The Awakened Heart. Бетти Нилс

Mabel into her basket and started on her journey home, it would have been nice to find the professor waiting for her outside the door.

      Wishful thinking; there was no sign of him.

      CHAPTER THREE

      HOME for Sophie was bliss after the cold greyness of the East End. The quiet countryside, bare now that it was almost winter, was a much needed change from the crowded streets around the hospital. She spent her days visiting the surrounding farms with her father and pottering around the house, and her nights in undisturbed sleep. She was happy—though perhaps not perfectly happy, for the professor had a bothersome way of intruding into her thoughts, and none of the sensible reasons for forgetting him seemed adequate. If she had been given an opportunity she would have talked about him to her mother, but that lady never mentioned him.

      She went back to the hospital half hoping that she would see him—not that she wished to particularly, she reminded herself, but he had said that he would return…

      There was no news of him, although there was plenty of gossip around the breakfast-table after her first night’s duty, most of it wild guessing and Gill’s half-serious plans as to what she would do and say when she next saw him. ‘For I’ll be the lucky one, won’t I?’ She grinned round the table. ‘If he’s operating I can always think up a good reason for being in Theatre during the day…’ There was a burst of laughter at this and she added, ‘You may well laugh, but I’ll be the first one to see him.’

      As it turned out, she was wrong.

      Sophie, bent on keeping a young man with terrible head injuries alive, working desperately at it, obeying Tim’s quick instructions with all the skill she could muster, stood a little on one side to allow the surgical registrar to reach the patient, and at the same time realised that there was someone with him. She knew who it was even before she saw him, and although her heart gave a joyful little leap she didn’t let it interfere with her work. He came from behind and bent his height to examine the poor crushed head, echoing Peter Small’s cheerful ‘Hello, Sophie’ with a staid ‘Good evening, Sister’.

      She muttered a reply, intent on what she was doing, and for the next half an hour was far too busy to give him a thought, listening to the two men and doing as she was bid, taking blood for cross-matching, summoning X-ray and the portable machine, and warning Theatre that the professor would be operating within the hour. She heard Gill’s delighted chuckle when she told her.

      At breakfast Gill gave everyone a blow-by-blow account of the professor’s activities. He had done a marvellous bit of surgery, she assured them, and afterwards he had had a mug of tea in her office. ‘He was rather quiet,’ she explained, ‘but he had only been here for a couple of hours, discussing some cases with Peter; he must have been tired…’ She brightened. ‘There are sure to be some more cases during the night,’ she added pensively. ‘I’ve got nights off in two days’ time. He’s on the theatre list to do two brain tumours tomorrow; probably he’ll be free after that.’