The Lonely One Read online

  Liz followed her, and stood hesitantly at the door as Bridget, moving as fast as she could, changed her dress, and threw her things into her suitcase.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Bridget,’ she said, her voice ashamed. ‘I – I thought you knew, really – I didn’t know you truly didn’t like David – ’

  ‘Whether I like him or not hasn’t anything to do with it. I’d need to feel rather more than that to – to spend this sort of weekend with him – ’ Bridget said roughly.

  Liz winced at that, and went a hot red. ‘It’s different for me and Ken,’ she said, her voice almost apologetic. ‘I mean, I’m not like Bobby and Judith. They’re fun to be with, so I – well, I strung along. But Ken and I are going to be married soon and – and well, we don’t get a chance to – to be together much really. So we came. But we aren’t like them – ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bridget said, closing her case, and shrugging her coat on. ‘It doesn’t matter. I was a damned fool not to see what the set-up was long ago. Well, now I know. Leave it at that,’ and she pushed past Liz, and went purposefully down the stairs.

  The drawing-room door was shut and she breathed a sigh of relief at that. She wouldn’t have to see David again, at least. Josh was sitting on the bottom step, and she went past him without a word.

  ‘I persuaded you to come,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I should have known better. I’m sorry.’

  She stopped by the front door, and said without turning, ‘There’s no need for you to apologise. I should have known myself. And thank you for – for your help.’

  He came and stood beside her, putting a hand on her arm.

  ‘Please, Bridget. Can I tell you something? Why I wanted you to come here this weekend?’

  ‘I’ve told you it doesn’t matter,’ she said dully.

  ‘It matters to me,’ he said. ‘Listen. I – I’ve always liked you, you know. I said you were different, and so you are. You’re sweet, and innocent – ’

  ‘Innocent!’ She laughed shortly at that. ‘Innocent! Ignorant and stupid, and pushed any way anyone wants to push me – ’

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Innocent. That’s why this happened, really. And I respect that in you. Very much. I’d hoped that this weekend – well, that I’d be able to find out for certain whether you cared for David – whether it was anger that made you say you hated him, or whether you meant it. It – it mattered to me to find out. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  She turned and looked at him then, and her grey eyes were level in their gaze.

  ‘I thought you had come for the same reason everyone else seems to have come here. For – for cheap sex, for “fun”, for a “giggle” – ’ she said evenly.

  He reddened. ‘I deserve that, I suppose.’

  ‘Don’t you? Are you trying to say that you came here for any other reason. As David said – Bobby is ready and willing. Why don’t you go and find her? She’ll – she’ll be getting angry, no doubt.’ And she was amazed at the cold anger in her own voice.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice hard and even. ‘I can’t deny that I’ve been having – “fun” as you put it, with Bobby. For God’s sake, Bridget, what do you think I’m made of? If a girl is – like Bobby, and seems to – want a man’s company, then only a very odd man would refuse what she puts on a plate for him! And I’m – a very normal sort of man. I take my pleasures where I can. But pleasure is one thing – and – and feeling is another. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve – oh, for Christ’s sake girl, I’m beginning to feel a great deal for you, and it’s that that matters to me! I wanted you here this weekend to – to see if there could be a chance to talk to you properly. Whenever I’ve tried to get anywhere near you at the hospital, you’ve sheered away, slipped out of my fingers! Here, being down here for three days, I thought I’d stand a better chance of – of getting to know you. So now you know. And I’m damned if I’ll apologise because I’ve been sleeping with Bobby – and I don’t deny I have. She’s – ’

  ‘I don’t want to know – I don’t want to know,’ she cried, and then pulling blindly at the door, she ran out into the cold of the December night, running as fast as she could. Anywhere – she didn’t care where to. Just to get away from the sound of his voice, the implications of what he had been saying.

  Chapter 10

  It was odd, somehow, the way everything about the Royal seemed to change, now that Bridget was no longer one of the four. It was the same hospital, the work was the same, the same people worked in it, but now, everything was different. She would come off duty alone, go to her room alone, spend her free time alone. The other nurses in her year all had their own friends, had had for a year or more, had made lives for themselves that included their friends, and there just wasn’t any room for Bridget.

  The strangest thing was the way Bobby and Judith would pass her in the corridors, or in the dining room, without a word, not appearing even to see her. It wasn’t that they set out consciously to ‘send her to Coventry’. It was simply that they had no further use for her, and as such, she just didn’t exist. Liz would speak to her, however, when they did happen to meet, though even she seemed unwilling to do more than exchange casual greetings. Bridget knew that this was partly because of Bobby and Judith. She accepted that Liz felt a loyalty towards them, even while she did not really share their view of the world. And it was partly because of her ever-growing preoccupation with Ken. They were to be married as soon as Liz finished her training, and this was general knowledge among the nurses.

  Bridget didn’t mind her solitariness nearly as much as she had feared she would. Many times she would marvel at the old Bridget she had been, so frightened of loneliness, and would smile in her new-found maturity when she remembered how she had been at first. For Bridget had undoubtedly changed a good deal. The affair at Bobby’s home at Christmas, as well as the episode on the ward with David before that, had pulled her up sharp, as it were, made her aware of herself and her responsibilities as she had never been before. The Sisters with whom she worked now told each other that that Nurse Preston was a different girl – that training had decidedly knocked the corners off, that the silent, still face of the old days had given way to a warmth, a friendliness. She was still reserved, but much of the diffidence of the old days, a diffidence that had looked like dumb insolence, had gone, as she developed both as a nurse and as a person. For she loved her work more and more, taking intense pleasure in every aspect of it. To her own surprise, she had a very real vocation for it – which, as she told herself wryly, was fortunate, seeing I took up nursing for any reason but that!

  She saw little of the men, either. David, much to her relief, left the Royal shortly after Christmas, as his appointment was over and he was not offered a new one. Bridget wondered vaguely if the fact that he had come drunk to a ward had actually reached the ears of the senior medical staff, and whether this had anything to do with his not being reappointed, but dismissed the thought. She just wasn’t interested, and that was that. David Nestor was a thing of the past, to be as forgotten as thoroughly as nursery school experiences.

  Sometimes, she would see Josh crossing the courtyard, meet him in a corridor, or see him in the coffee shop, but she would merely nod, and hurry on when this happened. Once or twice he tried to stop her, to speak to her, but she would pull away, say she was in a hurry, and couldn’t stop. She didn’t know whether he was still going about with Bobby – and as the only gossip she ever heard was the general gossip that occupied the nurses in the dining-room or in the sitting-room at night, she had no way of finding out. She certainly didn’t intend to ask.

  She pushed the memory of what he had said that night at the house in Surrey firmly to the back of her mind. He had said enough to make her realise that he did, in fact, care a little for her, that it hadn’t been the pity she abhorred that had prompted his kindness to her back in her early days at the Royal. And though she knew that she loved Josh Simpson very much indeed, tha
t part of her always would, she had decided to cut her losses. It was impossible to follow up what he had said that night, impossible to allow her feelings for him to sway her. What was past was past. She had only one idea now; to finish her training, and then to leave the Royal for ever, and start a whole new life for herself somewhere abroad.

  And then, half-way through her second year, she was sent to work in the operating theatres. She was alarmed at first, memories of her trips to that august department as a ward nurse stirring in her, but then she told herself sensibly that everyone who went there was new; they all had to learn, and she would learn too. And learn she did. Her days were a rush of sterilising, of running about as ‘dirty nurse’ for small cases, then larger and more complex cases, and the interminable cleaning that was so much a part of the work. And then, after her second month in the department, Theatre Sister sent for her.

  ‘Now, Nurse Preston,’ she said briskly. ‘You’ve been on this department for eight weeks, hmm?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ Bridget felt a momentary sinking as she wondered whether she had done something wrong. It was not often Theatre Sister found time to call individual nurses to her office like this.

  But Theatre Sister went on cheerfully, ‘You seem to have an aptitude for this work – I’ve been watching you, and you’re quick and deft – which a theatre nurse needs to be. Now, Nurse Jessolo is off sick – which means that the second theatre needs a new senior. Do you feel capable of coping with such work?’

  Bridget gulped. The second theatre was the one which handled the smaller lists, the straightforward work like appendicectomies, herniorrhaphies, varicose vein ties, and the senior nurse there was the one who ‘took table’, who scrubbed up with the surgeons, handed instruments, and generally acted as the boss of the small theatre, under Sister’s supervision.

  ‘I – I think so, Sister,’ she said. ‘I’d certainly like to try.’

  ‘Good,’ Sister said briskly. ‘Now, this is a good time for you to start – we’re not too busy at present, and I’ve time to really teach you – the first list today is a small one – an appendix, excision of lipoma, and a hernia. You will scrub for it and I will act as your dirty nurse – so I’ll be there to help if you get stuck. Come along now, and we’ll get your instruments out, and check the layout.’

  Bridget enjoyed that morning thoroughly. It felt odd at first to scrub up, to put on the sterile gown, to stand still while Sister tied the tapes, to put on the smooth, brown rubber gloves, but after the first few moments of strangeness, she forgot herself, and became absorbed in the operation. She found she knew more than she had realised that she knew. Almost without being told, she handed the surgeon – one of the younger consultants – the sponge forceps for the preliminary swabbing of the skin, spread the sterile towels over the area, clipped them into place, and swung smoothly into the routine of the operation.

  When the last stitch was tied, and she took off the towels to fasten the dressing in position, the surgeon grinned at her cheerfully above his mask.

  ‘First case, Nurse?’ he said, as he stripped off his gloves and dropped them into the bowl of saline beside him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Bridget said, looking at him sideways for signs of annoyance.

  But he grinned even more, his eyes crinkling above the white line of his mask. ‘Well done, then. To the manner born, eh, Sister?’ And Sister, busily changing trolleys round, ready for the next case smiled too, and nodded. ‘A credit to me, sir!’ she said, they both smiled at Bridget in a way that made her glow with pride.

  Within a week, Bridget was in full control of her new job. She found the work difficult enough to extend her fully, which was enjoyable, but not so difficult that she could not cope with any aspect of it. Sister, realising this, put more and more complicated operations on to the second theatre’s lists, and by the end of a month Bridget felt herself to be the complete theatre nurse.

  One of the best things about working in the second theatre was that Bridget hardly ever saw Josh at all. In the first eight weeks on the department, when she had been ‘dirty nurse’ in the main theatre, she had seen him almost every day, for he worked there constantly. But although there had been no occasion for them to talk to each other, except on purely professional matters, his presence had been distressing to her. Every time she had caught sight of his square shoulders, the muscles moving sleekly under the white gown as he worked, she felt her heart lurch, the painfully familiar sense of sheer physical excitement that he could arouse in her.

  Sometimes she had caught his eyes as she moved about the theatre, when he looked up momentarily from his work to ask for something, once or twice he had turned his head towards her so that she could mop his forehead, as he sweated slightly under the hot, shadowless light, and these moments had been electric for her. It would take a long time for her to get over the way she felt about this man, she knew that, and seeing him so closely and so often only exacerbated her feelings. So it was an intense relief that she no longer had to see him, tucked away as she was in her own little second theatre.

  And then, late one evening, just as she was going off duty, Theatre Sister called her from her office.

  ‘Look, Preston, can you help me out tonight? There’s a bit of a panic on in the private wing theatres – Sister there has flu, and her staff nurse has a septic finger, blast her, and can’t scrub. So I’ve got to cover for them tonight. And Night Sister is off duty, and her deputy can’t take any theatre cases if any emergencies come in, because she just isn’t a theatre nurse. So that means I’ve got to put a middle-year nurse on call here tonight – what with Staff Nurse Casey being on holiday this week. Do you think you can manage that? The chances are nothing’ll come in, of course – but it could happen, and if it does, someone from the department will have to be on call. Do you feel able?’

  ‘I think so, Sister,’ Bridget said slowly. ‘I’ve scrubbed for most of the sorts of emergencies we get, haven’t I? And if I get really stuck with something, I could get the junior to phone you in the wing to give advice?’

  ‘Of course you could – and I’ll probably be there all night God help me. They’ve got five labouring women in Private Maternity, and Sister there has warned me it’s odds on two of them will need Caesars – two of them! Honestly, it never rains but it pours – ’

  ‘I hope I don’t get a Caesar over here.’ Bridget was alarmed. ‘That’s one thing I’ve never taken – ’

  ‘No, you should be all right there. General Maternity is full, and any new cases will have to go somewhere else on the Emergency Bed Service, and none of their people are likely to come here for anything. I’ve checked – the most they anticipate are a couple of high forceps, and they cope with those themselves – look, I’ll have to go. They’ve still got a list going over in Private Theatre and none of their people have had any off duty today, they’re so short-staffed – I’ll tell Night Sister you’re on call – and here’s hoping nothing comes in for you – ‘Night, Preston. All the best!’

  Bridget checked that all was clear in the theatres before taking herself off duty, also praying that nothing would come in. She was tired already – it had been a long day, and much as she enjoyed her work, she did not relish the idea of being dragged from a warm bed in the middle of the night to take another case.

  She checked the list of surgeons on call before leaving the hospital for the Nurses’ Home, and at what she saw there, prayed even harder that nothing would come in for theatre, for Josh was on call for main theatres that night, too.

  But at the back of her mind, she knew something would come in. It was almost inevitable – her first time on call, and Josh on call too. And she was right.

  At half past two, the night staff nurse came and shook her briskly, pulling her out of a confused dream about taking a Caesar all on her own, to tell her of a case that needed urgent surgery.

  ‘I’m not sure what it’s all about, Preston,’ the night staff nurse said. ‘It’s all a bit hush-hush. All I know is it�
�s a member of the staff, and whoever she is, she needs a laparotomy. I can’t imagine why there’s such a fuss, but there it is. They want the theatre ready for a laparotomy in half an hour, anyway. And Mr Simpson said to be ready for a pretty major job. He told me to tell whoever was on call to put out practically everything she could think of. I’ve put the sterilisers on for you – so jump about a bit!’

  Bridget dressed with chilled fingers, her heart trembling within her. Of all things that could have come in, a laparotomy was the most terrifying. The patient needed an exploratory operation – and once the incision was made, and the condition explored, almost any operation might be needed. There was just no way of knowing what. She would indeed have to put out practically every instrument there was.

  By the time she had arrived at the theatres, the junior on night duty had laid up almost completely, which was one comfort. Bridget had merely to select her instruments, get them boiling, and lay her trolley. She checked the theatre carefully for details before scrubbing up herself, and as a precaution, told the junior to prepare a small trolley for an intravenous infusion.

  ‘This could be anything,’ she told the scurrying junior, over her shoulder, as she scrubbed her hands and arms at the big white sink. ‘And it’s odds on the patient’ll need some sort of IV – saline and glucose almost certainly, possibly blood. When you’ve done the trolley, ring the lab and see if any blood has been crossmatched for her, whoever she is.’

  ‘Will they know, if I can’t give them a name?’ the junior asked, busily slapping bowls and instruments on to a small trolley.