Betty Neels - Damsel In Green.txt Read online

  She turned away to help the porters lift the patient on to the trolley which

  would take him to the ICLJ "I'll go up with him," she murmured.

  "That blood will need an eye on it."

  When she got back, the other patient had been warded too, and Ned was dealing

  with the other two men who had been in the crash. She started to work

  methodically through the waiting patients.

  The morning wore on. They snatched their coffee as and when they could get

  it; indeed, Georgina had barely tasted hers when she was called away to take

  a toddler to X-Ray; its young, distraught mother insisted on going too, very

  white-faced and passionately remorseful. She repeated over and over again,

  "Oh, if only I

  hadn't left those safety pins on the table! "

  Georgina was holding the small boy carefully;

  they hadn't been able to discover if the pin had been closed when he had

  swallowed it--a large one would have stuck, but apparently this one had been

  very small, small enough to go down a long way before it would begin to do

  any damage.

  "Try not to worry," she said kindly.

  "Children swallow things all day and every day, you know. There's no reason

  to suppose he won't be as right as rain in a day or two. He'll be quite safe

  in the children's ward, and you can stay with him if you like."

  The young woman cast her a look of gratitude out of all proportion to her

  words--perhaps it was the kindness in Georgina's voice. When they parted at

  X-Ray she managed a smile and Georgina found herself promising to go and see

  how the small boy was doing when she went off duty that evening. She hadn't

  really time to do so, she reminded herself ruefully, as she sped back to Cas.

  It was her day off the next day, and she had a train to catch at seven that

  evening; but the woman had looked so lost. She was very late for dinner, but

  the theatre staff were late too, so that there were half a dozen of them

  sitting at the table. Two of them had taken their exams with Georgina, and,

  like her, had passed, but unlike her they were leaving to get married just as

  soon as they could. Listening to their happy chatter, she felt a small

  shiver of apprehension; supposing Matron's 'splendid career' was to be her

  lot in life? She pulled herself together with an effort, aware of a

  discontent quite alien to her nature. She was a very lucky young woman, and

  Great-Aunt Polly would be delighted.

  Gregg was on duty when she got back, and half an hour later Sister went for

  her rather tardy half day. Georgina was putting a collar and cuff bandage on

  a small cyclist who had broken a collar-bone and Ned was washing his hands

  while she did it. Sister had popped her head round the door as she went and

  wished them a quiet day, and when she had gone he said in the most casual of

  voices:

  "They'll make a wonderful pair."

  "Who?" she frowned an enquiry as she tucked in loose ends.

  "Good lord, George, do you go around with your head in a bag? Sister and old

  Bingham, of course."

  Georgina helped the boy on with his coat and tucked the useless sleeve tidily

  in the pocket, then sent him outside to the clerk's desk before she replied,

  "They're going to be married, you mean? I knew they were friends." Although

  now she thought about it, the Registrar did come very often and sometimes

  unnecessarily to Cas. She took the towel from Ned and dried her own hands,

  and said gloomily, "I'm glad, they're both dears, but Gregg will be Sister."

  He gave her a quick look.

  "I shouldn't be too sure of that, George."

  She had straightened the couch, and now began to refurbish the trolley.

  "You know, Ned, this ought to be a marvelous day, and it isn't. I feel at

  least forty, with nothing left to live for."

  He turned at the door, laughing.

  "You need a husband, my girl. Who shall he be? Tall, dark, rich and

  handsome; clever of course, and ready to buy you all the tea in China."

  She made a face at him.

  "That'll do splendidly to go on with."

  "Good. In the meanwhile, talking of tea, I'm going to get some--there's sure

  to be a cup going in Men's Surgical. That's where I'll be if I'm needed."

  Georgina nodded understandingly. Ned had a roving eye, which had settled,

  for the time being at least, on the pretty staff nurse on Men's Surgical.

  She hoped that there wouldn't be anything much in, so that he could get his

  tea in peace.

  She went off duty half an hour late and on the way along the corridor to the

  Nurses' Home remembered her promise to the mother of the pin swallowing baby,

  and had to turn and fly back again and up two flights of worn stone steps to

  the children's ward. As she suspected, he had been operated upon that

  afternoon in order to preclude perforation. He was lying in his cot, still

  drowsy from the anaesthetic, and his mother was sitting with him. Georgina

  spent several minutes listening to her troubled little voice, nothing in her

  relaxed manner betraying her impatience to be gone.

  She caught the train by the skin of her teeth. Great-Aunt Polly lived in a

  small village in Essex, some miles from Thaxted. It had been Georgina's

  home, since she had gone to live with Aunt Polly;

  that had been when she had been a little girl of nine. Her father, a

  schoolmaster, had died suddenly and unexpectedly from 'flu, and her mother

  had died a week or two after him, leaving a bewildered little daughter, as

  frightened as she was unhappy. Great-Aunt Polly had carried her off to live

  with her in her small timbered cottage, and had been father and mother to her

  ever since. Georgina sat in the train, looking out of the window at the

  dreary

  London suburbs, thinking about the old lady. She would be able to repay her

  now with a hundred and one small comforts. She lost herself in a daydream

  which lasted until the train slowed down at Thaxted. She picked up her case

  and jumped out, an attractive girl in her well-fitting corduroy coat and high

  boots.

  The small, rather ramshackle local bus from Thaxted, the last from that town

  for the day, took her to within a stone's throw of the cottage. The cottage

  stood a little way down a narrow lane leading off the village street. There

  was an ancient hornbeam on the corner, and on the opposite side the apple

  trees at the end of her aunt's garden, even on a dark November evening,

  combined to make a lovely picture in the cold moonlight. She unlatched the

  little gate and walked, a great deal faster now, up the brick path and beat a

  tattoo on the Georgian brass door-knocker before opening the door and going

  in. The passage was brick too, a little worn in places and covered with an

  Afghan rug, also worn, but still splendid. The back door faced her and each

  wall held two doors, from bne of which a plump elderly woman bustled.

  "Miss Georgina! It's nice to see you, that it is. Miss Rodman's had her

  supper and I've kept yours hot.. put that bag down, and go and see her. Did

  you pass?" She peered at Georgina anxiously and was swept into a violent hug.

  "Yes, Moggy, I did. Isn't it wonderful? I'll tell Aunt Polly."

  She opened another door and wen
t into the sitting-room where her aunt was

  waiting. She sat, as she always did, in a stiff-backed chair, her almost

  useless legs on a little Victorian footstool, her sticks on either side of

  her, so that she need not ask for help if she should want to get up. She

  hated to ask for help--Georgina had been almost sixteen when Great-Aunt Polly

  had been stricken with polio, and could still remember very clearly the look

  on the old lady's face when her doctor had told her that it was not very

  likely that she would walk again. She belonged to a generation who didn't

  discuss their ailments; she hadn't discussed them then, but over the

  following years she had progressed from wheelchair to crutches, and finally,

  to sticks. Georgina and Mrs. Mogg, who had been with them for as long as she

  could remember, had watched her struggles and said nothing, knowing that that

  was what she would wish, but the day Aunt Polly took her first awkward steps

  with her two sticks Georgina had gone down to the Three Bells in the village,

  and come back with a bottle of hock under one arm, because she wasn't sure

  what buy anyway, but quite obviously the occasion called for celebration.

  She crossed the little room now and slid on to her knees beside her aunt's

  chair and hugged her, just as she had hugged Moggy, only with a little less

  vigour because Aunt Polly was a small dainty person despite her will of iron.

  "I've passed," said Georgina, knowing that that was what her aunt wanted to

  hear.

  Aunt Polly smiled.

  "Yes, dear. I knew you would, of course, but congratulations all the

  same--I'm very proud of you."

  Mrs. Mogg had come in with a tray on which was Georgina's supper--steak and

  kidney pudding and a nice assortment of vegetables and a little baked custard

  for afters. Georgina got up and took the tray from her, put it on the floor

  and sat down beside it, and Miss Rodman said:

  "Mrs. Mogg, will you get the glasses and the Madeira? We must drink Miss

  Georgina's health--and you eat up your supper, child, you must be hungry."

  Georgina fell to. She had an appetite and enjoyed good food. Mrs. Mogg came

  back with the wine, and they sat, the three of them, drinking it from very

  old, beautiful glasses which she fetched from the corner cupboard.

  Presently, when she had disposed of the steak and kidney, Georgina told them

  what Matron had said and Aunt Polly nodded and looked happy, then glanced at

  her sharply and said, "But is that what you want, dear?"

  Georgina polished off the last of the custard.

  "Yes, of course. Aunt Polly," she said stoutly, and remembered rather

  clearly that Ned had.

  said that what she wanted was a husband. She turned her back on the thought.

  "Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married," she went

  on, anxious to talk about something else.

  "That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a

  Junior Night Sister's post to start with anyway, and that won't be for quite

  while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg."

  "You might marry," said Mrs. Mogg chattily, Georgina gave her a wide smile.

  "Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they're far too busy and

  penniless to marry, and if you're thinking of rich consultants, they're all

  married. Besides, it will be nice to earn some real money at last--it's time

  I did my share, you know."

  Miss Rodman straightened an already straight back.

  "That is very good of you, dear Georgina, but Mrs. Mogg and I are old women.

  We need very little, and we manage. You've worked hard, the money is yours

  to spend. Why don't you go abroad?"

  Georgina lied cheerfully, "I really don't want to. Aunt Polly. Perhaps

  later on when I've had more experience--I think I'll stay at St. Athel's for

  a year or two and get that Sister's post, then see how I feel."

  She got up and carried her tray out to the kitchen where she put it on the

  scrubbed wood table, then took the dishes to the sink and washed up, singing

  cheerfully in a clear voice so the occupants of the sitting-room would hear

  how happy she was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  st athel's looked grim and grey on Monday morning, Georgina walked into the

  cold, well polished hall of the Nurses' Home and started to climb the stairs

  to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against

  homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and

  the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of

  the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed

  her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being

  childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be

  all right again. But somehow she wasn't despite the fact that Gregg, had a

  half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and

  was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy--too busy to think

  on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o'clock and Ned telephoned

  to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would

  she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the

  receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker--he was on the medical side,

  which didn't prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty.

  When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper,

  what with Mr. Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while

  pronouncing on obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles'

  fracture a Potts'. She had asked him crossly if he hadn't learned the

  difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed

  patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his

  supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously

  fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a

  great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.

  "Days off," snapped Georgina.

  "I'll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back," and had the

  satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact

  that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr. Baker would serve her purpose as

  well as any, she supposed.

  He backed to the door.

  "I merely wished to know," he stated coldly, 'because I'm not completely

  satisfied with your work. "

  "I'll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning," she said with

  equal coldness.

  "I'm sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other

  housemen--she wouldn't like to think that our standards aren't up to yours."

  She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him

  a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.

  When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a

  large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk

  and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a

  large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs. Mogg. The cake

  disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the
conversation turned, as it always

  did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there

  but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into

  the QAs,

  two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting

  married or engaged.

  A voice said, "George, you haven't told us what you're going to do."

  "Well," she began; she wasn't sure if she should mention about getting a

  Sister's post, "I thought I'd stay here..."

  "Did Matron dangle a Sister's cap before you?" someone wanted to know.

  "Later on.. it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I'll do my Midder." She had

  only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.

  Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning

  Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she

  turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn't show through, and presented

  herself, outwardly composed, at Matron's office. She came out again within a

  couple of minutes. Night duty--four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience.

  Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too,

  several days at home each fortnight.

  She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and

  brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, "Thank God!

  That woman who's on now calls me for the merest scratch--besides, you're

  nice to have around."

  Georgina chuckled.