Nurse in Love (2 page)

At breakfast, talk at the Sisters’ table ran mainly upon the new ‘intake’ of student nurses due to go on the wards that morning. For, each three months, fourteen to twenty girls left the care of Sister Tutor in the Preliminary Training School and set upon the adventure of real nursing with varying success.

Sister Bridgeworth, a spare, agile woman of th
irty-f
ive, stirred her coffee moodily and dema
n
ded: “Has anyone seen this lot? What are they like?”

“Pretty dumb, I daresay,” suggested a cynic.

“I don’t know,” another voice contributed. “Sister Tutor told me she thought they were well above the average.”

“An incurable optimist, Sister Tutor! According to her, they’re always ‘above the average’. But she should see some of them when they get on to the wards
!”

“All the same, we ought to be fair.” This a little hesitantly from Kathryn. “Do you think, for instance, that they’re any worse than we were? I know that, looking back, I blush for myself
!”

“They start out knowing more, but we had to work harder and pick up our nursing as we went along. When I trained there was no block-system for us. We had to do our theory in our own time. I doubt if these
girls would come through the conditions we knew in those days,” said an elderly Sister who was about to retire.

“I don’t think I agree.” Kathryn was undaunted. “After all, taking up nursing involves a pretty big decision in itself, and no one who really wants to nurse is going to be put o
ff
by any conditions whatsoever.”

The older woman’s eyes softened. “What an idealist you are, Clare! You love every minute of your nursing, don’t you?”

“I’m not the only one,” defended Kathryn. “Sister
Bridgeworth
—
”

“Well, I’m not loving this morning’s prospects, I can tell you.” Sister Bridgeworth stood up briskly and pushed in her chair. “Last time they wished students on to me I told Matron I was in charge of a Medical ward, not a kindergarten.”

“You told Matron nothing of the sort!” Kathryn rose too, and they left the dining-room together. “On the contrary, if I know you, you buckled to and did the work for them. Didn’t you now?”

Sister Bridgeworth had the grace to blush. “It’s often quicker that way,” she allowed.

“Well, I can promise you that you’ve got one student who is intelligent
and
keen,” promised Kathryn. “She’s a friend of mine.”

“What is her name?”

“Spender. Sara Spender. Straight fair hair and blue
eyes.”

“I’ll look out for her. And by the time she’s used to my ways she’ll probably decide that a nursing career is not for her, and s
he’ll l
eave.”

“This one won’t.”

“Well she’ll be whisked off to Theatre or night duty
or something.”

“Of course she will. Aren’t they all? Or didn’t you know that Matron’s duty-list has the game of General Post beaten to a frazzle?” laughed Kathryn as they parted.

On her own ward she was greeted as usual by a babel of childish voices, mostly cheerful, but interspersed here and there by a rising wail of protest. Before going to take the night report she looked in upon one or two of the four-cot wards, where she opened a window, ruffled a tousled head or two, scanned a chart and responded to the gay chorus of: “G’ morning, Sister!”

In her office the senior night nurse awaited her with the report. But before she began to chant mechanically through it Kathryn asked quickly: “Did you have any admissions, Nurse
?
”

“Yes one. From Casualty. A boy named Roger Horrick. Five, he is. Eight-thirty last night. Fractured tibia, bruises and shock.” The girl looked up from the report. “A lorry ran him down, Sister.”

“Yes, I know. I saw it happen. That’s
why
I asked,”

“Oh, Sister
—
! He’s not in danger, though.”

“Good. Have his people seen him?”

“His mother came in for a few minutes last night She’s to come again to-day.”

“All right, I’ll go and see him. And now what’s the rest of the report, Nurse?”

When the night staff had completed their work and gone off duty, the ward slipped smoothly into its customary daytime routine. The children, naturally, were unaware that this particular day held any special prospect, but Kathryn and the staff were alert with the expectancy of seeing the ward’s new specialist upon
his first round.

Kathryn went for her morning break at nine-thirty, calculating that he would not arrive until after she got back. And she planned, on her return, to go to spend a little time with Roger Horrick, who had been fretful when she left.

But when she went to the single-cot ward where he lay she was surprised to find that he was no longer alone.

On one side of his bed stood a man with his back to the door—it could only be Dr
.
Brand, she decided. On the other stood a working woman who started dumbly across at him while her fingers pleated ceaselessly at a corner of the child’s coverlet.

Kathryn closed the door behind her, and at the sound the man turned. A
nd
, upon the instant, recognition flashed between them. In Kathryn’s mind there was no doubt at all that they both knew they had met before, and that it had been at this same child’s side, as now. But Dr
.
Brand made no sign. He allowed his eyes to travel briefly over her, then said:

“My name is Brand. You’ll have been expecting me. You are Sister Clare, I take it?”

“Good morning, Dr
.
Brand. Yes, I’m Children’s Ward Sister.”

Afterwards she wondered what she had expected of this surprise meeting. Embarrassment? Apology?

But Dr
.
Brand merely nodded and turned back to the bed, replacing the covers. To Mrs
.
Horrick he said drily: “Roger is fortunate, you know. Not much wrong with him that won’t heal quickly. But you realise, don’t you, that you’re not going to be able to let him run such risks again? A child of five—and out on the streets at that hour of night! What are you
thinking of to allow it?”

The woman opened her mouth once or twice before she burst out: “I can’t help it, Doctor. At night
I
clean offices in the West End, and I have to leave home at five o’clock. Can’t put him to bed that early, can I? There’s nobody to look after him. I’m a widow.”

“Have you no neighbours you could leave him with?”

“It’s the neighbours’ lads who come round and take him on the streets,” she retorted.

“Well, can’t you get daytime work near home, so that you would be out when he is at school and at home with him when he should be in bed?
”

To that she made no reply, but an incoherent mutter to the effect that “getting work on your own doorstep wasn’t that easy—let the Doctor try, some time”, and Kathryn, pitying her said quickly: “Perhaps you’d like Mrs
.
Horrick to see the Social Worker, Doctor Brand? I could speak to her about the case.”

“Yes, do. No—I’ll see the Social Worker myself.” He turned back to Mrs
.
Horrick. “Sister will let you come in again to-morrow, I daresay. Meanwhile the boy will be all right.”

She read his words as dismissal and scuttled away. Kathryn ventured, “It’s very difficult for mothers who go out to work, you know.”

His eyes met hers uncompromisingly. “But one can’t blame the children—or hope to teach them caution at that age. They’ve got to be someone’s responsibility, and whose but the parents’?”

“I suppose Mrs
.
Horrick would have got daytime work if she could,” murmured Kathryn.

He shrugged. “Yes, well—I propose to put that to the test. I’ve just moved into a house nearby, and I
suppose I shall need a daily woman. That’s why I said
I
’d like to see the Social Worker. T dar
esay she’ll
be able to get me
Mrs.
Horrick’s references and all that.”

Kathryn glanced at him in grateful surprise. Nothing of his brusque manner towards the child’s mother had revealed this warmth of purpose behind his questions. She said impulsively: “That sounds like a happy ending, Doctor!”

“Surely no more than an obvious solution, Sister?” Above his straight grey eyes his brows were raised in a way she was to come to know well. It was his dismissal of a subject of no further significance to him. And it had, she decided at her first experience of it, a damping effect.

As they made the round of the rest of the ward she could not but admire his manner with those most difficult of patients—children. His very hands seemed to have a gentle understanding which even the tiny babies could trust; he asked the minimum of questions, and his orders were given with a precision which even the junior nurse could appreciate. And Kathryn’s mental verdict was a thankful one—“He’ll take some knowing. But working with hi
m
should be worthwhile!”

They returned together to her office, and as he bent to sign some papers with a scrawled “Adam Brand” she stood by, watching him and realising with a little sense of shock that in the brief pause she was seeing him not so much as a welcome colleague as with an instant electric awareness of him as a man.

She found herself noticing the controlled strength of the fingers spread to support him as he wrote; appraising the way the hair grew back from the broad, intelligent brow; judging him to be about twelve years her senior—and for some reason comparing him with
Steven—with Steven Carter, who she had not been able to love
...

He straightened and handed the papers to her. Then he stood back from the table and with a deliberate effect which sounded oddly like an accusation, said: “So you are Kathryn?”

She looked at him, recognising the use of her Christian name for what it was—neither a friendliness nor a familiarity but a quotation of someone else’s use of it. But what friends had they in common? She replie
d
with a hesitant: “My name is Kathryn, yes. But—?”

Adam Brand said: “Steven Carter is one of my oldest friends, you know.” He still spoke with a weighty seriousness she did not understand. But at Steven’s name she smiled. So that was the link.

She said eagerly: “Steven was? No, I didn’t know
—
”

“ ‘Was’?” He took up the word sharply, unsmilingly. “He still is. Or hadn’t you heard that, after his life was despaired of, he has recovered from the blood
-
poisoning he contracted within a week of his landing at Lagos?”

“I had heard, naturally—from Thelma, his sister.”

“Not from Steven himself?”

“I understood from Thelma that he was too ill to write. We hadn’t corresponded at all, anyway.”

“It hadn’t occurred to you that, being as ill as he was, he might
have
hungered to hear from you—above anybody? Or that the weight of your responsibility for his falling ill should have driven you to seek at least firsthand news of him?” This time there was no mistaking the bite of accusation in Adam Brand’s voice.

A slow flush mounted in Kathryn’s cheeks. Carefully, lest she should say too much, she said: “Since you know Steven well, you’ll know that, on his accenting that six months’ trial appointment in West Africa, he asked me to marry him, and I refused.
I
—liked Steven, but I didn’t write to him because we’d made a clean break. Of course I was sorry to hear he’d been seriously ill. But you can’t really hold me responsible for illness, several thousand miles away!”

“Directly, no, perhaps. Indirectly, as I see it, yes. For nothing less than a personal tragedy he could scarcely brook could possibly have made him so crassly negligent of the most elementary precautions to be taken by a newcomer to a tropical climate. Steven is a doctor with a duty to himself that’s no less than his duty towards others. He wouldn’t have forgotten that, or even have become careless of it, if he hadn’t let himself be broken by an experience he suffered before leaving England. No, Kathryn Clare, I’m afraid my feeling for him is too strong to let you shirk the load of that!”

For all her dismay at the injustice his intolerant judgment did her, Kathryn knew a flash of instinctive sympathy for the strength—and the blindness!
—
of this man’s friendship for Steven which prompted it. And that moment’s insight kept her voice quiet as she said: “Nothing I did to Steven could have hurt him to the point you suggest. I merely—had my reasons for refusing him. So far as I know, he went out to Nigeria believing I’d acted for the best.”

Somehow she could not bring herself to say simply, “I didn’t love Steven Carter”, for about this fantastic argument there was nothing simple. And she scorned to offer the lesser reason—that Thelma Carter’s dominance over her brother and his fanatical deference to
her would have been fatal to their marriage. For Adam Brand’s feeling for Thelma might well be as strong as that which he had for Steven, and Kathryn had no intention of criticising Thelma to him.