The Hospital in Buwambo

by Anne Vinton

  “I would have done it—so—” he told her once, as they scrubbed up together. “But I’m not so sure you aren’t right. You’re a good one, Sylvia. I knew it when I picked you. Come to dinner, will you?”

  So she had gone to dinner with the MacAlpines, knowing her principal had more to say to her. She patted the bulldog and the Labrador, had her stockings plucked by a wild Siamese kitten, and finally joined the senior surgeon in his den for coffee and the téte-a-téte she had known to be forthcoming.

  “There’s been a meeting of the board,” he told her without preamble. “They want to double your salary and make you my assistant.”

  . “Oh!” She knew she should feel flattered, but was caught unawares.

  “Don’t accept,” said Dr. MacAlpine, shrewdly observing her. “There’s more to it than the money, you know, I don’t want you for my assistant, lassie. For my pupil—yes. Assistant—och, no! You’re too smart. It would be like two wives in one kitchen...” Sylvia was smiling.

  “I knew ye wouldna be offended.” Dr. MacAlpine’s native dialect broadened as he became more relaxed. “There’s more to it than my desires, though. I’m good for twenty years yet, as a surgeon. The family’s long-lived, too. I still have a grandmother, did you know? Ninety-nine come Hogmanay. My parents are a couple of youngsters compared, both middle-seventies.”

  “Really?”

  “Aye. So what would you be doing, a smart young woman like you, taking over the bits and pieces of surgery I choose to leave undone, eh? It’s no’ for you, Sylvia girl. No’ for you.”

  “Hmm,” she considered, looking into the fire.

  The S.S.O. cocked an eye at her.

  “You don’t seem to be the marrying sort,” he ventured, “though you have all it takes in that bonny face and figure of yours...”

  “Even you notice such things, sir?” she teased.

  “Why not? Didn’t I marry the prettiest sister at my first hospital? But you’ve got a skill, Sylvia, a rare skill. You can’t afford romantic relationships at the expense of your work. You must have thought of that when you turned men aside.”

  Sylvia, flushing, looked away. She thought bleakly how lacking in emotional upheavals her life had been so far, no matter how flattering an interpretation her principal might give of it. She realized that her life had known two loves—her chosen work and Martin. She had not encouraged men. She had appeared to others as she had felt, content and self-sufficient.

  “Maybe you’ve given some thought to the future already?” asked Dr. MacAlpine.

  Sylvia hadn’t. The pain of the past few days had excluded all practical thought, but her senior fortunately knew nothing of this.

  “Yes,” she said, turning to him brightly. “I had thought of an overseas appointment, perhaps.”

  “The very thing!” he said enthusiastically. “Och! I wish I’d traveled in my youth! They even held me down instructing M.O.’s in field surgery during the war. Any particular place in mind?”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “Buwambo. West Africa.”

  His enthusiasm dwindled. “Of all the places in the world, lassie, why a debilitating steam bath to start with?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe I’ve had it easy too long. Somebody’s got to go, you know, sir.”

  “I might have known!” He shrugged, rose and sighed. “They’re making ‘em tougher these days. But all my good work gone over to the mosquitoes!”

  Sylvia stretched her legs, feeling happier.

  “I haven’t gone yet,” she reminded him. “Meanwhile there are eleven postoperatives I’d better be looking at, don’t you think? It’s been a pleasant evening,, sir, and thank you for—everything.”

  He kissed her lightly on the brow.

  It was like a benediction on Buwambo.

  Sylvia had to come face to face with Martin sooner or later, even in the vastness of St. Augustine’s. She was at the tea truck when it happened, and seeing him at her side she quickly called, “Another cup of tea, please!” She found that she could actually smile with him as they moved to a corner of the sitting room to drink the dark stewed liquid with which the staff refreshed themselves at this time of the day.

  “I believe congratulations are in order?” she asked, hoping she could keep up the lightness in her tone.

  “Er—thanks.” Martin, quite obviously, was the embarrassed one. “Sylvia, you may have thought I was dodging you...”

  “Why should I think that?” she asked, and saluted Ian MacPherson on his way out. “Have you been?”

  “Well—it was difficult. Kay and I—we—I didn’t know how you would take it. We’ve known each other a long time and I don’t mind admitting I’m terribly fond of you. I like to have you around.”

  “Thanks. Now, what is all this leading to?”

  “You don’t seem to mind about Kay and me. I’m surprised—relieved—I thought maybe you ... you would mind. The way I behaved that night...”

  “Are you referring to that odd beery kiss or two you forced on me?” Sylvia asked in feigned amazement. “You were hardly Sir Galahad at that moment, Martin!”

  “Well—you sent a letter...”

  So, Sylvia thought ruefully, it has caught up with me at last! “I know,” she said quickly, before she could lose countenance. “You sounded so disgusted with yourself in your note that I had to put you at your ease. That’s all. Of course, had I known about your engagement I wouldn’t have written quite like that.”

  I’m doing fine, she told herself. I’m even convincing myself I never really cared about him!

  “Then we have your blessing?”

  “Absolutely. I have already congratulated Sister Waters.”

  “She told me.”

  Sylvia giggled a little.

  “Your fiancée doesn’t imagine I was ever in the running, does she? I should hate to be thought of as jilted or lovelorn.”

  Martin stared at her and his conceit took a dip. Could it be he had imagined Sylvia was his for the taking? Why, he had actually thought at one time that he had only to snap his fingers. She was deep, that one. He had been pleasurably surprised to find her trembling softly in his arms, but the thought of Kay wearing his ring had brought him to with the realization that he had made his choice and must abide by it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sylvia came out of the train station, set her hat more firmly and turned toward Threadneedle Street.

  She was to be interviewed by a Dr. Hogan about the Buwambo job at the offices of a firm of solicitors. She felt nervous and unsure of herself now that this day had arrived, for whereas her initial desire had been to get far away, she was viewing for the first time the immensity of the undertaking. Her skill would qualify anywhere in the world, but would she? Was she up to Buwambo? Such thoughts exhilarated and yet terrified her.

  Sylvia was looking at Buwambo now through different eyes. The more she read the wording of the appointment, the more it seemed to be a challenge—and she was no coward to hide away from her job when it also involved physical difficulties. Her brother, Mervyn, had spent a great deal of time on the African continent, and she was familiar with his feelings. “God put all the torments of hell into latitude nought, and nine-tenths of those are concentrated in Africa. But He put something indefinably grand there, too, and while we search we suffer and sweat—fools that we are—and never find what we’re looking for. Or do we, in the end?” It was this thought that had kept luring Mervyn back, though at the end of each tour of duty he vowed never to return. Two years ago he had died of a fever. Had he found his “something indefinably grand” before he succumbed? Sylvia didn’t know, but she thought that Africa, perhaps, might tell her—might grow on her as it had on her brother. It could certainly teach her much professionally, for a continent has its own diseases. But before she could minister to the African sick, she had to face an interview with one Michael Hogan, M.D., who might not care for her qualifications, her face, or her chic little hat.

  A junior c
lerk showed her into a very small room that had obviously been loaned to Dr. Hogan for the purpose of interviews. It contained a small table, a couple of chairs and a hat-stand. No one was in the room.

  After fifteen minutes Sylvia could hear footsteps dashing into the outer hall. Then, to her surprise, the door opened and a trilby hat sailed past her nose to alight on the hat-stand.

  “Never misses!” said a cheerful voice, as the owner came into the room grinning broadly and rubbing his hands. He was a very lean young man with sandy hair and a deep tan. He wore a soft shirt with an abominable tie that made Sylvia wince. As he saw his visitor he looked suddenly aghast.

  “Pardon me, ma’am, do I know you?” The accent was unmistakably American.

  “Not yet. You are Dr. Hogan, I presume?”

  “Yes. But not now, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date right now. Could I meet you someplace else?”

  “Well—” Sylvia looked taken aback. “I must go back on duty at two. My appointment with you was for eleven and—” she looked reproachfully at her watch which now said nearly twenty past.

  “Madam”—Michael Hogan looked somewhat scared—“would you be Sydney Phillips, Esquire?”

  “I am Sylvia Phillips,” she said coolly.

  “Oh, my gosh!” The young man searched feverishly in his pockets and brought out a letter which he scanned quickly. “I could have sworn you were a male aged about forty-two, which is absurd, of course—”

  He looked at her again until she felt herself flushing.

  “I don’t remember stating any age on my application,” she told him. “But I’m not forty-two—yet.”

  “Not by a heck of a way,” decided Dr. Hogan, sternly. “I guess I assessed you as that miss—all you’ve achieved, all you are...” He glanced again at her letter of application and then back to her, smiling a little. “Shy of telling me?” he asked.

  “No,” she laughed. “Afraid, but not shy. I’m twenty-five.”

  “Heck!” sighed Mike Hogan. “What luck! I told Dave we’d landed a sucker—I beg your pardon, an applicant—and you turn up. I should have known better than to send that cable before I’d seen you, but I wanted to set his mind at rest. You see we’re pretty desperate for relief at Buwambo. Sister Kineton—that’s the sister in charge—is worried lest Dave—he’s the boss—crack up. She thinks he can’t carry on much longer.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Sylvia asked levelly. “I’m here. I’m held to be quite reasonably responsible back at St. Augustine’s. You’ve heard of it?”

  “You kidding?” retorted Hogan. “Who hasn’t in the medical world? Oh, I hand it to you, your application seemed to come from heaven itself. The only one I received, anyway. Who wants Buwambo?”

  “I chose it,” said Sylvia, in growing annoyance. “Out of all the appointments in the paper I selected Buwambo. What’s the matter with me?”

  “Sylvia,” said Dr. Hogan, rather enjoying her pique, “there’s just everything right about you! Now ask me what’s the matter with Buwambo and I’ll tell you. It has one particular genus of mosquito that refuses to leave, having proved its immunity to all known pest eradicators. It loves new, unblooded, types like yourself and will batten on your youth and your beauty until—we need say no more, need we? It also provides a day-long steam bath, which gets rather monotonous after a while, and you want to cut off all your hair, discard your clothes and go mad. Your hair is kinda pretty as it is—I like it. But back to Buwambo. It has, perhaps worst of all, a deadly monotony. Six-thirty the sun rises and twelve hours later it sets, year long. Sometimes the temperature is up, or drops, by as much as two degrees; but as you’re past caring anyway, what matter? The rains make a change—for the first week, but by the twelfth when you’re up to your ears in mud and the mozzies are procreating at the rate of a million eggs per female, you just want the sun back, and he comes, good old Sol! Then you can’t see for heat-vapor, if there was anything to see! That is Buwambo.”

  “Well?” asked Sylvia.

  “Do you want more?” asked Mike Hogan in amusement. “Isn’t all that enough to put you off?”

  “But I was under no illusions to start with,” said Sylvia simply. “I realized by the wording of the advertisement that Buwambo is not famed for being a tropical paradise, and I have already met the mosquito on a holiday visit to Morocco four years ago. I had malaria and it was most unpleasant, but I have no doubt it served to ‘blood’ me, as you call it, against more virulent varieties. As for the heat and the humidity, well, we are all in that together. Monotony I do not fear at all; I hope to have too much to do. If there’s still time to watch the sun up, or down, then I’ll know there’s time to increase my store of knowledge. I should think tropical diseases will make a very handy specialty for future occasions.”

  Mike Hogan gazed at her in open-mouthed admiration. “What a woman!” he told her. “But still you don’t fully understand. There’s another reason—I hesitate to discuss it with you. When I see you sitting there with your big, gray eyes and your cheeks soft as lilies—”

  Sylvia was glad of the interruption the telegraph boy’s arrival afforded, for the air had grown positively electric as Dr. Hogan proceeded. She watched him open the envelope of a cablegram and reached for her gloves. She was standing as he looked up. “Leaving?” he asked.

  “To save you the further embarrassment of finding reasons not to appoint me—yes,” she said. “I must have appeared to throw myself at this job. I will wish you good day, Dr. Hogan!”

  “Siddown!” said that young man, commandingly. “I was too hasty. There is one overriding reason why I should appoint you.”

  “And that...?” asked Sylvia, still coolly.

  The man thrust the cablegram into her fingers. It read, “Send your relief as soon as possible. Get that MacAlpine pupil at all costs.” It was signed “Carroll.”

  Sylvia looked at Mike Hogan. He seemed to have grown pale beneath his tan, and was now regarding her in a kind of desperation.

  “I’m begging you to go and help,” he said quietly.

  “There is no need to do that, Dr. Hogan,” she said. “I am not easily put off, and I have taken a fancy to Buwambo.”

  Over coffee, Sylvia looked across at the American. He was giving her, as he called it, “all the dope.”

  “Do I understand you to say you operate a lot?” she asked. “I expect you received your fellowship before you went out there.”

  “You hurt when you hit, lady,” winced the man. “I am in Buwambo because I don’t even have the M.R.C.S. Shall I read chapter two? In the bush, when a man’s innards are on fire, he doesn’t much care whether the fellow with the knife has letters after his name or not, just so long as he gets some relief. This setup has given Mike the chance to practice plenty, and while I’m in London I aim to try for that little piece of paper that means so much to you conventional types.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Dr. Hogan, I’m truly sorry if I appeared patronizing. I wish you all the luck in the world. Surgeons are born. All the exams in the world couldn’t make one. I’m just as sure that not all the born surgeons in the world have qualified for membership—on paper.”

  “It made me lose confidence in myself when they failed me,” said Dr. Hogan, half to himself. “I didn’t mention it to Dave, but he knew. He ferreted it out and stuck the scalpel right back in my hand. No one could have a better teacher than Dave Carroll. I’ll make it this time. I know I will.”

  Sylvia was growing more curious about David Carroll, the surgical officer in charge of Buwambo hospital. Things Dr. Hogan had told her about him intrigued her. If he was so brilliant, why was he shut away in the African bush? Had he desired to escape from something?

  As she signed the contract that pledged her to a minimum of six months’ service in Buwambo, she thought of Sister Magaffigan and the ominous parallel her words had drawn. Was she, too, signing away all the “fun” in life along with the romance that had b
een stillborn? Buwambo might supply all her needs of a serious nature, but one could hardly place “fun” in the picture.

  “Is Sister Kineton easy to get along with?” she asked, drawing on her gloves, her signature duly witnessed.

  “Old Winifred’s all right. A bit of a martinet with her staff. But—wait a minute, though. Winnie ain’t gonna like you. No. You see she worships Dave and your presence is going to make her life hell!”

  Doctor Hogan began to laugh, slapping his long thigh.

  “You mean she’s in love with him?” Sylvia asked sharply.

  “No. She just loves him.” He leaned across the table implying confidence. “If you’d been like her I wouldn’t have hesitated in the first place. But you and loving just go together, I guess.”

  “I’ll mature,” Sylvia commented dryly. “And—the last thing I’m looking for is a ‘loving.’ Does that satisfy you?”

  “No,” he smiled challengingly. “Now you have me wondering why.”

  When Sylvia gave notice of her intention to leave St. Augustine’s, there was a mild sensation. Hadn’t she turned down the board’s offer? Such a thing was unheard of. Was Dr. Phillips after all as unassuming as they had thought her? What more could the board have offered her?

  She kept her own counsel, worked hard on the relief duties assigned to her and gradually prepared a wardrobe suitable for the tropics.

  Martin sought her out one day.

  “Look here, Sylvia,” he said sharply. “I thought we were friends...”

  “Well, aren’t we?” she asked lightly.

  “I’m considerably hurt, if you must know. I hear you’re leaving, and you didn’t tell me. It’s not true, is it?”

  “It is true, Martin, and if there wasn’t so much idle gossip in hospitals you would have heard it from me in good time. I really can’t stay chatting. I have an afternoon off and want to go shopping.”