A Man of Honour

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He sighed quietly. ‘Could we go round the pre-ops? Do you have time? I wanted a last word with them.’

Her heart sank. She had thought—oh, never mind what she had thought. She forced another smile. ‘Of course. Susan, clear up the trolley could you, please? And then start the lunches. Carol can give you a hand. Oh, and Susan?’

‘Don’t forget to read the menu list,’ the third-year student said with a grin. ‘OK, Sister.’

Helen watched her go. ‘Scatty as the day is long, but willing. Right, where were we?’

The rest of the day was hectic, and that suited Helen just fine, because the last thing she needed was time to think about Tom. She felt she had come within an ace of making a complete fool of herself over him, and he so clearly wasn’t interested.

Oh, well.

She was just going off duty at five when she heard a commotion in Judy Fulcher’s room.

The door was shut, most unusually, and when she opened it she saw to her horror that Judy’s husband was sprawled across the bed, his trousers round his ankles, and Judy was sobbing and pleading with him as he dragged her nightdress up.

For a second Helen was so stunned she did nothing, but then she leant on the bell over the bed and seized his shoulders.

He shrugged her off, and she stumbled back, steadying herself on the locker.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she asked furiously, and grabbed hold of him again, determined to drag him off. He flung her aside and she landed on the floor with a crash, shaken but not seriously hurt. She was more worried about Judy, still struggling with her half-crazed husband.

As she crawled to the door for help, so Tom appeared in the doorway and with one look at the scene stepped over her and hauled the man off, slamming him up against the wall.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he roared. ‘She’s ill, for God’s sake!’

‘She’s always ill!’ he snarled. ‘Always got some damn excuse or other. I’ve got rights, you know, and I haven’t had it for months!’

‘What about her rights?’ Tom yelled into his face. ‘What kind of an animal are you that she’s lying there after a major abdominal operation and all you can think about is getting your leg over?’

Helen tried not to smile. Tom was so furious with the man it would be a miracle if the latter survived intact!

She stood up, dusted herself down and went to make sure that Judy was all right.

Ruth Warnes had heard the bell and come to help, and between them they settled Judy down again and made sure her drip hadn’t become dislodged, while Tom hauled up the man’s trousers with more vigour than was strictly necessary and dragged him off to the office.

Judy was crying, and Helen left Ruth comforting her and went to phone the hospital security. Just as she got through there was a crash from her office, and she put the phone down after begging the security officer to hurry and ran into the office, to find Mr Fulcher pinned to the floor, Tom with blood running down his face and glass everywhere.

‘Security’s coming,’ she said briefly, and Tom nodded.

‘Fine. Just so long as they’re quick, before I’m tempted to run this bloke through with a scalpel.’

‘He threatened me!’ Fulcher mumbled against the floor. ‘Did you hear that? Threatened me, he did.’

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you,’ Helen said drily, eyeing Tom’s bleeding eyebrow. ‘He’s the one running with blood. Are you going to press charges, Tom?’

‘If I don’t bleed to death first,’ he muttered. ‘Where the hell are they?’

Just then the security staff came running in and Tom stood up, handing his charge over to the uniformed officials.

‘Lock him up till the police get here,’ he said shortly.

‘Right, sir,’ one of them muttered, and then they hauled the man to his feet and marched him out of the office.

Helen shut the door and turned to Tom. He was pale, trembling slightly with reaction, and the cut over his eye was still welling blood.

‘You look awful—sit down and let me look at that.’

He tipped the broken glass off the chair and sat down obediently, tipping his head back so that she could examine the cut.

‘What on earth did he hit you with?’ she asked incredulously.

‘The coffee-jug—ouch!’

‘Sorry. It’s a good job it was empty.’ She probed again, and he flinched. ‘There’s a bit of glass left in there, and it’ll need a stitch. Do you want to go down to A and E?’

He peered up at her from under his eyebrows. ‘Can’t you do it?’

She looked doubtful. ‘I can, but—I might leave a scar.’

‘Shame,’ he said softly. ‘Just stitch it, Helen.’

She took him into the treatment-room and made him get on the couch.

‘Don’t bother with the lignocaine,’ he told her as she picked up the syringe. ‘If it’s only one stitch it’ll hurt less just to do it.’

She shrugged and washed her hands, then opened the suture pack, swabs and antiseptic before pulling on gloves. It was his head, she reasoned. If he wanted it stitched without a local, so be it. And anyway, he was probably right, a local anaesthetic did hurt.

She lifted out the glass and swabbed the cut with antiseptic, and he winced and flinched.

‘Sorry—that’s probably the worst bit.’

‘God, I hope so,’ he said with a weak attempt at humour. ‘It brings the tears to your eyes.’

‘Just tough it out, cowboy,’ she told him firmly. ‘You wanted it this way—OK, hang on, here it comes.’

He didn’t move a millimetre, but she could see the muscle jumping in his jaw and knew it was hurting him.

‘OK, all done,’ she said seconds later, and snipped the suture.

He sagged back against the couch and shot her a weak smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘Sadist.’

She snorted and wiped the skin around the cut dry before putting on a couple of butterfly sutures each side of the stitch. ‘It was your idea to play the hero,’ she told him laughingly.

‘Hmm. Remind me next time not to bother,’ he said with a smile, and her stupid heart went into overdrive again.

She turned away, clearing up the debris from her suturing, and he was so quiet she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then his hand rested lightly on her arm and turned her towards him.

‘About yesterday…’

She forced herself to meet his eyes.

‘What about it?’

‘I’m sorry I got ratty. It’s just—the furniture was a bit of an issue in the past. You just hit a nerve. I’m sorry I was short with you.’

All the lectures she had given herself over the past twenty-four hours went out of the window at a stroke. She knew the smile must have lit up her eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it.

‘Forget it,’ she told him. ‘I thought it must be something I’d said or done to irritate you ——’

‘No. No, Helen, it was nothing to do with you. You’ve been marvellous.’

He sat up and swung his legs over the side, and his mouth quirked into that fleeting smile again.

‘Forgive me?’

‘Of course I forgive you,’ she said softly, and wondered if her heart would stand the strain of that wretched smile.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b93da68d-f854-538c-b643-100339337f34)

THE police came and interviewed Tom and Helen, and then talked to Judy Fulcher who was still very shaken but clearly so familiar with the pattern of her husband’s behaviour that she was unsurprised.

The only surprising thing, she told Helen, was that he had waited so long. However, even under pressure from the police she refused to press charges.

‘If he goes to prison, he’ll kill me when he gets out,’ she explained, and behind her matter-of-fact delivery Helen sensed a deep-rooted terror.

Instead of going off duty as she had planned, Helen sat and talked to Judy, letting her pour out all her troubles, and gradually a picture built up of a long-term pattern of abuse, both physical and mental, that had turned Judy into the submissive, diffident woman that Helen had been nursing for the past week.

Helen promised her that the medical social worker would come and talk to her in the morning, and that if she didn’t want to return to her husband she wouldn’t need to.

Again, Judy felt that there was no way she could escape from him, that if she left him he would find her and kill her.

‘It’s not that he’s deliberately cruel,’ she explained. ‘It’s just that he’s got definite ideas, and if I agree with him that’s fine, but if I want anything different—like this sex thing. I’ve been feeling awful for months, but still he insisted. When I finally told him I couldn’t stand it any more, he started going off with other women—prostitutes, mainly. So I let him do it with me after that—well, people were talking. Anyway, it’s hardly the first time.’

Helen didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. Now she had started, Judy talked for hours, and it was nearly ten o’clock before she felt able to leave her.

She went into the sister’s office and found Tom, slouched in a chair, reading a weighty textbook.

‘You’re still here!’ she said, surprised.

He put the book down and smiled fleetingly. ‘I was waiting for you. I went and got a book—it looked like a long job.’

Helen nodded and sank into the other chair. ‘Yes. God, what a coil, Tom. That man is a complete bastard.’

Tom gave a wry chuckle. ‘Tell me about it! I’ve got a hole in my head that says so.’

She looked at the cut, now swelling and colouring well, and shook her head. ‘It looks sore.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ he murmured. ‘Are you OK, by the way? I gather he threw you on the floor.’