as though he had never interrupted himself: ‘He’ll be last on the list—what have I got?’
She told him. It wasn’t a long list, luckily; the Commander would go to theatre at four o’clock. ‘There’s just one thing,’ went on Mr Dale, ‘he refuses to go anywhere but here afterwards. You’ll have to fix that…off duty then?’
‘No,’ said Philomena in a carefully cheerful voice, ‘I shall be here.’
‘Good—he’d like you to be there with him. Stretch a point for once and stay on for a while, will you? There won’t be much to do—usual recovery stuff. Got enough nurses?’
‘I daresay the night staff will be on by the time he’s recovered,’ she pointed out sensibly.
The coffee arrived just then and she said quietly: ‘Unless you want me for anything else, sir, would you excuse me? Dinners…’
‘Of course.’ And as she reached the door which Doctor van der Tacx was holding open for her, ‘Philly, the Commander hasn’t a chance, you know, but he wants me to operate.’
She said ‘Yes, sir, I understand,’ and slipped past Doctor van der Tacx with no more than the briefest of glances.
She took the old man to theatre herself, holding the thin bony hand in hers as she walked beside the trolley, and when, in the anaesthetic room, he said in the commanding voice the pre-med hadn’t quite dimmed: ‘You will be with me when I wake, Philly,’ she said in her calm way: ‘Yes, I’ll be there, Commander.’ He had never called her Philly before.
The anaesthetist came in then; Doctor van der Tacx. She supposed that she should have felt surprise, but he seemed to be popping up all over the place, and besides, she was worrying about the Commander.
He came back from the recovery room just after seven o’clock, looking like a bad reprint of himself, and the nurse who had accompanied him handed Philomena the chart with a small expressive shrug. As she helped Philomena with the tubes and drips and all the paraphernalia attached to him, she remarked: ‘He’s not round, Philly. Mr Dale said he was to be returned to you before he regained consciousness; the rest’s as well as can be expected. Mr Dale’s been in to see him; he’s coming here presently. Who’s the anaesthetist? A super heart-throb, even Sister smiled at him.’
Philomena was frowning over Mr Dale’s frightful writing on the chart. ‘Oh, he’s a friend or something…I say, is this a two or a three? Why didn’t someone teach Mr Dale to write?’
The nurse went and Philomena hurried back to the Commander, sat down by the bed and began to fill in the last of the day report. The ward was quiet now, the other operation cases were sleeping, the patients who had been allowed up were being got back into their beds, she could hear their cheerful talk among themselves and the quieter voices of the nurses. The men were a little subdued, though; the Commander had been in the ward for a long time and they all liked the peppery old man.
He hadn’t roused when the night staff came on duty. Philomena left a nurse with him and whisked into the office to give the report, and that done: ‘I’m going to stay with Commander Frost for a bit,’ she explained to Mary Blake who was taking over from her. ‘I promised I would.’
Mary was pinning the drug keys to her starched front. ‘OK, Philly—shall I let Night Sister know?’
But there was no need of that. Miss Cook, the Night Superintendent, already knew, for the telephone rang at that moment and her unhurried voice informed Mary that she had been informed of the Commander’s operation and that Staff Nurse Parsons was to remain as long as she thought fit.
‘Well, I never!’ declared Philly. ‘Fancy him remembering to let her know…’
‘He didn’t—Doctor van someone or other did—he anaesthetised, didn’t he? I met Jill as I was coming on duty and she said the whole theatre had fallen for him.’
Philomena sped back down the ward, whispered a goodnight to the nurse who had been relieving her and bent over her patient; he was about to wake up, her experienced eye told her, and a moment later he opened his eyes, focussed them on her and demanded in a thread of a voice why they didn’t get on with it.
‘They have,’ she told him serenely. ‘It’s all done and over and you’re in your own bed again. All you have to do is to lie quiet and do what we ask of you.’
He gave a weak snort. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Evening. Are you in any pain, Commander Frost?’
He shook his head. ‘Can’t feel a thing—feel most peculiar, too.’
‘One always does. Will you close your eyes and sleep for a little while?’
‘You’ll be here?’
‘Yes—not all night, of course, but for a while yet.’
He nodded. ‘Just like my Lucy,’ he muttered, and closed his eyes.
Mr Dale came half an hour later and Doctor van der Tacx with him. They looked at Philomena’s carefully maintained observation chart, took a pulse she hadn’t been able to get for several minutes, asked a few complicated questions of her in quiet voices and bent over their patient. Presently they straightened up again and Mr Dale said in a perfectly ordinary voice: ‘You’ll be here for a while, Philly? I’ll speak to someone and see if I can get a nurse to take over presently until you come back on duty in the morning.’
They were all watching their patient, aware that although his eyes were shut, he could hear them quite well. ‘That suits me very well, sir,’ said Philomena matter-of-factly. ‘Is there anything special for the morning?’
A question Mr Dale answered rather more elaborately than he needed to; they all knew that Commander Frost wasn’t going to be there in the morning, and when he had finished and wished her goodnight he said goodnight to his patient too, adding that he would see him in the morning when he would probably be feeling a good deal better.
After the two men had gone, Philomena sat down again and took the Commander’s hand in hers, and he opened his eyes and smiled at her and then winked. She winked back. ‘You old fraud,’ she said, ‘you were listening. Listeners never hear any good of themselves.’
He gave a tiny cackle of laughter. ‘Only when they’re meant to. Don’t let my hand go, Philly.’
And she didn’t, she held it, feeling the warmth leaving it as he slipped deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, until she knew that it didn’t matter any more whether she held it or not.
It was almost eleven o’clock when she finally left the ward; she had done what she had to do in a composed manner, bidden the night staff goodbye and left quietly. Only when she was in the dim silent passage and going down the staircase did the tears begin to fall. By the time she had reached the ground floor and the empty echoing entrance hall she was sobbing silently in real earnest, impatiently smearing the tears over her tired cheeks as she went. At least it was so late that there would be no one about.
She was wrong of course. She hadn’t seen him standing quietly at the side of the bottom step of the staircase; she walked right into him and only then stopped to lift a woebegone face and say: ‘Oh, so sorry,’ and then: ‘Oh, it’s you…’
‘Yes. When did you last eat?’
It seemed a strange question, coming out of the blue like that, but she answered obediently: ‘I had a cup of tea…’
‘I said eat, Philly.’
‘Well…’ She sucked in her breath like a child and thought. ‘I couldn’t go to dinner—I couldn’t leave the ward, you see, no trained staff…and at supper time I— I was with the Commander.’ Two large tears rolled down her cheeks and she added: ‘So sorry,’ and wiped them away with the back of her hand.
His ‘Come along,’ was firm and kindly and she made no protest as they went through the main door. His car was close by, he opened