like ’er’s doing in this dump beats me!’
Mr Grenfell turned to look at Eugenia, studying her through half closed eyes. ‘Yes, she is pretty, isn’t she?’ he observed. ‘She’s also very good at her job, so just you do as she tells you.’ He got up, took the chart from Eugenia’s hand and read it, scribbled a line or two and handed it back. Their eyes met for a moment, pleasantly indifferent to each other.
The next three patients were within a day or so of going home, so beyond a brief examination of them, and a few instructions to Harry Parker, his Registrar, Mr Grenfell didn’t linger, but the next case, a teenager with chest stab wounds, took up a good deal of his time. The girl wasn’t doing as well as she should. Without speaking, Eugenia handed him the chart and pointed unobtrusively to the raised pulse and temperature. Mr Grenfell frowned. ‘Antibiotics?’ He then looked at Harry.
They weren’t doing much good, indeed they had been changed twice.
‘I’ll take a look, Sister,’ said Mr Grenfell, and waited while curtains were drawn, the trolley wheeled nearer and the patient got ready. The wounds were small, but then stab wounds always were, almost not to be seen. There was nothing wrong as far as could be seen, so he left Eugenia to make the girl comfortable and wandered off down the middle of the ward with Harry and the house surgeon. On the way to the next patient he paused to say to Eugenia: ‘I’ll have that girl back in theatre this afternoon, Sister, two o’clock. Usual pre-op treatment and Harry will write up the pre-med. There’s some sepsis there and I’ll have to look for it. Don’t tell her until you have to.’ He ruffled through the chart he was still holding. ‘She’s over eighteen? What about a consent form?’
‘No, she’s fifteen, but I’ve got her mother’s phone number—I’ll ask her to come right away.’ Her lovely eyes studied his calm face. ‘What shall I tell her?’
‘I’ll see her if you like. Try and get her here by one-thirty, will you?’
Eugenia nodded and they made their way to the next bed, its occupant a sprightly eighty-year-old with fractured ribs and lacerations of the lung. She had been admitted during the night and the lengthy business of examination began. Harry had already seen her, of course, but it was left to Mr Grenfell to decide what to do for her. Eugenia, anxious to get the patients’ dinners served, thought him tiresomely slow; they were barely halfway round the ward. Her mind ran on ahead of her, reviewing the day. There was the girl for theatre, a handful of patients for X-ray and physiotherapy, patients to be got up and put to bed again, teas, medicines and a pile of tiresome little chores to do in the office. And she was off at five. Humphrey was off too, and they were going to spend the evening together; rather a special evening—dinner and dancing, in celebration of Humphrey’s birthday. She began to be aware that Mr Grenfell was looking at her and went faintly pink, feeling guilty because her attention most unforgivably had wandered.
He didn’t say anything, which made her feel even guiltier, but gave her some fresh instructions about the old lady’s treatment and passed on to the next bed; a straightforward chest surgery, going along nicely. Eugenia received directions about discontinuing the drainage, removing tubes and getting the patient on her feet and waited for Mr Grenfell to inspect the next patient; she knew him well enough by now to recognise that this was one of the days when he wasn’t to be hurried, and since she liked him in a vague impersonal way, she made no effort to urge him on. There was a faint smell of fish and soup coming from the ward kitchen, and her generous mouth twitched into a tiny smile as she saw his nostrils flare, but it made no difference to his rate of progress; he finished the round without hurrying, and at her pleasant: ‘You’ll have coffee, sir?’ thanked her mildly and followed her into the office. She had time to hiss instructions about dinners to the attendant Hatty before she went past him and sat down at her desk.
Harry came with them, and the house surgeon, but there wasn’t room for anyone else. Mr Grenfell bade the lady social worker a polite goodbye, adding the rider that he would see her presently on the men’s side, then he sat himself on the edge of Eugenia’s desk. ‘I’ll be bringing half a dozen students with me on Friday afternoon,’ he told her. ‘The round will be rather longer than my usual one, I’m afraid. You’ll be on duty?’
She had arranged to leave after lunch because Humphrey was free and it was an opportunity for them to browse round Selfridges pricing cookers, electric irons, kitchen equipment and so on. Humphrey intended to start married life with his home properly furnished down to the last pepperpot; a praiseworthy ambition which unfortunately meant that marriage was out of the question until they had saved enough money between them to achieve his wish. Eugenia, when they were first engaged, had declared that she really didn’t mind if they had no stair carpet and odd tea-cups, but Humphrey wouldn’t hear of it; he came from a solid middle class home, where everything matched, was polished and had its allotted place in a pristine household. And since his father had died, it had become even more pristine, so that Eugenia, when she visited her future mother-in-law, found herself plumping up cushions if she had leaned against them. If Humphrey had smoked she would probably have emptied the ashtrays as well, but he held strong views about the dangers of tobacco. Views not shared by Mr Grenfell, who with a careless: ‘May I?’ had taken out his pipe and was busy filling it while she poured the coffee.
She said with a briskness to disguise her disappointment: ‘Yes, sir, I’ll be here. Will you want anything special? And any particular patients?’
‘Oh, Mrs Dunn for a start—she’s so cheerfully unaware of her condition that she’ll make a complete recovery.’ He named several more and added: ‘There will be two new patients tomorrow morning—I saw them in OPD this morning. I don’t think there’s much we can do for either of them, but I’ll see what can be done.’ He turned to Harry and gave him instructions and then sat puffing at his pipe and drinking his coffee. He took up a good deal of space on the desk, and Eugenia thought vexedly that her neat piles of papers would be a fine muddle. Being engaged to Humphrey had turned her into a tidy girl. Sure enough, presently Mr Grenfell got up, spilling X-ray forms, diet sheets and off-duty lists all over the floor.
He got down to pick them up, bundling them up any old how and putting them back on the desk so carelessly that some of them fell down again. ‘Sorry, Sister,’ he said mildly.
‘It’s of no consequence,’ said Eugenia frostily, and was quite taken aback when he observed: ‘You’re quite right, it isn’t. One can be too tidy, it makes for a warped way of living.’
A remark which left her unable to think of a suitable reply. She accompanied him to the ward door, bade him a civil good morning and watched him meander away, with his two companions, already late for his round in the men’s ward on the other side of the corridor. Just for a few seconds she wondered what kind of a private life he had, and then forgot the thought, already busy planning the afternoon’s work—she would have to spare a nurse to go to theatre and pray heaven Mr Grenfell made a quick job of whatever he intended to do.
It was unfortunate that he did no such thing, although she had to admit that his meticulous surgery had probably saved the girl’s life. It had taken a good deal of exploration to discover the source of the sepsis and still longer to put it right. The girl had gone to the recovery room and then returned to the ward well after four o’clock. Eugenia hadn’t got off duty until almost six, because however much she wanted to, she couldn’t leave the ward until she was sure that the girl was going to be all right. Hatty was a splendid nurse, but Eugenia had always held the notion that the more senior you were, the more you had to be prepared to give up off-duty if the need arose. It wouldn’t be fair to Hatty to leave her with an ill patient, the rest of the ward to run, the report to write and the nurses to manage. Even when she at last felt justified in going, she had walked slap into Mr Grenfell coming up the stairs two at a time. Naturally, he had stopped to ask her about her patient and she had stood for another ten minutes, listening carefully to his observations on the case. She even offered to go back with him to the ward, but he refused this with a cheerful: ‘Hatty’s there, isn’t she? A sound young woman. I’ll let Harry know if there’s anything to be altered. Have a pleasant evening.’
He had gone, disappearing down the corridor at the head of the