J. E. MacDonnell - 114

by The Worst Enemy(lit)

  "Nurse Moreton."

  "Good. I'll be there in a moment." The sister smiled at Bentley and went into a private room. To Bentley it seemed like a goodbye smile. He said: "I'd better shove off."

  "Mmmm?"

  Bentley repeated his statement, adding, "I'll leave the car for you. See you at home."

  Merrie came out of her preoccupation. "No, that's all right. I won't be long. You can wait in here."

  She opened a door. Bentley stepped into an office. To his mild surprise Merrie followed him.

  "Doctor Warren's warren," she smiled. "I have to wash-up first."

  "Oh." Bentley remembered something. "Tell the switchboard where I am, will you?"

  He liked the way she lifted a phone at once and obeyed his request. There was intelligent discipline here, too...

  Merrie slipped into a white coat. She washed her hands at the basin, and looked at the mirror's sober comment on her face. But only her eyes saw the face; her mind was diagnostically and anatomically meshing. Bentley sensed this. Watching her in the mirror, he said: "Is this the Caesarian section you mentioned?"

  "Yes."

  "A major job?"

  The mirror reflected her small smile. "They all are. A minor operation is minor to everybody except the patient."

  "That sounds like a hospital cliche."

  "It is. It's also true."

  Bentley leaned back against Doctor Warren's desk and crossed his arms. His eyes patrolled. The desk was neat, like the whole room; like his cabin, or the chart room. Warren must see his pregnant mothers in here. There would be the joy of growing life; and drama, Mrs. Nelson, and sometimes death... Suddenly he said:

  "I'd like to see you at work."

  "You have, during rounds."

  "Those women? They looked fitter than me."

  "Some of them looked at you, the wretches. Not that I blame them. You look sweet in civilian clothes, just like a doctor."

  "I feel like a blasted tailor's dummy."

  Merrie smiled, remembering Big Bill's similar description. Bentley said:

  "I mean really at work."

  "Not this case, Peter. Mrs. Nelson would not be amused."

  Her smile dropped off, replaced by thoughtfulness.

  "This Caesarian thing," Bentley said, tracking her changed mood. "It's a complicated job?"

  "In principle it's quite simple." Merrie was rinsing her hands clear of soap. "But the actual work can be damned difficult. So much depends on the imponderables, what Doctor Warren calls the mystical equations. There's the state of the patient's health, her will to live, how much she wants the baby, the strength a diseased female frame can rake up to fight the hardest fight of all. But in this case there's one equation we have no doubt about whatever-Mrs. Nelson's courage."

  Change a few words here and there, Bentley thought, and you have a related picture of a ship's crew going into action. The imponderables of weather and enemy movements, the mystical equations of will to fight and courage. The corelation so impressed his mind, made imaginative by his surroundings, that he said on impulse:

  "Who's the enemy here?"

  Merrie looked startled for a moment. "Toxemia," she answered, "poisoning from the kidneys."

  "Poor woman. All that, and a baby too. I hope to hell she comes through. Both of `em."

  His attitude pleased Merrie; he seemed to have forgotten his own worries. If he could be kept occupied... She hesitated, then almost at once castigated her stupidity; in the wards he easily passed for a doctor, but there was no chance whatever of his seeing what she had to do with Mrs. Nelson.

  Merrie dried her hands, pushed the towel down on the rack and walked to the door, turning there to look back at him.

  "I won't be long, darling."

  Bentley wagged his head. "Take all the time you like. I'm the least of your worries."

  Merrie opened the door on to the quiet night corridor of the hospital and Peter Bentley and his worries fled into the back recesses of her mind. In front, there was room only for Mrs. Nelson.

  She was in the lithotomy position when Merrie entered the room, on her back with legs raised and apart, ready for the examination. Merrie nodded at Nurse Moreton and took the gloves she handed her. She dug her fingers expertly down into the tight thin rubber and now her eyes were on Mrs. Nelson. She did not need the chart's evidence-the high temperature was indicated in the feverish flush of her damp face.

  "I think we're going to have to do something about you, Mrs. Nelson," she said soberly. No falsely reassuring smiles for this woman.

  "Thank God for that, Doctor," she returned. Her eyes stared up at Merrie. "I won't get the fits?"

  "No. We're ahead of the convulsions. That young fellow who's causing all this... we'll get him out where he can do only good." Merrie held out her gloved hands and the nurse poured the antiseptic cream over her fingers.

  "I won't hurt you much-just want to see how much you've dilated. All right?"

  Mrs. Nelson nodded imperceptibly, and her eyes closed. Wearily, Merrie noted; and no wonder. Then she put pointless sympathy from her mind and her fingers under the sheet went into the birth canal.

  At almost exactly that moment there was another entry. A man with a face the colour of dried coffee beans and quick bright eyes came into the reception foyer. He was in uniform. He strode to the desk.

  "G'night. Where can I find Captain Bentley?"

  His tone was curt, his face experienced but unhandsome. The nurse was very pretty, unused to such an approach from men. She jabbed her finger at a phone on the desk and her tone matched his.

  "I'll connect you."

  "Belay that. I want to see him."

  "Please."

  "All right, all right. Please."

  "That's better. You're not on a ship now, you know."

  "Strike me up a bloody gum tree... Look, sister, this is important. Where is he?"

  The nurse thought he meant "Sister". Mollified, she told him:

  "He's on the first floor. Turn left out of the lift and you'll find him in Doctor Warren's office near the end of the passage. And don't go thundering all over the place. This is a hospital, remember..."

  He was already striding for the stairs.

  When the knock sounded Bentley unconsciously gave his normal brief answer; in this case it happened to be the right one.

  "Come."

  The door opened and Bentley saw who was standing there and alarm tightened his mind.

  "What is it, Yeoman? Trouble?"

  It had to be, to bring Ferris out here, but Ferris said, coming into the office:

  "Not really, sir. Just that you wanted to know at once if anything came from the flotilla. This did, just now."

  Bentley's hand started to dart out. He slowed it in time to take instead of snatch the signal. He read Dalziel's report swiftly; then, with no mention of damage contained in it, he read the signal again slowly, while his mind enlarged, with easy and worrying facility, the few terse sentences into a volume of knowledge; and round his mind caroomed five words: The enemy tried to ram.

  Seeing what was in his face, Ferris spoke placatingly:

  "A pretty successful action, sir. One hundred per cent, in fact. Two merchantmen and a destroyer sunk, all without loss."

  Bentley frowned up at him from the chair. His words seemed irrelevant. "There's no mention of the flotilla."

  Irrelevant only to Ferris' words. The yeoman wet his lips; he had hoped that bit wouldn't be noticed. A stupid hope, he realised now.

  "No, sir," was all he could answer.

  "Dalziel out on his own," Bentley muttered, like a man talking to himself.

  "But the flotilla must be all right, sir," Ferris said, glad to be able to. "If it wasn't, that would've been mentioned." You know what I'm thinking, Bentley thought. He said:

  "Thank you, Yeoman. That's all. Log this."

  Ferris took the signal, knowing it was burned into Bentley's brain.

  "No reply, sir?"

  Bentley flicke
d him a look, and Ferris interpreted it, pretty accurately, as: What should I send him? Congratulations?

  "Aye aye, sir," said Ferris, and closed the door behind him.

  Leaving less urgently than he'd entered, Ferris did not look at the reception nurse, but she noted his face, the hard set of it. Somebody's in strife, she reflected, and then, So what? They had a hospital full of it.

  Nutty's concern lasted as far as the first pub. It wasn't his bloody pigeon, he reflected; if that sour-faced bastard up there was wet enough to take his ship out on her own, then he could take the can for it.

  Nutty stepped into the public bar. He still felt sorry for Bentley, believing now the coxswain's diagnosis of the Old Man's prickly attitude, and so, in absentia, he gave vent to his feeling. He ordered a double rum.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MERRIE'S examination was not prolonged-she knew the patient's condition prior to this. She stripped off the "dirty" gloves and said to the nurse: "Mark Mrs. Nelson down for pre-operative sedative, Nurse, 1/100 grain of atropine sulphate hypodermatically." The nurse nodded, and Merrie said: "You understand why?"

  Mrs. Nelson might be listening, but she had to weigh a possible effect on her against a definite advance of the nurse's learning. "Not the technical reason, no Doctor."

  "A nurse will have to resuscitate the baby when we deliver. If we add morphine or Nembutal to the general anaesthetic, then that of course goes in part into the child. It will make the nurse's job more difficult."

  "Yes, Doctor."

  "Right, then." Merrie smiled down at the damp, pain-tightened face. "I'm phoning Doctor Warren to fix a time. Sometime in the morning, probably. Just a little longer and you'll have your baby." In answer, Mrs. Nelson barely lifted her eyelids. Stepping into the office, Merrie said: "There now, that didn't take long, did it?"

  Bentley failed to answer from his position by the window, just as Merrie missed his introspective attitude. She went straight to the telephone. Her conversation was brief, which at another time might have indicated to Bentley the unknown Doctor Warren's faith in his assistant; right now Bentley was brooding over a different operation, one which had already happened.

  "That's that," Merrie said, replacing the phone. "We operate at eight in the morning." She looked thoughtfully at Bentley's back. "Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that."

  Thinking he was addressed, Bentley turned. "Why not?"

  "I mean what I said to Mrs. Nelson, telling her she would have her baby shortly. If anything goes wrong..."

  "If this Warren fellow's half the surgeon you say he is, what could go wrong?"

  "Peter," she smiled, "there are only a couple of thousand things could go..." She stopped, recognising the mockery in his tone, seeing the change in his face; changed back to what it had been at dinner.

  Oh God, she worried, what's brought this on?

  "Is anything the matter, darling?"

  "No."

  "Peter, I understand now. Out on the verandah, remember?"

  His face remained hard. Hers hardened to match it; maybe Mrs. Nelson's real torment had something to do with that.

  "Oh for God's sake," she said, "why don't you talk about it, instead of bottling it up inside? After all, it's imagination, and that can be worse than..."

  "Imagination be damned," he said, almost in a snarl. "It's fact! It's happened!"

  She stared at him. "Dear Lord, not one of your ships?"

  "Bloody near." His voice had lowered to a growl, seeing the concern in her eyes. "I've just had a report of the action."

  "Action? Can you... tell me about it?"

  He told her, filling in the gaps so that she had a clear harsh picture of that violent engagement, and the climax which had come so close to smashing Dalziel's ship to uselessness. Bentley finished, his face bitter.

  "Darling, I'm sorry," was all she could say.

  "He will be, when I get up there. Bloody fool, taking her out alone like that. What's he after, glory? Christ!"

  She had never seen him like this. With the soldier it had been all ice and control; this was anger, naked and hot.

  "But Peter," she tried to help, "he may have had a good reason for going out alone, and after all he did sink those ships."

  "What reason, for God's sake? A flotilla's a flotilla, it's meant to operate as one, it's never broken up... Oh, what's the use! Are you finished here?"

  "I'm finished," she said, quietly.

  "Then let's get to hell out of it."

  "Keep your voice down, please."

  "Sorry," he said in a hissing whisper. "Would you care to lead the way, Doctor?"

  "In a moment." Level and steady, her eyes held his. "Are you sleeping at home, or shall I drop you off at the ship?"

  "Home. And I'm driving."

  "Very well."

  She picked up her bag and gloves, putting on these looser coverings slowly, controlled fury in the deliberation of her movements; then she walked to the door, switched off the light and walked out. Passing Reception, she smiled goodnight at the nurse.

  Bentley wasn't fooled. He knew something of steely rage; just then Merrie reminded him of what he had seen in a captain named Sainsbury. He knew something else; this was their first row. Damn and blast that bloody Dalziel!

  But here the innate honesty of the man stiffened his self-pity into self-denigration. He was to blame. Whatever Dalziel had done was no fault of Merrie's. Chastened, he helped her into the MG, went round and slumped into the driver's seat, and smiling at her he said:

  "I'm sorry, Nipper," using his own affectionate name for her, "you've got your own worries in there."

  "Peter," she answered, ominously quiet, "I'm getting a little tired of your attitude and your blasted ships. Please take me home."

  He let in the clutch savagely. The car jolted forward.

  It is a woman's place to forgive; this is in the natural order of things, she being the stronger of the species. As witness, go no further than Mrs. Nelson- poisoned near to death, still with her other ordeal ahead of her, and still willing, and able, to surmount it.

  Early next morning Merrie was on the phone again. This time she had to talk longer, and persuasively, even to the point of explaining something of her problem. But she came away from the phone smiling, and smiling she took Bentley in his breakfast.

  "Rise and shine, me hearties, or the sun'll burn your eyes out. Show a leg there. How would I be as a bosun's mate?"

  "My God," he said, blinking at her, and not only from sleepiness, "you on the messdecks... C'mere."

  She put down the tray, and came, and felt nothing of his bristles, while skylarks poured forth inside her, then she disengaged and stood up. She wanted to say Is all forgiven? but being wise as well as strong she said instead:

  "Do you have anything special on this morning?"

  "I could have," he answered huskily, "right now."

  So could she. But she placed the tray across his lap. "I'm serious, Peter."

  "Well, then," giving his boyish grin, "I'd better be. No, I have nothing special on this morning."

  "You could have."

  "That's my line."

  "Eat your breakfast. We haven't much time. The operation starts at eight, and nobody, but nobody, keeps that Warren fellow waiting. So pull the old digit out."

  He roared, nearly upsetting the tray. "I didn't teach you that, I'm damned if I... Wait a minute." He squinted up at her. "You're going to let me see the operation?"

  "Doctor Warren is. By the way, surgeons are called Mister while in the hospital. It's an old tradition, and rather highly valued, so try and remember."

  "You asked him," he accused her.

  "A reasonable assumption, considering he's never heard of you. Hurry, please."

  "Hold on. Why the sudden change? I know. You want to occupy me, keep my mind off my blasted ships."

  "Yes," she answered, simply.

  After a moment he said, very quietly: "God, I love you. God knows why I deserve such a..."

&nb
sp; "Enough of that, now," she said crisply, her eyes shining. "Will you hurry!"

  "I might faint."