Surgeon of Distinction

by Mary Burchell

  “Yes, yes. There was no doubt of it. He seemed to think I had been away for some time—he was evidently aware of some sort of hiatus. But he appeared—satisfied—not at all distressed. He just shut his eyes again, and I think he’s unconscious once more.”

  “Well, I’ll take good care of him,” Sister Evans promised. “And I’ll leave a message for you in the morning to let you know what sort of night he had.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much,” Alma said. And she went on her way, with a lighter heart than she had had for many a day.

  It was unwise, she kept on telling herself, to attach too much importance to a few disjointed words, spoken as Jeremy was returning to consciousness. But nothing could entirely take away from the fact that he had called her “darling” and had apparently missed her.

  The next few days, however, dragged past uneventfully and with nothing at all to increase her hopes. From Sister Evans’ brief but succinct reports she gathered that at least Jeremy was holding his own. But there was no complete return to consciousness. Only the occasional flicker of lucidity, and on none of these occasions was Alma present again.

  Saturday she found was to be her off-duty day that week, and apparently Maxwell Perring found that out too. At any rate, on the Friday he asked her if she would care to come out to his sister’s home for the following afternoon and evening.

  “Thank you, sir. I should like it very much,” Alma said, torn between the desire to stay near Jeremy, however little she could be of use, and the longing to get right away from the emotional tangle in which she was now involved.

  “We live in a small place called Windhurst, about twelve miles from St. Albans,” he explained. “If you catch the two-thirty to St. Albans, I’ll meet you there and drive you the rest of the way.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Alma repeated. “And Nurse Grayce? Will she be coming too?”

  “I’m not quite sure.” He frowned slightly. “She seems a bit vague about her off-duty time. But she usually comes home at the weekend if she gets the opportunity. Have a word with her, and no doubt you’ll travel together if she decides to come.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Alma, thinking how very little she would like that.

  She perfectly understood Geraldine’s intentional vagueness about her off-duty times. No doubt she too felt the over-riding urge to be near Jeremy at any cost. And, although Alma could not blame her for this, the silent, unacknowledged rivalry between them seemed to take on added point because of it.

  To have to ask Geraldine what she intended to do at the weekend had appeared difficult when Maxwell Perring suggested it. On reflection, it became very nearly impossible. And, in a cowardly sort of way, Alma decided to leave the initiative to the other girl. If she said something, well and good. If they met at the station, she would make the best of it. If she failed to turn up at all, then Maxwell Perring and his sister would simply suppose that she had no off-duty time available.

  On Saturday morning, Alma was able to sleep later than usual and allow herself that precious luxury in the nursing profession—a leisurely rising. But once she was up and dressed, she was consumed by the restless desire to see Jeremy, if only for a moment even if he were still unconscious.

  It was going to be a little difficult, as Sister Evans would be off duty and she would have to explain her particular interest all over again to whoever was in charge during the day. But, telling herself not to be self-conscious about a rather ordinary situation, Alma went downstairs and sought out the sister in charge of Jeremy’s corridor.

  Sister Pollock—a younger and more easy-going proposition than Sister Evans—appeared to find nothing remarkable in Alma’s wish to go in and see her friend.

  “You’ll find quite an improvement,” she said cheerfully. “I can see a considerable change since I went off duty yesterday. Seems as though he’s more or less recovered consciousness at last, although he’s naturally a bit vague about things and people. Go in, by all means. It might be a good idea for him to see someone he really knows.”

  So Alma entered the room, her hopes high and her heart beating a little more rapidly than usual. As she did so, she realized that Geraldine was in the room, silently busying herself (or appearing to do so) at a table near the window.

  She turned quickly. But not before Alma had noticed that Jeremy was lying with his eyes closed, though obviously only dozing. Certainly he looked very different from when he had lain there in deep unconsciousness.

  “He’s asleep,” Geraldine said, in a fierce, resentful little whisper.

  “So I see.” Alma also spoke in a whisper, and she silently approached the bed, even though the other girl’s glance said how unwelcome she was.

  She stood there beside him for a moment. And once more—almost as though her presence impinged upon him without the need of sound or sight—he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

  “Then I didn’t dream you,” he said, more strongly than he had spoken before, and smilingly he put out a weak hand and touched her.

  “No. I’m real.” She smiled too, and put her hand over his.

  “What happened?” he wanted to know.

  “There was an accident. You were knocked down by a motor-bike.”

  “How humiliating.” He gave a faint version of his characteristic grin. “It might have been a Rolls-Bentley, while we were about it.”

  “You’re getting better now,” she assured him. “Am I? I find it rather difficult to work things out clearly.”

  “Don’t try,” said Alma, aware, though she did not look up, that Geraldine had drawn near, at the other side of the bed.

  For a moment he seemed inclined to take that literally and relapse into silence. Then he roused himself instead and asked,

  “Were you with me when it happened?”

  “Why—why, no.” She stammered slightly, for the full recollection of the events of that evening suddenly swept back upon her.

  And, as though sensing the moment of advantage, Geraldine said quietly, from the other side of the bed, “You had just said goodnight to me and left me.” He turned his head slowly and stared at her.

  “Had I?” He frowned slightly, either in puzzlement or because it hurt him to turn his head.

  “Yes.” Geraldine leaned forward and smiled at him so winningly that Alma was overwhelmingly frightened. “We had spent the evening together. Don’t you remember?”

  In that moment Alma shut her eyes, for she did not think she could bear to see the dawning look of loving recollection on Jeremy’s face.

  Then she heard his voice say slowly and haltingly, “No—I don’t remember a thing. As far as I know—I’ve never seen you in my life before.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Alma HEARD a gasp of dismay from the other girl, and opened her eyes to see Geraldine Grayce staring at her across the bed with an expression of hatred that was understandable perhaps, but disconcerting in its nakedness.

  She flinched for a moment, then her professional instinct reasserted itself and she knew that the first essential was to guard the patient from any sense of conflict.

  “We won’t discuss it just now.” She was surprised at the quietness of her own voice. Then to Jeremy, who still looked puzzled and even rather distressed, she added, “You’ll remember everything presently. For the moment, don’t worry. Simply rest and do as you’re told.”

  “I was never good at that,” he reminded her with a faint grin. But he closed his eyes obediently and appeared to think the conversation was at an end.

  Slowly, Alma turned and went out of the room and, after a moment, Geraldine followed her and caught up with her beside one of the long windows.

  “What does it mean?” Her voice was shaking with anger as well as dismay. “He must know me! He knows you. Why not me too? It’s like a—a conspiracy. As though it had been arranged.”

  “Nothing has been arranged.” Alma spoke calmly still, though it was difficult to stifle her anger at this most unfortunate choice of expression. “It
isn’t unusual for someone with his type of injury to have a lapse of memory.”

  “But he remembers you!” It was evident that this was the galling fact which could not be accepted.

  “He has known me longer. I’m more—what shall I say?—embedded in his consciousness, I suppose.” But the other girl was not willing to accept that, either.

  “It’s not fair!” she cried angrily, and Alma had difficulty in not retorting that life had been pretty unfair to her during the weeks of Geraldine’s ascendancy. But she controlled herself and said, as patiently as she could,

  “Jeremy is sick. He’s a good deal confused mentally at the present time. It’s no one’s fault that he remembers certain things and forgets others. This is a stage that will probably pass—”

  “Probably? It must pass!”

  “That’s as may be,” Alma said a little coldly. “I don’t know how well you knew him, but—”

  “I told you! We were—engaged.”

  “Well—” Alma hesitated, wondering whether it were her heart or her mind which stubbornly refused to accept that statement in its entirety.

  “I tell you it is so!” Geraldine spoke with such vehemence that Alma found herself glancing round lest anyone should come along and see what must look like an unseemly wrangle between two members of the staff. No one was in sight, however, and, determined to end this fruitless discussion, she said firmly. “I’m not prepared to argue that statement, but—”

  “You mean you prefer to think me a liar?”

  “No. I mean I’m not in a position to judge the situation. So far as I am concerned, Jeremy is a good friend of mine, whom I’ve known a long time—”

  “You’re in love with him yourself, aren’t you?” the other girl flung at her angrily and contemptuously. And so unexpected was the crudeness of the attack that Alma groped unavailingly for words in which to rebut it.

  To her dismay, she found she simply could not just make a categorical denial of her deepest feelings. It would be too much like a betrayal. Instead, she prevaricated with what dignity she could muster.

  “I can’t have you speaking to me like that,” she said with what she hoped was authority. “You’re being quite extraordinarily impertinent, and this has nothing to do with the situation at all.”

  “But of course it has!” Goaded past reasonable self-control, Geraldine gave a scornful little laugh. “It isn’t even an unusual situation, except for Jeremy’s losing his memory. It’s just a case of two girls wanting the same man. And he was mine until this happened. You were only a past incident in his life. I know. He told me so.”

  “How dare you! That isn’t true.” Alma was stung at last into personal argument, even though she knew this was the last thing she should permit.

  “It’s perfectly true.” Suddenly it was Geraldine who was cool and collected and Alma who was agitated beyond description. “When he first told me he loved me, I teased him and suggested there was someone else. He took me quite seriously and said, ‘Oh, that’s over!’ I suppose he meant you.”

  With a pain that made her dig her nails into her palms, Alma supposed so too. But somehow she kept her voice steady, as she replied,

  “You must know that you’re jumping to the most absurd conclusions, and I’m not prepared to continue this talk any longer. I don’t know whether you know, but I’m going down to your home this afternoon—Mr. Perring kindly invited me. Are you coming too?”

  For a moment Geraldine seemed to have some difficulty in switching her attention to another subject. Then she said, in an off-hand way,

  “Not until later. I’m on duty until five o’clock. Tomorrow is my day off, and I’ll go down home some time this evening.”

  “Very well.” Alma hardly bothered to conceal her relief at the realization that at least they would not have to travel together. And then she went away, indescribably shaken by all that had happened.

  She would have been less than human not to feel some sort of elation that Jeremy remembered her, lovingly and eagerly, while he had forgotten Geraldine’s very existence. But this, she knew, was only one aspect of the tangled situation. What was to happen when he did recover his memory completely?—If he ever did.

  It was possible, she supposed, though not particularly probable, that he might never remember the blank weeks just before his accident. And, in that case, unfair though it might seem, Geraldine would remain a stranger to him. Where they went from there Alma could not imagine.

  On the other hand, if he continued to behave with all the old affection and possessiveness towards herself, only to find later that he was committed, if not actually engaged, to another girl, what would his reaction be?

  She was thankful that at least she was not on duty in the theatre that day. For with all the self-discipline in the world it would have been hard to keep one’s mind entirely on one’s work.

  After lunch she set out for her visit to Windhurst, with a pleasant feeling of interest and anticipation which even her anxiety could not entirely blot out. She was wearing a grey silk suit which matched the color of her eyes, and she carried a soft rose-colored scarf which Jeremy had once bought for her, with the comment that it reminded him of the dash of color which showed in her cheeks when she was excited.

  “Oh, darling Jeremy!” Alone in the compartments she pressed the scarf against her cheek, savoring its delicacy and softness as though it were some sort of caress from the hand which had given it. “If only he gets quite well—and yet loves me still!”

  Her journey to St. Albans was uneventful, and when she arrived at the station, Maxwell Perring was waiting for her. She saw his tall figure at the barrier, even before she was within hailing distance, and as he raised his hand and smiled a greeting, she thought how informal he looked and, in some curious way, younger, when she saw him out of his usual setting.

  As he piloted her out to the waiting car, he enquired pleasantly about her journey and then about Geraldine’s non-appearance.

  “She’s on duty until five,” Alma explained, “but I think she expects to come down later in the evening.”

  “No more definite arrangement than that?”

  “No.”

  “Then no doubt she will take the bus from here. There is a reasonably good connection with most of the trains,” he said, and Alma could not help thinking that, in that case, it had been specially nice of him to drive in to fetch herself.

  As soon as they were free of the city’s traffic and out in the open country, he began to talk, and it was not many minutes before he enquired after Jeremy, whose case, she knew, interested him profoundly.

  “I went in to see him this morning,” she explained carefully. “Sister Pollock told me there had been a marked improvement since yesterday, and it was true. He recognized me and spoke quite lucidly.”

  “Come, that’s excellent! Those long periods of almost unbroken unconsciousness were getting me a little worried,” Maxwell Perring confessed. “It was a complete recognition, you say?”

  “Oh, yes. There was just a flicker of recognition a few days ago, you know. But this was something quite different. He said only a few words—I thought it best not to let him talk much—but what he said was normal.”

  “And yet you’re not entirely satisfied?”

  “Why, sir”—Alma turned and looked at him, disconcerted—“h-how did you know?”

  “By exercising whatever faculty I have for assessing my patients’ reactions, I suppose,” he replied, drily but not unkindly.

  “Well—you’re right, of course.” She was half reluctant, half eager to take him into her confidence. “The disturbing tiling was that he did not recognize the other person he should have known.”

  “Geraldine, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know her as well as he knew you?”

  “He—he hadn’t known her so long.”

  “A nice distinction.” The corners of his mouth twitched in that faintly sardonic smile which some nurses had been kno
wn to describe as horrid. “Did he entirely fail to recognize her?”

  “Entirely. He said that, as far as he knew, he had never seen her before in his life. Though, of course, she was in fact that last person who was with him before the accident happened.”

  “Interesting,” observed Maxwell Perring, a trifle too academically, Alma thought.

  “It’s also rather distressing,” Alma ventured to point out.

  “Do you mean he is distressed?”

  “Oh, no. Not really. I mean the—the whole situation is distressing.”

  “It need not be. This phase will almost certainly pass.”

  “But when?” Alma could not help asking with some urgency.

  “That I can’t say.” He turned the car into a winding, tree-shaded lane. “One sometimes has to be very patient in a case of this sort.”

  Alma tried not to show any hint of the wild impatience which beset her every time she thought of Jeremy, and presently the car came to a stop before a long, low, half-timbered house, which looked as though it had stood among the trees and lawns that surrounded it for unnumbered tranquil years.

  “What a lovely house!” Alma got out of the car and stood looking round her, enchanted. “And what a peaceful setting.”

  “Yes. It’s a pleasant place.” Maxwell Perring also glanced round, with an air of relaxation and enjoyment which made Alma realize that, calm though he always remained, there were times, at the end of a long day in the theatre, when he looked tense and weary.