The Awakened Heart

Her voice was sharp, and he asked lightly, ‘Will you miss me? I hope so.’

She stared out at the wintry countryside. ‘Yes.’

‘We haven’t had that lunch yet, have we? Perhaps we can arrange that when I come again.’

‘Will you be back soon?’

‘Oh, yes. I have to go to Birmingham and then Leeds and then on to Edinburgh.’

‘But not here, in London?’

‘Probably.’ He sounded vague and she decided that he was just being civil again.

‘I expect you’ll be glad to be home again?’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t add anything to that, and a few moments later they had reached her home and were greeted by her mother at the door before the car had even stopped, smiling a warm welcome. Not a very satisfactory conversation, reflected Sophie, in fact hardly a conversation at all. She swiftly returned her mother’s hug and went indoors with the professor and Mabel’s basket hard on her heels. He put the basket down, unbuttoned her coat, took it off, tossed it on to a chair and followed it with his own, and then gave her a gentle shove towards the warmth of the kitchen. Montgomery and Mercury had come to meet them and he let Mabel out of her basket to join them as Mrs Blount set the coffee on the table.

‘Will you stay for lunch?’ she asked hopefully.

‘I would have liked that, but I’ve still some work to clear up before I return to Holland.’

‘You’ll be back?’ He hid a smile at the look of disappointment on her face.

‘Oh, yes, quite soon, I hope.’ He glanced at Sophie. ‘Sophie is tired out. I won’t stay for long, for I’m sure she is longing for her bed.’

He was as good as his word, saying all the right things to his hostess, with the hope that he would see her again before very long, and then bidding Sophie goodbye with the advice that she should sleep the clock round if possible and then get out in the fresh air. ‘We are sure to meet when I get back to England,’ he observed, and she murmured politely. He hadn’t said how long that would be, she thought peevishly, and he need not think that she was at his beck and call every time he felt like her company. She was, of course, overlooking the fact that her company had been a poor thing that morning and if he had expected anything different he must have been very disappointed. All the same, she saw him go with regret.

The two days went in a flash, a comforting medley of eating, sleeping and pottering in the large, rather untidy garden, tying things up, digging things out of the ground before it became hard with frost, and cutting back the roses. By the time she had to return to the hospital she was her old self again, and her mother, looking at her lovely face, wished that the professor had been there to see her daughter. She comforted herself with the thought that he had said that he would be back and it seemed to her that he was a man whose word could be relied on. He and Sophie were only friends at the moment, but given time and opportunity… She sighed. She didn’t want her Sophie to be hurt as she had been hurt all those years ago.

It was November now, casting a gloom over the shabby streets around the hospital. Even on a bright summer’s day they weren’t much to look at; now they were depressing, littered with empty cans of Coca Cola, fish and chip papers and the more lurid pages of the tabloid Press. Sophie, picking her way towards her own front door a few hours before she was due on duty again, thought of the street cleaners who so patiently swept and tidied only to have the same rubbish waiting for them next time they came around. Rather like us, I suppose, she reflected. We get rid of one lot of patients and there’s the next lot waiting.

Miss Phipps was hovering as she started up the stairs. ‘Had a nice little holiday?’ she wanted to know. ‘Came back by train, did you?’

Sophie said that yes, she had, and if she didn’t hurry she would be late for work, which wasn’t quite true, but got her safely up the rest of the stairs and to her room, where she released Mabel, fed her, made herself a cup of tea, and loaded her shoulder-bag with everything she might need during the night. She seldom had the chance to open it, but it was nice to think that everything was there.

The accident room was quiet when she went on duty, but Casualty was still teeming with patients. She took over from the day sister, ran her eye down the list of patients already seen, checked with her Staff and phoned for Tim Bailey to come as soon as possible and cast his eye over what she suspected was a Pott’s fracture, and began on the task of applying dressings to the patients who needed them.

Tim arrived five minutes later. ‘I’ve seen this lot,’ he said snappily. ‘They only need dressings and injections; surely you—?’

‘Yes, I know and of course we’ll see to those… This man’s just come in—I think he’s a Pott’s, and if you say so I’ll get him to X-Ray if you’d like to sign the form.’

She gave him a charming smile and she had sounded almost motherly, so that he laughed. ‘Sorry— I didn’t mean to snap. Let’s look at this chap.’

She had been right; he signed the form and told her, ‘Give me a ring and I’ll put on a plaster, but give me time to eat my dinner, will you?’

‘You’ll have time for two dinners by the time I’ve got hold of X-Ray; it’s Miss Short and she is always as cross as two sticks.’

The man with the Pott’s fracture was followed by more broken bones, a stab wound and a crushed hand; a normal night, reflected Sophie, going sleepily to her bed, and so were the ensuing nights, including the usual Saturday night’s spate of street fights and road accidents. The following week bid fair to be the same, so that by the time she was due for nights off again she was more than a little tired. All the same, she thought as she coaxed 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.’