Hospital in the Highlands

by Anne Vinton

  As the train steamed into Glen Lochallan, Meg Lamont made an attempt to sink her prejudices. It was a small place, certainly, but the surrounding countryside was majestically beautiful with towering peaks framing the dark waters of the loch; the lower slopes were alternately wooded and buttressed with black rocky cliffs on which nothing grew. There was a brooding solemnity about the scene that made one feel small and inadequate, somehow; almost humble. Even Fay was silenced as she looked around.

  This might not be Edinburgh, or boast a famous festival, but it was a natural symphony in its own right. It had the music of a thousand streams homing into the loch, and the air was shrill with bird song and thick with the beating of wings. The majestic firs rustled their layered petticoats to the sharpness of the mountain breeze, and the pines sighed, swayed and leaned away, as though seeking escape from its cool caresses.

  “Och, it’s no’ bad!” was Pixie’s happy summing-up. “But I can’t see Flo.”

  “Oh, dear!” Meg repined, hating the idea of having to make decisions in her sister’s absence. “We have to get a taxi, or something. Can you see one, Fay?”

  They wandered out of the small station into the quiet cul-de-sac that served it.

  “Only somebody’s old jalopy here,” Fay observed, and then looked around as she heard a cough.

  Leaning against the booking office window was a tall, muscular young man of such excellent physical proportions he might have used the caber for a walking stick: he was black-haired, blue eyed and wore a pleasant harris-tweed jacket over a well-pleated kilt.

  “Would you be the party for the taxi?” he asked hopefully, as though not believing his eyes.

  Fay looked again at the kilt and down to the well rounded calves in their chequered hose, where a dirk peeped coyly. “Good lord!” she said rudely. “It just can’t be true!”

  “We—we are looking for a taxi,” Meg said hastily. “Can you help us, please, young man?”

  The blue eyes left Fay’s absolute—yet cold—beauty and smiled upon the older sister.

  “If you’re Miss Lamont, I’m to take you to Rowans,” he explained. “I’m sorry my car’s only a—” he side glanced at Fay—“an old jalopy, but it’s mechanically sound,” he assured them.

  “I’m sure it is.” Meg was trying her utmost to rise to the occasion. “It’s a—a very nice car.”

  “Old cars are all right for out of the way places,” Pixie said cheerfully. “We have never owned a car of any description.”

  “Get in!” commanded Meg sharply, bundling the younger girl into the back seat as though hoping physical violence would quiet her tongue. “Fay?”

  “I’ll go in front beside Rob Roy,” that young lady announced in tones heavy with boredom.

  “Strathallan, Miss Lamont,” the young man said quietly, “and I’d be obliged if you’d join your sisters in the back of the car.” There was something commanding in the gentleness of the tone, and Fay looked at him in surprise.

  “If you run a taxi, the passengers surely sit where they like?” she argued.

  “I do not run a taxi,” he said patiently, “and I’m asking you to sit in the back unless you want my dog to give up his seat to you.” A golden labrador sitting in the front passenger seat suddenly lifted its head, cocked one ear and barked.

  Fay was at a loss and didn’t care to show it. It was one thing ragging the local taxi-driver, quite another ragging a stranger who was apparently prepared to give as good as he got. There he stood, holding open the back door of the ancient car looking more dignified than she felt as she bad-temperedly climbed in, snagging her nylons in the process.

  “What savages these Highlanders are!” she decided, sitting on Pixie’s hat.

  “Do be quiet!” Meg urged. “He’ll hear you!”

  The dog growled uneasily, sensing ill feeling.

  There was some banging about in the trunk of the car, then the young man presented himself apologetically at the car window.

  “I can only manage your small luggage. I’ll come back for the rest.”

  “Er—thank you,” Meg said uncertainly. “Do we need to bother you, Mr. er—? Couldn’t the railway people send it on?”

  “My name is Strathallan, Miss Lamont,” he said evenly. “Robert Strathallan. We’re to be neighbors. I’m only too happy to do a neighborly service at any time, and—no—the railway people do not deliver goods. There are no facilities in such a small place as this. But we get along.”

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Looking round at Pixie he smiled kindly and said, “There was a stag browsing in the woods near Rowans when I came by. Watch out. You may see him. He was a fourteen-pointer.”

  Pixie looked positively rapturous as she leaned forward in her seat.

  “I think we should have come here to live years ago,” she decided.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Not only did Flo Lamont fail to meet her sisters at the station, but she very nearly didn’t get home at all that night.

  An emergency was admitted just as she was signing off for Night Sister to take over, an emergency needing immediate surgery, and she was the only member of the staff, apart from Matron, who had enjoyed first-class surgical experience.

  The Glen Cottage Hospital was really a place where difficult or under-par patients came from the nearby city to recuperate after their operations. The fresh, tangy, heather-scented air was as good as a series of penicillin injections in its curative powers. For one thing it stimulated the appetite, and when a patient is eating well he is assuredly getting better from the severest of physical setbacks.

  In addition to the surgical convalescents there was a thriving maternity wing, and the small theater at the entrance to Maternity was the only one the hospital possessed. Occasionally there was a difficult birth necessitating a Caesarean section, and it was on occasions like this that Sister Lamont was called in to help. Not that the two attendant mid wives couldn’t have managed, but there was usually plenty for them to do and few hands to do it. It was better that they—and their assistant staff—should carry on with the routine with which they were familiar. In the theater their patient was being attended by the best-trained pair of hands in this part of northern Scotland.

  Florence Nightingale Lamont had gained her S.R.N. and the additional S.R.C.M., at University College Hospital in Edinburgh, no less.

  There were those—Matron MacDonald included—who thought Sister Lamont wasted at The Glen, and yet who found her services so invaluable they wouldn’t have remarked this for the world.

  With a training passport and a gold medal presented in the city that was a world-acknowledged shrine to medicine, she would have been welcome anywhere in the world. Yet she had chosen to rusticate in a small cottage hospital that couldn’t, no matter how hard it drove her, use her professional abilities to the full.

  Flo Lamont had come to Glen Lochallan at her godmother’s request, when the old lady felt herself to be failing in health. A bond of affection had stood the test of time between the two. There was never any thought of financial gain in Flo’s mind when she sat up night after night with Miss Nightingale, giving her drinks and potions, plumping pillows and bathing the fevered hands and head. Only once had the legacy been mentioned between them.

  “Flo, my dear, what am I going to do about Janet and William? They’re dependent on me and nobody else would employ them or give them a home. Will you take them on when I’m gone?”

  Flo had hushed the old lady gently but firmly.

  “You’re not to talk like that, dear. You’ll get better. I’m young and I can work. I have a good job and I’ve got Jim, too. You’d be happier assuring Janet and William about their future so I want you to see to them. Don’t bother about me.”

  But when Elspeth Nightingale died and the will was read, Flo remained the sole beneficiary. Nothing had been hacked from the already small annuity to allow money gifts to either of the two old servants. Flo was requested, simply, to give them a hom
e as long as they should require one, and where could she house two such responsibilities if she sold Rowans?

  The Glen was the obvious solution to her immediate problem; what was to happen when Jim came home, and they married, she left to the future. It was hardly likely that Jim Darvie, who was a qualified mining engineer, would consent to living in a cold, rambling Scottish mansion and maintaining two equally rambling ancient retainers.

  Adrian Lamont’s death had come as a shock to his second daughter, but not as a great surprise. Whenever she went home to the flat she warned him about his drinking habits, knowing he had a high blood pressure, but he shrugged off her protests and accused her of spoiling his fun.

  “Since you got in with that medical clique you go around looking for trouble, my girl. Until the day I die I intend to live without looking over my shoulder all the while for the approach of the ‘dark stranger.’ You know, that’s a good idea for a picture! Self-portrait, glass in hand, and Death in the shadows behind. I’ll do it!”

  Flo had sighed.

  “Don’t look so pained, my pet! You remind me of your mother, sort of despairing. I don’t intend to die until I’ve reached my popularity peak, for the sake of the children.” He had mused for a moment. “You know, Flo, I never included you with the rest, somehow. You don’t seem like my child. You don’t ask me for money to buy clothes. You never hang around my neck and wheedle me. Why?”

  “Oh, Father, I suppose it’s just because I’m not demonstrative, like the others, and I can buy my own clothes. Mother died when I was fifteen, remember, and with Meg at Art School, growing up seemed the most urgent thing in the world to me.”

  “Yes,” he nodded, “I remember we made a Cinderella out of you for as long as we could. Meg had to finish her studies, and Fay wanted tuition on the violin: she couldn’t soil her hands: and you were a second mother to Pixie, and as far as I know provided her with school uniform. I know I didn’t. One can’t wonder you made a break for it—and ran.”

  Making a break and running presumably described her entry into the nursing profession, Flo thought ruefully, and Pixie’s first school uniform second-hand and much too large, had come out of the housekeeping money.

  Adrian Lamont had died before he reached his popularity peak, however, and his work, though described by the critics as “pleasant,” was not unduly sensational. The few thousands accumulated from the sale of his pictures was offset by his debts, and the ghastly truth brought home by the family solicitors to the Misses Lamont was that they were not only penniless but homeless. Only Flo had foreseen what would happen with their father’s premature death, and when on occasions she had demurred over this extravagance, or that, she had been either called a spoilsport or accused of morbidity.

  Now that the blow had fallen, however, and her sisters were herded under her roof, still raw and embarrassed by all that had occurred, she found herself tied to the hospital and unable to act as a buffer between them and all that was awaiting at Rowans. She had not yet told them of Janet’s predilection for a “good cry.” The old woman would stop and cry for no reason at all, and more so if she was scolded or criticized. Flo feared that her sisters, somehow bereft of a critical faculty that at times bordered on malice, would not find their new home to their liking.

  “Auld William,” took a bit of understanding too. Tell him to take a box upstairs and he would either pretend he was a deaf mute or make some response in Gaelic when he was sure such would not be understood. He would perform no task in the simple straightforward fashion one might expect of a servant. “Willyum” didn’t look on himself as a servant. He was a tramp by inclination, and had merely looked in on Miss Elspeth fifteen years ago for a bite of bread and cheese, in return for which he had told her of a thing or two that was wrong about her roses. Miss Elspeth was most obliged, but had informed him that there wasn’t much she could do to remedy the matter as, owing to her arthritis, the garden was beyond her. For more bread and cheese—and a bed in the stable—Willyum had worked in the garden all next day and ever since. Whenever he had a “difference” with anybody he packed up his handkerchief bundle and talked about moving on. But Willyum was now eighty-two, so it wasn’t likely he would move very far before the last of all his journeys.

  What would her three sisters have done by now to the old couple, Flo pondered in absolute dread as she prepared to assist at the operation for a perforated appendix on a thirteen-year-old girl. She would have phoned Rowans if she could, but Miss Nightingale had never seen the need for a telephone, and now that it would benefit her and keep her in touch with her work, Flo found there was a considerable waiting list of applicants ahead of her.

  “How’s it going, sweetie?” Keith Bexley suddenly demanded of her in Nurse MacAlister’s hearing.

  Flo frowned at him coldly.

  “How is what going, sir?”

  “Everything. I’ve just been nosing my way around and it’s going to be an absolute pushover here. I never struck it so lucky since I qualified. It appears I’m kingpin on the medical side.”

  “Temporarily. But we’re mainly a surgical team, sir, at The Glen. However, we’ll doubtless find you a few patients from time to time.”

  Nurse MacAlister turned away to chuckle. The Sassenach doctor had been throwing his weight around considerably since he arrived, asking half the nurses to go out with him and so forth.

  “By the way,” Keith went on airily, “there’s been a bit of a sweat on. Your Mr. Maxwell couldn’t be found.”

  “They couldn’t find Mr. Maxwell?” Flo paled under her mask. She forgot all about Rowans and its problems and thought instead of the fevered, delirious child whose temperature hovered at danger point. “He always leaves a movements chitty. They must have contacted him by now?”

  Keith tantalized her for an instant more.

  “No. He’s stranded in the middle of the loch somewhere on his launch with engine trouble. It began to look as though yours truly was going to have to perform. However, they’ve got somebody.”

  “Who?” Flo asked curiously.

  “Someone with one of these unpronounceable Scotch names—”

  “Scottish,” corrected Nurse MacAlister before realizing where she was. A pink spot on each cheek she went on, “Scottish or Scots, if you don’t mind, sir. Scotch is—is whisky.”

  “Bottoms up!” said Keith soulfully, and went to peep in the changing room where there was a sudden bustling. “He has arrived!” he announced importantly, “and he says please can he have a bigger gown. This”—he held up a green garment disparagingly—“only comes to midway. Whatever midway is!” Nurse MacAlister laughed and Keith looked pleased. He liked an audience.

  “There!” snapped Flo, wishing her sister’s ex-fiancé was miles away. She had heard all his quips and jokes before and had ceased to laugh at them years ago. Even while Meg was still enraptured and chuckling at him, Keith Bexley had been a pretty poor fish in Flo’s eyes.

  There was a sudden standing to attention as the Consultant Surgeon entered the small theater and investigated the instrument trolley. It was apparently to his liking, for he said, “Splendid, Sister. I was told I could count on you. I hope we shan’t lose much blood, though I see you’re prepared for a major hemorrhage. Well—better to be safe than sorry.”

  The eyes above the mask were blue with flecks of hazel in them. They were friendly, laughing eyes and she liked them immediately. In a way the tall figure of the man was familiar, but as Rowans was fairly isolated she knew few people around. While she was still investigating those inquiring eyes her heart suddenly seemed to turn over, a most unethical thing for a hospital Sister’s heart to do on duty, and she couldn’t understand why she should suddenly remember Jim and tell herself that was the way he had made her heart feel just before a meeting.

  Jim wasn’t here and her heart had no business to turn over—for anybody else.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Peritoneum clear,” the deft young surgeon finally announced. “I’m going
to close up now. All swabs and packs accounted for, Sister?”

  “All in order, sir.”

  “Then I’ll go ahead.”

  The wound, when stitched, was infinitesimal, earning the staffs silent admiration.

  “She’ll do,” the surgeon announced as he peeled off his gloves. “I’ve entered her injections on her chart, and I’ll be in to see her tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh.” Somehow this information both pleased and disconcerted Flo. She didn’t quite know whether she was on her head or her heels. “Then she’ll be entered as your patient, sir, and not as Mr. Maxwell’s?”

  Again the stranger smiled and loosened his mask. A strong, pleasant countenance was revealed.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me quite a bit from now on, Sister. Your Mr. Maxwell got himself concussed in the middle of the loch just now. His head will be quite a sore point with him for some weeks.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Flo said sincerely. “Then what am I to call you, sir?” He looked at her in surprise, and as she had just removed her own mask he saw her cheeks flood scarlet. “I mean in the report, sir. Mr.—who?”

  “Strathallan,” he told her.

  “Oh!” She looked again. “You—you’re not the Strathallan who...?”