LITMIR.BIZ

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tied around her slim waist, she worked wherever she was most needed.

      ‘Is that Miss Phipps listening?’

      ‘Of course…’

      ‘What would happen if you brought a man back for supper?’ Her mother chuckled.

      ‘When do I ever get the time?’ asked Sophie and allowed her thoughts to dwell just for a moment on the man with the cold blue eyes. The sight of her flatlet would trigger off the little smile; she had no doubt of that. Probably he had never seen anything like it in his life.

      They didn’t talk for long; conversation wasn’t easy with Miss Phipps’s wig just visible in the crack of her door. Sophie hung up and went upstairs, fed Mabel and opened the window which gave on to a railed-off ledge so that the little beast could air herself, and put away her shopping. What with one thing and another, there was barely time for her to get a meal before she went on duty. She made a pot of tea, opened a tin of beans, poached an egg, and did her face and hair again. Her face, she reflected, staring at it in the old-fashioned looking-glass on the wall above the basin, looked tired. ‘I shall have wrinkles and lines before I know where I am,’ said Sophie to Mabel, watching her from the bed.

      Nonsense, of course; she was blessed with a lovely face: wide dark eyes, a delightful nose above a gentle, generous mouth, and long, curling lashes as dark as her hair, long and thick and worn in a complicated arrangement which took quite a time to do but which stayed tidy however busy she was.

      She stooped to drop a kiss on the cat’s head, picked up her roomy shoulder-bag, and let herself out of the room, a tall girl with a splendid figure and beautiful legs.

      Her flatlet might lack the refinements of home, but it was only five minutes’ walk from the hospital. She crossed the courtyard with five minutes to spare, watched, if she did but know, by the man who had retrieved her shoe for her—in the committee-room again, exchanging a desultory conversation with those of his colleagues who were lingering after their meeting. Tomorrow would be a busy day, for he had come over to England especially to operate on a cerebral tumour; brain surgery was something on which he was an acknowledged expert, so that a good deal of his work was international. Already famous in his own country, he was fast attaining the highest rung of the ladder.

      He stood now, looking from the window, studying Sophie’s splendid person as she crossed the forecourt.

      ‘Who is that?’ he asked Dr Wells, the anaesthetist who would be working with him in the morning and an old friend.

      ‘That’s our Sophie, Night Sister in Casualty and the accident room, worth her not inconsiderable weight in gold too. Pretty girl…’

      They parted company presently and Professor Rijk van Taak ter Wijsma made his way without haste down to the entrance. He was stopped before he reached it by the surgical registrar who was to assist him in the morning, so that they were both deep in talk when the first of the ambulances flashed past on its way to the accident room entrance.

      They were still discussing the morning’s work when the registrar’s bleep interrupted them.

      He listened for a minute and said, ‘There’s a head injury in, Professor—contusion and laceration with evidence of coning. Mr Bellamy had planned a weekend off…’

      His companion took his phone from him and dialled a number. ‘Hello, John? Rijk here. Peter Small is here with me; they want him in the accident room—there’s a head injury just in. As I’m here, shall I take a look? I know you’re not on call…’ He listened for a moment. ‘Good, we’ll go along and have a look.’

      He gave the phone back. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I took a look? There might be something I could suggest…’

      ‘That’s very good of you, sir; you don’t mind?’

      ‘Not in the least.’

      The accident room was busy, but then it almost always was. Sophie, with a practised glance at the patient, sent the junior sister to deal with the less urgent cases with the aid of two student nurses, taking the third nurse with her as the paramedics wheeled the patient into an empty cubicle. The casualty officer was already there; while he phoned the registrar they began connecting up the various monitoring tubes and checked the oxygen flow, working methodically and with the sure speed of long practice. All the same, she could see that the man on the stretcher was in a bad way.

      She was trying to count an almost imperceptible pulse when she became conscious of someone standing just behind her and then edging her gently to one side while a large, well kept hand gently lifted the dressing on the battered head.

      ‘Tut, tut,’ said the professor. ‘What do we know, Sister?’

      ‘A fall from a sixth-floor window on to a concrete pavement. Thready pulse, irregular and slow, cerebro-spinal fluid from left ear, epistaxis…’

      Her taxing training was standing her in good stead; she answered him promptly and with few words, while a small part of her mind registered the fact that the man beside her had tied her shoelaces for her not two hours since.

      What a small world, she reflected, and allowed herself a second’s pleasure at seeing him again. But only a second; she was already busy adjusting tubes and knobs at the registrar’s low-voiced instructions.

      The two men bent over the unconscious patient while she took a frighteningly high blood-pressure and the casualty officer looked for other injuries and broken bones.

      Presently the professor straightened up. ‘Anterior fossa—depressed fracture. Let’s have an X-ray and get him up to Theatre.’ He took a look at Peter Small. ‘You agree? There’s a good chance…’ He glanced at Sophie. ‘If you would warn Theatre, Sister? Thank you.’

      He gave her a brief look; he didn’t recognise her, thought Sophie, but then why should he? She was in uniform now, the old-fashioned dark blue dress and frilly cap which St Agnes’s management committee refused to exchange for nylon and paper.

      The men went away, leaving her to organise the patient’s removal to the theatre block, warn Night Theatre Sister, Intensive Care and the men’s surgical ward, and, that done, there was the business of his identity, his address, his family… It was going to be a busy night, Sophie decided, writing and telephoning, dealing with everything and the police, and at the same time keeping an eye on the incoming patients. Nothing too serious from a medical point of view, although bad enough for the owners of sprained ankles, cut heads, fractured arms and legs, but they all needed attention—X-rays, cleaning and stitching and bandaging, and sometimes admitting to a ward.

      It was two o’clock in the morning, and she had just wolfed down a sandwich and drunk a reviving mug of tea since there had been no chance of getting down to the canteen, when a girl was brought in, a small toddler screaming her head off in her mother’s arms, who thrust her at Sophie. ‘’Ere, take a look at ’er, will yer? Fell down the stairs, been bawling ’er ’ead off ever since.’

      Sophie laid the grubby scrap gently on to one of the couches. ‘How long ago was this?’

      The woman shrugged. ‘Dunno. Me neighbour told me when I got ’ome—nine o’clock, I suppose.’

      Sophie was examining the little girl gently. ‘She had got out of her bed?’

      ‘Bed? She don’t go ter bed till I’m ’ome.’

      Sophie sent a nurse to see if she could fetch the casualty officer and, when she found him and he arrived, left the nurse with him and ushered the mother into her office.

      ‘I shall want your name and address and the little girl’s name. How was she able to get to the stairs? Is it a high-rise block of flats?’ She glanced at the address again. ‘At the end of Montrose Street, isn’t it?’

      ‘S’right, fifth floor. I leave the door, see, so’s me neighbour can take a look at Tracey…’

      ‘She is left alone during the day?’

      ‘Well, off and on, you might

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