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      MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS half past five on a cold February morning, and Clement’s Hospital, behind its elaborate red brick Victorian façade, was already stirring, and this despite the edict from someone at the summit of the nursing profession that no patient should be aroused before six o’clock. An edict which the night nurses had, for a very long time, decided was a laughable impossibility, probably thought up, declared the younger and more frivolous of their number, by some dear old soul who still thought of nurses as ministering angels, gliding from bed to bed, turning pillows and smoothing brows while a vast number of underlings did the work, while in fact they were a band of understaffed, highly skilled young women who knew all about intensive care and cardiac arrest and electrolytes. True, the ward lights always went on at the precise hour allowed, shining out on to the grimy streets of one of the less fashionable quarters of London, but long before that on this particular morning, stealthy movement had been going on for an hour or more in Women’s Surgical, for it was operation day, which meant the preparation of those ladies who were on Sir Joshua White’s list, and as most of them had wakened early despite their sleeping pills the night before, the very early morning cup of tea they were allowed was immediately offered before the business of cleansing the patients, clothing them in theatre gowns and long woollen stockings, and in the case of the first patient due in theatre at half past eight sharp, removing anything from her person to which the anaesthetist might take exception.

      And now the last of them had been attended to and those who were able were left to sit in a cosy circle, enjoying a bloodcurdling and quite inaccurate chat about their various insides. They spoke in whispers, of course, because most of the other patients were still asleep, but Staff Nurse Samantha Fielding, carefully plaiting her patient’s pepper-and-salt hair behind the nearest cubicle curtains, caught a word here and there, just as her ear, tuned in to the various noises, however slight, which she might expect to hear on the ward, caught the stealthy tread of her junior nurse, Dora Brown, who was creeping from locker to locker, laying down washing bowls with the stealth of hard-earned experience, putting soap and flannel and towel within reach of the sleeping patients. Samantha glanced at the clock at the far end of the ward. There was still twenty minutes to go before the lights could go on. She would have time to write the report for Sister before that lady came to do her final round, as well as start the wash-out on the second theatre case. The medicine round could be quickly done, and that only left the Kardex to be written up and then the hundred and one jobs listed in her head.

      She smiled down at the elderly face on the pillow—a wrinkled face, still grey from shock, almost ugly. Indeed it seemed unlikely that the patient had ever been pretty, but it was a good face all the same and Staff Nurse Fielding liked it. The poor woman had been admitted just before midnight with badly burned hands, and although she had been sedated she had had a bad night despite all that could be done for her. But now she had been gently bathed and tidied up and her hands in their sterile plastic envelopes disposed side by side on the bed-cover. Second degree burns, the Registrar had said, which they had cleaned up in theatre before starting the Bunyan-Stannard treatment. Samantha had been irrigating them at intervals during the night; she did it once more now, deploring the fact that the patient could neither speak nor understand English. She had been brought to Clement’s for the simple reason that when she had been found, lying before the exploded gas oven, all she had been able to say was the name of the hospital, and the police and ambulance men, struggling to make themselves understood, had brought her in, hopeful that there would be someone at Clement’s who knew her. But no one did, nor had anyone succeeded in understanding the few muttered words the old lady uttered from time to time.

      She had been alone in the house when the accident happened; the police had been called by the housemaid next door, who, curious to know who had come to live in a house which had stood empty for some time, had been standing on the area steps and had heard the bang.

      Samantha smiled once again and nodded encouragingly as she popped a thermometer under her patient’s tongue and took her pulse, both up, she noted; probably the poor old thing was wondering what would happen to her. She patted an arm and sped down the ward to the kitchen, fetched a feeder of tea and gave it to her with the gentle expertise of long practice.

      She had finished the report with seconds to spare before Night Sister made her brief appearance on the ward and was taking down

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