!”

“What’s more, he could have had a set of golf-clubs, a fishing-rod a pair of boxing gloves and an air-gun too if he’d asked!” Simon’s grin seemed to fight up the darkness. Then he was gone.

Kathryn had gone off duty at last, feeling weary but elated, and longing to share her relief with someone. She could not reach Sara, and in any case Simon Glenn had promised to give Sara the good news! Barbara would know it already, of course, as she had been asked to keep in touch with hospital, and it would have been telephoned to her. But Kathryn knew that she would be longing for the details which the cursory message would not have included, and though it was late, she decided to go over to see her and Victor before going to bed.

She changed quickly out of uniform, thinking as she did so of how she had tried to express to Sara the sheer, fulfilling satisfaction of winning the sort of step-by
-
step fight with Carol’s case had been from the begin
n
ing. It did not matter that it was rarely given to a nurse to accomplish the thing alone; in fact, it was the teamwork that made it truly worthwhile. Skill had to be matched with endless patience and brilliant diagnoses faithfully carried out. But success—if it came—was always very sweet.

She found Barbara alone, Victor having returned to the school for a Sports Committee meeting after the news of Carol had come through. Barbara looked drawn with worry still, as if she had scarcely yet grasped that the days and nights of ordeal were over. But she confessed to Kathryn that when she went to bed that night she meant to sleep the clock round.

“Then you’re going now,” insisted Kathryn.

“No, dear
,
no—not when you’ve just come!”

“
Now
!
Go and have your bath, while I switch on the fire in your room and get hot drinks for us both. I know your kitchen almost as well as you do, and I’ll come and sit with you until Victor gets back.”

Under further protest Barbara did as she was told, and within half an hour they were ensconced
cosil
y
in her bedroom, she propped up in bed, Kathryn in an easy-chair beside her.

Between the intimate silence of friends they talked first of Carol and then of the many things which the child’s illness had thrust aside in their minds. Kathryn told what she knew of Sara’s quarrel with Simon Glenn, and Barbara admitted that she had guessed something had gone wrong, though Victor had not let her question Sara.

“If Victor—and most men—had their way,” declared Barbara emphatically, “the earth’s surface would be littered with the bodies of sleeping dogs they were carefully allowing to lie! They regard the merest friendly interest in people as ‘interference’.”

Kathryn smiled, but, recalling Adam Brand’s unwarrantable interference in her own affairs, did not agree. “I think they’re inclined to meddle as much as we are,” she said, and went on to reassure Barbara that, from Simon’s insistence over the telephone that he would be seeing Sara that night, she believed their differences were over.

“I suppose Sara was right really,” she added. “But she must have put her case very tactlessly, because I think they both flared up before they had even discussed it.”

“The young idiots,” mused Barbara affectionately. “Fortunately they’re young enough to have time before them to do everything they want. But when I tell Victor that it’s all right between them again, he’ll either insist that there was never anything wrong, or he’ll say, ‘What did I tell you?—as if his tiresome do-nothing policy was proved to the hilt!”

“Well, isn’t it?” laughed Kathryn.

“In their case, perhaps. Not always.” Barbara was suddenly grave. She added hesitantly: “You’re not very happy yourself, Kathryn, are you?”

In face of the gentle concern in her friend’s voice, Kathryn found it impossible to lie, or even to resort to evasion. A little tremulously she said: “When you’ve dreamt the impossible, it’s hateful to wake up to hard, plain fact. And I—have been doing some dreaming
!”

Barbara’s brow furrowed. “What is it, then? Is Steven being difficult? Or has Thelma interfered again?”

“Steven?” Kathryn’s repetition of the name was quite blank, as if she had had to wrench her memory over to its owner. And in that instant Barbara’s intuition told her the truth.

“It’s not Steven. It’s someone else. It’s—Adam Brand. And I think I’ve known since the night I telephoned about Carol, when you were so caustic about his praise of you.” Barbara was stating facts now, not asking questions. She did not need Kathryn’s nod of confirmation and went on gently: “My poor sweet, why did you have to let your dreams stray
there!
He is a dear at heart, and quite brilliant at his work, as we all know only too well. But he’s not for you, is he?”