LITMIR.BIZ

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE OPERATION, a lengthy one, was, to all intents and purposes, over.

      The man who had been bending over the still figure on the table for two hours or more straightened himself to his great height, spoke a few words to his registrar facing him, made sure that the anaesthetist was satisfied, peeled off his gloves and turned to his theatre sister.

      ‘Thanks, Sister. I believe we caught him in time.’ His voice was deep and quiet and rather slow and there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes because he was smiling beneath his mask.

      Rachel handed a needle holder to the registrar and a pair of scissors to the house surgeon assisting him. She said, ‘Yes, sir, I’m glad,’ and meant it. It had been a finicky case and she had watched Professor van Teule patiently cutting and snipping and plying his needle in his usual calm fashion. If he hadn’t been successful she would have been genuinely upset; she had worked for him for two years now and they got on splendidly together. He was a first-rate surgeon, a brilliant teacher and a stickler for perfection, all of which he concealed under a laconic manner which new house surgeons sometimes mistook for too easy-going a nature, an error they quickly discovered for themselves. Rachel liked him and admired him; they had a pleasant relationship at work but where he lived or what kind of a life he led away from the operating theatre she had no idea, nor had she ever bothered to find out. His tall vast person, his handsome face and his pleasant voice were as familiar to her as the cloak she wrapped around herself going on and off duty: comfortable and nice to have around but taken for granted.

      She nodded to one of the theatre nurses now and the girl slipped out of the theatre behind the Professor to take his gown and mask and warn Dolly, the theatre maid, that he would want his coffee. It was the last case on the morning’s list and he had a teaching round at two o’clock. It was going on for one o’clock already and Rachel, with three brothers, had grown up with the conviction that a man needed to be fed regularly.

      The registrar cast down his needle and put out a hand for the dressing and then stood back. ‘You do it, Rachel. You’re handy at it.’

      He pulled off his gloves. ‘That was a nice bit of needlework,’ he commented. ‘If ever I’m unlucky enough to be mown down by a corporation dustcart, I hope it’ll be the Professor who is around to join the bits together again.’

      ‘Refuse collector,’ said Rachel, a stickler for the right word, ‘and don’t be morbid, George, you’ll frighten Billy.’

      She twinkled at the young house surgeon as she arranged the dressing just so and then stood away from the table while the patient was wheeled away to the recovery room.

      ‘Coffee?’ she asked, taking off her mask and gloves and standing still for one of the nurses to untie her gown. ‘It’ll be in the office…’

      She went over to where her staff nurse was supervising the clearing away of the used instruments. She was a young woman, but older than herself, a widow with two children at school, and her firm friend.

      ‘Norah, I’ll be in the office. Professor van Teule wants his next list altered; I’ll try and pin him down to doing it now before he disappears. Send Nurse Smithers to her dinner, will you? And Nurse Walters. Mr Sims’s list isn’t until two-thirty and we’ve got Mrs Pepys coming on at two o’clock.’

      They exchanged speaking looks—Mrs Pepys, one of the part-time staff nurses, was tiresome and gave herself airs, talking down to the student nurses and reminding them all far too often that she was married to a descendant of the famous Samuel. ‘We’ll go to second dinner—at least, you go on time and ask them to keep mine for me, will you? And you scrub for the first case, I’ll take the second and Mrs Pepys can take the third,’—Rachel’s pretty face assumed a look of angelic innocence—‘ingrowing toenails!’

      A subdued bellow from the other end of the theatre corridor gave her no time to say more. She joined the Professor and his colleagues in her office and listened without rancour while the registrar and Dr Carr, the anaesthetist, made pointed remarks about women gossiping.

      ‘Go on with you,’ said Rachel mildly, on the best of terms with them both, and poured her coffee and then replenished the Professor’s mug.

      He was sitting on a quite inadequate chair which creaked alarmingly under his weight. ‘That will give way one day,’ she pointed out kindly. ‘Won’t you sit in mine, sir?’

      ‘Only when you are not here, Rachel.’ He watched her settle in her own chair. ‘And now, this list of mine…’

      They discussed the changes amicably. The Professor did not offer his reasons for starting his list at eight o’clock in the morning in three days’ time, nor did Rachel evince the slightest curiosity as to why he expected her to struggle with her nurses’ off duty rota and juggle it to suit. He took it for granted that she was prepared to be scrubbed and ready for him at an hour when she was usually in her office, coping with paperwork while her nurses got the theatre ready.

      He got up to go presently, taking his registrar and the house surgeon with him. At the door he turned to ask casually, ‘Your weekend off, Rachel?’

      ‘Yes. The theatre’s closed for cleaning, sir.’

      He nodded. ‘Well, enjoy yourself.’

      He wandered off to cast a sharp eye over his patient in the recovery room and Rachel began to enter details of the day’s work into her day book, dismissing him completely from her mind.

      That done, she went along to theatre, to find Norah on the point of going to her dinner and the two junior nurses back on duty. She spent the next half-hour

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