Surgeon of Distinction

by Mary Burchell

  “Certainly not,” said Maxwell Perring, with the air of a man who was not at all used to having anything he said queried.

  “Of course—I—I wasn’t thinking.” Alma flushed and gave an apologetic little smile. “I’ll go and explain to Sister Evans myself.”

  “Keep to the same story,” he advised her. “Yes, sir,” said Alma, not thinking it necessary to say that to Sister Evans she might feel able to tell something more like the real truth.

  He went away after that and, looking after him, Alma thought that she was sorry tomorrow was not one of his days at the nursing home, for in some indefinable way his presence gave her both a sense of security and a curious kind of consolation.

  It was later than she had intended when she was free at last to go and see Sister Evans, and as soon as she entered the office Alma realized that the story as given to Sister Pollock had preceded her.

  “What’s this about Mr. Truscott finding the excitement of the engagement too much for him?” Sister Evans wanted to know. “Too much excitement all round, I hear, and I’m not surprised. So it’s no good your asking to go and see him this evening.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.” Alma smiled faintly. “I came to see you, not Jeremy.”

  “To see me?” Sister Evans, who was not particularly popular with the rest of the staff, tried not to look gratified. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Because I wanted to tell you rather more of the story than can be given out for general consumption,” Alma said. And, sitting down opposite the older woman, she gave her a brief outline of what had happened.

  “I’d like you to know,” she went on slowly, “because I think someone on the spot—someone I can trust—should know the real situation when he—when he does remember everything.”

  “I see.” Sister Evans was looking grave. “I’m sorry, my dear. It’s a tough situation for anyone to take.”

  “Yes, it’s tough. But it can’t be helped.”

  “And I’m sorry that tiresome Grayce girl looks like coming out on top,” added Sister Evans, who was nothing if not partisan.

  “That too can’t be helped,” Alma said, with a splendid detachment she was far from feeling. “I’m glad I’ve told you. But I’d rather you kept most of it to yourself.”

  “But of course!” Sister Evans, who prided herself on her discretion, looked as though torture would not draw the story from her. “Don’t you worry, my dear. The story’s safe with me. And when the time comes, I’ll use my own discretion.”

  “Thank you.” Alma rose to go, feeling she had now done all she could.

  As she did so, however, the door opened with a precipitation which made Sister Evans frown, and Geraldine, flushed and radiant, almost fell into the room.

  “Oh, Sister—”

  “Nurse—please! I expect you to knock before entering when my door is closed.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m sorry. But”—suddenly she became aware of Alma, and immediately Sister Evans ceased to exist for her. She faced the other girl across the room with an air of half scared defiance.

  “He’s remembered me at last,” she said slowly and distinctly. “Jeremy remembers me.—And he wants to see you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Jeremy—wants—to see me?” repeated Alma, her voice catching slightly between the words. “But—why?”

  “He can’t see you, anyway,” Sister Evans stated briskly. “Mr. Perring gave instructions you were not to go in.”

  “But those instructions were to deal with an entirely different situation,” Alma said slowly. “As I told you, Mr. Perring thought it best for us to avoid developing the complication of the wrong engagement. But now Jeremy knows the truth, it’s different. It might even be that he’ll be much more dangerously worried and agitated if I don’t go in and reassure him.”

  “I’m not satisfied about that.” Sister Evans looked unconvinced. “I’m not prepared to believe the situation has changed all that much.”

  “It’s changed radically,” exclaimed Geraldine, so emphatically and scornfully that Sister Evans turned on her sharply and said,

  “Don’t use that tone of voice to me, Nurse. You’re forgetting yourself.”

  “I’m sorry, Sister.” With a palpable effort Geraldine subdued her tone to one of respect. “But I can’t have made the situation clear. Jeremy—Mr. Truscott has completely recovered his memory. He knows now what I was in his life. He knows that he was on the verge of becoming engaged to me when the accident happened. And he’s horrified to realize that, while he’s been ill, he has more or less got himself engaged to someone else.”

  “Not more or less. Completely,” Sister Evans corrected tartly. “And how do you know he is horrified? You’re making half this up.”

  “I’m not, Sister! Truly. It all came back to him, just as though a blind rolled up and showed him what was beyond the window. That’s how he described it himself.”

  “Did you prompt him in any way?”

  “No, Sister. He’d been asleep, and he woke up—and recognized me. I was just standing there—”

  “Doing nothing, I suppose?” Sister Evans had a poor opinion of the industry of the younger generation.

  “I was j-just looking at him,” Geraldine said. And because she knew so poignantly what that meant, in some strange, inexplicable way Alma was indescribably touched by the younger girl’s half sullen statement.

  “I think you’d better let me go in and see him, Sister,” she said quietly. “If he really remembers everything, he must be deeply disturbed. I’d better do what I can to reassure him.”

  “How?” asked Geraldine, half fearfully, half resentfully.

  “By explaining that he is in no way committed by anything he said or did while he was ill,” Alma replied categorically.

  “O-oh.” For a moment Geraldine looked at her, as though she glimpsed something beyond her usual comprehension and belief. “Will you—really—do that?”

  “Of course. What else do you suppose would reassure him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mustn’t suppose that everyone is ready to snatch personal advantage from an unfortunate situation,” Sister Evans put in sourly. “Some people have slightly higher standards than that.”

  “May I go in, please, Sister?” Alma pressed urgently. “I’ll take the responsibility of explaining to Mr. Perring.”

  “Very well.” Sister Evans spoke reluctantly. “But make the visit short—and try not to upset him further.”

  “Do you insist on going in alone?” Geraldine asked sulkily, but with an air which suggested that the situation had gone beyond her capacity for managing it.

  “Yes, I do,” Alma said, without qualification. And she went out of the office and along to Jeremy’s room.

  Outside the door she paused for a second, perhaps to gather her strength and resolution, or perhaps just to compose her expression into one of calm self-possession. Then she went in.

  He was lying back against the pillows, looking very much awake, a slight frown of concentration creasing his forehead. And, when he saw her, an expression of surprise and then disquiet crossed his face.

  “Hello,” he said. “I thought you were ill in bed with ’flu.”

  “No.” She decided she could do no better than come straight to the point, and this gave her quite a good opening. “That was really an excuse to keep me out of the way.”

  “Keep you out of the way?” He looked enquiring, and still uneasy.

  “Yes. As you’ve probably realized by now, the situation was getting a little—out of hand.” She contrived to smile at him, as though what they were discussing was not of first-class importance.

  “Was it?” He was feeling his way carefully, she could see.

  “Well, so it seemed to me. To us—”

  “Who might ‘us’ be?” he enquired quickly.

  “Mr. Perring, the surgeon-in-charge, and myself.”

  “I see,” said Jeremy, with the air of a man
who did not see at all, but wished he did.

  “But you don’t need to worry about that now.” She wondered if she sounded a shade too professionally bright, but she sat down by the bed and gave him what she hoped was a reassuringly humorous glance. “Nurse Grayce—Geraldine—says you remember everything now, so we can start straightening things out. Is the whole picture complete?”

  “More or less,” he said unhappily. Then suddenly his glance dropped to her left hand, and he exclaimed quickly, “You’re not wearing—your ring.”

  “No, of course not.” Her voice was perfectly steady. It was even light and unconcerned. “It wasn’t really my ring, was it?”

  “Oh, lord—” He drew a deep sigh which was more than half a groan. “It’s all such an appalling muddle. I feel the most unutterable fool and cad.”

  “You don’t need to,” she told him soothingly. “No one suffering from partial amnesia is expected to behave very sensibly. And no one nursing such a case,” she added deliberately, “attaches undue importance to anything the patient says.”

  “Oh, Alma”—he put out his hand and took hers—“you’re making it so easy for me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m only trying to get things straight for you,” she said, in her best “theatre sister” tone of voice. “It’s always difficult to know what to do when there’s a partial loss of memory. In some ways, a complete loss is easier. When a patient remembers some things and forgets others there’s always a danger of his going back to some earlier phase and trying to carry on life from that point.”

  “Which was what I did?” he put in quickly. “Yes. That was what you did. We couldn’t argue with you, for fear of upsetting you. At the same time, we couldn’t let you go on developing a false situation.”

  “It sounds so simple, the way you explain it.” His hand tightened nervously on hers. “But—was that exactly how you looked at things when I gave you that ring? Alma—I have to ask you that?”

  For a searing moment, she relived that harrowing scene in its entirety. And, with equal clarity, she knew that this was the moment when she could play on Jeremy’s conscience-stricken sympathies, if she wished.

  She could pay him completely for his careless defection. She could even, quite possibly, take him away from Geraldine. In his present mood, he was hers. If she chose, as Sister Evans had put it, to snatch personal advantage from an unfortunate situation, this was her moment.

  But, even as she realized the position, she knew she could never profit from it. If Jeremy were not hers by virtue of the fact that he loved her, and nothing else at all, then she could not take him. She heard herself say, gently but quite finally, “Of course that was the way I looked at things when you gave me the ring. I couldn’t do otherwise. There was an inscription on the case which contained the ring, Jeremy. And that made it perfectly clear that the ring was intended for Geraldine.”

  “You mean you knew—then?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “But”—he looked at her incredulously—“how well you acted your part.”

  “Nurses get used to that,” she told him with a smile. “We don’t tell our patients half our secrets.”

  “But then—you mean”—indescribable relief was dawning upon him, she saw—“you mean that this whole crazy muddle was never anything to you but the awkward mistake of a patient who persisted in talking nonsense?”

  “Something like that.” She still managed to smile at him.

  “You never took me seriously? Not once?”

  “Not once,” she assured him steadily, though she felt that the ground ought to open and swallow her for such a thumping lie. And then he gave a great sigh of relief, and she was not sure if it caused her more pleasure or pain.

  “What happened to the ring?” he enquired, with a mixture of embarrassment and real curiosity.

  “I asked Mr. Perring to keep it.”

  “Mr. Perring? My surgeon, you mean?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know quite what to do with it. It was rather a responsibility to keep,” she explained calmly, “but I couldn’t take it on myself to hand it on to Geraldine. That was your business—if you decided later that the words on the case really expressed your feelings. Finally, I more or less explained the position to Mr. Perring, and he agreed to take charge of the ring.”

  “He seems quite a useful sort of chap.” Jeremy grinned, in a way which showed he was beginning to recover his wonted good spirits.

  “Oh, he is,” agreed Alma, though all her professional instincts were against describing a brilliant surgeon in this casual way. “He’s a very remarkable surgeon too,” she felt bound to add.

  “He must be.” Jeremy put up his hand and gingerly touched the bandages on his head. “He made a pretty good job of this, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. A wonderful job. I was there in the theatre when he did it.”

  “Were you really?” He gave her a curious glance. “That must have been a gruelling experience.”

  A small pulse began to beat nervously in her throat.

  “Watching him operate on you, you mean?”

  “Watching him operate on anyone you knew personally.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t easy,” she agreed, with masterly understatement. “But it’s surprising how professional discipline keeps you steady, and helps you to regard the person on the table as a patient first and foremost, even if it’s someone you lo-like and know well.”

  “Sounds a bit cold-blooded to me,” Jeremy said. “No, there’s nothing cold-blooded about it,” Alma told him slowly. “Only the deeply rooted conviction that cool reliability will serve the patient far better than any emotional indulgence.”

  “You’re a wonderful girl, Alma,” he exclaimed, as she rose at last to go. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for—for—” He frowned, as though unable to define exactly for what. Then he said comprehensively, “For everything.”

  “I’m only glad I was able to help in your recovery,” she replied, in a voice she strove to make warm, but which suddenly sounded thin and impersonal.

  “Not only that,” he assured her. “Everything! The way you took this business—the way you explained it away—everything. I’m only just beginning to realize how you’ve given me, almost literally, a new lease of life. Heavens, how wonderful it is to be oneself again, instead of some muddled, half deluded stranger. Tell me, Alma”—he caught at her hand and detained her, even as she would have gone at last—“now that we can talk frankly, how do you like my Geraldine? What do you think of her?” For a shattering moment, it was in Alma’s mind to say that she loathed Geraldine, that she regarded her as the girl who had snatched away her happiness. But of course she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she smiled faintly and indulgently and said,

  “She’s charming. And, incidentally, a very good nurse. I hope you and she will be very happy, Jeremy.”

  Then at last she did escape. From the room, from Jeremy, and from the rack of repeated reassurances which had cost all her self-control to produce.

  At the door of Sister Evans’ room she paused for a moment.

  “It’s all right,” she said, tonelessly. “I’ve explained everything to him.”

  “You’ve—? Come in, my dear. Don’t stand there in the doorway.” The older woman got up from behind her desk. “Can I do anything for you?” she asked, in a troubled tone. “You look—drained, somehow.”

  “That’s how I feel,” Alma said. “But I’ll be all right. I’ve explained to him. He knows the engagement was a mistake now. It’s all clear—for Geraldine.”

  “What am I supposed to say to that?” the older woman asked, in a profoundly dissatisfied tone. “ ‘How very satisfactory’?”

  “It’s neither satisfactory nor unsatisfactory,” Alma said wearily. “It’s just the way things are. But—will you tell Geraldine for me?”

  “She’s gone off duty.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot. She would have by now. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell her myse
lf.” And Alma went on her way, aware that the other woman stood and looked after her with genuine anxiety.

  But she could do nothing to reassure her. She had done all the reassuring she could manage for one day. She felt she would never be able to reassure anyone again. Not even herself. Only—she must seek out Geraldine and tell her what had happened.

  She found Geraldine eventually in her own room. Or, rather, as Alma came along the upstairs corridor, Geraldine snatched open her door and stood there, unable to say anything in words, but with her eyes big and wide and questioning.

  “It’s all right,” Alma heard herself say for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I’ve explained everything to him. He understands now.”

  “Understands?—everything?”

  It seemed that generalizations would not serve. She had to be categorical.

  “Jeremy understands that the engagement to me was a complete mistake. I told him I never took it seriously, that we all regarded it as—-as a sort of delusion—just part of his illness.”

  “And he accepted that?”

  “Of course he accepted it. He was only too glad to accept it.” Though she had not meant to allow that, a tinge of bitterness crept into her voice. “It’s all right, I tell you,” she repeated impatiently. “He’s in no way committed to me. That’s over. The way is clear for you.”

  Then she went into her room, and not even Geraldine dared to follow her.