Hospital in the Highlands (3 page)

Flo had sighed.

“Don’t look so pained, my pet! You remind me of your mother, sort of despairing. I don’t intend to die until I’ve reached my popularity peak, for the sake of the children.” He had mused for a moment. “You know, Flo, I never included you with the rest, somehow. You don’t seem like my child. You don’t ask me for money to buy clothes. You never hang around my neck and wheedle me. Why?”

“Oh, Father, I suppose it’s just because I’m not demonstrative, like the others, and I can buy my own clothes. Mother died when I was fifteen, remember, and with Meg at Art School, growing up seemed the most urgent thing in the world to me.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “I remember we made a Cinderella out of you for as long as we could. Meg had to finish her studies, and Fay wanted tuition on the violin:
she
couldn’t soil her hands: and you were a second mother to Pixie, and as far as I know provided her with school uniform. I know I didn’t. One can’t wonder you made a break for it—and ran.”

Making a break and running presumably described her entry into the nursing profession, Flo thought ruefully, and Pixie’s first school uniform second-hand and much too large, had come out of the housekeeping money.

Adrian Lamont had died before he reached his popularity peak, however, and his work, though described by the critics as “pleasant,” was not unduly sensational. The few thousands accumulated from the sale of his pictures was offset by his debts, and the ghastly truth brought home
by the family solicitors to the Misses Lamont was that they were not only penniless but homeless. Only Flo had foreseen what would happen with their father’s premature death, and when on occasions she had demurred over this extravagance, or that, she had been either called a spoilsport or accused of morbidity.

Now that the blow had fallen, however, and her sisters were herded under her roof, still raw and embarrassed by all that had occurred, she found herself tied to the hospital and unable to act as a buffer between them and all that was awaiting at Rowans. She had not yet told them of Janet’s predilection for a “good cry.” The old woman would stop and cry for no reason at all, and more so if she was scolded or criticized. Flo feared that her sisters, somehow bereft of a critical faculty that at times bordered on malice, would not find their new home to their liking.

“Auld William,” took a bit of understanding too. Tell him to take a box upstairs and he would either pretend he was a deaf mute or make some response in Gaelic when he was sure such would not be understood. He would perform no task in the simple straightforward fashion one might expect of a ser
v
ant. “Willyum” didn’t look on himself as a servant. He was a tramp by inclination, and had merely looked in on Miss Elspeth fifteen years ago for a bite of bread and cheese, in return for which he had told her of a thing or two that was wrong about her roses. Miss Elspeth was most obliged, but had informed him that there wasn’t much she could do to remedy the matter as, owing to her arthritis, the garden was beyond her. For more bread and cheese
—and
a bed in the stable—Willyum had worked in the garden all next day and ever since. Whenever he had a “difference” with anybody he packed up his handkerchief bundle and talked about moving on. But Willyum was now eighty-two, so it wasn’t likely he would move very far before the last of all his journeys.

What would her three sisters have done by now to the old couple, Flo pondered in absolute dread as she prepared to assist at the operation for a perforated appendix on a thirteen-year-old girl. She would have phoned Rowans if she could, but Miss Nightingale had never seen the need for a telephone, and now that it would benefit her and keep her in touch with her work, Flo found there was a considerable waiting list of applicants ahead of her.

“How’s it going, sweetie?” Keith Bexley suddenly demanded of her in Nurse MacAlister’s hearing.

Flo frowned at him coldly.

“How is what going, sir?”

“Everything. I’ve just been nosing my way around and it’s going to be an absolute pushover here. I never struck it so lucky
since I qualified. It appears I’m kingpin on the medical side.”

“Temporarily. But we’re mainly a surgical team, sir, at The Glen. However, we’ll doubtless find you a few patients from time to time.”

Nurse MacAlister turned away to chuckle. The Sassenach doctor had been throwing his weight around considerably since he arrived, asking half the nurses to go out with him and so forth.

“By the way,” Keith went on airily, “there’s been a bit of a sweat on. Your Mr. Maxwell couldn’t be found.”

“They couldn’t find Mr. Maxwell?” Flo paled under her mask. She forgot all about Rowans
and its problems and
thought instead of the fevered, delirious child whose temperature hovered at danger point. “He always leaves a movements chitty. They must have contacted him by now?”

Keith tantalized her for an instant more.

“No. He’s stranded in the middle of the loch somewhere on his launch with engine trouble. It began to look as though yours truly was going to have to perform. However, they’ve got somebody.”

“Who?” Flo asked curiously.

“Someone with one of these unpronounceable Scotch names—”

“Scottish,” corrected Nurse MacAlister before realizing where she was. A pink spot on each cheek she went on, “Scottish or Scots, if you don’t mind, sir. Scotch is—is whisky.”

“Bottoms up!” said Keith soulfully, and went to peep in the changing room where there was a sudden bustling. “He has arrived!” he announced importantly, “and he says please can he have a bigger gown. This”—he held up a green garment disparagingly—“only comes to midway. Whatever midway is!” Nurse MacAlister laughed and Keith looked pleased. He liked an audience.

“There!” snapped Flo, wishing her sister’s ex-
fianc
é
was miles
away.
She had heard all his quips and jokes before and had ceased to laugh at them years ago. Even while Meg
was still enraptured and chuckling at him, Keith Bexley had been a pretty poor fish in Flo’s eyes.

There was a sudden standing to attention as the Consultant Surgeon entered the small theater and investigated the instrument trolley. It was apparently to his liking, for he said, “Splendid, Sister. I was told I could count on you. I hope we shan’t lose much blood, though I see you’re prepared for a major hemorrhage. Well—better to be safe than sorry.”

The eyes above the mask were blue with flecks of hazel in them. They were friendly, laughing eyes and she liked them immediately. In a way the tall figure of the man was familiar, but as Rowans was fairly isolated she knew few people around. While she was still investigating those inquiring eyes her heart suddenly seemed to turn over, a most unethical thing for a hospital Sister’s heart to do on duty, and she couldn’t understand why she should suddenly remember Jim and tell herself that was the way
he
had made her heart feel just before a meeting.

Jim wasn’t here and her heart had no business to turn over—for anybody else.

CHAPTER FOUR

“
Peritoneum clear,” the deft young surgeon finally announced. “I’m going to close up now. All swabs and packs accounted for, Sister?”

“All in order, sir.”

“Then I’ll go ahead.”

The wound, when stitched, was infinitesimal, earning the staffs silent admiration.

“She’ll do,” the surgeon announced as he peeled off his gloves. “I’ve entered her injections on her chart, and I’ll be in to see her tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Somehow this information both pleased and disconcerted Flo. She didn’t quite know whether she was on her head or her heels. “Then she’ll be entered as your patient, sir, and not as Mr. Maxwell’s?”

Again the stranger smiled and loosened his mask. A strong, pleasant countenance was revealed.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me quite a bit from now on, Sister. Your Mr. Maxwell got himself concussed in the middle of the loch just now. His head will be quite a sore point with him for some weeks.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Flo said sincerely. “Then what am I to call you, sir?” He looked at her in surprise, and as she had just removed her own mask he saw her cheeks flood scarlet. “I mean in the report, sir. Mr.—who?”

“Strathallan,” he told her.

“Oh!” She looked again. “You—you’re not the Strathallan who...?”

He bowed slightly.

“I am. Your neighbor, Miss Lamont, though distant by about fifty good Scottish acres from Rowans. Though you will not be expected to put my full title in your report, I am the Strathallan of Glen Lochallan, Chieftain and laird. We haven’t actually met before, I think?”

“No, sir.”

He was holding out his large, capable hand, which she couldn’t ignore. The contact was strangely electric so that she looked at him again, startled.,

“I keep thinking I already know you, sir,” she said in explanation.

“It’s not likely we’ve met, though, or I would surely have remembered. I trained in London, which seems rather ridiculous, doesn’t it? Maybe Miss Nightingale acquainted you with certain aspects of my misspent youth, such as the time I preferred her rosy apples to my own.”

“She only told me the good things,” Flo assured him gaily. “I believe you once cycled all the way into Pibroch for some lace edging for her?”

“Yes. And came back with several yards of lamp fringe. That must have been some petticoat
if she used it!”

They both laughed and Keith edged in rather meaningly. “If I may interrupt you for a moment, Strath—whatever your name is
...?
”

“Strathallan is not so difficult to remember, Doctor Bexley,
when you have heard it once. But if you do forget it in future you can call me ‘sir,’ as you would any other senior member of the staff. Now what was it you wanted?”

“Lovely!” thought Flo delightedly, thinking how much good it might have done the Englishman to be so slapped down at the other hospital in Edinburgh. There he had been spoilt and petted by the nursing staff—and some of the medical faculty.

“I’ll try to remember,
sir
,”
Keith now said heavily, hoping to impress Nurse MacAlister if he got away with a bit of cheek. “Actually I thought as S.M.O. I was senior to
you
.”

Robert Strathallan turned away without replying, however, and began to “wash-up” in the sluice. Flo, because her heart was kind, suddenly felt sorry for Keith Bexley, who had succeeded on his very first day in making such a fool of himself.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” she quietly advised.

“Well, who the hell does he think he is? Call me ‘sir’ my aunt Fanny!”

“You should know how important it is to memorize names in our profession, Keith. He knew yours, and naturally resented being addressed as ‘what-you-may-call-it’, or whatever it was you said.”

“He’s a bighead, like all these small hospital staff.”

“Actually he works in a very big hospital. The Royal Scots, to be exact.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s on leave. Anyway, he lives here.” “Next door to you, apparently. Have you got Meg hidden away in your house?”

“I—I—yes. You’re not to see her, Keith.”

“Why not? I like the girl.”

“She’s not a girl. She’s a broken-hearted woman. And she wants to be either loved or left alone. Liking won’t do.”

“How will I know whether I still love her or not if I can’t see her?”

“I don’t think you can love again once you’ve stopped. Old love is like cold pudding. There are hundreds of nice girls in the world for you.”

“If I can’t have you I want Meg back,” he sulked stupidly.

“Well, you can’t have me. And—look, Keith, I’ll see you tomorrow. I have two hours off in the afternoon if we can talk somewhere. I have to tidy up in here and—” she saw a movement in the changing room doorway—
“
he
’
s
coming. Do go!”

“Tomorrow at two, Sister?” Keith asked brightly as Robert Strathallan reappeared wearing the jacket and kilt in which he had been surveying his acres when the emergency at the hospital had been announced to him.

“Two-thirty, sir,” Flo corrected him, and positively sighed in relief as he left the theater.

“Has Doctor Bexley been long at The Glen, Sister?” Robert Strathallan wanted to know as she bustled about.

“He arrived today, sir, as locum.”

“Is there anyone else who could act as anesthetist in an emergency?”

“Yes. There’s Doctor Gairlarroch, Mr. Stewart’s surgical registrar. He’s quite capable.”

“Then I want him in futur
e
whenever possible. We mustn’t take up too much of Doctor Bexley’s valuable time while he’s acting S.M.O. Gairlarroch ... I should know the clan, but I don’t offhand. Where does the laddie hail from?”

“He’s a Nova Scotian, sir. He was sent by his father to study and work in Scotland while he looked up his family tree.”

“Clan!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Flo lowered her warm eyes and her cheeks dimpled despite herself.

“Ye’re no’ a Scots lassie?” he suddenly challenged her.

“My father made
Sassenachs out of us. He was born in Guernsey.”

“There’s no such thing as a half-Scot, Sister. If there’s Scots blood in you it’ll have killed the Sassenach off years ago.”

“You shock me, sir!”