Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      A CHURCH CLOCK somewhere close to the hospital struck the hour and Sister Eugenia Smith sighed, put down her pen, gave her muslin cap an unnecessary twitch and got to her feet, to walk, as she had done on so many previous occasions, out of her office and into the ward. She went unhurriedly, casting an eye here and there as she passed, to make sure that everything was just so, and came to a halt by Staff Nurse Bristow, waiting with her bundle of charts under one arm while one of the student nurses hovered with a trolley, equipped with all the odds and ends which might be required on the round. Eugenia smiled widely at her right hand as she joined her. ‘One day,’ she said softly, ‘I shall leave the office a few seconds late and Mr Grenfell will arrive a few seconds early—that’ll make history!’

      She composed her features into a suitable seriousness as the swing doors were pushed open and the Senior Consultant Surgeon strode through them, ready to make his weekly round. Hatty Bristow, watching him greet Sister Smith with impersonal courtesy, wondered for the hundredth time how it was possible for the pair of them to be so indifferent to each other, for they were surely meant to fall in love at first sight; Mr Grenfell, with his tremendous height and size, his lint-fair hair and sleepy blue eyes, and Sister Smith, dark-haired, dark-eyed and lovely to look at—a tall girl, generously built. Hatty, mousey-haired and flat-chested, envied her from the bottom of a loyal heart. She considered that Eugenia was throwing herself away on Humphrey Parsons, the Medical Registrar at St Clare’s, although he was a good-looking young man, clever at his work and with a charm she had never trusted—but then he had never bothered himself over her; she was a plain girl and shy, and she was ready to admit that perhaps that was why she didn’t like Sister Smith being engaged to him. And as for Mr Grenfell, he was engaged too—to a beanpole of a blonde, beautifully made up and dressed, who had come to the ward at Christmas and ignored everyone. Not nearly good enough for him, Hatty had decided. She sighed, a shade too loudly so that Mr Grenfell looked at her, and when she went red, smiled nicely and wished her a good morning before turning to Sister Smith.

      His polite: ‘Shall we start, Sister?’ received an equally polite: ‘Certainly, sir,’ and she led the way to the first bed, followed by Mr Grenfell, his registrar, his house surgeon, Hatty Bristow, the lady social worker, in case Mr Grenfell should require her services, and hovering on the perimeter, Nurse Sims and her trolley.

      It was a small ward, only twelve beds, none of them ever empty for more than a few hours, for the waiting list was a long one, and although St Clare’s was an old hospital, the chest unit was modern, well equipped and meticulously run by Eugenia. She had taken over the ward three years ago from Sister Atkins, a dear old thing thankful to retire from the modern world of a profession suddenly full of technology which she had never quite understood. Eugenia had realised at once that Mr Grenfell was brimming over with new ideas and spent the first enthusiastic six months carrying them out, marvelling the while that he had never so much as hinted to Sister Atkins that he had them in mind. By the end of that time, the ward had been modernised, equipped with the very latest of surgical aids, and ready to admit the steady flow of patients in Mr Grenfell’s care.

      And he had achieved the same results with the men’s ward at the opposite end of the wing, getting exactly what he wanted with a calm determination which never admitted of defeat, and always very pleasantly. Eugenia couldn’t remember ever seeing him in a really nasty temper; true, if something had gone badly wrong, his handsome face became a mask of blandness and his voice, never loud, became a deeper rumble. But he had never told anyone off in the ward, waiting to do that in decent privacy, although she had never been a witness of such a happening. By all accounts, though, a few short sentences from him were far more effective than the occasional loud-voiced complaints of some lesser men. Indeed, she had seen some luckless student standing quite unabashed while a senior man ticked him off in front of his companions, and that same student, requested in Mr Grenfell’s quiet voice to see him in his office later, turn as white as his coat, so that she had felt compelled to fortify him with strong coffee before he obeyed the summons.

      Now, after three years, she knew exactly what Mr Grenfell liked, and being a good nurse, endeavoured to give it to him; punctuality to the second, short, factual answers to his questions, and a devotion to her work which ignored the clock on occasions. Not that she didn’t rebel against these at times, especially when Humphrey had arranged an evening out together which had to be curtailed or even abandoned altogether because an emergency had been admitted or a patient had had a relapse… Humphrey tended to be a little impatient on these occasions, and, for that matter, so did she.

      Eugenia took the first of the charts from Hatty’s hand, gave Mr Grenfell the board from the end of Mrs Dunn’s bed and took up her station opposite him. Mrs Dunn, a cheerful cockney who had lived within a stone’s throw of the hospital for most of her life, had been operated upon two days previously for what she described as ‘a nasty old chest’, and which Mr Grenfell, out of her hearing, referred to as pyothorax, brought about by a sketchy convalescence from pneumonia and several wasted months of sampling every cough and cold remedy on the chemist’s shelves.

      Mr Grenfell sat himself down in comfort on the side of her bed, blandly disregarding Eugenia’s faint frown and well aware that no one other than himself would dare to do so. ‘How’s the chest?’ he wanted to know.

      Mrs Dunn summoned a smile. ‘So-so, and don’t go telling me what you’ve done, because I don’t want ter know, see? When I’m on my feet, that’s time enough. And I’ll thank yer ter take out that tube that’s hanging over the bed…’

      ‘All in good time, Mrs Dunn. Sister shall take it out for you tomorrow. It’s doing a good job