Bachelor of Medicine E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 312

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    Professionally speaking, Foster Ward was perfect. There it was, a model of neatness, beds and lockers beautifully tidy; there was the famous surgeon arriving to make his round, attended by his house surgeons of varying status and by eager but nervous students; there were the nurses, dutiful and efficient, ready to answer any questions he might ask. But beneath the decorous surface there surged many a strong emotion; love and ambition, professional and personal jealousy, fear and hope ... one way or another, the ward of a big hospital can provide them all.

Leseprobe

Bachelor of Medicine

Bachelor of Medicine

© Vivian Stuart, 1959

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-410-1

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

___

For John Percy Carpenter, also a Bachelor of Medicine, for whose help I am grateful, although—as he will be the first to perceive—I have taken certain dramatic licence with his advice.

CHAPTER I

SISTER EVELYN HUNT, her fair brows knit in an anxious frown, looked down the long ward, heartened by Matron’s praise.

The dark linoleum shone, each of the thirty white-painted hospital beds stood in perfect alignment with its neighbour, coverlets unruffled and blankets correctly tucked in, bedside tables and white enamelled lockers cleared of the litter of cigarette packets, newspapers and pools coupons with which the men normally cluttered them.

The men themselves, all twenty-nine of them—the thirtieth was behind screens—looked unnaturally and rather uncomfortably tidy and polished too, their hair slicked down, their faces shaved and shining. No one, not even old Daddy Binns, was smoking, and Nurse Blair had managed, by some means known only to herself, to persuade Patrick O’Keefe, the young Irish wharfinger who had been injured in a dockside brawl, to submit to having his shock of wild red hair combed and his bruised and battered face at least partly shorn of its week’s growth of stubble.

The docker caught Lyn’s eye and grinned at her ruefully.

“Sure, Sister, ’tis a terrible way to treat a man, and him at death’s door an’ all!”

Lyn went over to him, smoothing her spotless apron. She wore her Sister’s bows a trifle self-consciously still, for she had only donned them two days before and hadn’t yet achieved the dignified carriage that went with them. Or, she thought, the ability—despite Matron’s approval of her preparations for it—to take Sir Felix Asperley’s impending round in her stride. In the circumstances, it promised to be fraught with difficulties, both professional and personal....

The young Irishman eyed her smilingly as she approached his bed. He was a big, husky fellow with a musical brogue, and already, since his recent return to consciousness, a great favourite in the ward. Lyn noticed the speculative gleam in his very blue eyes with approval. After nearly a year in Men’s Surgical she had come to regard it less as flattery than as a healthy sign of convalescence, not, on any account, to be taken seriously. But not, on the other hand, to be lightly dismissed, for sick men were strangely sensitive, vulnerable beings, and hurt feelings did not aid their recovery. Patrick O’Keefe had been very ill indeed, though no one would have imagined it, to see him now.

She gave him her brightest smile, admiring his stoical cheerfulness and his gay, laughing courage, and she put out a hand, gently to smooth back the unruly hair from his brow.

“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Keefe?” she asked.

He captured the hand. “You could call me Pat,” he told her, greatly daring. “Everyone else does, and ’tis you I’d like to hear saying it. Couldn’t you, just for once?”

“Well—just for once then ... Pat.”

His eyes lit up. “Sure ’tis an angel straight from heaven ye are, Sister, but”—he gestured towards the rest of the ward—“for what reason is it that you’re going round like a dragon this morning, chasing us all till we scarcely know if we’re on our heads or our heels? No smoking and devil a thing out of our lockers and the whole place turned upside down! Is it the Queen of England herself you’re expecting to visit us?”

Lyn stifled a sigh. Patrick O’Keefe had been unconscious this time last week; he didn’t understand. “We’re preparing for Sir Felix Asperley’s round,” she told him, and added, with more feeling than she had meant to: “Which matters almost as much to me.”

“Ach, him!” The Irishman pulled a face at her, like a small boy contemplating a sour apple. “The ould so-and-so, with his Rolls-Royce motor-car and his hoigh and moighty airs! Sure I know him well be sight and I’ve little taste for him, so I have not. Why—”

“Sir Felix is our Senior Surgical Consultant,” Lyn reminded him, in her most reproving voice, “and as he’ll be here very soon, I can’t possibly stop and listen to your opinion of him, Mr. O’Keefe.” She almost added: “Much as I should like to,” but discipline restrained her. But she wondered, for the twentieth time, as she made her way down the ward, how she was going to face Sir Felix Asperley after what he had said about her to Mark. It had been so cruel, so needlessly, heartlessly cruel....

“Sister—” A plaintive voice broke into her thoughts and instantly the bright professional smile returned to Lyn’s lips.

“Yes, Mr. Binns, what is it?”

Old Daddy Binns raised himself slowly on one elbow to regard her balefully from behind the lenses of his old-fashioned steel-rimmed glasses. “’Ow much longer,’ ’he demanded irritably, “’ave we got to ’ang around waiting for ’is lordship? I wants me pipe o’baccy.”

“Hush now, Mr. Binns,” Lyn pleaded. “She settled him once more on his pillows. “You wouldn’t want Sir Felix to hear you complaining, would you? He has to do rounds in Cleve and Robert Thatcher before he comes to us. You know that as well as I do.”

Her tone was sympathetic Daddy Binns was the oldest inhabitant of Foster Ward and, as such, was privileged. He had been badly burnt in a factory fire almost a year ago and had undergone a long succession of skin-grafting operations which had tried his patience to its limit. When he had returned for what he had believed to be his last operation—a comparatively minor one—the deterioration in his physical health had led to his being investigated, and a much graver condition had come to light, which had no connection with the burns. He was down for laparotomy the next day and the knowledge made him irritable, for he had picked up enough of the hospital jargon to realize what this might mean.

Besides, like most old men, he had become very much a creature of habit, and it upset him to be deprived of his accustomed after-breakfast pipe of strong-smelling black tobacco. He was tired of the long investigation and resented being kept in bed, but his condition—which he referred to as “me yeller jaundice”—necessitated that he should be. He and Lyn were friends of long standing, for when he had first come to the ward, she had been newly appointed as staff-nurse and had acted as his special It was a private joke between them that Daddy claimed to have taught her all she knew.

She patted his old bony hand and announced, thinking to please him: “The students will be having a look at you this morning, you know. You’re our prize patient. Sir Felix is very proud of the way those skin-grafts took.”

“Huh!” Daddy’s grunt was ungracious but he looked pleased. He enjoyed having his case demonstrated to the students. “So ’e ought ter be proud, seeing what I ’ad ter put up wiv so’s they would take. But ’e don’t know when ter stop, don’t Sir Felix. I’m a burn case, I am. There ain’t nothink else wrong wiv me. But ’e ’as ter go on, cuttin’ and ’ackin’ me about, ’stead ’o leavin’ well enough alone.”

“Well,” Lyn offered consolingly, “there won’t be any more of it, will there—after tomorrow? Before you know where you are, you’ll be leaving us and going home for good. I don’t know what we’ll do without you, honestly I don’t.”

“Ah!” said Daddy smugly. “Gets around, I does, making meself useful, showing them young nurses what’s what. And I showed you a thing or two, didn’t I, when you first come?”

“Yes.” Lyn smiled reminiscently. “You did indeed, Mr. Binns.”

“An now you’re Sister Foster,” Daddy croaked delightedly, “eh? Found your feet an’ no mistake, you did. In more ways nor one.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Got young Mr. Asperley fair mazed about you, Sister, eh? But what’s this I ’ear about you an’ im ’aving words? ’Cauise I was countin’ on bein ’asked to the weddin—even if I ad’ gone ’ome by the time, it was ’eld. Tain’t true, is it?”

Lyn felt the colour drain from her cheeks but somehow she managed to retain her smile. “We haven’t had words, Mr. Binns,” she told him flatly, “but you’re quite wrong to imagine that there’s going to be a wedding. Or that there ever was going to be one. And now I must go, I—”

“Ere,” said Daddy fiercely, “the young doc told me ’isself. He caught at her sleeve. “Are you tryin’ ter tell me as it’s all off atween you?”

What was the use of denying it? Lyn nodded wretchedly. “Yes,” she said, “I am, Daddy. But please keep it to yourself, I—it’s not something I want to talk about.”

It wasn’t, it hurt too much. Even to speak Mark’s name now was like turning a knife in her heart. She had loved him so, but—it was over. Mark had made his decision, chosen his way. She had believed him to have more courage: enough, at least, to try to reason with his father, to fight for their love. Only—he hadn’t. He hadn’t loved her enough to fight for her, that was the stark, unvarnished truth, and she would have to face it Face it and the future too, decide what she was going to do now that the news had got out Because—Lyn drew a quick, painful breath and her fingers went to the bows beneath her chin—how could she stay on here, in spite of her promotion and the wonderful chance it offered her? How could she stay here when it meant seeing Mark every day, working with him, talking to him as if—as if he had never held her in his arms, never whispered passionately that he loved her, with his lips against hers and his dark, clever face alight with happiness and pride! Certainly she couldn’t stay here and see Mark marry Alison Foxhill, who was his father’s choice for him that would be more than she could bear....

Gently, she freed her arm from Daddy Binn’s frail grasp. “I must go,” she repeated, making a tremendous effort to steady her voice, “I really must. Sir Felix will be here in a minute and I daren’t keep him waiting.”

Daddy darted her a swift, bird-like glance over the top of his spectacles. “Was it ’im, Sister?” he suggested shrewdly. “Didn’t ’e think you was good enough for ’is precious son?”

Lyn did not answer, but as she walked away she was very conscious of his eyes on her back. Daddy Binns was incorrigibly curious and, she thought wryly, he missed very little of what went on in the hospital. With his uncanny instinct for other people’s troubles, he had put his finger unerringly on the root of hers. Sir Felix did not think her good enough for Mark. He hadn’t said so to her, but she knew, and the knowledge hurt, for that was something you couldn’t alter—your birth, what you were.

Not that she had anything to be ashamed of, Lyn reflected. She came of honest country stock, but in a town like Lichester, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, it was impossible to hide one’s antecedents. Her father had been one of a large family and there had been no money to spare for higher education—John Hunt had gone on the land when he was fourteen and he was now a farm manager. He had been the best of fathers and had done very well to get as far as he had, for the farm he managed was one of the largest in the district, but ... that didn’t make his daughter a suitable match for the son of Sir Felix Asperley. It was no use pretending it did. Or pretending that Mark himself had ever really thought so.

“Oh, Sister——”

Lyn turned and saw that Dr. Dyson had appeared and was waiting for her by the ward table upon which, with his usual disregard for its meticulous neatness, he had placed a selection of the complex apparatus of his trade.

Joe Dyson was the hospital’s Senior Resident Pathologist, a tall, loose-limbed, fair-haired young man whom—since they were both products of the same training school—Lyn had known for almost six years. She was fond of Joe and admired him: he had a brilliant brain, he was helpful and good-natured to a fault, and, since his student days, had been one of her staunchest friends, but at that moment—with Sir. Felix’s round impending—she couldn’t even make a pretence of being pleased to see him.

“Do you,” she asked him, in a breathless underton, “have to visit us now, Dr. Dyson? Because—”

Joe raised a large hand defensively in front of his face and smiled at her with engaging innocence.

“I’m afraid I do. But I shan’t be in your way, I promise you—just a small matter of a haematocrit reading which, as you may recall if you cast your mind back to our student days, has no value unless it is taken at regular and stipulated intervals. I can manage it on my own and, this being a male ward, I shan’t even have to ask for a chaperone, so there’s no earthly reason for my presence to make the least difference to your—er”—he glanced about him approvingly—“extremely efficient preparations for the reception of the great Sir Felix Is there?”

“No, I suppose not.” But Lyn sighed and her gaze was reproachful as it went to the disordered table. “Except that you’ve already made one of them look rather less efficient than it did before you came in. Do you really need all those stains and things in order to do a haematocrit reading?”

“I’m taking them to the lab.,” Joe explained patiently. “Dr. Masters has a suspect malaria in Charity and some of the boys have been trying to do their homework—with my stains—in the ward kitchen, if you please. I discovered this little lot hidden behind the milk saucepans. If I find out who put them there, I’ll give him malarial parasites. I’ll break his neck, too.”

“Yes, Joe, I’m sure you will. But if you don’t mind—” Joe’s grey eyes widened. “Don’t tell me that you’re in a flap, Lyn? Surely not—you of all people!”

“It is my first week as Sister,” Lyn defended.

Joe patted her arm, his smile apologetic. “There now, I’d forgotten. Time passes me by in my basement fastness, you know. One day’s much the same as any other. But I must say”—he studied her, head on one side—“you look absolutely charming in those bows, and in deference to them, as well as in the interests of efficiency, I’ll remove my messy tools from your highly polished table. In fact—oh, damn, that’s torn it!”

One of his bottles of stain, carelessly placed on the tray, tilted, wavered for an instant and finally fell, striking the, edge of the table with some violence. It cracked, and its contents—a bright, pinky-red liquid—cascaded across the table to spread, at alarming speed, over the pages of the open report book.

“I say, I’m most frightfully sorry.” Joe dabbed gallantly but ineffectually with his handkerchief. “Have you some blotting-paper? I think—”

“I’d do it, Joe. Please, if you could hold the tray and let me see what I’m doing, it would be easier.” Lyn’s fingers moved quickly, but the stain outpaced them. The report book, a hideous sight, couldn’t be saved, but the table might be, if she worked fast.

“I am so sorry,” Joe said again. I’m afraid the darned stuff won’t come off very easily if it gets on your hands, so watch out, won’t you. I wish you’d let me do it. After all, it was entirely my fault.”

“It’s done,” Lyn told him, with a rueful glance at her stained finger. She hoped she would have time to wash them before Sir Felix appeared, though it seemed unlikely—if what Joe said was correct—that it would make much difference. She disposed of the blotting-paper, whisked the report book temporarily out of sight and turned to Joe, a mute plea in her eyes.

“All right,” said Joe, answering it, “I’m on my way. And don’t bother to come with me. Er—” guiltily he hesitated—“er—there was just one thing I wanted to ask you.”

Lyn controlled herself with a visible effort.

“Yes, Dr. Dyson?”

“Oh, nothing, Sister.” He was hurt, she realized with instant compunction, and he was much too nice to hurt.

“What was it?” She managed a smile and Joe’s expression relaxed.

“Well,” he confessed, “I only wanted to ask you if you’d care to have a meal with me and go to the pictures this evening, to-that is, to sort of compensate for the ghastly mess I’ve made of your nice clean ward. I mean, of course, if you’re not doing anything else.”

He knew she wasn’t, Lyn thought Probably they all knew that she and Mark had broken up: the hospital grapevine would have been working overtime, her humiliation public property by now. But it was kind of Joe. He was a kind person and the best and most loyal of friends.

“Thank you,” she said, surprising herself, “thank you, Joe, I’d love that.”

Joe matched off with his tray of apparatus, beaming.

Lyn wasn’t given time to speculate as to the reasons which had prompted his invitation, for no sooner had she finished scrubbing ineffectually at her stained finger-tips and returned to the ward than Alice Blair, her staff-nurse, came hurrying from behind the screens which isolated Number Thirty from the rest of the ward, and caught her eye.

“Sister—”

Over Nurse Blair’s shoulder, Lyn glimpsed the transfusion apparatus which hung suspended above the patient’s head. the plasma bottle was almost empty. “How is he?” she asked softly.

Alice Blair sighed as she answered the question. She was a tall, gaunt girl who seldom had much to say for herself. But she was efficient and reliable and Lyn was glad to have her on the ward, for she knew her job and, despite her lack of conversation, she was intelligent and could always make time to explain things to the probationers. The patients teased and trusted her, the pros took her off behind her back but obeyed her implicitly and at once. She was known to all and sundry as “Alice in Wonderland” from her habit of prefacing her rare remarks with “I was wondering—”

Her brief report ended, she said: “I was wondering, Sister—” and she paused, looking at Lyn uncertainly.

“What were you wondering, Nurse Blair?”

“Well, if Mr. Axhausen ought to look at Thirty again. He said he was to be called if there was any change.”

“I’ll ask him as soon as he comes. He’s with Sir Felix.” Lyn glanced at her watch. “Goodness, they are late, aren’t they?”

“Yes.” Again Alice hesitated. Then she said, flushing a little: “I let Nurse Gibbons special Thirty, Sister. He—he’s a boy she knows, but I’m afraid”—she waved a hand towards the screens—“I’m afraid he must be the boy and—”

Lyn followed her behind the screens. Little Nurse Gibbons was seated at the patient’s bedside, his hand clasped in hers and her heart in her gentian blue eyes. She was a pretty child, but her cap, as always, was a trifle awry, and. her apron, despite the fact that it was a clean one, was already crumpled. She had come to the ward from training school only three weeks and was as clumsy and as eager to please as a puppy.

Seeing Lyn, she rose respectfully, trying to straighten her cap with one hand. The other still clasped that of the boy on the bed. He was semi-conscious still, his pulse when Lyn sought for it thready and barely perceptible. He murmured something when Lyn touched him and she asked gently: “Yes, what is it?”

“If—if you please, Sister—it’s Jenny,” Nurse Gibbons volunteered. Her cheeks were very pink

“And who,” Lyn enquired, “is Jenny?”

“If you please, Sister, I am.”

“I see.” Lyn’s eyes went pityingly to the white, shadowed young face on the pillow. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yes, Sister. He’s Bob Grant and he’s a professional footballer,” Nurse Gibbons said proudly. “He plays for Lichester Rovers and he’s only nineteen. He is—was—their centre-forward.”

Only nineteen, Lyn thought. He had come in as an accident case during the night and had spent two hours in the theatre where Mr. Axhausen, the Senior Resident Surgical Registrar, had done his skilled best to patch him up. But young Bob Grant wouldn’t play football again. His skidding motor-bike had crushed both legs, and one, the left, had been amputated at the knee.

Nurse Blair said softly, as she moved round to replace the now empty plasma bottle with a full one: “Nurse has done quite well, Sister. But if you think—” Her blunt, capable hands were busy with the drip connection, but her eyes looked a question at Lyn. So did the frightened blue eyes of little Nurse Gibbons as they both waited for her to answer it.

She ought, Lyn knew, to send the child back to the ward. Personal and emotional ties between nurse and patient didn’t make for good nursing, and Gibbons was the junior pro. She had no experience, had probably never seen a patient as ill as this one before, and yet—those pleading eyes beneath the cap that just wouldn’t stay at the correct angle made Lyn hesitate.

Finally she said: “I want you to go back to the ward, nurse. Tell me as soon as you see Sir Felix Asperley, will you? During his round, you may stay with Thirty, but after that I shall get Nurse Jones to relieve you. You understand?”

“Yes, Sister, I—thank you, Sister.

Lyn waited until she had gone, then she studied the chart. Alice watched her in silence. Then: “Sister, I’m sorry. It wasn’t until I heard her speak to him that I realized.”

“It probably helped him,” Lyn answered. Looking down at the boy’s white face, she found herself wondering if he was a fighter, like Patrick O’Keefe. She hoped he was, because he would need all his courage to accept the fact that he had lost a leg.

Footsteps sounded from behind the screen and Nurse Gibbons’ round, childish face appeared, her cap now definitely tip-tilted. “If you please, Sister—”

“Yes, nurse?”

“Please, Sister, they’re coming. And Dr. Dyson said I was to tell you that he’d finished with the burn case.”

“Very well,” said Lyn, “you know what to do, nurse. Mr. Axhausen will be coming to look at Thirty in a few minutes, so straighten your cap, it’s all over the place.”

To her own ears, her voice sounded high-pitched and unnatural, but neither of the others appeared to notice it Little Nurse Gibbons stood politely aside. Her cap set to rights now, she looked suddenly older. She passed Lyn and resumed her place at her patient’s side. The boy whispered: “Jenny ...” and his lips curved into a smile as Nurse Gibbons’ fingers went to his wrist The movement, if not yet quite professional, was almost so.

Lyn, her chin held high, went towards the doors of the ward. She reached her post some thirty seconds before the long procession, attending the hospital’s Professor of Surgery and Senior Surgical Consultant on his teaching round, made its belated appearance at the end of the corridor.

CHAPTER II

MR. AXHAUSEN, the Resident Surgical Officer, came first, a thin, erect figure in his white coat, his expression frankly unhappy. Lyn guessed, from this, that he had been given the blame for whatever had happened to delay Sir Felix Asperley on his way to Foster Ward, and she knew from past experience that Sir Felix did not take kindly to delays if they were caused by anyone but himself. She ventured a smile in Mr. Axhausen’s direction, which he returned briefly.

He was an Austrian, a refugee from his own country for political reasons, and, on this account, he was older than most men holding a similar appointment. A kindly, conscientious man, he was a clever surgeon, with the M.D. of his native Vienna, as well as the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons which he had recently acquired in Edinburgh. Staff and patients were devoted to him, with the sole exception of Sir Felix, who made no secret of the fact that he disliked his senior houseman and who lost no opportunity to bully and humiliate him, both in the theatre and out.

Normally Kurt Axhausen bore his chief’s insults patiently, but this morning he had evidently been tried beyond even his endurance, for his face was flushed and his brown eyes mutinous.

He said brusquely, when Lyn greeted him with the request that he look at Number Thirty at once: “Yes, of course I will, Sister, as soon as I can. But Sir Felix wishes us to see Twelve, so—” He shrugged resignedly and passed on.

There was a stir when at last Sir Felix entered the ward, flanked by his housemen and dressers and followed by a tightly packed train of students.

Lichester General was a teaching hospital, with a long tradition behind it. Founded in Tudor times as “a hospice for the reception and treatment of the poor and afflicted,” it had gone under the name of one of its present medical wards, St. Mary Charity, until—raised in the latter part of the eighteenth century to the status of a training College for Apothecaries and Surgeons—its designation had been changed, first to St. Mary’s Hospital of Lichester and finally, during the first world war, to the Lichester General Hospital

Having gradually lost ground to the better endowed medical schools of the larger universities, it no longer awarded a degree of its own but took the overflow from one of the minor northern universities for clinical training, its student body now numbering about a hundred fifth-and final-year men. The fact that it had students at all was due largely to the efforts of the great Sir Felix himself, who had established something of a reputation as a teacher in his own branch and who had been instrumental in reviving the hospital’s traditional function.

Like his famous predecessor, the surgeon John Fosterin whose honour Lyn’s ward had been named—Sir Felix Asperley believed in tradition and, in his annual address to the nurses, he was wont to discourse at some length on the hospital’s long record of service to the sick and suffering of the district and its proud history.

Perhaps, Lyn thought, he dreamed that one day—despite the advent of the Health Service—there might be a ward beating his name. Although—she sighed—he would not be remembered, as John Foster was, for his kindliness....

He stood, a slightly built, handsome man, at the entrance to Foster Ward, looking about him with cold blue eyes which, for all their apparent indifference, missed nothing. He had white hair and a thin, smooth face whose, youthful contours belied the snowy hair,

Lyn knew him to be in his late fifties but he didn’t look it. As usual he was immaculately, even foppishly dressed, his perfectly starched white coat open to display the correct black jacket and impeccably cut striped trousers which he wore, like a uniform, beneath it This morning he sported a buttonhole—a single ted carnation, pinned to his lapel with a small spray of maidenhair fern. It made a gay, incongruous splash of defiant colour against the sober black cloth.

Going forward to meet him, Lyn noticed it with astonishment, her gaze straying to it as she waited, stiffly erect, for him to acknowledge her presence. Sir Felix seldom wore anything so frivolous as a buttonhole....

“Ah—Sister Hunt!” His tone was playful, and Lyn bit her lip, dreading what might be in store for her. The emphasis on her new title was feint but it was deliberate.

Behind him, Mark Asperley stood shuffling his feet uneasily, at pains to avoid meeting Lyn’s eye. His good-looking face was set in unusually sullen lines, his mouth tightly compressed. Lyn sensed that he was more nervous than she and, against all reason, her heart went out to him. Sir Felix was adept in the use of veiled mockery, and his sarcasm—which made the students titter—could wound the object of it deeply. Ever since he had begun to suspect Mark’s interest in her, Lyn had been singled out as a butt for the renowned Asperley humour on such occasions as this one, and she braced herself apprehensively for the first stinging blow.

As Sister-in-Charge, she was now much more vulnerable to attack than she had been as a staff-nurse: the whole ward was her responsibility, and if anything went wrong, however small, she would be held to account for it.

But, to her surprise, Sir Felix contented himself with a suavely smiling remark about new brooms and stepped past her into the ward.

Lyn fell in behind him and Mark mumbled a greeting, his eyes still refusing to meet hers. A great gulf yawned between them, and Lyn was heartbreakingly conscious of it as they walked together to bed Twelve, where Mr. Axhausen held out the X-ray plates for his chief’s inspection, and Nurse Jones, with the competence of three years’ training, drew back the patient’s bed covers and murmured to him softly to lie still

The students fanned out round the foot of the bed and Sir Felix cleared his throat delicately.

“Now this case, gentlemen,” he announced, thrusting the X-rays back without acknowledgment, “will be of some considerable interest to you, I think. The patient is a labourer of some thirty-seven years of age—”

“I’m thirty-four, sir,” the patient put in aggrievedly, “and I’ve served me time, I’m not a labourer.”

Sir Felix vouchsafed him a pained glance. “You will oblige me, my good fellow, by remaining silent during my examination. If I require any information from you, I shall ask for it, do not fear. It is your illness with which these young gentlemen are concerned, not your professional attainments, interesting though these may be. My gloves, nurse, if you please ... thank you, thank you, I can put them on for myself. Now if you would kindly stand out of my way—” He advanced to the bedside and Nurse Jones stepped back, flustered. The patient glowered and watched him in sullen silence. Lyn picked up his chart in anticipation, her mouth stiff.

As the round progressed, taking in bed after bed, Lyn found herself wondering, with a sense of sick resentment, how it was that a man in Sir Felix Asperley’s enviable position could so abuse it.

He seemed to take a malicious delight in offending his fellow men and in leaving a trail of flushed faces and hurt feelings in his wake, caring little to whom they might belong. Housemen, nurses, patients and students, all felt the lash of his tongue, and none dared protest. The Senior Surgical Consultant’s power was absolute, his orders not to be questioned in Lichester General, least of all in his own surgical wards.

The medical side was under the benevolent supervision of Dr. Edwin Masters, who, Lyn remembered from her initial training in one of his wards, had never addressed a harsh word to anyone, however deserving of it. The humblest, most inexperienced probationer had no fear of incurring Dr. Masters’ wrath. He never became ruffled, he seldom raised his voice, and his rebukes, when he had occasion to deliver them, were gentle.

Yet discipline hadn’t suffered. Dr. Masters was deeply respected and he had the loyal support of every member of his medical and nursing staff, the warm approval and affection of his patients ... unlike Sir Felix

Sir Felix, Lyn thought as she held up a chart for him, might be a surgeon of unsurpassed brilliance and a great teacher—he was undoubtedly both and was revered on this account—but he was a ruthless and extremely intolerant man.

The reverence and the admiration he was accorded did not mean that he was liked. He wasn’t liked, he was feared, and his ruthlessness detracted from his brilliance. Most of his patients were afraid of him, even when he saved their lives: the junior nurses and the younger housemen were frankly quaking in their shoes when they had to attend him: she herself was trembling now. And Mark? What did Mark feel, after his last stormy interview with his father?

Lyn bit’ her lip. Sir Felix had been cruel to her and to Mark. He had shattered their bright, shining, happy dream by destroying it and their faith in it and each other—he hadn’t spared his own son, gaining his obedience by coercion, by threatening to disinherit Mark and withdraw support from him in his professional career, bringing him savagely to heel, like a whipped dog. If he could do that to his son, then she need expect no mercy from him. If he ...

“Sister Hunt, whilst I realize that it may be asking too much of you, I should be obliged if you would attend to what I am saying.” There was a note of weary irritation in Sir Felix’s voice, and Lyn felt the hot, shamed colour which burned in her cheeks. She had been engrossed in her own unhappy thoughts and hadn’t heard what he had asked her to do, hadn’t the least idea what it was.

“I—I’m sorry, sir.”

“Well”—he eyed her distastefully—“for how much longer must I wait, Sister?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Lyn said again, rather desperately, sensing Mark’s eyes on her too, although she resolutely refused to look at him, “I—I’m afraid I didn’t hear what you said.”

“You mean you weren’t listening? Come, Sister, be honest with us—perhaps you find my remarks uninteresting?”

“I—no. I was thinking of—of something else.”

“Ha! I imagined you were.” Sir Felix was enjoying himself. “It was evident to the meanest intelligence that you were not with us, Sister. It was even evident to mine.” A student tittered and Sir Felix quelled him with a glance. He said coldly: “I asked if you would remove this man’s dressing for me, Sister. But if it is too much trouble for you, I could, of course, do it for myself. Or ask Dr. Axhausen to do it for me.”

He never referred to the unfortunate Axhausen as anything but “Dr. Axhausen”, despite his surgeon’s status.

Lyn, her fingers shaking a little, hastened to take off the dressing. Because of her haste, she did it with less than her usual skill and Sir Felix glared at her.

“Tch, tch! I asked for the dressing to be removed, Sister, not the entire epidermis. Thank you.” He motioned her impatiently to stand aside. “Now, gentlemen, your attention, if you please....”

The students gathered round him.

From his bed at the far end of the ward, old Daddy Binns watched the procession wending its slow way towards him.

He was impatient and vaguely, inexplicably uneasy. Too far away to be able to hear what was being said, he had yet sensed the atmosphere of tension which surrounded the Senior Surgical Consultant, and he waited, with growing apprehension, for it to reach out and enfold him too.

He and Sir Felix were old antagonists: Daddy had his pride and was very well aware of his rights. He refused obstinately to allow the surgeon to treat him as a body possessed of neither ears nor tongue, but used both freely and to considerable effect whenever his case was demonstrated. Sir Felix had long ago given up all attempts to restrain him, but, instead, passed him by as often as he could, only permitting the students to examine him immediately prior to or following one of Daddy’s long, intricate skin-grafting operations.

This morning the old man knew that he was to be the subject of Sir Felix’s lecture, and he had been busy, since Lyn had told him so, preparing a speech of his own. But the round had been late starting and was taking much longer than it usually did, and Daddy’s memory was not what it had been a few years ago. To his annoyance, all his carefully rehearsed phrases were going, one after another, out of his head.

He had intended to make a short, flowery little speech of congratulation, addressed to Sir Felix but designed also to pay tribute to the care and kindness shown him by Mr. Axhausen, whom he held in very high esteem. Now all he could remember of it was the opening sentence, and he lay there, mumbling this angrily under his breath and impotently fuming at the delay.

Been an age with that there cholecystectomy, they had, though why they had to waste their time on him