Heartbreak Surgeon (1960s Medical Romance Book 2)

by Sheila Burns

He took her down in his car; he talked of ordinary things again. They entered the deer park through massive bronzed gates with a crest on them, and drove slowly down an avenue of chestnuts. They were just beginning to light their candles for the spring. About the world in the sweetness of Maytime, there was an infectious beauty, so that one believed fairy-tales could come true.

  His father was a silver-haired patriarch, the sort of majestic gentleman who is always polite to women. They ate their lunch on the loggia, amidst baskets of marguerites and hydrangeas, and afterwards Michael took her to the stables to see the horses. I’m dreaming this, Lorna thought, all this.

  Although a girl may be well aware of the danger of a dream, and of the hopelessness of thinking that this is the story which ends they-lived-happily-ever-after, there is no power great enough in the world to stop her vaguely believing in it. They left early, for Michael had a busy day tomorrow, and somehow as they drove away she felt in the loveliness of early evening a new association between them, a closeness, and a fresh joy.

  She glanced at his handsome dark looks, and he, aware of it, turned and grinned.

  ‘Will I do?’ he asked.

  ‘You are a very great surgeon.’

  ‘Today I’m not thinking of surgery. Do I make a good friend?’ and then, ‘Have you ever been in love?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said with some emotion, and quickly, ‘don’t ask silly questions.’

  ‘You’re a ridiculous girl! Why should you think that is absurd?’

  ‘I don’t want to fall in love.’

  ‘I am always falling in love. I’m in love now,’ and the bright eyes smiled. It was not the look across the whiteness of the gauze mask.

  ‘Well, I’m not always falling in love.’

  He said, ‘This place? You’d like it? You’d wish to live here, would you? Or do you hate deer, and have you a sort of allergy to big houses?’

  ‘I’m never likely to live here.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  Now, driving her own car along the lanes of home, she was remembering everything that he had said, the way that he had said it, and her own eager response. ‘Think about it, darling,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to think about anything so silly.’

  ‘But it’s not silly, it’s true. I’m a curious man, I know, you’ll have to put up with my funny ways. Perhaps I am a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who knows? Perhaps nobody will ever really understand me. Perhaps I’m …’ He lifted her hand and kissed it.

  Contact made it all so much worse. She never knew what she did, she seemed to lose hold of her life, and release the reins in some naive way that betrayed her; but he had her in his arms and kissed her again and again. Then, almost as if both of them realised that this was wrong, he let her go gently, murmured something that she did not quite understand, and drove on. The unreality of it all was like an autumn mist that had suddenly come down on them. She was desperately happy, and supremely unhappy, in one and the same moment. They parted near the hospital; both knew it would be unwise to approach the precincts together, and she accepted that.

  She walked in to the nurses’ home as though she wore Cinderella slippers and was going to heaven in them. Now she could not think how she had been so idiotic! She had believed the foolish things he had said, believed that the hand she had watched operate and which in those magical moments had held her own, had meant every caress. Jealous nurses had nicknamed him the Heartbreak Surgeon. He was nothing of that really.

  Next day he did not operate. He had developed German measles! It was so maddening that an absurd complaint like that could butt into her life and upset everything. She did not know whether to write or not, then did nothing, for after all what is German measles? Nothing. He was gone three whole weeks. She had the days counted off in her heart, and on the very day he was due to return Nurse Vincent stopped her as she went into breakfast.

  ‘You’ve seen the news?’

  ‘I’ve seen nothing.’

  ‘The Heartbreak Surgeon is getting married. The engagement is announced, Frances something or other, would you believe it?’

  Lorna knew that she would go chalk-white and there was nothing she could do to stop herself, and she only hoped that little Vincent was so excited that she did not notice what was happening. She tattled on.

  ‘She’s a distant cousin, daughter of Lady Victoria something or other, and very very rich. I suppose he is the sort of man who just could marry for money. But would you believe it! I don’t envy her, he may have the most awful temper, dark-eyed men often have.’

  Lorna had eaten no breakfast. She had just prayed that the gods would be kind to her and that she would not run into Michael today. She wanted time to recover; time to realise that something unbelievable had happened, or that she had just run away with herself, misled by her heart.

  She did not see him for a week, and by that time she had primed herself. But all that week she had failed at meal times, and once she had fainted in the ward, and had been dismissed from duty by Sister.

  Then she did meet him; coming out of the theatre and rounding the corner of the corridor she ran unexpectedly into him. She still wore her gown and mercifully had a mask over her mouth so that he would not see how it trembled. He looked at her. At all costs she must conceal from him the fact that he had hurt her so terribly, he must never know and she must never admit it. Michael wore one of those dark suits of his, no wonder the patients called him the well-dressed doctor.

  ‘Why, it’s Lorna!’ he said.

  She lost her head, of course, and what could he expect from a girl who had been so desperately in love? Her voice no longer sounded quite like her own, for it was riddled with emotion. ‘I’m awfully busy,’ she answered.

  He put out a hand to stay her. ‘You’re angry with me, aren’t you? What a silly girl you are! I couldn’t help it, you know.’

  ‘I have to fetch something for Sister.’

  ‘My marriage was planned when we were both in our cradles, almost as if we were a prince and princess who never get the chance to choose their loves.’

  It wasn’t true, she knew. He said it just to make the most of the moment, and all she could do was to stammer. ‘Yes, yes of course I knew! Don’t think it mattered, I’ve never even given it a second thought.’

  He grabbed her wrist, and for a moment detained her, and the contact hurt quite badly. It was as if he had gripped her heart and twisted it.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, then dropped the hand and walked away.

  Lorna did not know whether to blaze into fury, or burst into tragic weeping. But it was in that moment that she knew how deeply she loved him, how much she wanted him, and that she could not bear the thought of a life which excluded him. He had gone before she realised it, and she had applied for the ten days’ leave because she could not bear the thought of ever meeting him again like that. It might be true; perhaps he did still love her, but somehow she could not accept that! She could not meet it face to face.

  Now she was driving out in the quiet evening in the little car her kind parents had given to her, and she was trying to make up her mind what to do with her future.

  Not return to St. Botolph’s, of course. There are some things which are impossible, however advisable. Take the job if she could get it, the one that was offered in Cornwall. Yes, take the job, said her heart. Better the completely unknown than the horror of continuing to work with a man who had betrayed her so badly. Forget him.

  If I can, she thought, and in vivid contradiction, but how do I forget him? She had loved him far more than she had realised, and there could never be anybody else again who was quite as lovely as he was, or quite as dear. And this, in spite of the deceit. In spite of everything.

  Her mother had said, ‘You’re not well, dear, is something the matter?’

  That was the moment of course, but one never takes it. ‘It’s just the hospital, the routine and the food. I want to get away from the place.’

  As she said it
the thought of an avenue of chestnut trees lighting their summertime candles faded into nothingness, and the old house with the kind old man in it, faded into nothingness and had gone. I’m mad, she thought, bewitched in a fairy-tale way. At the time it had seemed quite impossible that Michael did not mean it; that idea had never occurred to her, as they drove along together, with the springtime scents about them, and him so close to her. It had seemed that a great big world of happiness opened itself up to her, and she stood enchanted on its threshold.

  Her mother said, ‘This is just a passing worry, you know, and it will change. Don’t do anything foolish. Don’t ruin the whole of your future career by shooting off into the blue because life has been difficult, and you have got run down with it.’

  Lorna had talked perhaps a little aimlessly about the prospects life had for her. The chances of becoming a nurse on board ship; nurse at an airport; perhaps to some rich old lady in a wonderful ancestral home with everything to offer her and the probability of travel. There were such jobs.

  ‘But darling, finish up at the hospital. Become a Sister,’ her mother begged. There was pain in the tired eyes that once had been so pretty. Mrs. Vane was definitely anxious. Her own life had held difficulties, she had ruined her own career because of a love affair that had gone wrong. She had been on the stage, with the exciting life in Rep., a world of props, baskets, stages, draughty behind scenes, stuffy in ‘the house’. She had dreamt of stardom.

  At the time there had been a young man who had glittered into her life, and the heart which she believed was dedicated to the footlights suddenly let her down. The affair was futile. He was already married, she found later, one of those men who made a habit of amusing himself with Rep. companies, and could only enjoy being alive if on the verge of the romantic affair. She had given up her career because he told her his parents would not like it. Too late, she had realised that in this life there is no going back.

  ‘It’s so much wiser to get your career established first, dear,’ she said, ‘and you ought to go on until you become a Sister; you really ought.’

  Perhaps, Lorna thought, it would have been easier if she could have forced herself to tell her mother all about it, but at this stage she couldn’t. She could not bear to mention it. It was idiotic that words could hurt so much, but they could sting, and did.

  If she stayed on at St. Botolph’s for the one year more, about which her mother was so insistent, it meant that she would be seeing Michael every day. He would be the phantom in the operating theatre, the ghost who any moment might walk the wards. Every corner would be dangerous, for he could be coming round it, and she did not think she could bear that.

  The hospital would discuss his marriage; oh, the chatter in the nurses’ common room and dining-room, and then there would be the honeymoon comment, and after that the thrill of the first baby. She could see the teasing, haunting sequence of events, and knew that she could not bear the sharp wounds that her fellow nurses’ comments would inflict.

  Michael had hurt her too badly.

  ‘It’s my own life, Mum,’ she had said, and instantly recognised the pain in her mother’s eyes, the apprehension and the doubts. It seemed so unfair to be hurting anyone as kind as her mother was, like this, just because he had hurt her!

  ‘When one is oneself wounded, then one wounds others,’ she said quickly.

  ‘What has happened, darling?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I know I’m being difficult and don’t blame me entirely for it. I’ve had a rotten headache all day, I’ll go out for a drive and get some air.’ She got up, knowing that her mother’s eyes were still questioning, and however much Lorna loved her mother, she simply could not find the words into which to put this.

  ‘All right, dear.’

  Mrs. Vane did not understand. Perhaps that’s just as well, Lorna thought. Later, when she had taken the car out, Mum would go out to Dad, who was mowing the lawn in the falling light, and probably she would say, ‘I suppose all modern children are like this, but isn’t it awful? So worrying! I suspect that she is going to throw up her whole career, and whatever can we do to stop her?’

  From the doorway, Lorna spoke again, ‘I’m so sorry to be so difficult, Mum.’

  ‘That’s all right. You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ and she let Lorna go. Mum was one of those sweet women who could be good about the things that she did not understand. Bless her heart.

  Lorna went out into the garden where Dad was now shoving the mower into the shed, for already it was getting too dense a twilight for him to see clearly any more.

  ‘Not going out again, Lornie?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve still got a foul headache and I need air. I shan’t be long, can’t, because already it’s getting dark.’

  She wished that she could have told him the truth, but she couldn’t, because mere words still had the power to distress her so much. She must pull herself together. What she really needed was something exciting to happen, some big event which by crowding on to the stage of the present, pushed the immediate past into perspective.

  She backed the little car out; her parents had given it to her when she qualified, and it was her pride and joy. She backed it into the lane, where in springtime the bluebells were a sheet of azure, and before them pale primroses dotted their stars. She was sentimental, perhaps she was weak, but sentiment was no sin, and in the wards Sister Henson always said that Nurse Vane was the one who never lost her head. Yet in her own personal life, perhaps she did lose her head.

  She was setting out on a journey which with the keen fresh air, the countrified scents and the silence, would help to pull her together. The roads were clear, and deliciously cool after the heat of the day.

  Lorna drove quietly, not hurrying, and with no particular destination, just the longing to get right away and fight this thing out with herself. The twilight slipped from that soft amethyst into the vivid violet of night itself. It seemed all in the same moment that the real darkness came, then the moonlight, and the stars suddenly spangled the sky in delicious twinkling garlands.

  ‘I can forget Michael and I must’, she told herself, but she swung more towards the job that she had seen advertised and which looked like providence. It might be a darling old lady, someone whom she could really love, and this holiday would help her to come to a decision. It was crazy to let Michael spoil her life, he wasn’t worth it anyway, he was just the Heartbreak Surgeon who specialised in this sort of thing.

  With an effort she conquered the memory of him in the operating theatre, and those dark eyes looking at her light ones over his white gauze mask. A yashmak which concealed the provocative invitation of a mouth, she had once thought. The challenge of those eyes was something that she could not meet, she would not be asked to meet it again, perhaps, and she must make the break to escape it. There would be all the gossip which always went the rounds amongst the student nurses, who delighted in chatter about the amours of the Sisters and the staff nurses. That would magnify her personal wretchedness. Obviously escape was the answer. I’ll be strong about this, she thought, and now with the gentle coolness she realised that the headache was better.

  She jammed on the brakes.

  A man had stepped off the verge into the road, a man who was carrying in one hand a heavy suitcase, or so she thought; he wore no hat, and she got the impression that he was tired out. He thumbed a lift. In the darkness she could not clearly see him, but she had an idea that he was youngish, probably in the late twenties (that at most), slender, and very very tired. She drew the car into the side.

  ‘You want a lift?’

  ‘I do, and how!’ The voice was not unpleasant, a trifle gruff, though, almost as if he resented having to endorse his acceptance with the words ‘and how!’.

  ‘I could drop you at Hitchin if that would be all right for you?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and she had a rather uneasy impression that if she had said Royston or Bedford it would have made little difference to him. But be
fore that thought took root, he was in the car and beside her, the suitcase at his feet.

  ‘Better put the suitcase in the back, then you’ll have more room?’ she suggested.

  ‘Thanks no, I like it here. I like it with me.’

  Lorna started the car again. The roads were very empty, and the night had now begun. It was going to be very dark, a darkness against which the occasional bright light coming from some cottage made a brilliant contrast.

  ‘Have a cigarette?’ he asked her, and brought out a battered case, opening it clumsily.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you are the miracle girl?’

  ‘I don’t know about that; I’m a trained nurse, and I never think that smoking goes awfully well with my calling.’

  It took him a moment to get her remark; she had the feeling that he was turning it over rather untidily in his mind. ‘So you’re a nurse, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had to admit that she did not like the way that he sprang questions at her, with an abruptness which verged on rudeness. She wished that the darkness were a little less dense and she could have seen his face, for like this she could not see it. Only a pair of startlingly clear whites to his eyes, the eyes themselves moving in that sea of opaque whiteness which showed above and below them. He wore a scarf looped high about his throat as though he were afraid of catching cold, which at this time of year, and in the balmy warmth of the night, was impossible, surely?

  For the first time she had a pricking feeling in her throat, something which always came when she was half afraid, and which was in itself disturbing.

  ‘You nurse near here?’

  ‘No, I work in a big London hospital. I’m on leave.’

  ‘I bet you see life?’

  ‘Some people would say so,’ she agreed.

  He moved his body round towards her so that he could see her, and still she could not see his actual face, anyway she had to keep her eyes on the road. ‘And men? Do lots of the men make love to you?’

  The remark quickened her pulse. She felt her body tense sharply, and she put on the brake.