by Jane Arbor
The report, when it came, was positive; by that time Carol’s fever had risen, making her only partially conscious most of the time; and Sara had received permission from Matron to visit the ward.
Was she taking it better than Barbara? It was hard to tell. Home Sister, who had broken the news to her, had told Kathryn that she had gone very white, but had taken it quietly. And she was still quiet and withdrawn as she stood looking down at Carol without speaking. Then: “Why can’t I do something for her?” she muttered.
Kathryn laid a hand upon her arm. “It’s the best possible thing for her to be here, Sara,” she said. “Dr. Brand or our house physician sees her every few hours. And you can trust her to me, can’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s not the same, don’t you see? Whenever she was ill before, I nursed her. She turned to me.”
“She’s never been as ill as this before,” was Kathryn’s grave reminder.
“No, but that’s all the more reason! because, if—if anything happened to her. I should have it to bear all my life that I’d been able to do nothing for her—nothing!”
Kathryn signalled her from the room. “Come into my office,” she said. “We mustn’t talk here.”
When they were alone she went on: “I know just what you’re feeling, Sara. I was the same about Peter—Barbara’s baby. I would willingly have sacrificed all my off-duty and every night’s sleep if I could have saved him. I was only a staff nurse then, but I was actually inclined to distrust any skill that wasn’t mine, and I could hardly bear to wait for the success or failure of any treatment that was tried. Nothing was successful, as you know, and for a time I’d got things so out of proportion that I even wanted to blame myself for that. You mustn’t make the same mistake, Sara—of resenting to leave Carol in hands far cleverer than yours, while you are forced to stand by, doing nothing.”
“You say you understand—but that doesn’t help much,” muttered Sara. “Of course I know that there’s nothing I could really do, except the ordinary insignificant things a student nurse does for every patient. But I could at least be doing those, if—if Matron would give me a transfer from nights to your ward while Carol is here! Kathryn, could I ask her, do you think? Or could you?”
Did Sara really imagine that the whole mechanism of hospital duty could be stopped and turned to suit a single personal problem like her own? What a long way she had still to go to learn the true, demanding discipline of the work she loved, thought Kathryn, pitying her.
Sara was urging: “Matron couldn’t refuse, could she? I could be just as useful here—”
“You mustn’t ask her, Sara.” Kathryn’s voice was gentle, but firm.
“Then I shall ask Dr. Brand! He’s fond of Carol, and he knows what she means to me. He’ll understand. He—”
She broke off guiltily and sprang to automatic attention as Adam himself came in. He glanced from one to the other, sensing the tension he had caused. Besides, he had heard part of Sara’s outburst.
“What were you going to ask me, Nurse?” he enquired, addressing her directly.
“1—I so badly want a transfer to this ward, so that I could help in nursing Carol. And I hoped that perhaps you would speak to Matron for me, if I asked you.” Sara was too desperate to be shy, though she had flushed deeply and her hands were working nervously at her sides.
Adam’s brows went up. “But aren’t you working on another ward? On night duty, I understood?” His glance of enquiry passed to Kathryn, who nodded confirmation.
Adam faced her decisively. “I’m afraid you can’t expect me to intervene. For one thing you have already been assigned a duty which is yours until you are relieved of it. And apart from that—” He paused, seemingly taking in every detail of the tense young figure before him. And when he continued it seemed to Kathryn that he had weighed the telling significance of each word as he said: “Apart from that, you would not be of any help to Carol. She’s too ill for her nursing to be complicated by any of the fret and worry you would bring to it because you care for her so much. You could, in fact, hinder her recovery very seriously. Is that clear?”
Sara blanched as if she had been struck. She opened her lips as if about to speak, but no words came.
Adam went to her and laid his hand upon her shoulder. “You find that pretty hard to accept, don't you?” he asked.
Sara nodded, and he went on: “All the same, my concern is with Carol, not with you. You must try to believe that I know best.”
“She’ll need me—” murmured Sara rebelliously.
“—And you may see her as often as possible. I promise that. But you must be content to leave her care to me.”
Kathryn, seeing the tears begin to well into Sara’s blue eyes, said compassionately: “You may go, Nurse.”
And Sara turned and plunged from the room.
She left silence behind her. Then Adam said: “You consider I was brutal, don’t you?”
“You were her last court of appeal, and she sincerely believed you would help her,” evaded Kathryn.
“That means you think I was. But how would you treat a case of hysteria?”
“I should be firm—”
“Implying that would stop short of being hurtful? But here the truth was hurtful—and still had to be told. Shall we go to the child now?”
She went with him, thinking how ruthlessly he saw his duty always. Just so had he conceived that he had a duty to Steven, and had brooked no weaknesses in achieving it. It seemed that for him there was no blurring of the outlines of his loyalties, whether personal, as to Steven, or to his work. It was a strength, a sureness that she longed to have the right to lean upon, to know that it would always wrap her about—
He was thoughtful as they left Carol’s bedside, and on their return to her office he said: “I’m not satisfied. I shall call Sir Paul Denver in consultation. You’ve met him, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but only briefly—at Thelma Carter’s party for Steven. How did you know?”
“He told me so. Or rather, he described you to me, not knowing of our connection. You made a deep impression upon him.”
“But I didn’t tell him I was a nurse—”
“I meant an impression as a woman, not as a nurse. Does that surprise you?”
“Yes, because we met only as briefly as people do at such parties.”
“And you’d judge that your personality couldn’t have impinged upon him in the time? Kathryn Clare have you no conception of what you bring to your relationships with other people, however brief?”
Startled by the change of intensity in his tone, she looked up at him to meet his eyes almost accusingly upon hers. “I—don’t know what you mean,” she faltered.
“Don’t you? Then you must have forgotten our own first meeting—our first real meeting, I mean, here in hospital.”
“I’ve forgotten nothing about it,” she assured him quietly.
“Well, do you suppose I should have accused you as I did if you’d been at all my conception of the woman who had thrown Steven over? Don’t you understand my need to blame you came from nothing but my shock at finding you to be the person you really were. You seemed to have everything Steven needed in a wife, and I blamed you for first encouraging him and then withdrawing—possibly because you didn’t want to go abroad with him. That was my first impression of you.”
“Not a very happy one.”
“Well, there it was. As I saw it, you had power over Steven which you were refusing to use, after letting him believe he could rely on it.
“I don’t understand? Power? What power?”
“Surely? The subtle power a man confers on a woman, when he loves her. In my experience a man in love has only the frailest of armour against that.” Adam paused. “But you think I’m generalising, don’t you? That I’m merely spouting theories about the man-woman thing? Nothing more important than that?”
“Was there anything more important to say?” (How long must she find words of her own with which to
parry his?)
In a gesture that was foreign to him he passed a hand across his brow as if he were suddenly weary. “At one time I thought there might be,” he said. “It seems that there wasn’t, after all.”
Sara sat alone within the arc of light thrown by the green-shaded lamp before her. She added a note to the treatment chart and drew her cloak more closely round her. How cold even a late spring night could be before dawn! And how lonely and aloof you were, awake while other people slept all round you.
Her senior on night duty, a third-year nurse, had gone to the midnight meal, leaving Sara in charge of the ward. There was nothing she could not handle—the routine round which she had just made, a two-hourly feed to be given, and a watch to be kept upon Daddy Fosdick, to whom the house physician on call would be coming presently.
Daddy had taken a turn for the worse lately, and everyone missed his plaintive quaver demanding drinks. Now he lay weakly, muttering and grumbling a little, and somehow, in Sara’s troubled dreams of Carol during the long days since her name had been upon the danger list, Daddy’s case sometimes got mixed up. Daddy Fosdick must recover, or Carol wouldn’t ... That was silly, of course, and unworthy of her reason. But the muddled fears that haunted sleep seemed to take no account of reason.
She was thinking of Carol when the light of a powerful torch swept across the glass of the ward’s swing-doors. That would be Dr. Mason, she thought, and letting her cloak slip from her shoulders, she stood up to receive him.
With the torch lowered, but remaining in the obscurity behind it, the figure approached her desk. The torch was switched off, and in the light of her own lamp Sara found herself confronted, not by Dr. Mason, but by Simon.
Their eyes met and held. Then Simon said: “I’ve come to see Fosdick, Nurse.”
“Yes.” Sara added nervously: “We were—that is, Sister was—expecting Dr. Mason.
“He is taking a night off, so I’m deputising for him. If you are ready, let’s go.”
Silently they moved down the ward together. Both of us in white, like a couple of ghosts out for a walk, thought Sara. If she had been on speaking terms with Simon she would have whispered it to him, and they would have laughed, as at a tremendous joke. Unshared, it was not funny at all.
At Daddy Fosdick’s bed they stopped. And when Simon had taken his pulse and respiration he ordered: “Bring screens, will you? Then the saline stand. I’m going to cut down for an intravenous. He’s lost a lot of strength since I saw him last.”
At their inevitable movements Daddy’s neighbours stirred, but did not fully wake, and as they worked within their own little circle of light, Sara found a strange satisfaction in their isolation. Here, taking Simon’s orders, she was at one with him again, and the moment—which would not last—was very sweet while it did.
At first they had trouble with the apparatus, but they righted it together after a whispered consultation, and then they both stood back to take satisfaction in the steady drip entering Daddy’s veins, taking over his healing.
At Sara’s table once more, Simon took his torch from his pocket. “Well—” he began, then thrust back the torch and faced Sara compellingly.
“You may as well know the truth,” he said. “I bribed Mason to let me take over his round to-night. I had to see you, and without Sister’s eagle eye upon us. But first, have you heard about Carol?”
Sara’s heart leapt, then tightened again within the familiar clutch of fear. “Carol? Oh—what?”
“She’s responding at last. I rang the ward. Kathryn had stayed on duty to watch the result of her latest transfusion, and answered the phone. She could hardly speak for exultation, and I asked her if I could tell you, and she said yes. Sara—Carol is out of danger—”
“Oh, Simon!” She breathed his name in the merest whisper, but it was loud enough for him to hear. She swayed a little on her feet so he drew out her chair and pushed her gently into it. She leaned her forehead on her hand, murmuring: “It’s not a dream this time, is it? I’ve dreamt so often that I was hearing it, and always when I woke it wasn’t true.”
“It’s not a dream.” Simon paused, seeking an argument that would convince her. At last he produced: “I’ll bet no dream ever forecast that I should bring the good news!”
“No, but—” She looked up at him wonderingly.
“Simon, do you realise something?”
“Only that I’ve been able to make you happy.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? They—they wouldn’t let me do anything to help, and I suppose they were right, though I was dreadfully hurt at the time. But you—you’ve helped to save her life!”
“My sweet, I had nothing to do with it!”
“But you had! Don’t you remember that your blood was AB negative? And so is Carol’s—Kathryn said so. So that you have given her something that I couldn’t. Oh, Simon, I love you so much. But not—not just for that!”
Simon looked at her wondering just how worthwhile it might be to try to explain the unlikelihood of his particular pint of plasma having been selected from a vast blood bank for Carol’s transfusion. He decided it was not worthwhile at all. Sara, bless her, wanted to believe it, and so she should. Meanwhile, they had other things to discuss...
He said hesitantly: “We were a couple of idiots that night, weren’t we?”
“Yes, Simon.”
“And since?”
“Worse since. But there have been times when—”
“I know. I’ve had them too. But we’re not going to quarrel on that score any more. You must finish your training, Sara. I see that.”
“I didn’t try to see your side of it,” mourned Sara.
“No, and having screwed myself to the point of asking you to marry me, I admit I thought you might have done! But in my heart I knew you were right, which was what made me so mad.”
“And yet you called me illogical!” murmured Sara.
“Well, so you are. But I said I loved you for it, and so I do.” Simon broke off to thrust his wrist-watch towards the arc of lamp-light. “Look, what time is your senior due back?”
“About now.”
“Then I’d better hop it. We’ll talk later, my sweet. What a lot of time we’ve wasted, haven’t we?”
She walked down the ward with him. At the door she whispered: “What did you bribe Dr. Mason with?”
“My new rugger boots.”
“Was it worth it?”
“You’re fishing for compliments, girl, but the answer is in the affirmative.”
“Oh, Simon!”
“What’s more, he could have had a set of golf-clubs, a fishing-rod a pair of boxing gloves and an air-gun too if he’d asked!” Simon’s grin seemed to fight up the darkness. Then he was gone.
Kathryn had gone off duty at last, feeling weary but elated, and longing to share her relief with someone. She could not reach Sara, and in any case Simon Glenn had promised to give Sara the good news! Barbara would know it already, of course, as she had been asked to keep in touch with hospital, and it would have been telephoned to her. But Kathryn knew that she would be longing for the details which the cursory message would not have included, and though it was late, she decided to go over to see her and Victor before going to bed.
She changed quickly out of uniform, thinking as she did so of how she had tried to express to Sara the sheer, fulfilling satisfaction of winning the sort of step-by-step fight with Carol’s case had been from the beginning. It did not matter that it was rarely given to a nurse to accomplish the thing alone; in fact, it was the teamwork that made it truly worthwhile. Skill had to be matched with endless patience and brilliant diagnoses faithfully carried out. But success—if it came—was always very sweet.
She found Barbara alone, Victor having returned to the school for a Sports Committee meeting after the news of Carol had come through. Barbara looked drawn with worry still, as if she had scarcely yet grasped that the days and nights of ordeal were over. But she confessed to Kathryn that when
she went to bed that night she meant to sleep the clock round.
“Then you’re going now,” insisted Kathryn.
“No, dear, no—not when you’ve just come!”
“Now! Go and have your bath, while I switch on the fire in your room and get hot drinks for us both. I know your kitchen almost as well as you do, and I’ll come and sit with you until Victor gets back.”
Under further protest Barbara did as she was told, and within half an hour they were ensconced cosily in her bedroom, she propped up in bed, Kathryn in an easy-chair beside her.
Between the intimate silence of friends they talked first of Carol and then of the many things which the child’s illness had thrust aside in their minds. Kathryn told what she knew of Sara’s quarrel with Simon Glenn, and Barbara admitted that she had guessed something had gone wrong, though Victor had not let her question Sara.
“If Victor—and most men—had their way,” declared Barbara emphatically, “the earth’s surface would be littered with the bodies of sleeping dogs they were carefully allowing to lie! They regard the merest friendly interest in people as ‘interference’.”
Kathryn smiled, but, recalling Adam Brand’s unwarrantable interference in her own affairs, did not agree. “I think they’re inclined to meddle as much as we are,” she said, and went on to reassure Barbara that, from Simon’s insistence over the telephone that he would be seeing Sara that night, she believed their differences were over.
