Seaside Hospital

by Pauline Ash

  Their favorite cafe was quite near the hospital and usually stayed open until midnight. They sat near the door and sipped hot milky coffee and ate sausage rolls and sandwiches, while Mary discussed the show and Lisa’s sister and the possibility of Thalia getting engaged to Randall Carson. She tactfully refrained from mentioning Derek again.

  “I must say your sister is a wonderful dancer, though. She won’t be in the local shows long, will she? Someone will see her and her name will be in lights!” Mary said enthusiastically. And then she recalled that Derek Frenton was Jacky’s boyfriend now, and the inference was that Jacky would want to marry into the rich Frenton family. Mary reddened in embarrassment.

  “The thing to do now is to find a new boyfriend,” she said at last, as they got up to go. “That’s always the best advice anyone can give someone who—” She had been going to say, someone who has just been jilted, but Lisa’s delicate face was already looking as if she was too hurt to take any more.

  “As a matter of fact,” Lisa said, trying to sound casual, “I have a date for next week. Dinner with ... an ex-patient. I don’t think you know him. He was in Out-Patients with a suspected fractured arm, not long ago.”

  “Good for you!” the loyal Mary said heartily, but she wondered how long it would be before Lisa realized that, with her sister now interested in Derek Frenton, she would not be able to shut the memory of him out of her life so easily.

  The children’s ward was a much easier place to work in than casualty. None of the little ones had anything really seriously wrong with them at that time. With the exception of a mastoid case well on the road to recovery, the others were mainly tonsils and adenoids, and one broken leg.

  “How did you get that, young Phillip?” Lisa asked the cheery little sandy-haired boy with the plaster cast, who was just inside the ward door.

  “Playing on the pier. I fell off and got caught in the struts underneath,” he said cheerfully. “Serves me right. The others were all younger than me, and they got away with scratches and bruises. They all laughed when I had to go off in the ambulance.”

  “Unfeeling little brutes,” Lisa chuckled.

  After she had completed the milk round, there was even time to sit and read a quick story to the few older children and to play briefly with the woolly animals on the babies’ beds. She had discovered that Sister Rudolph was a darling, and so was the staff nurse. Lisa felt that at last she would have breathing space and could concentrate on her studies instead of being worn out when she came off the wards.

  Her optimism was short-lived, however, for just as she was going down to lunch that day, she was called to the telephone. Jacky’s voice hailed her from the other end.

  “Lisa! Didn’t you come to the show on Saturday, after all?” she demanded. “You promised! It was the least you could do! You know I was waiting to introduce my new boyfriend!”

  “I did come to the show,” Lisa assured her, “and I enjoyed it, but there were rather a lot of people obviously waiting to go backstage afterward—”

  “Yes, I wanted them all to meet my sister!” Jacky declared. “There was Derek, my new boyfriend, and his mother and sister—a title in the family and frightfully rich—and one of the surgeons from your old hospital. He looked a bit grim, but given the time, I bet I could loosen up that tongue of his,” Jacky finished cheekily.

  “Did you tell them you had a sister who was a nurse at St. Mildred’s?” Lisa asked quickly, in an agony, of suspense.

  “No!” Jacky said. “I was too furious to say anything about what you did for a living.”

  “Thank heavens for that. Jacky, please don’t mention it to anyone at all.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not likely to. It made me feel such a fool to keep looking for you and have to admit that my own sister hadn’t shown up, so I just forgot about you. Really, Lisa, it was too selfish of you, darling!”

  Selfish! Lisa almost gasped, until she remembered that Jacky hadn’t changed at all. According to her, everyone was selfish who didn’t do just as she wanted them to.

  “I had to get back to the hospital,” Lisa said patiently. “We can’t stay out as late as we like, you know. Never mind, I’ll come another time, but I can’t promise when that will be. I’ve got a change of duty. I must go now ... and, Jacky, we aren’t really allowed private calls, so don’t ring me up again, will you?”

  Jacky ignored that and said imperiously, “Lisa, you really will have to come to the garden party just to make up for letting me down last Saturday. This is really important. Lady Frenton—that’s Derek’s mother, you know!—is giving it and I’m to present the prizes. She likes someone from a good local show. Now you must promise to come!”

  "I will if I can manage it,” Lisa said, but when she put the receiver down she felt sick at heart. The garden party to be held at Penderby Towers had been an event that Lisa had been looking forward to. Derek was to have taken her. Now he was taking Jacky to this highlight of the Barnwell Bay season.

  Lady Frenton held it every year, to raise funds for the hospital and to get herself well and truly in the limelight. The national as well as the local press would be represented, and undoubtedly the enterprising Jacky would receive all the publicity she needed. Lisa, who had been puzzled about Lady Frenton’s attitude toward her pampered son’s new choice of girlfriend, now guessed that Derek’s mother was probably just using Jacky for her own ends.

  The thought that Derek preferred Jacky to herself was no real surprise to Lisa, although the knife still turned in her heart as she remembered those bright, laughing eyes of his, the coppery hair that was never really tidy, and that tall lithe frame exerted in sports or poised for dancing. He and Jacky would make a splendid lighthearted couple, she considered, with never a thought of anything serious—just fun all the time.

  Mary was waiting for her. “What are you doing with your four hours off?” she demanded.

  “I ought to study,” Lisa said, thinking of the next examination ahead. “It’s so hot, and I did promise young Arty Benny I’d get him some new crayons and books to color. His mother’s left him some more pocket money, arid coloring’s all he really cares about.”

  “Jerry and Mike, those two medical students, want to go to the new carnival, and they’ve invited me and a girlfriend,” Mary said. “What do you say, Lisa? You could do your shopping on the way. Come on, let’s go out in the fresh air. I’m tired of broiling in this uniform. I wonder what cantankerous old grandfather designed these stiff collars and cuffs?”

  After their meal, they dashed to change; Lisa in a crisp striped dress, Mary in an apparently demure button-fronted frock, which turned out to be, beyond the precincts of the hospital, merely a top covering a very daring, low-cut sundress.

  “Well, no one can see us now,” Mary said, shedding her special “best ward manner” and becoming hilarious. “Those boys will be along in their old car in a minute, and I’m not going to look stuffy and hot for anyone. Here they come!”

  A series of bangs and crashes hit the air. An old car screeched its way around the corner, and two young men, looking no more than irresponsible schoolboys, waved madly to Mary, who waved back at them.

  “Jump in, girls! Hurry up, if you want to make the most of your break,” the dark boy shouted. Lisa and Mary climbed into the back seat, and they chugged their noisy way through the town to where, at the end overlooking the park, the massive newly painted scenic railway and water chute could be seen, gay with flags and bunting. Beside it, model airplanes wildly circling the central pole flew out farther and farther, and the occupants’ screams grew more shrill. Shots from the shooting range and the cries of the barkers added to the general pandemonium as the boys parked their old car, and they all trooped through the main entrance.

  “Just the thing to help you girls get away from it all,” Mike, the fair boy with glasses, chuckled.

  Lisa stayed with them for a little while, but she found the noise exhausting. She wondered whether this was what the rest of t
he medical staff were like as students—gay, noisy, and so desperately young and unworried. Could Randall Carson have ever been like this? If so, what had happened to make him change so much, or had he always been grim and efficient, expecting too much from everyone?

  She didn’t know what had made her think of him just then. Impatiently she decided to break away and do her shopping for the children.

  “Don’t you come, Mary,” she said, explaining to the others what she wanted to do. “Stay here and have fun. I’ll go back to the hospital when I’ve finished my shopping. Thanks, boys, for a lovely time.”

  She watched her friends for a few minutes, as the boys whisked Mary off to the water chute. It was easy to realize that Mary had been brought up, as an only girl, among a crowd of brothers.

  Lisa wandered through the toy department of one of the big stores and finished her shopping with an hour to spare. But on her own, she found she was remembering everything she had done in Barnwell Bay with Derek. His face seemed to be everywhere: in the new open-air swimming pool, dancing in the new pier pavilion, cocktails in the big hotel on the front, and lastly even in the Coronet Theatre, when he had presented her sister with a basket of flowers.

  Lisa felt she must get away from all the memories at all costs. There was one place where Derek had never taken her. Down in the old part of the town, where the harbor, almost abandoned now, stretched out green gray arms, was a huddle of white cottages belonging to the local fishermen. In the end cottage, lived old Simeon Eddy, who had been a favorite patient at St. Mildred’s a year ago.

  He was sitting on an upturned lobster pot, mending his nets, as Lisa made her way across the shingle. There was a strong salty tang in the air. The stone walls were green with fine moss left by the heavy tides; upturned boats scattered the sharply sloping beach, and a few small craft bobbed prettily at anchor beyond the jetties. This was Barnwell Bay as it had been, before the carnival and the swimming pool.

  “Hello, Simeon, how’s that leg of yours?” she smiled.

  The old man’s vivid blue eyes twinkled at her. “Nay, my lass, you’ve never come down here just to ask about that leg of mine, I know,” he said, removing his clay pipe from his mouth and stretching the injured leg to show her how well it now was. “Why aren’t you out with some young fellow on your afternoon off, now?”

  She flushed painfully. “I only have an hour left. I came to see you. It’s peaceful here. Do you still go moonlight fishing?”

  “Aye, that I do,” he said, his smile fading as he noticed that she hadn’t answered his question. He had seen her once, in Derek Frenton’s new yacht. Simeon had been out in his old motorboat, its sail furled, riding sweetly and silently. The occupants of the yacht had not seen him. They had not been looking for dirty little fishing craft. They had their eyes elsewhere. That had been at the start of the season, a rare hot day in late spring, when Lisa and Derek had still been all in all to each other. “Want to come fishing, do you, lass?” he went on.

  “If it isn’t too late finishing, I’d love it,” Lisa said. “I expect my girlfriend would come too.”

  “If it’s the one who upset the screen on Matron when she came on her rounds that day, you’d best not bring her. Fine larky customer, that Nurse Thorley, I remember, though she fair do try and look quiet on the wards. It’s the real quiet ones I like to take out at night fishing with me.”

  Lisa grinned. So he had not forgotten Mary’s lapses when he had been in hospital.

  “Could you manage this day week, lass? Because if so, you don’t have to bring anyone. I got another passenger. Rare quiet chap. We’ll have a good run out to the Channel and back.”

  “I can’t get a late pass. I’ll have to be in by eleven,” she warned him.

  “Fair enough. My other passenger has to be back as well.”

  Lisa left old Simeon then, and walked along the shingle to a steeper flight of steps that led to the top of the cliff. Among her shopping she had bought a little foam rubber duck for one of the toddlers, a frightened wee mite who had never been away from his mother before; the mother could not come and stay with him as she was in the maternity wing, having a new baby.

  On impulse, Lisa slipped off her sandals and fastened them around her neck. Taking the little duck out of its wrappings, she set it on the water and paddled it along. It looked sweet on the glassy surface of the receding tide, but suddenly she realized it was being tugged out quickly to sea. She put out a hand to reach it, but her foot encountered nothing, and she drew back hastily, remembering too late that in the heavy battering of last winter’s seas, this part of the beach had dropped away sharply and was too deep for paddling. No one was in sight at this quiet end of the shore, and the little duck was fast becoming beyond hope of rescue.

  Then she heard a quiet chugging of an outboard motor behind her, and she looked around with relief. The tall man sitting with his back to the sun obligingly steered toward the toy, and reaching it, brought it inshore toward her. As he neared, she recognized him, and her thanks froze on her lips. It was Randall Carson.

  She blushed as his sardonic glance roved from her bare legs to the sandals slung around her neck.

  “Paddling with a rubber duck? Rather a juvenile way of spending your study hours, isn’t it, Nurse?” he asked, as he turned his craft outward again and chugged away.

  It was for remarks like those, slighting and hurtful, and that sardonic amusement of his, that Lisa cherished a special dislike for Randall Carson. They were worse even than his eternally picking on her for the mistakes she made when she was working with him.

  She told Mary about it, when she dropped into Lisa’s little room at bedtime that night.

  “Oh, take no notice of him, Lisa. He’s an old sourpuss,” Mary comforted. “Mind you, they do say that he’s had a pretty grim sort of life, so that may account for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Lisa wanted to know.

  “His parents were poor, and he had to work frightfully hard to qualify. No fun at all, like those fellows this afternoon, for instance. Then, not long after he came to Barnwell Bay, the tragedy happened.”

  “What tragedy? How is it you know so much about him?”

  “Because I enjoy gossip, ducky, and you don’t,” Mary chuckled. “It seems that the girl he was going to marry died in a boat accident. Her name was Catherine Varnell—her father owned half of Barnwell Bay. She was a wilful type and Carson warned her not to go out in her father’s new boat—she wasn’t very good at handling it, and she went just to show poor old Randall Carson what she thought of him.”

  “Oh, I never knew that,” Lisa gasped.

  “That’s not all. She wasn’t dead when they brought her back. The surgeon-in-chief at the time happened to be a distant relative of hers, and he wouldn’t let Randall Carson try out a new technique he had—one that might have saved her.”

  Lisa’s eyes shone with sympathy. “The girl he was going to marry! That can’t be long ago, then.”

  “It is, actually. He isn’t as young as he looks. He’s nearly 35 now.” Mary hesitated. “They do say she was secretly going out with someone else at the time, some wealthy playboy. She wasn’t alone, d’you see, in the boat. It must have been an awful shock to him. As it happens, you look like her. That could be it, you know.”

  “What on earth d’you mean, Mary?”

  “Oh, perhaps I’m silly, but it just struck me that every time he looks at you, he can probably see her. She was always doing things he told her not to, such as driving her car like a lunatic, and going out with crazy people instead of spending a quiet evening with him. I suppose you keep reminding him of all that.”

  “Well, I don’t see what that has to do with me!” Lisa said indignantly. “Even today, I wasn’t doing any harm, but he had to go out of his way to say something nasty to me. Oh, I wish I’d never seen the man!”

  The next day Lisa’s mind was completely taken up with the worrying prospect of her dinner date with Ellard Lindon.

  “
What’s he like?” Mary wanted to know, as they left the dining hall together. “Your age? Likes fun?”

  “No-o,” Lisa said hesitantly, and did her best to describe him. Mary shot her a sharp look. “Funny type for you to pick,” she commented. “If you’re thinking of going out with this man-about-town type in your old pale blue dance frock, you’d better think again, hadn’t you? He’ll probably take you to a very smart hotel, somewhere down the coast.”

  “Well, there isn’t time to buy anything else, and anyway, I can’t afford a new dress,” Lisa said definitely. “If he doesn’t like what I wear, perhaps he won’t ask me again.”

  “Don’t you want to go out with him?” Mary asked sharply. Lisa flushed. She had not confided in Mary why she was going out with Ellard Lindon, and she did not want to arouse her suspicions because of her loyalty to her sister Jacky.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever want to go out with anyone but Derek,” she said quietly, and with truth, “but as I can’t spend the rest of my life moping, I’ll have to put up with second best.”

  “Well, you’d better wear that amber velvet of mine. It never did suit me, but come to think of it, it ought to show up your hair color marvelously.”

  Lisa felt as if her last excuse had slid away. The feeling of safety from Randall Carson deserted Lisa too, that day, when he came up to look at a small patient who had just been admitted.

  As Lisa hastily left the ward for the surgeon to make his round, his eyes met hers, and remembering the circumstances when she had last seen him, she bit her lip in vexation as she fled.

  Sister Rudolph, who adored Randall Carson, accompanied him on his round after he had seen the new little patient. At the bedside of the homesick toddler, he paused. There on the counterpane lay the foam rubber duck that he had last seen on the water, with Lisa trying to reach it.

  “That’s a fine duck,” he said to the child, in a voice so gentle that Lisa would have found it difficult to recognize as his. But Sister Rudolph had seen him in this mood before and loved him to come around and soothe her infants.