Cobweb Morning

It was the kind of answer to make Mrs Dobbs dart a sharp glance at her daughter and change the subject. ‘How is Anthony?’ she wanted to know.

Alexandra’s high forehead creased into a frown. ‘Oh, all right—busy, you know.’ She yawned and her mother said at once: ‘You’re tired, dear—bed for you. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?’

Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, Mother dear. I’ll drive Father on his rounds if he’d like me to, it’s a nice way of seeing the country.’

Two days of home did her a world of good; she hated going back; she always did, but there would be more days off and in the meantime work didn’t seem as bad as it had done. And indeed, it wasn’t; the unit had filled up, and filled up still further that morning, even though temporarily, with a case from theatre which had collapsed in the recovery room. It was late afternoon by the time the man was well enough to send back to his ward, and Alexandra was already late off duty, but before she went she paid one more visit to the girl. She was doing well now; another day and she would be sent down to the Women’s Surgical ward. It was a pity that she hadn’t regained consciousness, though. Alexandra bent over the quiet face and checked a breath as the girl opened her eyes.

‘Hullo,’ said Alexandra, and smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in hospital. You had an accident, but you’re getting better.’

The blue eyes held intelligence. ‘My head aches.’

‘I’m afraid it may do for a little while, but you’ll be given something for it. My dear, what is your name?’

The girl looked at her for a long moment. ‘I can’t remember,’ she spoke in a thin whisper, ‘I can’t remember anything.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Alexandra comfortably, ‘it will all come back presently.’ She pressed the bell beside the bed, and when a nurse came, not quite running, asked her to let the Surgical Registrar know that Mr Thrush’s patient was conscious and would he come as soon as he could.

He came at once, and a few moments later, Mr Thrush with Doctor van Dresselhuys. Alexandra went to meet them and the surgeon said in tones of satisfaction: ‘This is splendid, Sister, and how fortunate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been here with me. And now, before we see the patient, give me your observations, Sister.’

Which she did, very concisely, before going with them to the bedside.

The girl had fallen asleep with all the suddenness of a child. Alexandra counted her pulse. ‘Almost normal and much stronger. How pretty she is with all that golden hair.’ She smiled at the two men. ‘Like a bright penny.’

Mr Thrush nodded, but it was the Dutchman who said quietly: ‘She has no name, has she, not until she remembers… What you just said, Sister, about a bright penny. Could we not call her Penny Bright?’

He too was looking down at the girl, and for no reason at all, Alexandra suffered a pang at the expression on his face. It was ridiculous to mind; why, they didn’t even like each other, and having rescued the girl like that must have caused him to feel something towards her. ‘It’s a marvellous idea,’ she agreed at once. ‘It will worry her dreadfully if we don’t call her something, and she might be like this for some time, mightn’t she?’

‘One can never tell with retrograde amnesia,’ said Mr Thrush. ‘A month, perhaps longer, who knows. You’ll do all in your power, I know, Sister.’ He moved to the other side of the bed. ‘I think I’ll just go over her reflexes.’

Alexandra, off duty at last—for even after the men had gone, she had to add everything to her report—went first to the hospital entrance. Anthony had asked her to meet him there at six o’clock, and it was already half past that hour and she was still in uniform. He was there all right, walking up and down and looking impatiently at his watch every few seconds, and when she reached him and began to explain why she was late, he hardly listened, nor did he give her a chance to finish what she was saying.

‘I must say,’ he began furiously, ‘that you have no thought for my convenience at all—here have I been waiting for the last forty minutes—the least you could have done would have been to send a message. And I can’t for the life of me see why you needed to stay; the girl won’t die if you leave her to someone else,’ he pointed out nastily.

Alexandra sighed. She was tired and it would have been nice if she could have told him about the girl regaining consciousness and how pleased everyone was; she repressed the thought that when Anthony had been late on more than one occasion she had been expected to wait for him uncomplainingly and then listen to his weighty explanations afterwards. But he was tired too, she mustn’t forget that, so she said now in a reasonable voice, ‘Oh, I know that, but it helped Mr Thrush if I stayed on for a bit, because I was there when she became conscious and he wanted to know exactly what had happened. You see, she’s got a retrograde amnesia—she can’t remember anything, not even her name. We’re going to call her Penny Bright.’

His lip curled. ‘I suppose you wasted more time thinking that one up?’

She answered without thinking. ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t, it was Doctor van Dresselhuys.’

‘Now I know why you’re late—hanging around after that Dutchman. I’ve seen you staring at him.’

She was cold with rage, but she kept her voice reasonably still. ‘That’s a silly thing to say; we don’t even like each other, but you know as well as I do that you can work quite well with someone, even if you don’t get on well. And I don’t look at him.’

They were standing at the door, and people going in and out looked curiously at them. There was a fearful draught too and she shivered. ‘Look, shall I go and change?’

She really had no wish to go out now, her evening had been spoilt and Anthony was in a vile mood, and so, she had to admit, was she.

‘Don’t bother,’ he told her with a nasty little sneer. ‘Why not go back to that fellow… I must say, Alexandra, that your behaviour is hardly what one would expect of a doctor’s wife.’

That really was the last straw, the reasonableness exploded into healthy rage. ‘Whose wife?’ she demanded. ‘I wasn’t aware that I had made any plans to be a doctor’s wife, and even if I had, I haven’t any more,’ she went on rapidly, getting a little mixed by reason of her strong feeling, ‘and how dare you talk to me about my behaviour—the utter gall…’ she choked on her temper, turned on her heel and crossed the hall, straight into the solid seventeen or eighteen stones of Doctor van Dresselhuys.

He caught her by the shoulders and set her back on her feet and then with his hands still there, said softly: ‘Oh, dear, what a nasty habit I have of intruding into your love life!’

‘It’s not my love life,’ she muttered in a fine rage. ‘I haven’t got one, and I wish you wouldn’t keep…’ She stopped and sniffed, aware that at any moment she was going to burst into tears. ‘If you would let go of me,’ she besought him, and when he did, tore off through the hospital until she reached the haven of her room. A hearty burst of tears relieved her feelings enormously, and thankful that there was no one else off duty, she went along to make a pot of tea and then, very much refreshed, had a bath. By the time her friends came off duty after supper, she looked very much as usual and was able to join in their talk as though she hadn’t a care in the world. It was only after all the various doors had closed and it was quiet and dark that she got out her writing case and found a pen.

Miss Trott showed considerable astonishment when Alexandra, her written resignation in her hand, presented herself in the office the following morning. She heard her rather feeble reasons for leaving without comment and only when she had finished did she remark: ‘This is a great surprise to me, Sister Dobbs, I had come to regard you as one of my more permanent senior nurses. Naturally, I had expected that you might leave in order to get married…’ She paused expectantly, but Alexandra had nothing to say to that, and she frowned slightly, thwarted out of the speech she had intended to make so that Alexandra might be persuaded to change her mind. She sighed. ‘Who is to take your place?’

‘Well, Staff Nurse Thorne is very good, Miss Trott, she’s been my right hand for more than two years, she would be perfectly capable of taking over the unit, and everyone likes her.’

‘You are determined to leave, Sister Dobbs?’

‘Yes, quite determined, Miss Trott.’

‘And not, I fancy, entirely for the reasons which you have given me?’

‘No, Miss Trott.’

‘Well, in that case I must accept your resignation, although with the greatest reluctance. And I will consider Staff Nurse Thorne for the post.’ She smiled faintly in dismissal. Alexandra was one of her favourites, although she was careful not to show partiality for any one of her staff. That she was labouring under strong feelings was obvious to Miss Trott’s experienced eye, trained to notice such things. Equally obvious was the fact that she was to be told nothing but a string of flimsy reasons as to why she wished to leave. She sighed and pulled a sheaf of papers towards her, aware of a number of half buried, wistful thoughts.

Alexandra’s thoughts were neither wistful nor half buried; they were angry and a little frightened; she had burnt her boats behind her for the silliest of reasons and on an impulse. She had surely made it clear to Anthony that she didn’t wish to marry him; they could have continued to be friends and he would have found another girl, more amenable than she so that she could have stayed on in the unit and everything would have been settled in a nice, civilized fashion, but upon reflection, it wouldn’t have done at all. Anthony wasn’t the kind of man to accept her as a friend once all idea of marriage between them had been scotched and meeting him each day would have been embarrassing to them both. Not only that, she reminded herself, he had been unreasonably ill-tempered, shouting at her and making snide remarks about Doctor van Dresselhuys. Not that she had any sympathy with that gentleman, always poking his large arrogant nose into her affairs.

With difficulty she brought her mind back to her own problems; she had a month in which to find another job—time enough, indeed, a few weeks at home while she looked around might be a good thing—just what she needed to cure the vague restlessness she had felt for the last few days.

She quickened her footsteps, back to the ICU, confident that she had her future well in hand.

CHAPTER THREE

IT was the second week of November, which meant that Alexandra would be free to leave well before Christmas, a sound reason to postpone the finding of a job until after the festive season. And indeed, during the ensuing weeks, she found herself singularly loath to set about serious job-hunting; she had made several tentative inquiries and met with encouraging replies, but she found herself unable to make up her mind about any of them, something which puzzled her just as much as it puzzled her family and friends. In the end she concluded that it was because she didn’t want to leave Penny Bright; the girl was making excellent progress now, down in Women’s Surgical, and each day she became prettier, only her memory, for the moment at least, had gone, and without relations or friends to stimulate it, it was proving a difficult task to break down the barrier her accident had caused. Mr Thrush was of the opinion that it would return, given time and patience, in the meantime he was satisfied with her progress. Alexandra went to visit her each day, usually as she was going off duty in the early evening, and it was on one of these occasions, two weeks or more after she had decided to leave, that Penny surprised her by saying: ‘Doctor van Dresselhuys says that I am almost well. I shall be glad to leave here, though everyone has been very nice to me.’

Alexandra smiled. ‘Well, of course, why shouldn’t they be?’ and could not prevent herself from asking: ‘Does he come often, the doctor?’

Penny answered readily. ‘Oh, yes, every week. He brings me books and magazines now that I may read a little and he shows me pictures of places and asks me if I know them. Sometimes he’s stern, though, and says I must do as I’m told…’

‘Why does he say that?’

‘Well, sometimes I don’t do as Sister tells me and then I get giddy—I shan’t be giddy for always, shall I?’

‘No, of course not, Penny, but you gave your head a nasty bang, you know, and it’ll take a little time to get quite well.’

She gave the girl sitting so docilely in the chair a motherly look. What a charming creature she was; no wonder the housemen made a beeline for her the moment they came into the ward, and so, apparently, did Doctor van Dresselhuys. She frowned, annoyed at having thought about him at all; she had dismissed him to the back of her mind days ago—she had tried to dismiss him altogether, but he had refused to go—and now, with just one remark from Penny, here he was again, every line of his handsome, aloof face well remembered, every note of his deep voice ringing in her ears.

She found herself wondering if she would encounter him on one of his visits, but either he had just gone or was expected shortly; he was never there when she was. After a few days she came to the conclusion that he didn’t want to meet her again.

She was finding the month hard to get through; she and Anthony couldn’t avoid meeting each other, and although she kept up a semblance of friendliness towards him, he chose to ignore this, behaving as though his feelings were much injured, and taking care to let everyone see it. She found herself longing to be gone even though her plans for the future were still vague. Even the news that Penny was considered well enough to leave hospital, while delighting her, did nothing to spur her on to the tiresome task of finding another job, let alone make up her mind where she wanted to go.

A decision which, as it turned out, she didn’t have to make, for the very next day, a few minutes after she had gained her room after her day’s duty, the floor telephone shrilled, bidding her go all the way downstairs again because Doctor van Dresselhuys would like a word with her.

Not in the best of tempers at this infringement of her free time, she dug her feet back into her shoes, put back the cap she had just taken off her rather untidy head, and trailed down four flights of stairs, to find him pacing impatiently to and fro in the hall.