Seize The Day

With a huge effort of will, Jenny shook her head. ‘No, honestly. I must get back to the ward; there must be so much to be done. And I want to speak to this—this Trentham man.’

‘Jenny—you won’t do anything foolish, will you? He acted in your best interests——’

‘He doesn’t even know me,’ Jenny pointed out coldly.

‘Yes, I know, but——’ her anxious expression returned ‘—Jenny, I couldn’t bear to lose you as well.’

Jenny managed a small glimmer of a smile, and shook her head emphatically. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Sonia. I’m not going anywhere.’

Sonia appeared gratified by this. ‘And you’re sure you’re up to a late duty?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jenny with more conviction than she felt. But she could think of nothing worse than retracing her steps to her small cottage, to sit alone and in silence while her mind tried to grasp the enormity of what had happened—that Harry Marlow was dead, and that Judy Collins had been driven away by his replacement. She felt as if all the carefully arranged order and calm of her life was slipping into utter chaos and disarray. She felt like a holidaymaker who saw glorious sand beckoning, and then stood in fear as she realised that it was quicksand.

She clip-clopped her way back to the ward in her neat, shiny black shoes, her slim legs in the sheer black tights. She held her head high, her neck long and elegant, the frilly cap perched neatly on top of the thick, glossy hair and she was oblivious to the admiring glances cast at her by an elderly woman who was visiting her husband.

Inside, however, she felt far from serene, and as she approached Rose Ward she hesitated very slightly. Should she have Dr Trentham bleeped and confront him now? Or better to wait until her anger had subsided and she was more in control of her feelings? And besides, wasn’t unity the most important thing at the moment? She must gather her staff around her now, show all the girls that she was still in charge, that things were going to be all right, and that they could slip back into their trusted and familiar pattern.

She would carry on as normal. She would take a report from the agency staff nurse and then send the morning staff to lunch. She would wait until they returned before giving a full report to the three staff who would be with her this evening, and in the meantime she would go round and see all the patients, check the progress of the ones she knew, and acquaint herself thoroughly with any new ones. And she would give Mrs Jessop her bag of oranges.

She could hear the murmur of voices as she approached her office, and as she drew nearer she could hear that one was most definitely masculine—gravelly and deep—a voice which stirred a vague memory. She stood in the open doorway of her office, watching for a moment. The agency staff nurse was being shown a chart by a man who was obviously a doctor, since he wore a white coat, and Jenny could see the clutter of a bleeper and a stethoscope protruding from one pocket.

All she had time to notice was how wide and powerful his shoulders looked, how tall and just how much bigger he seemed than the sprightly Dr Marlow. Her lip curled very slightly as she observed the dark hair which curled untidily on to the collar of his white coat.

She drew in a deep breath. She wanted her words to him to be biting, and cutting—she could never remember feeling such a raw kind of anger towards someone she didn’t even know. They must have heard her, for they both turned round, the pale staff nurse giving her a kind of non-committal smile again.

And it took some moments for it to register why her heart was thudding away like some primitive drum, why anger and scorn had metamorphosed into total shock.

For no wonder that the deep voice had stirred a memory, because this was no stranger. Nut-brown eyes and untidy hair. The legs were no longer encased in tight fading denim—they now wore dark cords, and these, together with the snowy-white coat he wore, had the effect of making him seem almost presentable.

Her shock was so great that she was unable to tell from his face just what his own reaction to seeing her again was.

Stupidly, she recalled his suggestive comment about stockings, and that became the final straw. The gamut of shocks which she’d had in quick succession since she’d come to work that day proved too much.

She was a fit, healthy young woman, but she knew what was about to happen to her. The strange rushing and hissing sound in her ears; the blurring and retreating of the shapes which stood before her. It had happened to her only once before in her life, and she had been fourteen then.

As her eyes stared at Leo Trentham’s name-badge, she felt her knees buckle beneath her, and, slipping to the cold floor, she fainted.

CHAPTER TWO

IT SEEMED the whole hospital had become a theatre, the floor of Rose Ward the stage. Coming round was exactly like the fainting attack in reverse. Jenny saw a blurred figure, which cleared, then retreated.

She awoke to find herself lying on the office floor, fine beads of sweat on her brow, the top buttons of her uniform dress undone—and Leo Trentham crouched down next to her, his solicitous expression clearing as he watched her eyelids flutter open.

‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve often had a dramatic effect on women, but that’s a one-off, I must say!’

‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ she snapped, and tried to sit up, but couldn’t manage it, and, feeling as weak as a kitten, flopped down again.

‘Stay there!’ he commanded, and without further ado he lifted both her feet with one hand, and held them suspended in the air.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she cried, but he did no such thing, a look of amusement merely crinkling the corners of his eyes.

‘Don’t be so melodramatic, woman! Your blood-pressure has dropped into your boots; I’m merely trying to restore your equilibrium.’

The last person in the world to do that, she thought furiously, closing her eyes briefly as she felt her strength returning. When she opened them again she saw that he was staring at her curiously.

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

She could have sunk her teeth into one of the strong brown hands. ‘How dare you?’ she demanded icily. ‘I’m not married!’

He gave a low chuckle. ‘What a refreshingly innocent remark for the nineties,’ he commented. ‘It may have escaped your notice that a wedding-ring isn’t necessary for that particular act of nature to take place these days.’

‘It is—round here, anyway,’ she muttered. ‘Now, are you going to put my feet down—or am I going to have to scream for help?’

‘Scream away,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘When they come running to see what’s wrong I shall simply tell them that you’re hysterical, and they’ll believe me. I am the doctor, after all!’

‘You’re not my doctor,’ she retorted.

‘On the contrary,’ he fielded smoothly. ’You’re a member of staff who has passed out on hospital premises. As I am the resident doctor, you therefore come under my responsibility. Even if you climbed into a wheelchair and got yourself taken down to Casualty, it’s still me you’d have to see. So shut up for a minute and try sitting up, but leaning against my arm.’

What choice did she have? She had never felt more helpless or more filled with rage in her entire life. And then, as she started to feel normal again, she remembered just why he was here, and why she had passed out like an idiot. Dr Marlow was dead. She stifled a small sniff with difficulty.

‘Hey,’ he said in a ridiculously gentle voice, lifting her chin up very carefully. ‘Are you OK?’

She stared at him, the green eyes suspiciously bright, thinking that she was at a disadvantage sitting on the floor, her head against his arm, her long legs sprawled in front of her. She was in no position to give the overbearing Dr Leo Trentham a piece of her mind.

‘I would be,’ she said coldly, ‘if you’d help me up and into that chair.’

She hated having to be dependent on his strength as he half picked her up and deposited her into her chair behind the desk. She simply must snap out of this lethargy which had followed her faint. She still had a ward to run, a long shift to get through and this man to deal with.

‘I’ve sent Staff Nurse off for some iced water,’ he explained, and just then the pale blonde returned, in her hand a polystyrene cup which he took from her and handed to Jenny.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Drink it,’ he ordered, and watched until she had sipped almost half of it.

She put the cup down shakily. ‘Thank you, Staff. Would you mind telling the evening staff to carry on as normal, that I’ll be out in just a moment? And could you and the rest of the morning staff go to lunch now?’

The other girl nodded. She seemed pleased to leave. ‘Yes, Sister.’

Jenny saw the curiously pale eyes glance once in Dr Trentham’s direction before she closed the office door behind her.

Leo Trentham remained standing at the window, an expression of amusement lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘I seem to have that effect on you, don’t I?’ he remarked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s just that on the only two occasions we’ve met you’ve ended up on the ground. It gives quite a new meaning to the saying “he swept her off her feet”—don’t you think?’

It seemed that he actually expected her to join in with his laughter. She stared at him coldly, the anger she felt towards him managing mercifully to dispel the tugging at her heart which being back in this office without her late colleague had produced.

‘I can assure you that it would take someone as little like you as possible to sweep me off my feet,’ she retorted. ‘But I’m not interested in bandying around social niceties with you—if you can call your egotistical attempts at conversation that. I just want to get a few things straight.’

He seemed taken aback by her hostile tone. ‘Such as?’

She willed her voice not to have a quaver of emotion in it. Somehow she felt that for him to see her vulnerable would be a disadvantage. ‘Such as why you directed the nursing officer not to recall me from my holiday in order to attend Dr Marlow’s funeral.’

He looked surprised. ‘She asked my opinion, and I gave it. You weren’t related, were you? And you’d only just gone away.’

‘I’d worked closely with him for years!’ She spoke in an unnaturally high voice.

He chose to ignore that. ‘I’d already spoken to some of your staff. They told me how devoted you were to your work, how you worked unpaid overtime if the ward was short-staffed, which it frequently was. One doesn’t meet with that kind of dedication much these days, and I rather liked the sound of you. And I certainly didn’t imagine that you’d look the way you do.’

There was a murmur of appreciativeness in his voice and she was furious. ‘Just stick to the point,’ she hissed at him.

He shrugged. ‘You may or may not agree with me, but I’ve always tended to think that all nurses need their hard-earned holidays. They feel better and then they do their jobs better. Weighing everything up, we thought it better for you to continue with your holiday. I can’t see what the problem is, unless you’re one of these super-women who feel that the ward simply can’t run without their presence. Indispensable is the word, I think.’

‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

He remained unperturbed. ‘Oh, I dare all right. You asked me a question, and I’m giving you an honest answer. I’m just sorry you don’t agree with me. You may be sister of the ward—but I certainly don’t come under your professional jurisdiction.’

She bit her lip. ‘And Staff Nurse Collins? What did she say? She knows me almost better than anyone. Did she recommend that I continue on my holiday, blithely unaware that the man who was almost—like a father to me——’ her voice broke a little at this ‘—was dead?’ she finished in a whisper.

He moved over to her side then, his face soft with sympathy. ‘Hey—I certainly didn’t mean to cause you this much pain. I’m sorry if you think the wrong decision was made. But you know yourself that attending a funeral doesn’t change anything. You still have to grieve. Don’t you think that perhaps you might be misdirecting your grief, and it’s coming out as anger against me?’

‘You can keep your cheap psychoanalysis,’ she said bitterly. ‘And please answer the question—did Staff Nurse Collins agree with you?’

‘Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘She did.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Then ask her.’

‘Oh, believe me—I shall. And I shall also ask her why she felt she had to leave so suddenly, but that will be academic, since I feel pretty sure I already know the answer to that one.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

‘Because she realised that she wouldn’t be able to bear working for an arrogant, overbearing doctor like you, Dr Trentham!’

For one moment there was an answering flash in his eyes, and she thought that he was going to respond with an equally angry retort, but he evidently changed his mind, for he shook his head very slightly.

‘Why don’t you smash a plate or something?’ he enquired mildly. ‘It might make you feel better.’

‘Then I should get out if I were you,’ she said between gritted teeth, ‘because if I do choose to smash something it’s very likely to be over your head!’

‘I’m going, I’m going!’ he said, in mock alarm. ‘Women with green eyes and hot tempers have always terrified me—and, honey, you are one very angry young woman!’

Before she could screech at him ‘don’t ever call me “honey”,’ which she was intending to do, he had slipped quietly out of the door, leaving her sitting there, her cheeks flushed with rage, feeling ever so slightly a fool.

What on earth had made her over-react like that? Why hadn’t she been her normal calm, unflappable self, telling him that his behaviour had been out of order, and would he mind being a little less familiar in future?

In fact, what was it about the man which made her feel such a strong and genuine dislike for him? Apart from the fact that he was overbearing and quite disturbingly masculine. Something about the way he had looked at her when he had made the comment about women with green eyes and hot tempers, as if he would like to. . . She shuddered very slightly.

She had better stop wasting time thinking about him. Roll on Dr Marlow’s replacement, please—the sooner they could get rid of this unconventional locum, the better.

She stood up to straighten her hair and her cap, and to do up the button of her dress. Calm down, Jenny, she urged herself. It was time to get on with the job in hand. She had better have a quick walk around the ward and say hello to all the patients before she gave the report.

Rose Ward, like all the other wards in the cottage hospital, was small compared to those in some large district general hospitals. The hospital itself was unusual in that it had survived its original small state—the current trend to centralise small units into large hospitals had passed Denbury Hospital by, partly because of the vociferous support of the local community, and partly because an extremely wealthy ex-patient had bequeathed his massive fortune to them. An added point in Denbury’s favour was that the surrounding countryside consisted of notoriously impassable hilly areas, which often became cut off during heavy falls of snow—and the powers that be had decreed that it was better to have a hospital which was accessible to all the farms and small villages around, rather than risk patients being marooned in transit to the nearest large DGH.

People often asked Jenny how she could bear to settle in such a God-forsaken part of the country, being so young and so well-qualified, but she simply couldn’t imagine life in a busy town or city. She loved the simple calm of country life—the predictability of seasons merging into the next, not obscured or deafened by the intrusion of inordinate amounts of cars and machines. She liked knowing which hen had laid the eggs she ate! She liked knowing people she had grown up with. And, above all else, she liked continuity and order.

Sometimes she questioned why it was that she never felt the burning desire to marry and settle down, and produce children of her own. There had been overtures, of course, two from young men she’d known all her life, and one from a doctor she had gone out with while she was training. But she had not felt deeply enough about them to want to disrupt the solitary peace of her existence. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that her mother had lived on her own all her life—perhaps she had liked that role-model so much that she was prepared to choose it for herself. And, when you’d spent your whole childhood hearing how awful men were, it tended to influence you a bit.

She was aware that, at twenty-six, she was considered by some of the younger nurses to be ‘on the shelf’, but it rarely bothered her. Indeed, she’d had to cope with so many red eyes and such morose behaviour when nurses’ love-affairs were not going so swimmingly that she often felt glad that that side of life seemed to have passed her by.

She put a new notebook into the pocket of her dress and walked briskly on to the ward, fixing a smile on her face, not wanting the patients to see her upset. She saw an answering lift in many of their faces. She could imagine that many of them had taken the news of Dr Marlow’s death badly, but, as well as that, patients on long-stay wards such as orthopaedics tended to miss Sister when she went away. A simple fact—the ship was without a captain!

‘Afternoon, Sister!’ called a couple of the men. ‘Good to have you back!’

She smiled her response, and went round to each patient in turn, perching on the side of the bed for a brief chat, and writing down in her notebook anything which she should mention to the doctor.

A wave of horror, quickly suppressed, washed over her as she realised that she was going to have to take every single problem to that man. As she patted Mr Walters’s hand and assured him that his fractured neck of femur was healing splendidly, before moving on to the next bed, she vowed that at no time would she let any of the patients or other staff know how much she disliked him. That would be extremely unprofessional, and might even undermine his authority. A clash of personalities was one thing. . .

Unless, of course, she thought with a grim kind of longing, unless he proved utterly useless as a doctor—then she would be perfectly in her rights to register a formal complaint about him.

When she eventually reached Mrs Jessop’s bed she was surprised to see her sitting up in bed knitting, her hair looking smart and newly set, and a brand new fluffy pink bed-jacket covering her thin shoulders.

‘Why, Mrs Jessop!’ exclaimed Jenny in surprise. ‘You look absolutely wonderful—and you’re knitting! I didn’t know you could knit!’

‘Hello, Sister,’ said the old lady fondly. ‘Lovely to see you—and you’re looking bonny yourself.’

‘Tell me what’s happened to you. Have you suddenly learned to knit?’

Mrs Jessop looked bashful. ‘Aw, no, Sister! Years ago, when we lived in Scotland, I used to turn out matinée jackets for every baby in the village. I’d kind of got lazy over the years, sitting in my chair and watching the box. That nice new doctor’s taken me in hand, like.’

Jenny felt her facial muscles freeze. ‘Oh?’

Mrs Jessop sighed happily. ‘Oh, yes. Brought an occupational therapist round to see me, he did.’

‘But we haven’t got an occupational therapist!’

‘Oh, yes, we have, Sister—now! Dr Trentham saw to that! Kicked up a terrible fuss, he did, according to the nurses. Said—what was it he said? Oh, yes—that it was “counter-productive” not to have one, that people got better more quickly with expert guidance. Said that, even if the hospital told him it couldn’t afford one, he knew a girl who would come in an afternoon a week and do it for nothing! Going to start in a few weeks’ time, she is—but she came round to see us all and then got me all this knitting wool. Lovely girl, she is, ever so athletic—used to play tennis at Wimbledon when she was a lassie! Imagine that, Sister!’

‘Imagine!’ echoed Jenny faintly, trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice. She put the bag of oranges into the old lady’s fruit bowl, and, brushing aside her effusive thanks, made her way back up the ward, trying to quell the unreasonable feeling of irritation which was growing inside her.

It all made sense, she knew that. Hadn’t she thought that they should have an OT for years? Hadn’t she politely spoken to Dr Marlow time after time, requesting one? But the kindly, and somewhat elderly doctor had not been in the least dynamic. He had gone into committee meetings and put his case so mildly that none of the board of governors—operating under such tight financial strain already—could believe his arguments that an OT was imperative.

So why did it irk her so much that Leo Trentham had achieved in less than two weeks what she had been coveting for years? She should be glad for the ward’s sake. And yet she felt as though her position as leader was being usurped. What else had he changed while she had been away?

She called one of the student nurses over to her, a happy hard-worker called Daisy Galloway, who was on secondment from Denbury’s sister hospital—the large St Martin’s. Jenny liked her very much.

‘Hello, Sister,’ grinned the girl. ‘You look great! Did you have a good time?’

‘I certainly did!’ Until I became acquainted with our new surgeon, she thought. ‘Will you do the two o’clock drug-round with me?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

They unlocked the trolley from the wall, then unlocked the first section, then the section within which contained the Schedule ‘B’ drugs. Jenny flinched a little when she saw how disordered the latter drugs appeared—bottles dumped haphazardly into the small space, not into the neat alphabetical lines which she favoured. She wondered who was responsible, but she suppressed a small click of disapproval, not wanting to seem overly critical of her staff. There might have been a perfectly good reason for such oversight—an emergency taking place during the drug-round, for example—when all the bottles might have had to be put back quickly and locked, so that the staff could run to the aid of a patient.

With experienced fingers she swiftly realigned the bottles, then glanced up at the student nurse.

‘Do you know why hospitals are so obsessed with neatness and order, Nurse Galloway?’

Nurse Galloway cleared her throat. ‘Er—I think so, Sister.’

‘Yes?’

‘Er—it’s because hospitals are run a bit like the military.’

Jenny laughed. ‘And why do you say that?’

Daisy looked less shy. ‘My dad used to be in the marines, and he told me.’

Jenny nodded. ‘Well, you’re right! Like the services, we tend to have lots of rules, but there are reasons for those rules—we don’t devise them just because we want to make more work for the students, or to be awkward.’

‘Yes, Sister?’ asked Daisy interestedly. She loved Sister Hughes—even though she was a ward sister, you felt you could ask her anything.

‘Well, if I shouted for you to get me something urgently—a drug, for example, and we always kept our drugs in alphabetical order, you’d be able to find it immediately, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Alternatively, if a patient was having a cardiac arrest and I wanted the defibrillator, it would be of no use to us if the last person to use it had left it lying at the bottom of their ward instead of returning it to the corridor between Rose and Daffodil, now, would it?’

‘No, it certainly wouldn’t, Sister!’

‘There is “a place for everything, and everything in its place”, to quote the old saying, because the most orderly way of doing things is also the most efficient, and we need hospitals to be efficient. Not, of course,’ here she paused and smiled at the junior nurse, ‘that we must ever forget that we are dealing with people first and foremost, and therefore if a patient was depressed or worried about something then I’d expect you to find the time to sit down and talk to them. I wouldn’t bite your head off just because you’d missed a bit of ward-cleaning!’