A Time to Heal Read online

  Also by Claire Rayner

  First Blood

  Lunching at Laura's

  The Meddlars

  Maddie

  Clinical Judgements

  Postscripts

  Claire Rayner

  A TIME TO HEAL

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-046-2

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

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  M P Publishing Limited

  Copyright © Claire Rayner 1972, 1991, 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated 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 purchaser.

  e-ISBN 978 1 84982 046 2

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  For

  Nan Powys-Lybbe

  with gratitude

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

  A time to kill, and a time to heal …

  Ecclesiastes 3:1–3

  1

  SHE DROVE into the hospital car park at half past nine, though she knew the unit would not be ready for her until ten. But it had been impossible not to be early. She had woken at half past six, filled with a nervous excitement that had lifted her shoulders and thickened her throat so that she could only drink black coffee for breakfast. Which had made George behave in a more than usually tiresome way about his own breakfast.

  “What’s the matter with it, then?” he had said, his tremulous voice thin with suspicion as he peered sideways at the boiled egg and carefully trimmed bread and butter strips she had given him. “You have it. Make me another one.”

  “There’s nothing the matter with it. Nothing at all. I’m just not hungry, that’s all. Now, do for pity’s sake eat your breakfast and stop nagging. Look, you can watch me open it for you—see? Not a crack in it. So there can’t be anything wrong with it, can there?”

  But it had been foolishly self-indulgent to so allow her edginess to spill over into her dealings with him, for he responded to the testy note in her voice with predictable sulks, and she had to spend almost fifteen minutes coaxing him back to some semblance of good humor, so that eventually he had eaten the egg but still pushed the bread and butter away with an ostentatious narrowing of his eyes. He rummaged in his cardigan pocket for a stale biscuit to mumble over, watching her all the time with watery malevolence while she drank her coffee and tried to contain her mounting irritation. These senile paranoid notions of his were getting worse; and the illogicality of them was almost worse than being suspected of feeding him poison. Why he should think the biscuits he filched from the larder were safer than the bread and butter he watched her prepare was beyond her. She relinquished him to the care of Mrs. Davies at nine o’clock with more than usual relief.

  And all through the drive in the smoky October sunshine along the dull road that stretched itself past the flat burned-stubble fields, her nervousness and excitement had mounted. She tried to control it, thinking deliberately about Oscar’s return tonight. Would the trials have been satisfying for him? Would he be expansive and affectionate, or sour with frustration again? Either way, it would be agreeable to see him. She had to admit that though she had not missed his company very much, she had been frequently aware of a need for his physical presence.

  She grimaced a little at that thought, and let her mind slide away to Ferris. It was unscientific of her to be so sure. No, not sure. If she were really certain, she would not be so anxious this morning, would she? Why so anxious, damn it? His progress had been steady from the start.

  She ran over in her mind the whole pattern of the trial. The man had been moribund, undoubtedly, the first time she had seen him. He had lain neatly in the center of the screened white bed, his body making hardly any bulk under the taut counterpane, his chin pointing at the ceiling, the bones so sharply defined under the gray skin that she had suddenly remembered one of the plays she had been in at school. “His nose was as sharp as a pen—”

  But there had been nothing else Falstaffian about him. Sunken temples and eye sockets, hands so thin that each joint showed clearly between the bones. She had had no conscientious objection to using him for the trial, none at all. Sister Hornett had said—and she had more experience of death than the rest of them put together—that the man would be lucky if he lasted another month.

  “Well, hardly lucky,” Sister Hornett had amended, snapping the file of notes closed. “I doubt he’s a healthy organ left in his body, poor man. The only thing we can do for him now is to leave him to die decently. God disposes, as they say, Dr. Berry.”

  “Well, maybe he does, but I’m inclined to do some proposing,” Harriet had said almost absently, reading his file. “I could use him for the human trial without any problems, looking at this history—”

  “But Professor Bell’s away!” Sister Hornett had said, her eyebrows curving up into immediate disapproval. “Wouldn’t you be better waiting till—”

  “I know perfectly well where Professor Bell is, thank you, Sister,” Harriet had said tartly, once again leaning over to look at the thinly silent shape in the bed. “And since, as you pointed out yourself, this man will be well past taking part in anything by the time Professor Bell gets back, I’d hardly be better off waiting for him, would I? Any more than the patient would. We’ll start immediately, if you please, Sister. I want him moved to the small side room in my unit. This afternoon.”

  And moved he had been, and she had started work without giving any more thought at all to Sister Hornett’s misgivings. She had collected her specimens from the desiccated little body—and Ferris had seemed quite unaware of her activities, though with an almost embarrassed awareness of the way she was using him, she had talked to him as she worked, explaining what she was doing—and the tissue cultures had developed exactly as she had hoped they would, their action on the samples of tissue she had taken from neck glands being precisely as she had extrapolated.

  And as the weeks went by, while the tissue cultures were prepared in sufficient bulk for the treatment, and Ferris had lingered on, her hopes had grown. And then, during the past six weeks, through the series of treatment sessions in the unit, she had watched him improve, saw his skin lose its dead color, watched the graph of his blood chemistry rise and then flatten out to normal levels, saw his body fill out as his appetite came back, above all saw the personality and mind inside the body become recognizable human attributes again, and her hopes had approached certainty. Successful animal trials were pleasing enough, but this—this was something quite different.

  There was a controlled bustle about the unit when she came in, a tension that so accurately reflected her state of mind that she experienced a suddenly increased surge of anxiety that made her feel almost physically sick. She hadn’t felt anything quite like it since the war. The war. David, her rather—hell, this was ludicrous! She really must relax, treat this like any other morning; if she allowed memories of long-dead emotion to come bubbling up like this she’d be as much use as a sick headache.

  “Good morning, Dr. Berry!” John Caister said
from the console of gauges, where he was setting up for the treatment. He smiled at her brilliantly, his head a little on one side. “And how’s our medical genius this morning? Speaking for myself, I’m in a complete tiz, I promise you.”

  “When aren’t you?” Catherine Warne said acidly as she pinned a cardiograph on the board and nodded across at Harriet. “Good morning, Dr. Berry. I thought you’d like a full run this morning as well as last night’s, under the circumstances. He seems very chipper this morning, I must say. You look a bit off yourself, though. Feeling all right?”

  “Morning! I’m fine, thank you. Not precisely in a tiz, but—well …” Harriet smiled at John; impossible not to like him. Impossible not to like Catherine too, for all her acerbity. She was lucky to have so good a team on this project. “Ferris is in good spirits then? Good. Let’s be grateful he didn’t turn out to be a difficult type. Have we got this morning’s pathology reports too? Splendid.”

  She slid into the pattern of work gratefully, and at last emotion settled, giving way to the comfort of shapely thought. She checked the results of the tests that had been ran on Mr. Ferris, checked the injections lying ready on the covered tray beside the door that led to the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and then, more to satisfy her need for order than because it was necessary, went to the microscope to look again at the series of histology slides.

  The primary growth in the liver had undoubtedly gone; the difference between the biopsy taken the day they had started the treatment and yesterday’s was extraordinary. And the lymph node slides too. Theo had assured her that there was complete remission when he had operated last week, but that had been simply a surgical opinion. Here was the microscopic evidence to confirm it.

  It was still only ten minutes to ten, and with nothing more she could do until Ferris arrived from the ward at quarter past, she reached across the desk for the telephone and dialed.

  “Theo? Good morning. Can you get away for a while?… T just thought you’d like to see how Ferris is. We’re doing the last one this morning. What?… Mm. Bless you. Yes.”

  She hung up, and smiled across the desk at John. “I’m obviously showing the tension more than I realized. Anyway, Mr. Fowler seemed to notice it—he’s coming to hold our hands, he said.”

  “Oh, that is nice!” John stood up and smiled his brilliant smile again. “Such a perceptive person, isn’t he? I daresay a little coffee would come in handy. I’ll make one of my special brews.” And he flurried away.

  “Gone to comb his hair and pretty himself, more like,” Catherine said. “Are you sure you feel all right, Dr. Berry? You do seem a bit—you know.”

  “Oh, Catherine, do stop fussing over me! Of course I’m all right! But I’m—well, I’m edgy and I can’t deny I’d have to be more than human not to feel a little strung out. Aren’t you?”

  “Not at all! When you get to my age, you know better. You’ve nothing to fret about, I’m certain. It’s been obvious to me this past two weeks and more that you’ve made it. This’ll be the biggest thing that ever came out of Brookbank. Could get you your Nobel. Should get it, if justice were to be done. You’ve earned it, as no one can know better than I do. I’ve seen how much work you’ve put into it. Anyway, high time another woman got some recognition. These men—so busy worrying about their own glory, they don’t get down to any real effort.”

  “Oh, Catherine, for God’s sake! I know you don’t like Professor Bell, but it isn’t true, and you know it. He does work hard—and he’s had some nasty knocks, one way and another. The Ross-Craigie business, and—”

  Catherine almost snorted. “Ross-Craigie! Best thing that ever happened to the place, losing him down the brain drain. If I’d had my way, I’d have washed him down a different sort. Just proves my point! Cared more about his own glory than the job in hand. No, Dr. Berry, I’m right, you’ll see. You’ve made it, you really have—oh, good morning, Mr. Fowler.”

  Harriet turned as the door closed behind Theo’s square bulk, and she held her hands out toward him.

  “Hello, Theo! You are good to come. I feel as stupid as a schoolgirl waiting to go in for her A-levels. John Caister calls it being in a tiz—”

  “Caister? He would! Good morning, Mrs. Warne. Big day for the ladies of our august establishment! Though I don’t imagine you need reminding of that fact.”

  “Indeed I don’t. And if you’ll excuse me, I must check the oxygen supplies. Caister calls himself a technician, but for my part …” and she went away, her back rigid.

  “Lord, how that woman hates men! I wish you joy of her, Hattie. Such a tiresome lady! So, my dear, feeling the tension, are you? Your voice was vibrating like a zither on the phone—though I can understand it. Oscar coming home today too.”

  “Perceptive isn’t the word! You can be positively clairvoyant. All right—yes. I am a bit anxious about Oscar. He sent me a couple of remarkably uncommunicative postcards, but—” she shrugged. “He must have met Ross-Craigie again.”

  Theo sat down in Caister’s chair and, stretching his legs out in front of him, looked up at Harriet with a smile of pure pleasure on his heavy face. “Indeed he must! And dearly would I have liked to be there to see it. Little Willy, all dapper and puffed up with pride, hopping up and down in front of Oscar, glowering like—like I don’t know what! Not precisely a confrontation of the gods, but pretty electric, all the same.”

  “Oscar has a right to be angry, though! Damn it, the man behaved abominably. We all know Oscar can be a little—well, ponderous in his approach, and wants every t crossed and every i dotted, but all the same, Ross-Craigie could have gone along with him. To march out with the whole scheme in his head and take it to the States was tantamount to daylight robbery.”

  “All’s fair in love and science, my dear Hattie. And Oscar isn’t precisely fair in either department, is he? So I find a certain malicious pleasure in the situation. Schadenfreude, isn’t that the word for it? Anyway, I feel it.”

  “Not that again, Theo, please. It—Oscar and I—it suits me well enough.”

  “Does it? Then why are you so nervous about seeing him tonight? You are, aren’t you? You don’t strike me as a woman glowing with pleasure at the thought of reunion with her lover.”

  “My God, Theo, why I let you talk to me as you do, I’ll never know. I will not talk about Oscar. I asked you to come and see the last stage of the treatment, not to nag like an old woman. If you’re in one of your disagreeable waspish moods, then you can go away and sting someone else. Why pick this morning to start all this again?”

  “Because I love you, my dear Hattie. You’re the best and most important friend I have. And more to the point, I’m the best and most important friend you have. And you don’t please me this morning. You look positively haggard.”

  “With a friend like you, who needs enemies? If I look haggard it’s because I’m a bit tense about this morning—I can’t deny that. Or it could be due to the fact that I dm a hag. I’m getting old! I’ve a right to look haggard.”

  “Quelle blague! You’re not that far past forty! Bloom of your life, my dear Hattie. But you look ten years older today, and that’s largely because of your anxiety about Oscars return. Admit it! You’re suffering a crise de nerfs—”

  “If you’re now going to start on your French grandee act, Theo, I’m not going to listen to you. Go away. I’ll hold my own hand during the treatment—”

  The door swung open and John Caister came in backward, carrying a tray of coffee mugs, and he turned toward Theo at the desk, his face pink with pleasure.

  “I’ve made you some splendid coffee—just the thing to see us through the drama. How are you, Mr. Fowler? You do look comfortable there—no, please, don’t move for little me! I’ll have my coffee here by Dr. Berry’s desk. You don’t mind, Dr. Berry?” Harriet took a mug from him and said sweetly, “Thank you, John. Theo was just saying how much he wanted some of your special coffee. He says you make the best in the unit,” and she went and leaned against the oxyg
en chamber door, cradling the mug in her hands and smiling a little maliciously at Theo.

  Catherine came back and took her own coffee from the tray, and for a few moments they drank in silence. Then Theo stirred and said, “Harriet, what are you doing about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? What?—Oh. At conference.”

  “Yes. Will you announce your success with Ferris?”

  “Please—don’t call it that yet,” Harriet said swiftly. “There’s still this morning’s treatment—”

  “Oh, really, my dear! Do spare me your feminine superstitions. Of course you have a success! There’s not the least need to feel any doubt on that score.”

  “So I’ve already told her this morning,” Catherine said. “No need for any anxiety at all. She’s done it. In spite of Professor Bell’s—well, never mind.”

  “I hadn’t thought,” Harriet said slowly. “I suppose so, if you’re right and we’ve got a success. Why not?”

  “Shall you tell Oscar first?” Theo was watching her under his thick eyebrows, and she looked back at him, puzzled.

  “I told you—I haven’t given any thought to the business of announcing it. I’ve been concentrating on the work.”

  “Dear Harriet! So like you!” Theo murmured. “You should give it some thought. Politics matter. You know that perfectly well!”

  “Well, I know what I’d do in your shoes, Dr. Berry, that I do!” Catherine marched across to put her own and Harriet’s empty mugs on the tray. “I’d slap it in front of him, I would, the whole thing, and let him put it in his pipe and smoke it. I remember, if you don’t, the remarks he made about it all two years ago when you started. Thought it a lot of pie-in-the-sky compared with his precious jungle juice. But no matter what results he may have had in the States this time, he won’t match what we’ve got here. And my word but I’ll enjoy seeing all their faces when you do tell them!”