by Jane Arbor
“Yes, of course. What is it?”
“It’s a scarf of Sara’s. She left it in the car after Carol’s party, and I didn’t find it until she had gone. Would you give it to her?”
Kathryn took the square of chiffon from him. “I don’t think she has missed it. But why don’t you give it to her yourself?”
“I haven’t seen her since. And she is on night duty now.”
“Yes, but—” Kathryn stopped short, her instinct warned by his non-committal tone. His eyes, too, were as wary and withdrawn as Sara’s had been lately. She said evenly: “I haven’t seen much of her either. Night duty does upset things, doesn’t it? But I’ll see that she gets the scarf.”
“Thanks. I thought you would.” Without another word Simon drove away.
Sara too! And she had envied Sara, believing that between her and Simon nothing could go wrong! Yet something had, and the realisation that Sara had come so soon upon an unhappiness which matched her own was almost more than she could bear. Was it Sara who had rejected love—or love which had failed Sara? Until the girl gave her her confidence she would have to wonder, though the return of the scarf might help to break down the barriers Sara had set up.
She took it to her room that evening before the meal that would be supper for her, “breakfast” for Sara.
At Kathryn’s knock, instead of calling “Come in,” Sara came to the door to open it. Kathryn had the fleeting impression that she was guarding the privacy of her room as if it were the only citadel of refuge that she had.
“Oh, it’s you—” she began, and stopped as she saw the filmy wisp in Kathryn’s hand. “Where did you get that? I—” She stood aside, allowing Kathryn to enter.
“Simon Glenn asked me to give it to you.”
“I must have left it in his car.”
“Yes. He said he hadn’t seen you since Carol’s party.”
“No, we haven’t met.” Sara was aimlessly moving her toilet things on the dressing-table. “What—what else did he tell you?” she demanded truculently.
“Nothing else.” Kathryn paused before adding gently: “He didn’t need to, Sara. I’d say that he’s just as unhappy as you are that you’ve—quarrelled.”
“I’m not unhappy!” Angry tears welling in Sara’s blue eyes belied her words. “I—I’m only teaching myself to forget that I ever wanted him to fall in love with me. And that I thought I loved him more than anyone—not more than Carol, of course, just differently. But he won’t try to understand, so loving couldn’t ever have been real to him, any more than I—I’m letting it be for me in future!”
“Sara dear!” Kathryn sat down on the bed, drawing the girl down beside her. “What doesn’t Simon understand? Or is it possible that there’s something you don’t understand about him? Surely it’s nothing so dreadful that you couldn’t discuss it reasonably and quietly? Because, if you really did love him, you won’t be able to forget him by determining to, almost overnight. You’ll only live it down, live through it, and that could take a long time. Are you telling me that there’s anything between you and Simon that could be worth all that?”
“I think there is. Simon must, too, or he’d have come to me since to tell me that he understood really.”
Sara paused, and then asked piteously: “Kathryn, I was right, wasn’t I, to tell Simon that I must wait to marry him until I’ve finished my training and I’m qualified?”
Kathryn’s memory flashed back again to the softly lighted restaurant where Sara, starry-eyed and very sure, had never foreseen all this. She asked gravely: “And that’s the issue between you? Simon wanted to marry you at once, I suppose?”
“Yes, and I wanted to say Yes so much. Instead, I asked him to wait, and he sort of flared into anger. And after that we said some dreadful things to each other. I accused him of not trying to see my side, and he—Kathryn, he said I evidently just wanted the glamour of being engaged! He couldn’t have said that if he’d cared for me at all. And there was a lot more, of course, before we parted. But I was right, I know I was. And you do, too, don’t you?”
“Dear, it’s impossible for a third person to say! I understand, because I know how determined you’ve been from the beginning that nothing should come between you and your training, once you’d begun. Do you remember that I teased you about it?”
Sara nodded wretchedly. “Yes. I suppose I ought never to have let myself get fond of Simon.”
“If you’d been wiser than anyone could expect you to be at your age, you might have foreseen that loving Simon might bring you to facing this decision sooner or later. But if neither of you had been serious it mightn’t ever have arisen, so that no one would have been justified in warning you. But now that it has, are you quite sure that you and Simon couldn’t reach some agreement about it?”
“He wouldn’t try. He said he ‘gave up’, and told me to get out of the car. And after the things he’d said, I was glad to. We haven’t spoken to each other since, except on the ward when we couldn’t help it, before I went on nights. What’s more, I know I’m right, and I’m not going to be the first to give in.”
“You’d let him go rather? Perhaps to some other girl a lot less worthwhile than you? Sara, do consider what you are doing and whether you are doing it only for pride’s sake. You’d lose nothing by going to Simon to tell him that you’d like to discuss it again. So will you go?” urged Kathryn.
“No, I won’t.”
“Then will you let me go?”
Sara’s head flung up defiantly. “No. I’m not going to involve you, Kathryn. I know I asked your advice, but I don’t really want it. This is something I’ve decided for myself, and if I’m wrong I mustn’t be able to shift the blame—afterwards.” Her lips quivered on the last word.
“Oh, Sara!” Kathryn stopped, feeling baffled and helpless, knowing herself defeated by the stubborn, falsely courageous streak in the girl’s character, the same one which had blindly risked Carol’s future and her own for the ideal of caring for the child without help from anyone.
They sat in silence for a minute or two before Kathryn looked at her watch and rose. “We’d better go down,” she said.
“Yes.” Sara went back to the dressing-table to pin on her cap. As she adjusted her cuffs she turned about to ask most wonderingly: “Kathryn, why do you suppose men want everything arranged just their way?”
“Aren’t we the same? Aren’t you?” challenged Kathryn.
“Yes, well—” Sara hesitated. “I know I’m digging in my heels now, but at the time I wasn’t suddenly angry and sort of frustrated, as Simon was. It seems to me that they hate it when we don’t fall at once into the pattern they’ve planned for us. Look at your Dr. Brand, for instance, at what he told Thelma Carter about you—” Sara broke off quickly, aghast at her unguarded words.
Kathryn stiffened. “About me? What did Dr. Brand say about me?”
“Kathryn, I’m sorry! I oughtn’t to have repeated it!”
“You’d better finish it now. What did Dr. Brand say about me?”
Sara lowered her eyes. “It was Thelma gossiping, really. She said that you were cultivating your friendship with me so that, because of Carol, you would have an excuse for going often to Barbara Thorley’s and meeting Dr. Brand—she called him Adam—there. And when I said that was absurd, because you had known Barbara and Victor long before I did, she said that perhaps she was wrong, but that she certainly had the impression from Dr. Brand that he saw far too much of you off the ward. ‘Dogging his footsteps’ was the beastly phrase Thelma used—Forgive me, Kathryn. I listened, because I had no choice. But I never, never meant that you should hear it!”
Rigid with distaste, Kathryn heard herself saying: “It’s better that I should, I daresay.”
“But you hate it!”
Kathryn shrugged. “It’s never very pleasant to hear yourself accused of an offence you weren’t even aware of committing.” She wondered that she could discuss it so evenly. But perhaps she was past being hurt.
“I ought not to have told you, even though Thelma suggested that I should give you a hint. It simply slipped out when I was thinking about how men want us in their patterns just so. Simon making his plans, Dr. Brand needing you and appreciating you on the ward—”
“It’s where our relationship does begin and end, after all,” Kathryn reminded her.
“But surely that’s for you to say! Not for Dr. Brand, nor for Thelma Carter!” protested Sara loyally.
Kathryn forced a laugh. “They seem to have said it quite effectually all the same. I must go guardedly in my social contacts, I can see!” She was glad to believe that nothing in her tone could betray to Sara that her flippancy would not last, and that already an emotion that was more than distaste was pounding relentlessly at her heart, trampling it under...
In the dining-room Sara went to join the other night-nurses, and Kathryn did not see her again before she went on duty. She herself went to the Sisters’ sitting-room and watched a television play through to its end, determined to take its problems, not her own, to bed with her when she went. But as she said good night to her companions after it, she was called to the telephone by one of the maids.
“Is that you Kathryn?” It was Barbara’s voice, sounding urgent and rather worried. “I phoned you because I know Sara will already have gone on duty and the doctor has only just left after his second visit to-day. It’s Carol—she hasn’t been herself for a day or two, but we didn’t call the doctor until to-day.”
“Sara doesn’t know?”
“No. She hasn’t been able to come over since her last off-duty, and I didn’t want to worry her without cause. That’s why I called you, hoping you’d break it to her in the morning, if she must know. I’ll ring you again, of course.”
“What’s the matter with Carol, do you think?”
“The doctor seems doubtful. She has a headache and has just begun to run a temperature, but hasn’t any other symptoms. It could be any of the childish diseases, I suppose, but I’m worried because Sara has told me of a similar, vague illness that she had once before. Can you suggest what it might be, Kathryn?”
“Not without seeing her, and probably not then, if your doctor doesn’t know.”
“I’ve got the feeling he does know, but isn’t committing himself,” worried Barbara.
“When is he seeing her again?”
“In the morning.”
“And what then?”
“It depends on what’s the matter, I suppose.” Barbara paused and sighed. “I hope it isn’t anything much, but if it is I can’t help wishing that she could be in your care—yours and Dr. Brand’s.”
“Don’t worry ahead, Barbara. It may be nothing, though if she had to come into hospital she would be in our care.”
“I know, and that comforts me a lot. You and Adam Brand are such a team, and he has got the most perfect confidence in you.”
“Has he?” (But he doesn’t care to find me dogging his footsteps on the ward, ran the twisting irony of Kathryn’s thoughts.)
“Yes. He talked to Victor at Carol’s party, though Victor didn’t resurrect the conversation for me until days later.”
“Was it meant to be ‘resurrected’?” queried Kathryn.
“Well, it wasn’t said in confidence, and in my opinion not nearly enough ‘good reports’ are passed on to the people concerned, although the critical, upsetting ones almost always are. And Adam said of you, Kathryn, that besides a remarkable integrity and skill you had a rare understanding that, for him, outmatched either. Don’t you find that rather pride-warming? I should.”
“Yes, I do.” (But it still doesn’t cancel out that other evil thing!)
Barbara seemed to be waiting. At last she said flatly: “Somehow I thought you’d be more pleased.”
“I am—gratified.” Kathryn chose the word with care. “Coming from a specialist—of the mere ward Sister working under him—it’s high praise indeed.”
“You sound determined to believe he was talking just about your work.”
“I’m sure he was. Dr. Brand and I are not likely to meet often on any other plane.”
Barbara did not answer, and with a word of reassurance about Carol, Kathryn rang off.
But Barbara, at her end of the line, stood thoughtfully, the receiver still in her hand. She was wondering—wondering quite a lot—about a note of asperity which, in Kathryn’s gentle voice, she had never heard before.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the Wardrop the day staff went on duty before the night staff came off, so that Kathryn did not see Sara before going to her own ward. But there had been no telephone call, and she decided against leaving a message for the girl until more definite news came through.
When it did it came unexpectedly and disturbingly, not from Barbara, but from Casualty Ward.
“Children’s Ward? Sister Clare? Can you accept immediately a case for observation by Dr. Brand? It’s a child of seven, Carol Spender the name, a patient Dr. Freeman’s,” came Casualty Sister’s impersonal enquiry.
Kathryn drew a sharp breath, but this was no time for explaining her personal interest in Carol. “When am I to expect her?” she asked.
“Almost at once. The ambulance left here ten minutes ago.”
“Does Dr. Brand know?”
“He’ll have been notified by Dr. Freeman. But you should let him know when you have admitted the patient.”
“I’ll do that,” promised Kathryn. “He’s due at Out-Patients’ Clinic at ten.”
Immediately she rang off there was another buzz on the switchboard, and Barbara was put through.
“Oh, Kathryn, I’ve been waiting for your fine to clear! What do you think? The doctor has ordered Carol into hospital urgently—we’re waiting for the ambulance now.”
“Yes, I know, Barbara. I’ve just been told to expect her. What’s the matter? Has your doctor said?”
“Victor stayed from school to see him, and he told him, not me. It’s something spinal, Kathryn. He fears—meningitis. He told Victor so.”
Kathryn was shocked, but she dared not betray the fact to Barbara, who sounded ready to believe the worst. She said quietly: “Then this is the best possible place for her, in Dr. Brand’s care. If it were likely to be anything serious, that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—and in yours too. Kathryn—” Barbara paused. “She—she isn’t likely to be another—Peter, is she?”
“You mustn’t let yourself believe so for a moment,” Kathryn told her firmly. “Meanwhile, Sara must be told, mustn’t she?”
“I rang her before I got through to you. But Home Sister said she’d already gone to bed, and advised against telling her until Carol was in hospital and Dr. Brand had seen her—Oh, there’s the ambulance arriving now!”
Barbara rang off, and Kathryn went back to the single-bed ward where she had decided to isolate Carol. She saw to its final preparations—the hot-water bottle between the sheets, the bedclothes turned back lengthwise, the covered jug of barley-water on the locker-top—and then went to ring Adam Brand at the Clinic.
“Yes? Yes?” He sounded brusque and preoccupied, as if she had interrupted a consultation. But there was a sympathetic concern in his voice as he went on: “It’s Carol, isn’t it? Well, I’ll be on the ward inside ten minutes. Meanwhile, get her into bed and leave somebody with her.”
For all her experience, Kathryn was scarcely prepared for the change in Carol from the merry, laughing person of her birthday party to the sick, restless child being gently slipped from the ambulance blankets into the bed made ready for her. She was deeply flushed, and there was something sinister to be read into the way her head lolled persistently to one side. Kathryn laid a tentative hand upon her brow, pushing back the clinging hair, and then felt for the racing, pounding pulse in her wrist. Carol seemed barely conscious, but as Kathryn put her hand back beneath the covers she stirred and tossed, muttering: “Want Sara—”
“Sara will come, darling.” As
Kathryn turned away she noticed something on the floor, something dropped by the ambulance men when they had folded their blankets. She stooped—and then smiled as her fingers closed round a teddy-bear’s plump plush leg. So Edward, that persistent malingerer, had got himself admitted to hospital at last!
She bent him at the hips into a sitting posture and was placing him on the locker-top where Carol could see him, when Adam Brand came in.
“How is the patient Sister?”
Kathryn reported upon the pulse, and stood by while he consulted a card of details given to him by Carol’s doctor. Then he made his own examination, looking, feeling and listening with the pure, deep concentration that was characteristic of his skill.
He stood back at last, fingering his chin thoughtfully. “Has she a chart?” he asked.
“Not yet. Staff Nurse was getting one ready in my office.”
He gestured towards the door, and they went out together. Outside he said: “Well, Dr. Freeman diagnosed meningitis, and I’d confirm that, subject to the path, report on the spinal fluid. I shall do a puncture this afternoon, so have her ready at two-thirty, will you? Who came in with her—her sister?”
“No, she’s on night duty on Men’s Medical. Barbara—Mrs. Thorley—brought her.”
“If she’s waiting, would you like me to see her?”
“If you would—”
Barbara, Kathryn could see, was not taking well the shock of Carol’s illness. She was much too inclined to blame herself, and it took some patient argument by Adam to convince her that no precautions, apart from the ordinary rules of health, could have guarded against the onset of such a disease.
Kathryn, standing by, noticed that he did not commit himself to any hearty reassurance, and she sensed that he had none to give. Carol was very ill indeed, and, without needing the confirmation of a pathological report, Adam Brand knew it only too well.
