Return to Night (3 page)

The rattle of a parked cycle sounded outside; the district nurse came up the path and into the room.

“The ambulance will be along in a few minutes, doctor. It was Matron herself I spoke to. She was ever so pleased to know you were here, because she was just going to ring you. Would you be able to come straight away, she said, because there’s an urgent casualty just come in, a head injury, she said, and the patient’s unconscious.”

“Thank you, Nurse. I’ll go along now, if my instruments are boiled.” Hilary stood up briskly, shocked next moment by her own feelings of pleasure and excitement. In the days when she had worked for Sanderson, this would have been simply a typical moment in a packed unremitting routine. Grumbling mechanically, she would have picked up the internal telephone—any scalp lacerations, any bleeding from the nose or ears, any response to painful stimuli? She almost turned to ask the district nurse these questions, but stopped herself in time.

Her instruments were ready. On her way out through the kitchen, she stopped for a few parting admonitions to the husband, by way of striking while the iron was hot. He lowered at her in sullen resentment—
exactly,
Hilary thought,
as if
I
were responsible. By this time he has probably convinced himself that I am. Really, these men.

The Cottage Hospital was in a flutter, with the Matron and Sister in violent circulation; Hilary, who liked smooth-running machinery, felt her irritability increased. The Matron was competent enough in her sphere, but the rare advent of something both acute and complex was apt to go to her head.
Probably,
Hilary thought,
it gets under my skin because I’m going the same way.
In reaction, she affected an easy social manner, which put the Matron on her dignity and produced a certain amount of simmering-down.

It emerged that the history of the patient’s injury was unknown, for he had been found lying in the road and had not since recovered consciousness. She gathered that the signs of gross damage to the brain were so far absent. “Nurse Jones,” the Matron added, “has just finished undressing him.”

Hilary stopped herself from saying, “Well, I hope she hasn’t been rolling him about.” Since her rustication she had trained herself out of many exigencies; but Nurse Jones, a plump china-eyed blonde, still seemed to her less intelligent than any citizen at large had a right to be. This opinion she had concealed less perfectly than she imagined; with the result that in her presence Nurse Jones was shaken out of what simple wit she had. Hilary knew this; found it shaming and infuriating; and began every fresh encounter with good intentions.

The Matron led her to a small single-bedded ward on the ground floor, one generally reserved for the dying. The door stood open, a screen across it inside. Nurse Jones came out of it, a large enamel bowl of soapy water in her hands. Seeing Hilary and the Matron, she pulled up sharply, and the water slopped over the edge of the bowl.

“I don’t think,” said Hilary, “that I should have bathed him just yet, Matron. Is there much shock?”

The Matron, who had not ordered a bath but had forgotten to be explicit, said, “Nurse, you should have known better than to have bathed this patient. I left that to your common sense. Don’t you realize that cases like this are very shocked?”

With the bowl wobbling in her hands, Nurse Jones began to stammer, “I didn’t do much, Matron. I thought, as I was admitting him—in case his feet were dirty or anything, you know. But he was quite clean. I didn’t do much. I’ll just go and get him a bedgown.”

“You should have had it ready, Nurse, before you prepared to bath him.”

“Yes, Matron. I—”

“Well, get it now.”

“Yes, Matron.”

“That will be all right for the moment,” Hilary said. “I shall want him stripped to go over his reflexes.” Seeing the Sister bearing down urgently upon them she added, thankfully, “Don’t let me keep you if you’re busy, Matron; I’ll come and talk him over with you when I’ve had a look.”

Nurse Jones had set down her bowl. Eager to restore her status with a display of zeal, she darted ahead of Hilary into the room, and flung back the bath blanket which lay loosely on the bed. Hilary, following her, noted with speechless exasperation the open window, and the long motionless form of the patient lying in its draft, exposed down to the loins.

With slow, careful control Hilary said, “I meant undressed Nurse, not stark naked. Shall we have that window shut? And then perhaps you’ll bring a couple of hot-water bottles.”

Nurse Jones flushed and hurried away. Hilary stood for a moment tapping one foot on the floor, filled with irrational and conflicting sensations of satisfaction and guilt. They coalesced into a general irritation. She turned sharply toward the bed; took hold of the blanket to twitch it upward; and stood still, its fold suspended in her hand.

Lying flat and straight on the sheet, in a marmoreal peace, was the young rider of the larch wood. A narrow first-aid bandage, covering a cut on his forehead, bound his dark hair like a fillet; his head was turned a little to the left, as if in sleep. As if in sleep, one arm lay on his breast, the other slackly at his side. His body was as strictly cut and as faultless as his face. The black iron bed on which he lay seemed incongruous; he looked like the flower of Sparta brought back from Thermopylae on a shield.

For a few moments, the normal processes of professional routine in Hilary’s mind were wholly arrested. Her reaction was purely human and esthetic. She felt, not compassion, for there was no suffering to awake it, but a kind of awe. Drawing up the blanket, she looked again at the quiet face. On one of the cheekbones the skin had been grazed, and picric dabbed on the place; it jolted her mental mechanisms; the wheels began to go round again. She felt the skin temperature, and noted signs of a fractured collarbone. On the same side, the right, the palm of his hand was scraped. She took his pulse.

It was slow, but not to the point of danger; and the wound on his head proved to be superficial and without sign of deeper injury below. Naturally, there would have to be an X-ray; a portable, he had better not be moved. She proceeded to pick up a fold of chest muscle, and, twisting it expertly, noted in relief a faint flinching indicative of some response to pain. The leg and foot reflexes were normal. Just as she had ascertained this, Nurse Jones reappeared with two hot-water bottles. To her own surprise Hilary smiled at her, and explained the salient points of the case in simple terms. In her haste to be off before the weather took a turn for the worse, Nurse Jones nearly upset the screen.

The Matron presented a problem. She was a competent and practical person; but her notions on the treatment of head injuries were archaic, and the powder of instruction would have to be mixed with liberal coatings of jam. It proved unexpectedly easy, for other preoccupations were keeping her dignity in check.

“That’s very interesting, Dr. Mansell. I’m afraid my nurses get a bit behind with some of the new methods; it will be good experience for them. Now with regard to his condition; you think his relatives ought to be here?”

Hilary considered. The question was a strictly technical one. “I don’t see any need, if you can get at them easily. These cases do queer things, but we ought to get some warning of any deterioration. They’ll only be a nuisance to you, camping about; and if he starts recovering consciousness, that’s just when we’ll have to keep them away. I should leave it, provided they know his condition and can get here in reasonable time if they’re sent for.”

“That’s just what I thought you’d say, Dr. Mansell. I was wondering, if he’s a stranger about here, how soon the police would be able to trace them.”

“Do you mean,” said Hilary, startled, “that you don’t know who he is?”

“Only the surname. That was on his underwear. Of course, when he comes round—”

“He may come round with complete aphasia; probably will. Or, of course, just possibly never.” She listened to her own voice, hard and incisive, and thought,
Do I always talk like this?

“Where was he picked up?” she asked.

“He was found by some people motoring from Birmingham. Of all the silly things, they didn’t phone for the ambulance, just bundled him into their car and brought him here because they’d noticed the sign driving by. You’d think, with a head injury, anyone would have more sense.”

Hilary had no such expectations of the lay intelligence. She further suspected that these rash Samaritans had been responsible for the accident, which would explain their leaning to informality. She said, absently, “What about his horse?”

The Matron was impressed.

“Why, Dr. Mansell, you’re quite a detective, aren’t you? I did mean to have told you he was picked up in riding-things, but it quite slipped my memory.”

“Oh, well,” said Hilary casually, “the injuries were typical. You’ve been through his pockets, of course?”

“Yes; I’ve got everything on my desk, but really it doesn’t tell you much. Do come in, doctor, and take a cup of tea with me, and then perhaps you can do some more of your detecting.”

On the Matron’s desk, a heap of oddments strewed the speckless sheet of the blotter. Hilary turned them over. Seventeen shillings odd in loose silver; a key ring without a name tag; a crushed postage stamp; part of an electric plug; a twist of fuse. Wire; matches; a silver cigarette case, empty, with the initials
J.R.F.
in one corner; an ancient square of wrapped toffee; and a dirty scrap of paper. The little handful suddenly struck her as rather moving. She said, curtly, “Not much help,” and un-folded the paper, which had been used as a spill and burned at one end. Through the creases and rubbings she managed to decipher:
Dear Julian, I shan’t be in Hall tonight, so if by any chance
—The other side of the paper was blank, and there was no date; but she knew the College crest, having been at Oxford herself.

“That ought to do,” she said. “It’s the vac, but someone will be there. A first-year man, I should think; he can’t be more than twenty.” The Matron, to whom the crest conveyed nothing, waited aloofly. “There can’t be two
J.R.F.’s
in one college, I suppose.”

With some self-satisfaction the Matron said, “If you remember, doctor, we have the surname. It was at the top of his chart but perhaps you overlooked it. Fleming was the name.”

“Julian Fleming,” said Hilary. “No, but really—”

“I beg your pardon?”

A little annoyed with herself, Hilary said, “I only meant that by all the laws of human compensation he ought to be called Henry Pratt, or something of that sort, don’t you think?”

“You mean he reminds you of someone called Pratt?”

“Yes,” said Hilary desperately. “I expect that’s it.”

The trunk call was through before they had finished tea. After listening nostalgically, over the wire, to the muted noises of an Oxford street, she learned that Mr. Fleming had gone down in the previous year. In spite of this—which put her guesswork some three years out—the porter sounded, when he heard her business, quite personally upset. He gave the address as Larch Hill, near Lynchwick, Glos., and begged that she would convey to Mr. Fleming his best wishes. As soon as she had disengaged the line, the telephone rang again; she left it for the nurses, and went back to the Matron’s room.

The Matron, in the meantime, had decided that she herself ought to have taken the call, and had to be thawed out with care. Just as the operation could be said to have succeeded, there was a knock at the door.

“I’m so sorry to disturb you, Matron. But I thought you’d like to know that the mother of the new patient, Fleming, has just rung up. She says his horse has come home without him, and she thought this would be the best place to inquire. She seems very much upset. What would you like me to say to her?”

“I’ll speak to her myself, Sister.” The Matron rose, with conscious poise. At the door she turned, with a geniality under which prickles were faintly discernible. “Well, fancy, Dr. Mansell; after all that clever detecting of yours. What a waste, wasn’t it?”

Hilary suppressed an offer to pay for the call to Oxford, and smiled nicely. Left alone, she experienced an odd feeling of flatness. Helpless, nameless, and defenseless, he had given her a feeling of proprietorship which, when she noticed it, struck her as singularly silly. He hardly looked the kind of property to be lying unclaimed for long. She had better look him over thoroughly and make good her escape, leaving the Matron—who would enjoy it—to cope with the swarm of loving relations, fiancées, and candidates on the waiting-list with whom, of course, the place would presently teem.

She opened the door of the little room, and went in.

Almost total darkness greeted her. For a moment bewildered, she then recalled hearing, at a lecture, that this treatment had obtained at some remote pre-Cushing era of the past. She groped her way toward the window.

Her hand was on the blind cord when she was arrested by a sound behind her; a smothered, laboring breath which, perhaps because of the gloom, gave the impression not only of struggle but of acute fear. As she turned to listen again, a voice which was no more than a whisper said, “No.”

Hilary twitched the blind; it shot upward, letting in a clear evening glow of reflected sun. His eyes were open, and turned, it seemed, in her direction, though it might only have been toward the light. They were wide and fixed; before, she had pulled back the lids to examine the pupils, but she seemed to be seeing them now for the first time. Their Celtic gray was startling against his black lashes and brows. Whether he saw her at all, it was impossible to say. His face was set in a stiff mask of suffering, but the eyes and forehead were not contracted as if physical pain had been behind them. She thought that he must be experiencing some kind of hallucination; but the sight of his distress conquered her professional instinct to observe more. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and, finding his good hand under the blanket, took it in both her own.

“It’s all right,” she said, leaning over him. “Everything’s all right. There’s nothing there.”

He drew in a long, gasping breath; she saw the Iris of the eyes contract, trying to focus, then relax into blindness again. His fingers, at first loose and unresponsive, closed round hers and tightened, slowly, into a crushing grip. She could feel the bones of her hand grinding together, and began seriously to wonder if he would succeed in fracturing one of them. Too much interested to be fully conscious of the pain, she sat watching his face. The fixed stare was leaving it and his breathing was easier. Presently his grip on her hand became something that could be comfortably tolerated. She was about to withdraw herself when she saw that he was trying to speak.