Nurse Saxon's Patient Read online

  NURSE SAXON’S PATIENT

  Marjorie Norrell

  Julie Saxon had no right to fall in love with Garth Holroyd, who was not only her patient but engaged to another girl—and yet Ian Greensmith, for whom she could feel nothing but friendship, was hers for the asking. Why did life have to be so unfair?

  CHAPTER I

  ‘You’re not on Casualty today, Nurse Saxon.’ Duty Sister Gregson looked up with a smile as Julie halted by her desk. She gave a quick, confirmative glance at the sheet of paper she held in her hand. ‘Mr. Greensmith wants you to special an accident case which was brought in during the early hours of this morning. Very severe concussion and badly injured hands,’ she ended in explanation.

  ‘Very well.’ Julie returned the smile the older woman gave her. ‘Where is the patient?’ she enquired.

  ‘Emergency Three. There is an unexpected, slight complication too.’ Sister Gregson’s brows drew together in a frown. ‘The young man’s fiancée was with him Fortunately she isn’t hurt. It seems a trailer broke loose from a lorry and came crashing into them, hitting their car head on as they were just about halfway up Constitution Hill. He threw himself in front of her, which is apparently why he is in such a serious condition. Mr.. Greensmith thinks the girl is blaming herself in some way. She has been given a sedative and is being allowed to wait in the small room at the end of the Emergency corridor, but she is quite worked up about all this and frantic to be allowed to see her young man. This, of course, cannot be allowed at present, and she doesn’t understand why, or won’t understand,’ she added almost to herself. ‘I just thought I’d better warn you.’

  ‘Thank you. Poor things,’ Julie said compassionately. ‘I always feel sorry for people involved in accidents which are obviously no fault of their own. Usually they’re on their way to or from something pleasurable, and then for things to end in tragedy ... it always seems so unfair.’

  ‘They were coming from some kind of party.’ Sister Gregson was, as usual, in a talkative mood. ‘I should imagine they’d have been going to another one tonight or giving one—from what Mr. Greensmith said. The young man’s name is Garth Holroyd. If you’ve seen the local newsrag he’s just won the Borough’s prize of one thousand pounds and is to be appointed as Assistant to the Borough Architect as part of his prize award too. And it’s his design they’ve accepted for the town’s new development scheme.’

  ‘What a shame!’ Julie was genuinely distressed. She knew all her teaching had said ‘be kind, compassionate, but do not allow yourself to get emotionally involved in the lives of your patients’, but somehow she could never avoid doing so. Patients were people, people first and patients afterwards, and their worries and joys were, for Julie, all part of the process of getting well or of holding back their progress towards recovery. ‘How badly injured are his hands?’

  ‘I don’t know much about the case,’ Sister Gregson confessed, ‘but Mr. Greensmith gave me the impression they would eventually be all right, providing he will accept the long treatment necessary. But the concussion appears to be the worst aspect of the case at the moment.’ She saw Julie’s anxious glance at her watch and added quickly: ‘Did you get your brother off all right, dear? Such a pity you couldn’t go to the airport with him...’

  ‘I didn’t mind, not really,’ Julie confessed. ‘I don’t ever like saying goodbye, even if it’s only for a short time, but when goodbyes have to be said I’d rather say mine privately. Yes, thanks,’ belatedly she remembered Sister’s question. ‘He went off in good time. Very nervous, of course, but he’ll be all right when he gets there.’

  ‘He’s done very well,’ Sister Gregson commented. ‘I like to hear of young people making their way by their own efforts. I shall watch his career with interest, just as I shall watch that of young Garth Holroyd—if he recovers from this accident and can take up his new position!’

  ‘We shall all do our best to see he does,’ Julie answered soberly. ‘Now I must be off. See you later,’ and she walked briskly down the corridor which led to the Emergency Unit.

  Sister Gregson was a dear, Julie reflected. Almost due to retire, she was a motherly person, interested in everything and in everybody, and Julie, in common with most of the staff of St Luke’s, loved her.

  She’s genuinely interested in people for themselves, she realized. Not just for whether they’re important or not ... that’s what makes her so human herself.

  She thought of the Sister’s reference to her brother’s departure. In a way it still seemed like a fairy story to Julie. Roger had worked on the Hyncaster Chronicle since he had left school, and in the spare time left over from reporting local activities he had written a book. It was a novel, based on the folk lore of Old Mexico, which had always fascinated him. He had saved every possible penny and at last had realized a life’s ambition by going there for a holiday, and on his return he had worked hard revising and rewriting far into the night until his book was completed. After three trips to varying publishers it had been accepted and was now to be filmed, and to the delight of brother and sister, Roger had been invited to be present.

  ‘I don’t know what it may lead to, Julie,’ he had told her when she visited him in his small flat, ‘but if it’s to anything big, don’t forget, we share it. Unless—’ he had grinned at her, but she sensed the underlying anxiety behind his teasing—‘you find you can’t live without Ian Greensmith after all!’

  ‘No fear of that,’ Julie had returned. ‘Far more likely you’ll come back with some dark-eyed senorita as my new sister-in-law!’

  They had both been joking, but since they had been left alone in the world only the two of them knew how much their close companionship really meant. So far as Julie was concerned she felt that any love which came between herself and her devotion to Roger would have to be a far stronger emotion than anything she could ever feel towards Ian Greensmith, charming though he was.

  Ian was the Senior Surgeon at St Luke’s; clever, devoted to his work almost to the exclusion of all else, he had a cool, withdrawn manner which seldom allowed him to mingle with the rest of the staff, and Julie had been as surprised as anyone else when, at the Hospital Ball, two years previously, he had singled her out for his attention. Since then he had done his best to convince the girl of his love for her, but Julie was not ready for any emotional involvement just yet, so she told him. She liked him as a man and respected him as a surgeon, but falling in love was an entirely different matter.

  ‘When I fall in love,’ she had told him, ‘I want to feel I’ve found someone I can’t live without, someone whose happiness and well-being matters more to me than my own, than Roger’s, than that of anyone else on earth. I want someone with whom I shall feel I want to share everything, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, and somehow make it all feel worth while in the end.’

  ‘And I don’t make you feel like that, Julie?’ Ian had asked gravely, adding as she shook her head: ‘Have you ever met anyone who might?’

  ‘No,’ had been her answer then, but she knew she was not telling the truth. There had been someone, someone she had met exactly one year after Ian had first shown an interest in her, at the next annual Hospital ball. A young man whose name, she realized so abruptly that she stopped with a sense of shock almost at the end of the long corridor, had been Garth Holroyd and who had talked to her throughout the two dances they had danced together about town planning and houses which were designed to be homes.

  ‘Garth Holroyd.’ Julie whispered his name to herself as she stood alone in the deserted corridor. ‘Oh, no!’ Hastily she recalled all that Sister Gregson had said of him. There was nothing more to go on but that one memory of a very attractive young man whose dark eyes lit with enthusiasm, whose wavy
dark brown hair flopped untidily over his forehead as he danced but whose intense fervour for the work he was doing aroused interest and inspired those who listened. Now he was injured. Those clever hands would be heavily bandaged, and he had severe concussion.

  And a fiancée, Julie reminded herself sharply. He wasn’t engaged when he came to the dance, I’m sure of that.

  He couldn’t have been, she told herself, because he had asked her out, but she was starting a new round of night duties and studies and could not spare the time for some weeks ahead. She had never seen him again. Perhaps he had thought she was not interested and did not realize that she was determined to be fully qualified in as many branches of her chosen profession as she possibly could, and also that any person worth her salt as a nurse has a devotion to duty that is seldom found in any other field. If they had met a week earlier, or when her examinations were ended, it would have been an entirely different story, she reflected. As it was their next meeting had to be like this, he as a patient in St Luke’s, she as the nurse who was to ‘special’ his case, under Ian’s direction.

  Someone came walking quickly along the corridor, and Julie came to herself with a slight start. Such a thing had never happened to her before throughout her nursing career—day-dreaming in the corridor when she ought to have reported for duty nearly three minutes ago! She gave a quick flick to her cuffs and hurried on, but at the end of the corridor she was halted again as the door to the small room just off Emergency Three opened and a slight, pale-faced girl stood before her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the girl began in a whisper, ‘are you the nurse who’s to be looking after Mr. Holroyd? Oh, please,’ she added in frantic appeal, ‘I’m his fiancée. I must know how he is. Nobody will tell me anything!’

  ‘You’ll be informed as soon as there’s anything to tell you, as soon as there is any change,’ Julie assured the girl in her best professional manner. Under her white starched cap her hair, deep gold and gleaming, was neat and controlled. The other girl had a mop of chestnut-coloured curls, unruly and unfettered, clustered about her small head. Her speedwell blue eyes looked into Julie’s darkly blue ones, wild with entreaty.

  ‘Please tell me,’ she begged again, laying one small, neatly gloved hand on Julie’s sleeve. ‘Is he conscious yet? Can I speak to him?’

  ‘I haven’t been in to see him myself yet,’ Julie said gently. ‘Look, if Mr. Greensmith said you could wait there then that’s just what I would do if I were you. If he promised to let you know how Mr. Holroyd is, then he will do. But you can’t run about a hospital, making a nuisance of yourself‘ She broke off at the sudden bleak expression on the girl’s pretty face. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked more gently, but the girl shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she answered politely enough but completely without interest. ‘You’re very kind, but I’ve had so many cups of tea ... so many people telling me just to wait there ... they don’t seem able to imagine what it’s like...’

  ‘I know it’s difficult,’ Julie sympathized, ‘but I’ll be in trouble if I stay here talking. I’m supposed to be on duty. You go back and try to rest, and I give you my word I’ll let you know the moment there’s any change at all.’

  ‘If he speaks ... if I could speak to him,’ the girl persisted. ‘That’s what I’m waiting for. Will he know me? Will he know what I’m saying to him? Will he know why we’re here? Will he realize what has happened?’

  ‘I really can’t say; nobody can tell you that at present.’ Julie had to leave the girl. There was no help for it, but the blue eyes raised to hers were swimming with tears. ‘Listen,’ she said impulsively, ‘you do as I say; go back and try to rest ... and wait. Believe me, there’s nothing else you can do at this stage, and we’ll let you see him as soon as ever it’s wise. I promise.’

  ‘I suppose there’s nothing else I can do,’ the girl said with such an abrupt change of tone that Julie was startled. The tears were gone and there was a bitter twist to the painted lips which had not been there before. ‘You’re all alike,’ she continued. ‘When I looked out and saw you coming along the corridor I thought how kind you looked—how human. Not a bit like the grim-faced female who marched me up here and left me. I thought you would help, but you’re like all the others. Obey the rules, don’t ask questions, do as you’re told and never mind why you’re doing whatever it is you’ve been told to do.’

  ‘If you don’t understand then there isn’t time to explain,’ Julie said, biting back her words of natural indignation. ‘There has to be a set of rules, and those rules must be obeyed. There are so many sick people, and so few to care for them that we have to do what is best for all concerned. Right now you’ve been told to wait, and I suggest you do just that! I must go, but believe me, I really do feel sorry for you, you have all my sympathy, and I meant what I said when I told you I would let you know the moment there is anything at all to report.’

  Julie was not surprised to find Ian awaiting her in the small room. He looked up as she entered, a smile lighting his thin, dark face under the sleek cap of well-groomed hair. Over at the other side of the narrow white bed Nurse Stephenson moved slightly, arresting their attention.

  ‘Nurse Saxon will relieve you now, Nurse.’ Ian’s quiet, courteous tone was none the less a dismissal, and the girl murmured her excuses and left them, moving quietly from the room.

  Garth’s still figure lay on the narrow white bed. The unruly hair, where it had escaped from the heavy bandages, looked as tousled as ever. Below his forehead his face was white and drawn and the hands which lay on the coverlet before him were still and quiet under the shroud of white wrappings.

  ‘How is he now?’ Julie asked in a whisper.

  Ian looked grave. ‘No sign of returning consciousness,’ he told her. ‘The X-rays show only a slight fracture, but the blow on the base of his skull was an awkward one and there may yet be some slight pressure.’

  ‘And—his hands?’ Julie asked.

  ‘Badly cut, very badly bruised. There’s nothing broken there, although to look at them it scarcely seems possible. The plastic surgery boys will have to get busy on some of the cuts, though.’

  ‘But he will be able to use them again?’ Suddenly it was of overwhelming importance that nothing should prevent Garth from enjoying the hardly earned fruits of his efforts. ‘This won’t prevent his being able to take up his new job, will it?’ she asked Ian anxiously.

  ‘He’d better be able to take it up.’ A faint smile touched his thin mouth. ‘It seems he’s a godson of Mrs. Andy’s, almost takes the place of her own son who was killed in the war. The fact that he’s always been very independent—he worked his way with outside jobs to see himself through college, to pay for the extra books, drawing instruments and so on he needed—makes her all the more determined to help him now and to make sure that he doesn’t lose this chance.’

  ‘Mrs. Andy knows enough about the staff of St. Luke’s to realize that goes for everyone here,’ Julie said crisply, ‘but I see what you mean. If Mrs. Andy’s interested in the case then there’s no more to be said.’

  Indeed there was not. Mrs. Andrew Crossman, known affectionately as ‘Mrs. Andy’ to far more people than she was aware of, was a well-known figure in Hyncaster. Welfare State or no Welfare State it was her firm conviction that those who could help others should do so whenever possible. It was due to her money, and a great deal of effort on her part, that the new Chest Clinic had been built, the School for the Blind endowed and a number of other things been done to which she had given her attention. Ian’s voice broke in on Julie’s thoughts.

  ‘Mrs. Andy says he’s to go to her home to convalesce, as soon as he’s fit to be discharged from here. His hands will require attention for some time. I shall have a word with Matron and ask that you may be the nurse detailed to attend him there.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. ‘You’ll be safe enough,’ he commented, ‘attractive though he is. His fiancée was with him, and appears to be devoted
to him. She’s out there now, in the rest-room at the end of the corridor.’

  ‘I’ve met her.’ Julie was well aware that Ian was warning her that Garth’s affections were engaged elsewhere, and she resented the implication behind his words. She knew he must have seen Garth and herself enjoying their talk at the dance at New Year, and she knew he would not have been pleased, but she could not prevent herself from adding: ‘I was very surprised when I realized who she was. She hardly looks his sort of person...’ and then she stopped. How should she know what sort of person would really interest and delight Garth Holroyd?

  ‘That’s what Mrs. Andy seems to think,’ Ian remarked cryptically, ‘but it always seems to me that any engagement—the rights and the wrongs of it, that is—is the sole concern of the two people concerned. If they love one another, then the opinion of the rest of the world doesn’t really matter. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘That depends ... on the two people.’ This was treading on dangerous ground. Ian would not listen to her when she had tried to tell him that she did not love him or anyone else, and had turned down his first proposal. He had asked if her hesitation was because he was so much older than Julie, if she had ever considered what would happen to her lifetime of devotion ‘if when you’re both older but it’s still not too late for Roger to meet someone he wants to marry’. It seemed that he could not believe a girl would not be swept off her feet by the mere fact of his position, his financial security and the status he had built up for himself over the years. There had been many arguments since that first one, and yet he refused to believe the truth, that Julie just could not love him, and she did not feel that now was the ideal place or the time to begin yet another such fruitless discussion.

  For a moment it seemed Ian was not going to be put off so easily, but a glance at his watch made him give an involuntary exclamation.