скачать книгу бесплатно
The girl seemed to have registered what Jenny was wearing, and her eyes came to rest on her name-badge. She looked slightly taken aback, but nowhere near as embarrassed as Jenny would have been in similar circumstances.
‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘You must be Sister.’
‘I am indeed,’ answered Jenny. ‘And now perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself?’
‘I’m. . .’ the girl began, but the phone on the desk started to ring. She made as if to pick it up, but one look from Jenny stopped her in her tracks.
‘Rose Ward. Sister Hughes speaking,’ she said smoothly.
‘Oh, Jenny—you’re back! Thank goodness!’
The voice she recognised immediately as that of Sonia Walker, the hospital nursing officer. ‘Of course I’m back, Sonia! What’s the matter?’ She saw the girl in white watching her warily. ‘And where’s Judy?’ she queried.
Sonia’s voice continued to sound worried. ‘I need to speak to you in my office, Jenny. Can you come down immediately?’
‘But I haven’t taken the report yet!’ Jenny protested.
‘This won’t take long. Tell the agency staff nurse that she can go to lunch in about ten minutes, when you’ll be back—but I must speak to you right away.’
‘OK, I’ll be right along,’ Jenny agreed, and as she replaced the receiver she glanced at the fair-haired nurse. ‘Are you an agency staff nurse?’ she enquired.
‘Yes,’ answered the other curtly, ‘I am.’
Jenny nodded. That would explain her uniform. ‘I have to go and see the nursing officer—I shan’t be long. Can you hold the fort until I get back?’
The girl had dead pale skin and her eyes grew fearful. ‘Hurry up, then, will you? I’ll drop if I don’t eat something soon.’
Jenny could believe that—the girl was so thin that she didn’t look as though she’d eaten a proper meal in months, let alone hours. She couldn’t help being a little surprised at the forthright response, though—in hospital it simply wasn’t done to clock-watch. Or at least it hadn’t been the done thing when she had trained—but things were changing all the time, even attitudes in as strict a discipline as nursing.
She smiled as she made her way to the central nursing office, and waited while the secretary buzzed through to Sonia. Moaning about the junior nurses—that made her feel very old!
She was shown into Sonia Walker’s office, and Sonia rose from behind her desk immediately, as immaculate as always in her smart blue dress, but with an anxious expression in her eyes.
‘Jenny!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do sit down. I’m so sorry to have had you come back from your holiday to such sad news.’
Jenny glanced at her, alarmed now. ‘Sad news? What news?’
‘You mean you haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sonia.’
Sonia rested both hands on the desk, her eyes compassionate. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this—I’m afraid Dr Marlow is dead.’
Jenny’s knuckles whitened as she gazed at the nursing officer disbelievingly. ‘Dead? Harry, dead? But. . . He can’t be. . .’ She stared at Sonia. ‘He was one of the fittest men around.’
Sonia shook her head. ‘I know. It happened so suddenly. He was driving to work. One minute he was fine—the next, gone. It was a terrible shock. The P-M showed that he had a massive stroke—he wouldn’t have suffered.’
Jenny let her head fall into her hands, willing the tears to stop, but unable to do anything to quench them. She had known Harry Marlow for as long as she could remember. He’d worked alongside her mother for years, and then with Jenny herself. He’d eaten his Christmas lunch with them every year, bar the time when he’d visited his sister in Australia. He had bought Jenny the engraved fob-watch, which she still wore, on the day she’d passed her finals.
Sonia moved from behind her desk to place a comforting arm around her shoulder, and handed her a wad of tissues.
Jenny wiped her eyes and blew ner nose. ‘I’m sorry, Sonia,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just come as such a shock. When—when. . .?’
‘It happened two days after you went away. We didn’t know where to reach you.’
Of course, she had left no word. She hadn’t even left a phone number.
‘So the funeral. . . ?’
‘Was last week. I’m so sorry, Jenny.’
So there wouldn’t even be a funeral for her to attend. No occasion for her to pay her last respects to the man who had been almost like a father to her.
‘And Dr Trentham thought it best not to try and trace you—to bring you back from wherever you were to be confronted with a funeral.’
Jenny had hardly been listening, but she raised her head a little. ‘Who?’ The tear-filled, green eyes stared at Sonia, who shifted in her seat a little.
‘Dr Trentham—he’s the new surgical attachment, replacing Dr Marlow. He didn’t think it wise to disrupt your holiday, and I agreed with him. He was right, Jenny. You needed the holiday. Everyone knew how hard you’d been working. What was the point of dragging you back?’
Sorrow, guilt and rage combined to form an icy hand which clutched at her chest. ‘This—Dr Trentham,’ she spat the name out as if it had a bad taste. ‘He had no right to make a decision like that, and I’m surprised that you allowed him to, Sonia.’
‘I wanted to do the right thing—and what he said seemed eminently reasonable at the time. I know you’re upset——’
‘How has Judy taken it?’ she interrupted in a small voice which seemed to come from a long way away.
Sonia looked as if she was about to wring her hands. ‘Judy has left, Jenny. She’s gone.’
Jenny looked blank. ‘Gone? What do you mean—gone?’
‘She’s left. She left when Dr Trentham joined. I think she found all the changes too much. She was only a couple of years off retirement, and I think that——’
Uncharacteristically, Jenny interrupted her nursing officer again, but Sonia Walker could see that the normally cool and efficient ward sister was in a state of shock.
‘Let me get this right.’ She spoke very slowly, as if checking her statement’s veracity while she uttered it. ‘Not only has this new doctor effectively prevented me from attending Harry’s funeral, but he has also made Staff Nurse Collins leave—after twenty years of loyal service?’
Sonia raised her eyebrows a little. ‘I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that. . . Listen, I can arrange for cover for your ward for today. Why don’t you go home and rest? It’s all been a terrible shock for you.’
Jenny had stood up, like an automaton, her eyes unseeing. Sonia sprang to her feet.
‘Jenny—Jenny, dear! Let me get someone to take you home.’
With a huge effort of will, Jenny shook her head. ‘No, honestly. I must get back to the ward; there must be so much to be done. And I want to speak to this—this Trentham man.’
‘Jenny—you won’t do anything foolish, will you? He acted in your best interests——’
‘He doesn’t even know me,’ Jenny pointed out coldly.
‘Yes, I know, but——’ her anxious expression returned ‘—Jenny, I couldn’t bear to lose you as well.’
Jenny managed a small glimmer of a smile, and shook her head emphatically. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Sonia. I’m not going anywhere.’
Sonia appeared gratified by this. ‘And you’re sure you’re up to a late duty?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jenny with more conviction than she felt. But she could think of nothing worse than retracing her steps to her small cottage, to sit alone and in silence while her mind tried to grasp the enormity of what had happened—that Harry Marlow was dead, and that Judy Collins had been driven away by his replacement. She felt as if all the carefully arranged order and calm of her life was slipping into utter chaos and disarray. She felt like a holidaymaker who saw glorious sand beckoning, and then stood in fear as she realised that it was quicksand.
She clip-clopped her way back to the ward in her neat, shiny black shoes, her slim legs in the sheer black tights. She held her head high, her neck long and elegant, the frilly cap perched neatly on top of the thick, glossy hair and she was oblivious to the admiring glances cast at her by an elderly woman who was visiting her husband.
Inside, however, she felt far from serene, and as she approached Rose Ward she hesitated very slightly. Should she have Dr Trentham bleeped and confront him now? Or better to wait until her anger had subsided and she was more in control of her feelings? And besides, wasn’t unity the most important thing at the moment? She must gather her staff around her now, show all the girls that she was still in charge, that things were going to be all right, and that they could slip back into their trusted and familiar pattern.
She would carry on as normal. She would take a report from the agency staff nurse and then send the morning staff to lunch. She would wait until they returned before giving a full report to the three staff who would be with her this evening, and in the meantime she would go round and see all the patients, check the progress of the ones she knew, and acquaint herself thoroughly with any new ones. And she would give Mrs Jessop her bag of oranges.
She could hear the murmur of voices as she approached her office, and as she drew nearer she could hear that one was most definitely masculine—gravelly and deep—a voice which stirred a vague memory. She stood in the open doorway of her office, watching for a moment. The agency staff nurse was being shown a chart by a man who was obviously a doctor, since he wore a white coat, and Jenny could see the clutter of a bleeper and a stethoscope protruding from one pocket.
All she had time to notice was how wide and powerful his shoulders looked, how tall and just how much bigger he seemed than the sprightly Dr Marlow. Her lip curled very slightly as she observed the dark hair which curled untidily on to the collar of his white coat.
She drew in a deep breath. She wanted her words to him to be biting, and cutting—she could never remember feeling such a raw kind of anger towards someone she didn’t even know. They must have heard her, for they both turned round, the pale staff nurse giving her a kind of non-committal smile again.
And it took some moments for it to register why her heart was thudding away like some primitive drum, why anger and scorn had metamorphosed into total shock.
For no wonder that the deep voice had stirred a memory, because this was no stranger. Nut-brown eyes and untidy hair. The legs were no longer encased in tight fading denim—they now wore dark cords, and these, together with the snowy-white coat he wore, had the effect of making him seem almost presentable.
Her shock was so great that she was unable to tell from his face just what his own reaction to seeing her again was.
Stupidly, she recalled his suggestive comment about stockings, and that became the final straw. The gamut of shocks which she’d had in quick succession since she’d come to work that day proved too much.
She was a fit, healthy young woman, but she knew what was about to happen to her. The strange rushing and hissing sound in her ears; the blurring and retreating of the shapes which stood before her. It had happened to her only once before in her life, and she had been fourteen then.
As her eyes stared at Leo Trentham’s name-badge, she felt her knees buckle beneath her, and, slipping to the cold floor, she fainted.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7f47f445-1efa-5625-b7b3-921254db1379)
IT SEEMED the whole hospital had become a theatre, the floor of Rose Ward the stage. Coming round was exactly like the fainting attack in reverse. Jenny saw a blurred figure, which cleared, then retreated.
She awoke to find herself lying on the office floor, fine beads of sweat on her brow, the top buttons of her uniform dress undone—and Leo Trentham crouched down next to her, his solicitous expression clearing as he watched her eyelids flutter open.
‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve often had a dramatic effect on women, but that’s a one-off, I must say!’
‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ she snapped, and tried to sit up, but couldn’t manage it, and, feeling as weak as a kitten, flopped down again.
‘Stay there!’ he commanded, and without further ado he lifted both her feet with one hand, and held them suspended in the air.
‘Take your hands off me!’ she cried, but he did no such thing, a look of amusement merely crinkling the corners of his eyes.
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, woman! Your blood-pressure has dropped into your boots; I’m merely trying to restore your equilibrium.’
The last person in the world to do that, she thought furiously, closing her eyes briefly as she felt her strength returning. When she opened them again she saw that he was staring at her curiously.
‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
She could have sunk her teeth into one of the strong brown hands. ‘How dare you?’ she demanded icily. ‘I’m not married!’
He gave a low chuckle. ‘What a refreshingly innocent remark for the nineties,’ he commented. ‘It may have escaped your notice that a wedding-ring isn’t necessary for that particular act of nature to take place these days.’
‘It is—round here, anyway,’ she muttered. ‘Now, are you going to put my feet down—or am I going to have to scream for help?’
‘Scream away,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘When they come running to see what’s wrong I shall simply tell them that you’re hysterical, and they’ll believe me. I am the doctor, after all!’
‘You’re not my doctor,’ she retorted.
‘On the contrary,’ he fielded smoothly. ’You’re a member of staff who has passed out on hospital premises. As I am the resident doctor, you therefore come under my responsibility. Even if you climbed into a wheelchair and got yourself taken down to Casualty, it’s still me you’d have to see. So shut up for a minute and try sitting up, but leaning against my arm.’
What choice did she have? She had never felt more helpless or more filled with rage in her entire life. And then, as she started to feel normal again, she remembered just why he was here, and why she had passed out like an idiot. Dr Marlow was dead. She stifled a small sniff with difficulty.
‘Hey,’ he said in a ridiculously gentle voice, lifting her chin up very carefully. ‘Are you OK?’
She stared at him, the green eyes suspiciously bright, thinking that she was at a disadvantage sitting on the floor, her head against his arm, her long legs sprawled in front of her. She was in no position to give the overbearing Dr Leo Trentham a piece of her mind.
‘I would be,’ she said coldly, ‘if you’d help me up and into that chair.’
She hated having to be dependent on his strength as he half picked her up and deposited her into her chair behind the desk. She simply must snap out of this lethargy which had followed her faint. She still had a ward to run, a long shift to get through and this man to deal with.
‘I’ve sent Staff Nurse off for some iced water,’ he explained, and just then the pale blonde returned, in her hand a polystyrene cup which he took from her and handed to Jenny.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything.’
‘Drink it,’ he ordered, and watched until she had sipped almost half of it.
She put the cup down shakily. ‘Thank you, Staff. Would you mind telling the evening staff to carry on as normal, that I’ll be out in just a moment? And could you and the rest of the morning staff go to lunch now?’
The other girl nodded. She seemed pleased to leave. ‘Yes, Sister.’
Jenny saw the curiously pale eyes glance once in Dr Trentham’s direction before she closed the office door behind her.
Leo Trentham remained standing at the window, an expression of amusement lifting the corners of his mouth.
‘I seem to have that effect on you, don’t I?’ he remarked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s just that on the only two occasions we’ve met you’ve ended up on the ground. It gives quite a new meaning to the saying “he swept her off her feet”—don’t you think?’
It seemed that he actually expected her to join in with his laughter. She stared at him coldly, the anger she felt towards him managing mercifully to dispel the tugging at her heart which being back in this office without her late colleague had produced.
‘I can assure you that it would take someone as little like you as possible to sweep me off my feet,’ she retorted. ‘But I’m not interested in bandying around social niceties with you—if you can call your egotistical attempts at conversation that. I just want to get a few things straight.’
He seemed taken aback by her hostile tone. ‘Such as?’
She willed her voice not to have a quaver of emotion in it. Somehow she felt that for him to see her vulnerable would be a disadvantage. ‘Such as why you directed the nursing officer not to recall me from my holiday in order to attend Dr Marlow’s funeral.’
