A Surgical Affair Read online

  “All’s fair in love and getting on with the nurses, old boy.” said Mike Simons, grinning at him.

  Diana sipped her coffee and thought, “So that’s why Mark is so frivolous and off-hand. Once bitten...”

  Then Mark strolled in, hands in his pockets, the collar of his white coat turned up. His brown eyes casually surveyed the table and, for a moment, rested on Diana.

  He sat down opposite her.

  “Anyone want to buy a good suit, for a fiver?” he asked loudly, stirring his coffee.

  “Why? Broke again?” said Mike Simons.

  “I’m saving up. I want to see the south of France this summer, in case I decide to go home at the end of the year. I’ll just lie on the beach all day and watch the girls go by in their bikinis.” Diana saw Mark grinning at her and knew that he had deliberately said this to shock them all. It amused her.

  “Surely your suit is worth more than five pounds?” she asked.

  “Not really. I’ve had it since I qualified.” He frowned. “Looking back, I wish I’d left all my trunks at the harbor in New York. I could have bought six new suits with the money from my insurance company.”

  “Have you a job lined up at home to return to, Mark?” Mike Simons asked.

  “No. I suppose I’ll have to find one in Sydney. I can’t go on floating from job to job. I’m a surgical hobo.”

  It’s all good surgical experience,” somebody said.

  “Sure, but I belong in Australia. It’s part of me.”

  The table was nearly full now. Suddenly Tony Spring stood up, banging his cup with a spoon.

  “Attention, please, all!” he shouted. “I wish to announce a small, informal party in my room, Number Two, on Saturday. Seven o’clock on wards. Everyone’s invited, including wives and attachments.”

  As he sat down, amid a general murmur of approval, Mark asked him, “What’s this in aid of?”

  Tony smiled happily. “As a matter of fact, I’m getting engaged.”

  An expression of horror came over Mark’s face. “Engaged? You must be mad! A good-looking young fellow like you. You could have a wonderful time. Live it up while you can, boy.”

  “I’m not like you, Mark, I’m a one-woman man.”

  “But so am I!” he insisted. “It’s just that I can’t find the woman.” As she joined in the laughter, Diana realized that since Mark had come into the room, she was feeling different. All at once, life seemed full of fun and excitement.

  “I’ll have to marry a doctor, I think,” he was saying gaily. “I’ll retire at 65, and she can keep me in my old age.”

  With Mr. Cole away in Zurich, Diana had been thrown together with Mark for long hours in the theater. In the fatigue of the day’s long lists, and in the silence of the night during emergency cases, she hoped he found her sensible and reliable. She tried not to talk too much. She knew he liked her sense of humor too; her “rather fascinating giggle,” as he called it. Mark had once said to her, jokingly, “Two people could run this outfit, you and me. Shall I wire Cole not to come back?”

  Diana remembered Mark leaning toward her over the operating table, his hand patiently exploring, searching, feeling inside the unconscious body, making sure that everything was normal, that no disease lay hidden out of sight. And she found herself thinking: “This man attracts me. I can understand him, I admire his skill. His face is gentle, but strong.”

  The feeling had only lasted a moment, then the operation had taken up all her attention. But it surprised her, worried her a little, that she could have such sympathy for this man, whom she hardly knew. It threatened to disturb the safe, comfortable pattern of her life. Her work and her friendship with Richard were parts of her life that she had grown used to and could understand. But this excitement she felt at the nearness of Mark Royston was strange to her and, unable to explain it, she had hastily pushed it to the back of her mind.

  Breakfast over, Diana went up to the ward and found Sister Baker checking the medicine cupboard in the sterilizing room.

  “This foggy weather makes me glad to be inside the hospital, Sister,” remarked Diana, as she collected together some syringes on a tray.

  “It’s all right if you live here, but I have a 15 minute bus ride.”

  “Oh, yes. I forgot. What’s your apartment like? Nice?”

  Sister locked the cupboard and turned around, smiling mysteriously. She went over and took Diana’s elbow. “I’ll let you into a secret, Dr. Field. Come into my office. You’ll still have time to take the blood samples before the round starts.”

  In the office, Sister took a colored photograph out of her handbag and gave it to Diana. It showed a small white-washed cottage with a thatched roof. A gravel path ran between masses of yellow and red tulips up the front garden. Sister was standing in the cottage doorway, waving happily.

  “What an adorable little house!” cried Diana. “Who lives there?”

  “Nobody. That’s the point. I’m going to buy it.” Sister announced proudly. “Larkspur Cottage, it’s called.”

  “How exciting!” Diana said enviously. “Where is it?”

  “In Barnley, a little village only eight miles from here. I’ll have to buy a car, of course; a second-hand one if I can. The cottage needs a lot of repairs and decorating before I can move in, but it’s just what I’ve always dreamed of. My cousin Fay took the photograph. It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “I’d love to see it some time.”

  “Of course. What about next weekend? We’re off duty then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Now, I’d better get on,” said Sister, putting away the photograph. “There’s a new patient on her way up from Casualty.”

  “How’s Mrs. Phillips today?” asked Diana as they left the office. “Still your favorite patient?”

  “Still the life and soul of the ward. Helps to take around the early morning tea trolley now. After that repair operation, she’s never looked back.” Sister peered over her spectacles. “Not my favorite patient, Dr. Field. You know I don’t have favorites.”

  “I was only teasing. But they always say every teacher has a favorite pupil. I thought a Sister would be the same.”

  Sister chuckled. “If I have a favorite, I try not to show it.”

  It was a busy morning in the ward, and that afternoon, in the theater, nothing seemed to go right. The catgut snapped on three occasions when Mark was tying knots. Harry, one of the theater porters, was off with influenza, which slowed down everything. There were three emergency cases on the end of an unusually long list of “cold” cases.

  Late that evening, Mark told Diana, “I’ll be in the television room, my legs stretched out on the chair in front, watching my favorite western. Those sunscorched open spaces and the horses make me think of home. I had the most beautiful horse in the world. I used to ride Silver all day in the outback and never see another human being.”

  “Is this a warning that you’re not to be disturbed?” Diana asked anxiously.

  He smiled. “Well, only if it’s really urgent.”

  But about a half an hour later Diana had to talk to him. She heard Mark pick up the phone.

  “Joe’s laundry,” he drawled, to confuse anybody inconsiderate enough to interrupt his program.

  “Dr. Royston. You didn’t answer your buzzer.” It was the hospital receptionist, a cheerful blonde, who recognized the voices of all the resident doctors.

  “No, light of my life. It must have been drowned by the sound of bullets and horses’ hooves.”

  She giggled. “Well, you’re through to Dr. Field now.”

  Then Diana spoke. “Mark, we’ll be ready for you in the theater in five minutes. It’s the patient you admitted before dinner.”

  He sighed wearily. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  Then Diana hesitated. Should she warn Mark that Dr. Pallie was refusing to anesthetize the patient? Was it her business to interfere? She had never known anything like this to happen before; it was a dreadful situation. Pe
rhaps, after all, she would wait until Mark found out for himself.

  “See you upstairs, then,” she said.

  When Mark arrived in the theater corridor, Diana and Dr. Pallie were waiting for him.

  He frowned at them. “What’s up? Patient still in the ward?”

  “The patient is in heart failure, Royston,” explained Dr. Pallie in a clipped, stern voice. “I do not wish to anesthetize.”

  “In heart failure, is she? We’ll soon see about that,” snapped Mark and walked on into the anesthetic room.

  Five minutes later he returned to them.

  “Heavens, man!” he cried at Dr. Pallie, “she’s no more in heart failure than I am. Let’s get on with it.”

  The anesthetist did not move. “I am sorry. I refuse to give the anesthetic. It would kill her.”

  Mark became red in the face and his eyes flashed. “Kill her? She’s a bit breathless and the ankles are slightly swollen. But she’s a heavy woman of 65 with varicose veins, isn’t she?” Diana stood between them, looking nervously from one to the other.

  “I shall have to phone a consultant anesthetist,” declared Dr. Pallie, calmly staring back at Mark.

  “Pallie, you make me mad!” Mark told him, in little above a whisper. “That would delay the operation for at least an hour. I want to be in bed some time tonight. Do you call yourself an anesthetist? You have no guts!”

  Dr. Pallie turned on his heels and walked into the office. They heard him speaking on the telephone.

  Mark looked at Diana. “If you hadn’t been there, I might have said a great deal more.”

  “Isn’t it possible the patient is in a bit of heart failure?” she asked him quietly.

  “Look—you’re either in cardiac failure, or you’re not in it. There’s no halfway about it.”

  Diana remembered the pained expression on Dr. Pallie’s face as Mark spoke. “I think you hurt him,” she said.

  “All right, I hurt him. But I’m tired; we’re all tired.” Mark sighed. “Let’s go down and have some coffee in the common-room, while he’s sorting it out with his boss.”

  As they stood in the elevator, Diana asked him if he disliked Dr. Pallie.

  “Yes, I do,” Mark replied. “If my cat was sick, I wouldn’t send him to Pallie.” He laughed, and Diana knew that he was half-joking now; the moment of anger had passed. “He’s shifty, too. The sort of guy who would make up his own references for a job.” Suddenly she noticed that he was looking tired. The strain of long sessions in the theater, of hours without sleep, had begun to show. It was the first time Diana had seen Mark, usually so full of vitality and good humor, lose his temper. She realized how he must have to struggle to overcome the constant fatigue and tension that is the lot of every surgeon.

  An hour later, the operation started. Miss Enid Johnson, a consultant anesthetist, had responded to Dr. Pallie’s SOS and came in from her home. Fortunately for her, the fog had now lifted. She was a small, elderly woman, who hardly spoke at all during the operation, except when she sent a nurse to fetch something or replied to a question from Mark.

  Everything went well, until the end. Diana and Mark were removing the towels covering the patient’s chest. As she opened one of the sharp metal clips that held the towels in place, Mark suddenly let out a piercing scream of agony, shattering the silence of the theater.

  At first Diana was bewildered. Then she saw blood pouring through the glove of his finger and realized she had pierced it with the towel clip.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” she said quickly.

  “It was an accident. When he had recovered from the sudden acute pain, he heaved a long sigh of exasperation, ripping off the glove. “Was that a punishment for my bad behavior this evening?”

  “No. It was an accident, I said,” pleaded Diana unhappily.

  “All right, I believe you. But you’re a dangerous house surgeon to have.” He looked closely at the finger, frowning. “I think that slip went in one side and came out the other.”

  For a moment she wondered if he was joking, but there was no sign of a smile on his face. She repeated anxiously, “I can only say I’m sorry, terribly sorry. What else can I say?”

  “Forget it,” he said tersely, strolling away to wash his wound at the basin.

  Later, back in her room, Diana wrote on a piece of notepaper: Dear Mark:

  “I’m desperately sorry I caught your finger in my towel clip. I shall have no sleep tonight, with the sound of your scream ringing in my ears.

  “If the finger becomes infected, and they have to amputate your hand, I will support you for the rest of your life!

  Diana

  She read it through, with a smile of satisfaction, hoping that Mark’s sense of humor would overcome his annoyance.

  Diana went into the silent corridor. Twice she put the note into the side of Mark’s door, but each time it fell down.

  Diana hesitated. She had left Mark up in the theater and badly wanted him to know how upset she was about his injury, especially as it had come at the end of such a tiring, difficult day.

  So she knocked softly, opened the door, and switched on the light.

  His sitting room was smaller than her own and looked out over the forecourt and the main road. She noticed the single row of surgical textbooks and a few magazines about music. A large iron trunk stood in one corner, and stereo record player, with its loudspeaker looking like a miniature radar installation, in another corner. Behind the door was a desk, covered in letters, papers and scribbled telephone numbers and, underneath it, three large boxes of records.

  The window was open and Diana shivered in the cold. She still wore her shapeless white theater gown; it had seemed unnecessary to change to ordinary clothes before going to bed. Carefully, she propped the note against the telephone, deciding that Mark was certain to see it there.

  The roar of the traffic had drowned the noise of his approach. He entered the room, and they stood looking at each other.

  Diana blushed. “I’ve left you a note—it’s about your finger.”

  He went over and picked it up. “I like being sent notes. Reminds me of my schooldays.”

  Mark laughed loudly as he read it, then examined his finger carefully. “It’s too early to know yet if I’ll lose the hand, but I’ll keep you informed.” He was grinning at her.

  Diana smiled with relief because he was not annoyed with her and walked back to the door. She noticed a painting hung above the desk; a beautiful Chinese woman, wearing a green, high-necked dress, and holding a fan.

  “I like that,” Diana said appreciatively.

  “I’m glad.” He was gazing at it thoughtfully.

  “Who’s the artist?”

  “My wife. She painted quite well.”

  He had spoken the words flatly, without emotion. Diana had the feeling that one day he would tell her about his wife. She was prepared to wait. For the moment she felt curiously pleased that Mark had confided in her about something so personal.

  “I must go,” she said quietly. “Goodnight.”

  Mark touched her sleeve, grinning mischievously. “Say, I’ve always wondered—does the hospital provide official underwear with this gown?”

  “I don’t think I’ll answer that question.” Diana was trying to look shocked, but could not help smiling.

  He laughed. “Good night. Go straight home.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The small tea shop in Barnley village was full. There were only four tables, and at one of these sat Diana and Sister Baker, beside a blazing log fire.

  They had been to visit Larkspur Cottage. Diana was fascinated by its tiny rooms with their oaken beams, and the wild, scented yard sloping down to the river. They spent the afternoon taking measurements for curtains and carpets; then they took a long walk around the country lanes, exhilarated by the winter sunshine and sharp cold air after being confined in the hospital.

  “I can’t wait to move in, now it’s really mine. I’ve been saving up for years, and
it’s all going to leave me quite broke, but I don’t mind.” Sister poured herself another cup of tea, her face flushed and happy. “Have another toasted scone. Aren’t they delicious?”

  “You’re lucky to be setting up a home,” said Diana wistfully, taking a scone. “The trouble with these hospital jobs is the living-in part. But you can’t get anywhere on the surgical ladder unless you do them.”

  Sister peered over her spectacles. “You might decide to marry and settle down.”

  Diana was gazing into her cup, thinking of Richard. “I don’t think so, at the moment. There is somebody who wants to marry me, but he’s—he’s too sure of me.” She looked up. “Do you see what I mean, Sister? He thinks he owns me already. I feel smothered.”

  “I think I see. But isn’t it nice to know you can rely on a man always to be around?”

  “I suppose so, if you’re sure he’s the right one. But I’m not sure. The only thing I can do is to get away from him and see how I manage on my own. You see, I’ve known him for so long—since we were at Oxford together. If he’s always there, I can’t judge him— or myself.” Diana found herself wondering why Sister had never married.

  As if in answer to the unspoken question, Sister said quietly, “I was engaged once. He was a chartered accountant; Charles Buchan, his name was. I was a very junior nurse in a geriatric ward in a Plymouth hospital at the time. Charles used to visit his father, who was recovering from a stroke. He came every evening for months, so we grew to know each other fairly well. Soon he started bringing me flowers and chocolates. I began to look forward to his visits.” She stopped, her face sad and wistful.

  “Go on,” Diana said softly.

  “Well, we became engaged, although his father disapproved of me. He said I hadn’t the right background for his son. Charles was very easily influenced by him and kept saying we should postpone the marriage, because all this worry was making it harder for the old man to recover. Then, one evening, they had a huge argument about me; I could hear them shouting from the other end of the ward. Just after Charles left, his father died; quite suddenly. I never saw Charles again. I suppose he blamed me for his father’s death.”