Rachel Lindsay - Love and Dr Forrest

by Rachel Lindsay

  "Hello, Phillip," the man said. "You're the very person I wanted to see!"

  "Nothing's wrong, is there?" Redwood's voice was clipped.

  "No, no, your wife's doing fine. You're looking pale, though. Working hard?"

  "Not hard enough."

  "What's all this I hear about your giving up the hospital and going into private practice?"

  There was a sharp intake of breath and Lesley could well imagine the anger on the younger man's face. She knew she was eavesdropping but short of leaving the kitchen, there was nothing she could do.

  "I don't know how these rumours get around, sir. I've no intention of giving up my hospital appointment—or at least if I do it will be only temporarily. Professor Zecker's asked me to go out and work with him."

  "It's a wonderful opportunity. You're going, of course?"

  "I'm not sure. Deborah doesn't want to live in Switzerland."

  "It wouldn't be forever. Give her a few weeks to get used to the idea."

  "If it were as simple as that! Why do women always have to make things difficult?"

  Sir Clive chuckled. "They have their uses. Think what this place would be like without 'em! Rather dull."

  "I wasn't thinking of nurses," Redwood said bitterly. "I can just about stomach themV

  "Not still thinking of Miss Roberts, are you?"

  "I wish I could forget her. After the fiasco of her last operation she should go where she can't do any harm."

  "The best of us make mistakes." Sir Clive's voice held a tinge of rebuke. "What happened the other night could happen to anyone."

  "I don't agree. She should have realised she didn't have the experience to carry out that sort of operation. The trouble with women is that once they have any authority, they don't like to give it up. Heaven help me from working with women doctors again!"

  "You've no right to say that!" Beside herself with rage, Lesley darted out. "How dare you talk about Miss Roberts like that? No one's infallible."

  "Indeed," Redwood said icily. "And how long have you been snooping?"

  "I wasn't snooping! I was in the kitchen and didn't like to come out."

  "It's a pity you just did."

  "I couldn't stand by and hear you speak that way. Don't you think Miss Roberts has suffered enough since the operation?"

  "And what do you know about it?"

  "I was there."

  Redwood flung out his arm. "I don't want to discuss it any longer. Perhaps I'll report your impertinence to sister!"

  "I don't care!"

  "I think you will when you're asked to leave!"

  For a moment Lesley stared at him in horror, then she turned and fled down the long, narrow corridor.

  The following morning she was called before matron.

  "This is most regrettable, nurse." The woman's voice was gentle but inflexible. "In view of all the circumstances I've no option but to ask for your resignation."

  "I'm sorry, matron."

  "So am I. You have the makings of an excellent nurse. It will be a shame if you give up the profession."

  "I won't do that," Lesley said firmly.

  "I'm glad to hear it. If you wish me to give you a reference—————— "

  "That won't be necessary, matron. I've already spoken, to the Dean at St. Andrews." She saw the woman's surprise and said quickly, "I'm not going to be a nurse. I'm going back to medical school. I came into some money a little-while ago and I couldn't make up my mind what to do with it. Yesterday decided me."

  "Then you have something to thank Mr. Redwood for."

  Lesley smiled. "Wouldn't he be furious if he knew!"

  Matron did not return the smile, though her eyes twinkled. "One day perhaps you'll tell him. But wait until you've qualified."

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Why didn't you tell me all this was going on in your mind?" Pat demanded later that afternoon when she learned of Lesley's decision. "You aren't doing it to spite Mr. Redwood, are you?"

  "He just acted as the catalyst. Nursing was always second best for me—you know that."

  "But you'll be studying for years!"

  "Only three. Don't forget I've already done two."

  "But you won't have much of a chance to enjoy yourself or…"

  "If you're thinking about men, forget it. At the moment I don't care if I never seen one again!"

  "You're saying that because of Mr. Redwood."

  "It has nothing to do with him."

  "Then why the anti-male attitude?"

  Lesley hesitated and then, realising she owed Pat some explanation, said slowly, "It's Tod. I've never liked him as you know, but for the past six months he's been unbearable. His job isn't as good as he thought and he's taking it out on Janet."

  "You can't judge men by Tod…or Mr. Redwood, cither."

  "Why not? Seems to me they're either weak and boorish or autocratic dictators! If I—" she broke off as a porter put his head through the door of the nurses' sitting room and wagged his finger at her.

  "Miss Roberts wants to see you, nurse. Right away."

  Lesley looked at Pat in surprise. "I wonder what she wants?"

  "Probably to thank you for defending her."

  "I hope not! The whole thing's embarrassing enough as it is."

  "Well, don't be surprised if I'm right. She may even go all weepy on you. We women are women no matter what our profession!"

  But in this respect Pat was wrong, for when Lesley entered Miss Roberts's office she found the surgeon as crisp as usual.

  "I wanted to see you before you left, Nurse Forrest. I hear you're taking up medicine?"

  "I'm hoping to," Lesley added.

  "I trained at St. Andrews, you know. You must keep in touch with me and let me know how you're progressing."

  "I… I'd like that," Lesley stammered.

  "Wait till you've settled back into the routine and then come and have supper with me. My number's in the book."

  That night Lesley arrived to stay with Janet. She had two months to wait before returning to medical school and decided to have a short holiday before taking a temporary job. But after a week she could ho longer bear Tod's behaviour and, pretending she had other friends to see, she left Liverpool and returned south.

  The bed-sitters she saw were so dreary, and the jobs offered her so dull, that she accepted a post as a mother's helper and found herself with a young architect's family in a modern house in Blackheath. Here she had a brightly furnished room with excellent food and her own colour television… and the hours she was expected to work were considerably less than she had had as a nurse.

  The little boy she looked after reminded her of her nephew and she regretted that her dislike of Tod made it difficult for her to maintain a relationship with Bobby. How much longer could Janet manage to go on, she wondered, knowing that only by staying away from her sister would she be able to hold her tongue.

  At the beginning of October, Lesley returned to St. Andrew's. Determined to concentrate on work and ignore all the men she met, it was disconcerting to discover there were only three other women in her year, and she found it hard to relax under the admiring gaze of some twenty pairs of masculine eyes. But gradually they became used to her, and within a month she was treated—if not as one of the boys—at least as an intellectual equal.

  Frequently she worked with Richard White, a plump young man with red hair and twinkling blue eyes. As time passed without his making any overtures toward her, she relaxed sufficiently to form a casual friendship with him, and they would occasionally go to the cinema or have supper together in a caf6 near the hospital.

  Though the work was hard it was far more rewarding to her than nursing had been. How she had envied the students who had trailed the specialists around the wards. Now she was doing the same herself, taking in her stride something that, a short while ago, had seemed unattainable.

  From time to time she saw Miss Roberts, and she grew to like the woman more with every meeting. At no lime did they mention
Phillip Redwood. It was what was happening at St. Andrew's that was important—the passing of examinations and the years ahead.

  The final examinations were held in a large building near Harley Street, and students from every medical school in the country trod the square hidden behind Marylebone. Lesley was convinced she had failed and, lunching with Richard, bemoaned the fact that she would have to sit them again.

  "You're just letting your nerves get the better of you," he said firmly. "Of course you've passed."

  "Do you think you have?" she asked.

  "Positively not!"

  Their eyes met and they burst out laughing.

  "Okay," Richard said grudgingly, "but I only hope that if I fail, you do, too."

  "What a thing to say!"

  "It's a compliment. I can't bear to think of not seeing you." He hitched his chair forward and stared at her intently.

  In the years they had been together she had matured out of all recognition and, at twenty-four, had a loveliness that had been only hinted at when she was twenty. Her thick hair, still the same shade of taffy, was drawn into a simple coil on the nape of her neck—not an imaginative style perhaps, but one that suited the perfect oval of her face. Gone was the gawkiness of the young girl and in its place was a natural fluidity of movement that made anyone watching her feel she should have been a dancer.

  "You're even more lovely now than when I first met you," Richard went on reflectively.

  "Any normal, healthy person looks wonderful when you've been with sick people all day!"

  "I'm not joking, Lesley," Richard said with unusual force. "You know how I feel about you. I love you and want to marry you." Her answer was in her eyes and he forced himself to shrug. "Don't look so miserable, old girl. I asked you to marry me, not bury me!"

  His ever present humour did the trick and she was able to smile.

  "I'm sorry, Richard. I had some idea how you felt but I thought that if I didn't encourage you "

  "Since when does a male need encouragement!" He bent closer. "I won't give up, you know. I'll disappear from your life for a bit and then come back and sweep you off your feet."

  "Will you really? Disappear I mean?"

  "I think so. I've been offered a job on the continent, and once I'm able to accept it, I'll be off."

  "Where will you be going?"

  "I won't tell you. If I vanish for a year, you'll realise what you're missing!"

  "I might marry someone else," she said, irritated by his childish behaviour.

  "Not you. You won't marry for years. You want to set the world on fire all by yourself."

  "You make me sound very militant."

  "You are in a way. You have a bee in your bonnet about women doctors not being accepted."

  "They aren't. In many hospitals there's still a bias against them, and I intend to fight it."

  "Where are you going to begin?"

  "At St. Catherine's. Martha Roberts thinks there's a chance of getting me in there."

  "Your old stamping ground, eh? 'The Return of the Prodigal Daughter!' "

  "Why not? I've worked hard enough for it. I can't wait to walk those wards. Just imagine Pat's face when she has to stand up for me!"

  "I might have known Pat would be in it somewhere," Richard sniffed.

  "What have you got against Pat?"

  "Nothing." He sniffed again. "Let's say I'm allergic to fat girls."

  "She isn't fat!"

  "All right. She's skinny. But don't let's waste time talking about her. It's you I'm interested in."

  "Forget me. As far as I'm concerned, marriage is out."

  "Don't you believe it." He pushed back his chair. "You're a man hater today, but when the right man comes along, you'll fall for him like a ton of bricks."

  To Lesley's satisfaction both she and Richard qualified as doctors and, once they had fulfilled their contractual obligations to St. Andrews, went their separate ways: Richard to his secret destination and she to St. Catherine's.

  It was the ultimate in triumph to return as the resident house physician to the hospital that had dismissed her as a nurse a few years previously, and it required a great effort not to comment on it when she bumped into matron for the first time after her return.

  But matron herself had no such inhibitions and she looked at Lesley with an unusually warm smile. "It's a pleasure to have you back, Dr. Forrest. You must be feeling very pleased with yourself."

  "I hope it doesn't show!"

  Matron chuckled. "Let it. You've worked hard to come full circle."

  Yet it was not quite full circle, Lesley thought as she went on her way, for Mr. Redwood was not here to see her return. He was working in Switzerland and no one knew when he would be returning to England. How had he persuaded his wife to go with him? Or had she decided it was too dangerous to leave a man—even one as dedicated to his work as Phillip Redwood—alone in a Swiss mountain resort for too long? With a shake of her head she dismissed him from her mind. He was part of the past and she must now concentrate on the present.

  As the weeks merged into months she did not think about him again. Even Richard was forgotten in the spate of work that devolved upon her shoulders, and it was left to Pat to remind her of him one evening when they met for dinner in a small Soho restaurant.

  Although now a sister, they rarely met in the hospital, and their weekly dinner was the one relaxation Lesley allowed herself.

  "How's the boyfriend doing?" Pat asked nonchalantly.

  "Richard isn't my boyfriend, and I don't know where he is, let alone how he is!"

  "He'll turn up again—bad pennies always do."

  "He isn't a bad penny," Lesley protested. "I don't know why you never liked him."

  "The dislike was mutual. You can't deny that."

  Lesley stirred her coffee. "I can't understand it. I'd have thought you would have got on well together. You're both so alike in many ways."

  "Fat and happy!" Pat pushed back her unruly red hair. "Do you know the nurses call me Sister Podge behind my back?"

  "Some of them call we the Petrified Forrest," Lesley said quickly.

  "Because they see you as an iceberg. Me they see as someone who doesn't have a chance to be anything else!"

  The bitterness in Pat's voice was too noticeable to go unremarked.

  "What's wrong with you, Pat? You always had loads of boyfriends, all of them simply crazy about you."

  "I still have—but with the accent on 'friends.' "

  "I think it's your own fault. You have a phobia about your figure and it's affecting your behaviour. I watched you in the ward the other day when one of the doctors was talking to you. You closed up like a clam."

  "How's Janet?" Pat asked with a deliberate change of conversation.

  "She's coming to London on Friday. I had a letter from her yesterday. They're staying for a week."

  "Holiday or business?"

  "A bit of both."

  "Is Janet happier now?"

  "I'll let you know after I've seen her. I haven't been to Liverpool for a year."

  Lesley lapsed into silence, remembering the unhappy weekend she had spent there. Tod was doing badly at work and had taken to drink as a means of bolstering his confidence. This had led to bitter rows with Janet, and Lesley had been sorely tried not to take her sister's part.

  "You're wise to keep out of marital quarrels," Pat said. "But I only hope it doesn't affect their little boy."

  Lesley thought of this as she waited in the lobby of the Waverley Hotel at six on Friday evening. Janet had said they would be arriving at five, but there was still no sign of them. Forcing herself to relax, she ordered some coffee and tried to read an evening paper, throwing it down with relief when, at seven-thirty, Janet's voice hailed her.

  Her sister was far thinner than she had been a year before, and Bobby had changed from a young child into a sturdy, snub-nosed little boy with a freckled face. Only Tod was the same, his face unlined, his manner sarcastic.

  "Wel
l, well, Dr. Forrest in person. I'm surprised you found time to be here. From the way you've stayed away from us this past year I thought you'd written us off as your 'poor relations!' "

  "Tod!" Janet said quickly.

  "Forgive me sweetheart, I forgot we must be polite to your brilliant sister."

  Hastily Lesley turned her attention to Bobby. "You've grown so much I hardly recognised you."

  "I'm the tallest boy in my class," Bobby said. "Do you want to hear how I—"

  "You'll have plenty of time to talk to Auntie Lesley tomorrow," his mother said firmly. "Right now, it's bed for you." Janet looked at her sister. "Give us half an hour to get unpacked and washed and then we'll have dinner."

  "I'm afraid I can't. I'm on duty."

  "Are you so important to the hospital that you couldn't get time off?" Tod asked.

  "It's because I'm so unimportant," Lesley said with an effort at humour.

  "Come on," Janet said abruptly. "I'll walk with you to the bus stop." Outside the hotel she drew a deep breath. "Don't mind Tod. He's been rather depressed lately."

  "Any reason?"

  "The shop. He hates managing it for someone else. But let's not talk about that now. Tod's sure things will improve."

  "I hope so," Lesley replied. "You look terrible."

  "I'm just tired."

  "You won't get much rest in London."

  "It'll be a change at least. Tod's booked us up for shows every night."

  "Then I won't be seeing much of you."

  "Of course, you will," Janet said quickly. "I'll ring you as soon as we've settled in."

  But four days passed without a call, and though Lesley longed to see her sister, she was reluctant to make the first move. Tod obviously did not want to see her and was no doubt making it difficult for Janet to do so.

  It was not until the sixth day that Janet finally rang. "This is the first free minute I've had since we arrived," she apologised. "I feel dreadful about it." .

  "Don't worry," Lesley said hurriedly. "I understand."

  "Do you?" The question was half a sigh. "Can you meet me for lunch today? We're going home tomorrow and I wanted to see you alone."