Cobweb Morning

Alexandra studied the man. He had an air of authority, but his clothes, though well cut, were a little shabby; there was nothing about him to denote the successful physician or famous surgeon. Her speculations were interrupted by the entry of the hospital’s senior anaesthetist, Doctor White, who added to the mystery by greeting the stranger as an old friend and shaking hands. What was more, he crossed the room to shake hands with Miss Thrums too, although he didn’t stop to talk to her, returning to the couch where the radiographer had done his work and was on the point of leaving. The three doctors went with him, the stranger pausing to lift a beckoning finger at Alexandra, and when she reached his side: ‘You will be good enough to remain with the patient,’ he said, ‘and let us know at once if you have reason for alarm.’ He nodded, staring at her as though he didn’t like her at all, and followed the others out.

Alexandra, checking this and that and making neat entries on the chart, ruminated with the tiny piece of her brain not occupied with her work, that her evening plans had been squashed: it was already an hour after she should have been off duty and she saw no chance of getting away for quite some time; it would have to be decided where the girl was to go, there would be delays while her relations were sent for, another hour, she reckoned before the doctors would make their decisions, and once they had, she vowed silently, she would hand over to the other two Sisters and streak off to her room and pack.

She looked up and caught Miss Thrums’ eyes on her and exclaimed with sudden contrition: ‘Oh, you poor thing—Sister Pim, do you suppose we could charm someone into giving Miss Thrums a cup of tea, she must need one after the nasty time she’s had.’

She was on the point of suggesting that she might like to go to the waiting room down the passage, too, when she remembered that the doctor had brought her with him and would probably turn nasty if she took it upon herself to send his aunt away, however kindly she meant it.

Miss Thrums smiled tiredly. ‘That would be delightful.’ She spoke in a whisper, with due regard for her surroundings, all the same she had a carrying voice. ‘What a very efficient girl you are, Sister—St Job’s, are you not? Miss Trott is a friend of mine.’ Miss Trott was the Principal Nursing Officer and rather an old duck. The doctor’s aunt went on: ‘I hope that poor girl will be all right—we were directly behind her, you know, so fortunate, because Taro was able to give help within seconds.’

She broke off as Sister Pim came back with the tea, and settled back to enjoy it as the men came back. It was Mr White who crossed the room to speak to Alexandra. ‘I believe that you are due back at St Job’s tomorrow, Sister Dobbs? We are hoping that you will co-operate with us in the plan we have decided upon. The patient has a fractured base—she’s very ill, but provided we can get specialist treatment for her within a reasonable time, I think we may hope for complete recovery. I’ve been in touch with Mr Thrush—you know him, of course, and he is willing to accept her as a patient of St Job’s. Now, would you be willing to escort her on the journey—ambulance, of course, and not immediately—possibly in a few hours’ time, by then we should get a very good idea of her condition and be reasonably certain that she can stand the journey. You will have everything laid on, needless to say.’

She liked Mr White, he was elderly and balding and kind, and reminded her of her own father. She agreed at once and he looked relieved, and when she looked across at the stranger, she saw, not relief on his handsome features, but satisfaction—so it was he who had been behind their scheme, she decided shrewdly. She asked on impulse: ‘Could I have this doctor’s name, sir? We shall need it for the report.’

She hadn’t spoken loudly, yet before Mr White could answer, the subject of her question was crossing the room to join them. ‘You agree to what we ask?’ he wanted to know, and when she nodded: ‘My name is van Dresselhuys, you will need it for your report, no doubt.’

‘Thank you. Mine’s Dobbs.’ She gave him a little nod, said ‘Excuse me,’ smiled brilliantly at Doctor White and went back to where Sister Pim was busy with the patient.

The ambulance left four hours later with Alexandra, her packing done in a swift ten minutes or so, in attendance. The stranger and his aunt had disappeared; vaguely, at the back of her busy mind, she was disappointed at this, but there really was no time to indulge in her own thoughts. She supervised the transfer of the girl to the ambulance, and collected the charts and notes from Lucy, who had volunteered to stay on duty until they went. No one had inquired about the girl; the police had drawn a blank and there was nothing in her handbag to give them any clue as to her identity; there was no driving licence there either and the car, a write-off, had borne a Midlands number-plate. Their search for her identity might take some time. Alexandra, hearing this, gave a resigned shrug and went out to the ambulance, primed with Mr White’s instructions for the journey.

There was a Morris 1000 drawn up beside it, in it sat Miss Thrums, and bending over its open, middle-aged bonnet was the strange doctor. He took no notice of Alexandra; it was his aunt who thrust her head out of the car window and said cheerfully: ‘We are accompanying you, Sister—we have to go to London in any case, and my nephew is anxious that the girl should have every care.’

Alexandra bristled. ‘Perhaps he would prefer to travel in the ambulance?’ she asked with dangerous sweetness.

The doctor answered this for himself, without bothering to take his head from under the bonnet. ‘My dear good woman, why on earth should I wish to do that when you are perfectly competent to attend to the patient? We shall travel behind you, and if you need my help you have only to signal me.’

‘Just as you wish,’ said Alexandra, still very sweet, ‘and be so good as not to address me as your good woman.’

She turned her back on his deep chuckle and flounced into the ambulance.

It was a great pity that she had to stop the ambulance twice during the journey and ask for his help; something which he gave with a calm despatch which she was forced to admit was all that she could have asked for. On the second occasion they were delayed for half an hour, working over their patient in the confines of the ambulance, with the ambulance men hovering, helpful and resourceful, at their backs, and when at last the doctor pronounced it safe to continue their journey, he added a rider to the effect that they should make the best speed they could. Luckily they were on the outskirts of Woking by now and at two o’clock in the morning the roads were fairly clear. They arrived at St Job’s without further alarms and the patient was taken at once to the Intensive Care Unit, with Alexandra, her eyes very bright in her tired face, accompanying her. She hadn’t stopped to speak to the doctor; the all-important thing was to get the girl back on to the ventilator again and she heaved a sigh of relief at being back in her own department once more with two night nurses waiting and everything to hand. The girl responded fairly quickly, and once she was sure of that Alexandra gave her report to the Night Sister, repeated it to the Registrar and yawning widely, started off for the Nurses’ Home. She hadn’t seen any more of the doctor and she didn’t expect to; probably he would see Mr Thrush’s registrar and then continue his journey.

She went sleepily down the stairs and found him at the bottom, deep in conversation with the Casualty Officer on duty, but as she reached them, he bade the young man good-bye, took her by the arm and led her through the front hall and down the main corridor, opening a door half way down it and pushing her gently inside.

‘I can’t go in here,’ Alexandra, now very much awake, pointed out, ‘this is the consultants’ room.’

‘I know, but they aren’t here at this time of night—only Aunty. The Night Super sent some coffee down for us and I promised her that I would see that you had a cup before you went to bed.’

Miss Thrums was sitting at the large table in the centre of the room, very upright and looking as though staying up all night in awkward circumstances was something she was quite accustomed to. She nodded bracingly at Alexandra, begged her to take a seat and poured her some coffee.

‘A trying evening,’ she observed. ‘I can only trust that the girl will recover.’

Alexandra murmured, because the doctor had nothing to say, and then asked: ‘Have you somewhere to go for the rest of the night? I could get Night Super to let you have the rooms we keep for relations—you could at least have rest…’

This time the doctor spoke. ‘Very kind, Sister Dobbs, but we have been offered beds at Mr Thrush’s.’ His tone implied that it really was no business of hers, and if she hadn’t been so tired, she might have felt inclined to take him up on that, instead she drank her coffee, said good-bye to Miss Thrums, and taking a brisk farewell of the doctor, started for the door to find him with her as she reached it.

‘You have been very kind,’ he told her, ‘I’m grateful. Let us hope that the patient repays you by recovering.’

‘Yes,’ said Alexandra, vague with tiredness, ‘and I hope they find her family soon, too.’ She knitted her brows, trying to think of something else to say by way of a pleasant farewell and he smiled a little. ‘You’re asleep on your feet. Goodnight, Miss Dobbs.’

It was as she was tumbling into bed that she remembered that he hadn’t said good-bye, only goodnight.

CHAPTER TWO

IT had been a very short night; Alexandra got up and dressed with the greatest reluctance and went down to join her friends at breakfast, a meal eaten in a hurry, although she still found time to answer the questions put to her.

‘And what’s this I hear,’ asked Ruth Page, Women’s Surgical Sister, ‘about you arriving in the small hours with a tall dark stranger? I met Meg coming off night duty and she was full of him—driving a Rolls, I suppose…’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Alexandra, ‘his hair’s grizzled and he was driving a Morris 1000. Oh, and his aunt was with him.’ When the shrieks of laughter had died down, she added demurely: ‘It went like a bomb.’

‘Yes, but what about him?’ persisted Ruth. ‘What’s his name—how old is he—did he turn you on?’

Alexandra considered. ‘His name’s van Dresselhuys, that’s Dutch, isn’t it—though his English was perfect. I’ve no idea how old he would be and I thought him rather rude and bad-tempered, though,’ she added fairly, ‘he was pretty super when the girl had a cardiac arrest.’ She swallowed the last of her tea and got to her feet. ‘I’d better be on my way, I suppose; there’s a long list and if she’s fit enough they’ll want to operate, though heaven knows where they’ll fit her in.’

Several of her companions got up too and as they walked through the hospital to their various wards, someone asked: ‘This girl—who is she?’

‘That’s just it, no one knows yet. She hadn’t any papers or anything with her, the car was hired from a garage in the Midlands—Wolverhampton, I believe, and until the police can trace her family or friends she can’t be identified.’

‘It’s to be hoped that she’ll be able to tell us herself before long,’ Ruth spoke soberly. ‘I’ll get her once she’s out of the ICU, I suppose?’

‘I should think so—lord, there’s the panic bell, someone’s arresting.’ Alexandra was off down the corridor like a bullet from a gun.

It was old Mr Dasher, who had been in her unit for five days already, he had been admitted a few hours before Alexandra had gone away, and here he was still, she thought worriedly, looking not one scrap better; she got to work on him and was getting a little response when Anthony Ferris arrived. It wasn’t until the old man was once more breathing and she had spent a careful five minutes with the unconscious girl that she felt able to leave things in the hands of her staff nurse and go along to her office, so that she might go through the various papers and messages on her desk. And of course Anthony went with her, and when she sat down, sat down too, on the only other chair in the room.

Alexandra, short-tempered from lack of sleep and an unexplained dissatisfaction with life in general, frowned at him. ‘Anthony, I’ve heaps of jobs to catch up on and that girl will probably be going to theatre…’

He smiled at her with a condescending tolerance which set her splendid teeth on edge and made it worse by saying: ‘Poor little girl—I hear you had to put up with some foreign type, ordering you around. One of those know-alls, I suppose.’

‘Then you suppose wrong.’ Alexandra had forgotten the Dutchman’s arrogant manner and couldn’t spring fast enough to his defence. ‘He was extremely civil and he knew exactly what to do— I should never have got the girl here alive if it hadn’t been for him.’

Anthony was too conceited a man to be worried by her championship of someone he hadn’t even met. ‘My poor sweet,’ he said, ‘how kind of you to stick up for him…’

‘If I might echo those words?’ queried Doctor van Dresselhuys from the door.

She stared at him, her pretty mouth slightly open; she hadn’t expected him, though she had thought of him several times, and here he was, in her office, of all places. She said, inadequately: ‘Oh, hullo, I thought you’d gone.’

He leaned against the wall, dwarfing Anthony, and looking, despite his well-worn clothes, elegant. Indeed, he made the other man’s rather way-out style of dressing look rather cheap. ‘Er—no. Mr Thrush asked me if I would give the anaesthetic—he intends to do a decompression.’

His cool eyes flickered over Anthony, and Alexandra made haste to introduce the two men, but they had little to say to each other; after a few minutes Anthony announced, rather importantly, that he had work to do and edged to the door, saying over-loudly as he went: ‘I’ll see you as usual this evening, Alexandra—we might dine and dance somewhere.’ At the door he turned. ‘’Bye, darling.’

Doctor van Dresselhuys hadn’t moved, he still leant against the door, the picture of idleness, only his eyes gleamed. When Anthony had gone, he asked casually: ‘Going to marry him?’

‘No, I’m not!’ declared Alexandra explosively. Anthony had behaved like a bad-tempered child and she had given him no right at all to call her darling; he’d been showing off, of course, hoping to impress this large man, whose very largeness, she suspected, had annoyed him, and who, unless she was very much mistaken, was secretly amused.

He didn’t say anything else, just went on looking at her with his blue eyes until she felt the soft colour creeping into her cheeks. It deepened when he said softly: ‘You’re a remarkably lovely girl.’

She disliked him, she told herself seethingly, as much as she disliked Anthony—as much as she disliked men with a capital M. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin at him, and was outraged when he asked, still casually: ‘Did I come at the wrong moment—was your young man on the point of proposing?’

‘No, he was not,’ she snapped, ‘and even if he were,’ she went on crossly, ‘I really don’t see that it’s any business of yours.’ She got up. ‘And you really must excuse me, I have work to do.’