A Surgical Affair (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It
was always a horrible anti-climax to come off duty at the stroke of one o’clock. For three days and nights there had been a succession of operations, ward rounds and emergencies to cope with.

Now Diana sat miserably in her room with nothing to do. The buzzer in her white coat was silent at last. The other surgical team had taken over. She remembered her mother always used to say, “Nobody is indispensable.”

“You’re free!” Diana told herself. “You can sleep undisturbed until tomorrow. You can read that novel you bought six months ago and write some letters. You can see that new musical at the Odeon, or go to London for your favorite meal of roast duck, with two jam pancakes to follow.”

But Diana didn’t move. She didn’t want to do any of those ordinary things she used to enjoy. She was quite happy to go on and on being a house surgeon. Her whole life and all her thoughts were bound up with Mansion House Hospital. The world outside seemed dull and lonely.

Lonely, that was it. People rushing about, worrying about their own problems. Inside the hospital it was different. There was no time to be lonely. And Diana knew everybody there by sight even if not to talk to. They all had the same purpose—to make the hospital an efficient, happy place.

Diana took off her white coat and hung it behind the door. Immediately, she felt uncomfortable and strange. Now she wasn’t a doctor any more. She was an ordinary girl, wearing a gray pleated skirt and a blue cotton blouse. She felt dull, uninteresting, stripped of her identity.

She thought, “This is terrible! I’m behaving like a nun. Cutting myself off from the world. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be an ordinary person ... I must go out somewhere. I’ll just walk and walk, and
r
emember how things used to be.”

It was a cold gloomy day, so she wore her thick coat and fur-lined boots. Even the air outside the building was like an enemy, stinging the face, chilling the throat with every breath she took.

Across the road from the hospital there was a new housing estate, beyond that, open country. Diana walked past the rows of semi-detached houses with their neat, well-kept yards. Lights were on in some of the rooms, and the fires were flickering in the window panes.

“It’s a good day for hot buttered crumpets,” she thought. “Richard always liked those.”

At last there were no more houses; only green fields and narrow winding country lanes.

Sometimes Diana had to think hard before she could remember where and when she first met Richard. He was one of those people who slid unobtrusively into a circle of friends and acquaintances. There was no dramatic meeting; no unforgettable moment when their eyes met across a crowded room. In fact it had all been very ordinary and unromantic.

It was at a meeting of the English Club at Oxford, held one spring evening in a small hall. An eminent author (she couldn
’
t remember his name) had come from London to give a talk on Sir Walter Scott.

At the beginning the Chairman said, “Now, I’d like nominations for the club committee.”

To Diana’s amazement, a voice from the back said, “I’d like to propose the girl in the second row, Mr. Chairman. That is, if she’s willing to stand.”

It was Richard’s voice.

“Do you agree to be nominated?” asked the Chairman. Before she could answer, Richard
said, “We must have a girl on the committee—to arrange our tea meetings.”

Then Diana realized that she was the only girl at the meeting apart from the club secretary, and that tea-making is traditionally not a man’s job.

So she replied, “All right, I agree,” and thought that to be on a club committee must be terribly important, especially as this was only the second meeting of the club she had attended.

From then on she was seeing Richard a lot. They held tennis parties at each other’s colleges, went to dances together and met during the vacations. Diana usually found it difficult to make friends quickly, but with Richard it had been different. His complete lack of shyness and reserve drew her out of her shell.

About this time she went through a girlish
in
fatuation. Whenever she thought about it
,
Diana felt extremely ashamed.

It was all over a fellow medical student called Arthur Hudson. He was unusually good looking, or so she thought at the time, but as he was two years her senior, she only spoke to him occasionally. She would wait around the anatomy classroom to catch a glimpse of him. How silly it all seemed
now! But how important it was at the time. When he left Oxford to do the rest of the course in Kenya, Diana thought she wouldn’t be able to go on living. But to her astonishment, she managed to survive and the memory of Arthur Hudson slowly faded.

When she lived in London she didn’t see so much of Richard. The final exams were getting nearer, and there were more lectures and ward rounds to attend.

“I can’t enjoy the ballet,” she would tell him, “when I’ve spent the afternoon in the pathology museum or in a hot pre-natal clinic examining patients. I’m just not in the mood for it.”

Some of the students led a fun-filled life, of course. They went to parties at night and were wide awake for the lecture at nine the next morning. But Diana could never manage it. So Richard was the only boy friend she had.

It was six months before she sat her final exam when he first asked her to marry him. They’d been to see a movie, because Diana said she couldn’t bear to look at textbooks any more that day.

He proposed in a particularly noisy subway train.

“Will you marry me?” he had shouted, as they drew out of Piccadilly station.

Diana wasn't surprised at the question. They’d been going out together for years.

“Let’s talk about it when my exam is over,” she said.

“Now I’m a qualified lawyer, I’m not doing at all badly. We could get a little apartment somewhere to start with.”

“Let’s wait, Richard, please.”

During the next six months Richard proposed four more times. He said her exam didn’t matter, that he could keep her. He had the persistence of a spoiled child who’s told he can’t have another candy and keeps asking, “Why can’t I?” (In fact Diana had always noticed, when she stayed at his home, that Richard’s parents spoiled him dreadfully. He was their only child.)

And now the exam was over. She hadn’t seen Richard since she qualified. Diana knew that when she did, she might still want to ask him to wait
...

Suddenly she was feeling hungry. She realized she was completely lost and that it was nearly dark. She looked at her watch and found she’d been walking for over two hours.

She turned around. The hospital was silhouetted against the sky. The lights from the houses twinkled below it.

At that moment Diana wished she had a little house of her own. A white one, with a thatched roof, and not too big.

“And perhaps a husband?” she thought vaguely. “And maybe eventually some children?”

She was more cheerful now.

“The hospital is only the place where I work,” she told herself, walking back briskly. “Disease and death are only a small part of existence. I mustn’t make them too important. It’s the world outside that matters.”

And when Diana arrived at the hospital, she found there were buttered crumpets for tea.

CHAPTER SIX

S
o Sister said, in a terribly haughty voice—“it has come to my notice, Nurse, that you were seen leaving the resident doctors’ quarters yesterday evening. Is that so?”

High-pitched giggles came from behind the screen in the sterilizing room.

Diana was intrigued by this fragment of conversation. She had
gone there to collect some syringes and needles. The screen partitioned off the side of the room where the bandages and some of the linen were kept. Two of the nurses were obviously sorting and checking the supplies.

“I felt myself blush scarlet!” the voice went on. “She said that I should know that a probationer nurse is strictly forbidden to go to a doctor’s room. As I’ve only been here a few months she’s not telling Matron, but, she will if I’m caught doing it again.”

“Gosh!” said the second voice.

“Do you remember that time all six of us burst into tears when Baker was lecturing us? Well, I didn’t cry this time. I just looked terribly, terribly hurt and offended, as if I’d never been near—” The voice broke off as Diana picked up the tray of things she needed and made for the door. But not before she saw Nurse Joan Edmonds’s head pop around the screen and then disappear, to the sound of more giggles. Nurse Edmonds was 19 years old, but looked 16, dark-haired and small. Although not one of the most efficient nurses on the ward, she had a pretty face and a pleasant nature.

Diana called in at the office.

“Hello, Sister. What have you been doing to poor Nurse Edmonds? My spies have told me all about it.”

“A little disciplinary matter, that’s all.” Sister sighed. “It’s hard to be cross with them. They look so young. I keep remembering the time many years ago when I was 19, and Matron lectured me about climbing into the Nurses’ Home after a dance: ‘And not in uniform, either!’ she said. ‘In an off-the-shoulder dress!’
”

Diana was studying the theater list pinned on the notice board. “This is a great day for me. My first appendix. Dr. Royston says I can do Miss Stevens. She’s a healthy girl of 17, with no complications—I hope. I’ve helped him do so many now, so I should be all right on my own.”

“But he’ll be there, assisting you?”

“Oh, yes! But thank goodness Mr. Cole will be doing Out-Patients this afternoon. I think if he shouted at me in the middle, I’d drop my scalpel.”

Sister looked thoughtfully at Diana. “If you had to have your appendix out in this hospital, who would you choose to do the operation?” she asked.

Diana pretended to ponder over the question for a moment, but there was no doubt in her mind. “I think Dr. Royston. You see,” she explained hastily, “these days Mr. Cole doesn’t have much experience with appendixes, he’s out of touch—doing all the big things.”

Sister shook her head. “I’d have Mr. Cole. I’m his biggest fan. The patients think he’s wonderful, too.”

With an armful of files, Miss Harvey swept through the door,
a
yellow orchid pinned to the lapel of her smart black suit.

“I heard you, Nan—about Mr. Cole. But you’re not his biggest fan, I am!”

“What a heavenly orchid.” Diana said enviously.

For a moment Miss Harvey looked embarrassed, then she was smiling happily at them both.

“It’s
no good, everybody will have to know sooner or later. Anyway, I can never keep a secret for long.” She dropped her voice. “I’m engaged.”

“How wonderful!” cried Sister.

“Who to?” asked Diana.

“To somebody you know.” Miss Harvey laughed happily. “Dr. Pallie.”

“You’re very lucky, he’s a charming man.” Diana shook Miss Harvey’s hand warmly. “Isn’t she a dark horse, Sister?”

Sister smiled and looked wistfully at her friend. “Yes, you are, Kate. Nobody suspected anything was going on between you. I’m glad it’s Dr. Pallie, though. He’s very nice.”

“It’s not a whirlwind romance. We’ve been very friendly since the hospital party last Christmas,” Miss Harvey told them gaily, “but we knew each other for years before that.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“As soon as possible, but no fuss. We’re both too old for that.
Just our families—and I’ll go on being called Miss Harvey in the hospital. Nothing will change, really.”

“Nothing—and everything. I hope you’ll be happy, Kate, I’m sure you will. Now, I must get on,” said Sister, hurrying out of the office.

Miss Harvey looked anxiously at Diana. “What did she mean, “Nothing—and everything?” She’s behaving very oddly. Did I say something wrong?”

“No. I think your news gave her a bit of a shock, though. You’ve known her for years, haven’t you?”

Miss Harvey sighed. “Yes. I think I’m probably Nan’s best friend, after her cousin Fay, of course. Perhaps I should have told her the news alone first. I didn’t realize she would take it like this.”

“I’ll go and talk to her.”

In the sterilizing room, Sister Baker had busily started to lay out a. trolley for wound dressings.

“Kate and Dr. Pallie. They’ll go well together,” she said to Diana. “He’s so serious and she’s so lively; almost the same age, too. How nice to be getting married. Perhaps it’s never really too late?”

Diana shook her head and smiled. “I’m sure it’s not. We never know what’s around the corner in life.”

Sister bent over to put a bowl on the lower shelf. Diana noticed her face suddenly go white. It was as if a sharp stab of pain had pierced the center of her body. For a moment Sister did not move, as if the agony was so intense, so unbearable. Then the pain seemed to disappear completely. Later Diana wondered if she had imagined it all, if it had been a horrible nightmare.

At two o’clock that afternoon Miss Doris Stevens, shorthand typist, was wheeled unconscious into the theater by Dr. Pallie.

Diana, gloved and gowned, painted the exposed skin with antiseptic spirit and arranged the sterile towels. She stood next to Sister Jay, with Mark opposite them.

He warned her quietly. “Not too big an incision. This girl might want to wear a bikini in the summer.
”

Diana took the scalpel and made a careful cut into the skin. But the skin was thick and unyielding, she had only scratched the surface.

“Be bold,” Mark told her.

The blade went more easily through the layer of yellow fat and then into the glistening muscle. It was not easy to find the appendix and to bring it out through such a small hole. Diana thought how deceptively simple it had always looked when Mark was operating.

“Easy does it,” said Mark softly, as she tied a ligature around the base of the red, swollen appendix.

The operation lasted longer than the time normally needed for a straightforward appendectomy and left Diana exhausted by the mental and physical strain of being the chief surgeon rather than merely assisting. She pulled off her mask and dropped thankfully into the office armchair.

Mark came in and patted her on the arm. “Well done!”