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When he'd gone, the room was appallingly empty. It had been within her grasp and she had thrown it away. What had she been trying to prove to herself? Always looking for a sign when she knew there would be no sign.

She sank down at the table and put her head in her hands. Now that the irrevocable decision was taken, horror at what she had done took over. The dream now surrendered became inexpressibly dear.

Underlying it all was a new despair. Soon it would be over. She would be going away. His life would go on and she would have no place in it. Never to know when he was sick or worried or unhappy - surely there were some things that couldn't be borne?

She shivered in spite of the room's central heating. So much for the claims of friendship: for the noble ideals. If this were self-sacrifice she wanted no part in it. Through the raw, gnawing ache, something else broke with clarity. Given the past half-hour over again Jim Graham would have had to take his own chances.

Unusually, there were various blood counts to take when she got back to the ward at a quarter to two. Mechanically, she took out her blood tray and fetched the fresh supply of syringes and pipettes. It was foolish to play this what-might- have-been game. The thing was done now. She could only go on from there.

In spite of her strictures to herself, the morning's conversation continued to play back in her head. She rephrased it, improved it, gave it a new ending. If only she'd said this, he might have said that. And so it went on.

She walked into the ward. There wasn't a nurse in sight, and six-year-old Elizabeth was already starting to cry. It was too much. She went back to the door of the sluice.

"Nurse, would you come and hold Elizabeth's arm, please?"

Nurse Obanyke, flustered by extra duty, came with a bad grace.

Elizabeth's cries grew to screams. Lesley was aware of thirty pairs of eyes boring into her back as she plunged the needle into the child's vein.

Really, she had no heart for this at all today. She was overwhelmed by a new feeling of sickening futility. What good would it do? Elizabeth was going to get better now in her own good time. It seemed scarcely necessary to keep on inflicting the pain just to check up on the rate of that recovery. It was like digging up a seedling every other day just to see how the roots were coming on. "That wasn't too bad, now, was it, Elizabeth?" Her smile was artificially bright. She produced the sweets she always carried for moments like this. "Thank you, Nurse. I'll manage the others on my own, if you want to get back to your other work." The- smile now included the Nigerian nurse. If she were being strictly honest with herself, she thought, she'd say that she shared the child's dread of the needle.

These things, with recurrent snatches of the morning's dialogue, were in her mind as she took her tray of syringes into the side room.

Mrs. Hopkins didn't feel much like talking. She was rather sleepy. Lesley rolled up the sleeve of the coarse hospital nightgown and wound the sphygmo cuff round the jaundiced upper arm. The vein stood out in the crook of the elbow. "Just hold still a minute. It's the customary prick."

"That's all right," the woman said dreamily.

"There you are - we're in." Lesley released the cuff and withdrew the piston. The dark venous blood welled up into her syringe. Carefully she measured twenty-five cc. She removed the needle and bent the elbow to prevent further bleeding. "You can go off to sleep again now, Mrs. Hopkins.'-'

Moving like an automaton, she took the tray next door to the test room, and began setting up the two sedimentation tubes.

What had she been hoping for? He had reasoned with her, pleaded with her, said the most flattering things about her prospects, even suggested that Jim wouldn't do the same thing for her. How on earth could she have drifted into this untenable position? The processes of her own mind baffled her. She couldn't trace the steps leading up to the decision. All she'd succeeded in doing was to create the wrong impression.

She sucked up ten millilitres of Elizabeth's blood and filled the B.S.R. tube. She labelled it and replaced it in the rack, put Mrs. Hopkins' sample into a fresh vessel and inserted the end of the slim sedimentation tube. Routinely, she began sucking up the required amount.

She wasn't a fool. She knew how it must have looked to him. Naturally he thought she was in love with Jim. Why did people always have to jump to that conclusion - as though women had no loyalties apart from love?

Just for a second she let her attention slip. The end of the tube cleared the pool in the test tube, and some of the blood shot up into her mouth. It was a full moment before she realised the significance. This was a case of infective hepatitis.

She spat viciously and repeatedly into the small sink, then dashed for the duty room. The page of the textbook stood out in letters of fire. This was a virus that was blood-borne. It could be absorbed from the alimentary tract.

There was instant commotion. Afterwards she found it difficult to remember the exact sequence of events. Sister Bishop was bustling with her keys, unlocking the stock cupboard, taking out the bottle which she kept marked STIM.

"A little of this, Doctor. Brandy is, after all, the best antiseptic."

Just for a moment she was a little girl again - frightened and quite unsure of herself: only too glad to have someone else make the decisions.

She sat down when she was told and took the glass from Sister's hand. Later, in her room, she would remember that there was no evidence - no evidence at all - that brandy or any of the known antiseptics had any effect whatsoever on the virus of infective hepatitis.

Afterwards, Sister Bishop insisted that she go back to her room and lie down. She'd been so kind and concerned, Lesley hadn't the heart to stand out against her now.
After
all, she could write up her case histories just as readily there as anywhere else. She took her rough notes and the pile of records from the window rack and made her way back to the staff quarters. She was aware of Sister standing at the end of the ward corridor watching her progress down the long stone passageway past the Surgical and X-ray units.

She climbed the steps to the medical hut and pushed her way through the swing doors.

The medical auxiliaries were doing PT exercises in the common room. They greeted her with silence. The old breach hadn't healed. There was nothing for it but to sit in her own room with the notes.

Half an hour or so later there was a knock on the door. Dr. Ross, the pharmacologist, stood outside.

"They tell me you've had a bit of a misfortune, Doctor," he said. "There's no conclusive evidence that this stuff has prophylactic properties, but there's been a recent suggestion in the literature that it might do some good." He held out a bottle of bright orange pills. "At least it'll do no harm to try it. Better than waiting around and doing nothing, eh?" He sucked on the stem of his unlighted pipe. "Afraid you'll need to set your alarm - or get the night porter to give you a call. They have to be taken every four hours in milk - and you'd better have some of these too." He rummaged in the pocket of his white coat and came up with a bottle of red Vitamin B pills. "Just in case the drug alters the intestinal flora. You'll probably need to keep it up for a week. If it's going to do any good it should have achieved it by then. If not, you'll just have to take your chance with the bug." He knocked out his pipe against the wall.

Lesley was grateful he'd refrained from pointing out how foolish she'd been to get the blood in her mouth in the first place.

He seemed to sense what was in her mind, for he went on, "Familiarity breeds contempt. Done it myself on more than one occasion. Always been lucky. Never done myself any irreparable harm."

"Trust me to do it with something infectious," Lesley said wryly.

"It's always the way." He refilled his pipe from the pouch in his hand. "If it's any consolation, it's usually the time when you're least expecting it that things have a habit of going wrong." He struck a match. "Let me know when this lot's finished. I've already put in an order for some more." He shambled back along the corridor.

Lesley was left standing with the bottles in her hand. Really, people were good, she thought with a sudden warm glow. Aunt Margaret was right. When it came to the crunch, and you were up against it, most folks had a habit of coming up trumps.

Lesley
was already awake and waiting for the night porter's call. After six days her subconscious now anticipated the four- hourly alert. She turned in bed and listened for the footfall.

The night had been restless. She was glad to be properly awake at last.

The dream this time had been particularly vivid. She'd been swotting night and day for an important examination. It had all the tension of a final degree. When she reached the hall it turned into the old schoolhouse building at home. She'd been surprised to find there were no other candidates. The question had been written up on a blackboard - a complicated algebraic equation. She sat in mounting panic, uncertain how to proceed. Somewhere there had been a terrible mistake - it wasn't the subject for which she had prepared.

She'd wakened up in a cold sweat at the shame of having to hand in a blank examination book. It had taken several moments for the truth to dawn.

She lay now in the darkness listening to the footsteps. They came steadily along the block. She waited for them to stop outside her room. When the knock came, however, it was on Jim's door. She switched on her bedside light and looked at the clock. It was only one a.m. Another full hour before her pills were due. She turned over and waited for the retreating footsteps to die away. In a moment the bathroom light would go on. Knowing Jim, there would be a scuffle. Somewhere along the corridor a door would slam.

After ten or twelve minutes she became vaguely aware that none of these things had happened. She was almost certain he hadn't gone out. But he must have replied to the porter's knock. Old Bell would never have left without knowing that Jim was awake. Surely he couldn't have fallen asleep again?

She propped herself up on one elbow and listened. There was nothing to hear. She tried to settle to sleep again, but it was no use. There was nothing else for it, she would have to make sure. If Jim had been called and hadn't got up, Sister Staines would soon be on the war path. There would be the devil himself to pay if the Night Super's summons had been ignored.

Lesley groped her way into her slippers and pulled on her dressing gown.

Outside in the corridor there wasn't a sound. Light streamed from only one room, and that was at the far end of the block. Lesley stole softly to Jim's door and put an ear to it. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could hear him breathing. She was about to knock when her eye taught the white slip of paper which Bell had pushed half-way under the door. She stooped and picked it up.

The Night Super's bold scrawl leapt out at her. John Farmer in Ward Three had vomited .23 blood. Just like old Staines, she thought, to get a resident out of bed for two ounces of blood.

She remembered Farmer. He was a haematemesis. She'd admitted him herself last receiving day. He had insisted on walking from the ambulance to the ward. She'd almost collapsed when she discovered later that his haemoglobin was already down to forty two per cent. Since then there had been several small recurrences of the bleeding. He had been on blood transfusion. His blood pressure had been maintained. It was a bit thick Staines sending for Jim at this hour in the morning on account of another small mouthful of vomit.

She went back to bed. Two minutes later she was bolt upright - that queer trick of the subconscious stabbing her mind awake. Where had she seen that symbol before - a circle with a dot in the middle of it? Somewhere, something was nagging to be remembered.

Then it clicked. On the chart in the hall of the old Materia Medica building in College. The old-fashioned signs. Some of the older nurses still used them. The circle with the dot in the centre of it. Dear God. She remembered. It was a pint!

She shot out of bed, grabbing dressing gown and slippers. A moment later she was shaking him awake.

"Jim, Jim, wake up! Farmer's had another haemorrhage."

He shrugged off her hand. "Go away," he groaned sulkily, trying to pull the bedclothes up over his head.

"Jim, you clot, wake up!" Some of her urgency finally got through to him.

He sat up rubbing his eyes. "Well, well, it's a dream - or is it Mary Poppins?"

"Shut up, you fool. It's no joke. Staines had you called over twenty minutes ago. Farmer's had another haematemesis."

"Good lord! You'd better get out of here." He was thoroughly awake by now and pulling on his clothes. Like the rest of them he was adept at doing this over his pyjamas.

"You've got blood matched, haven't you?" She spoke from the door.

"Yes. In the big fridge at the far end of the haematology lab. I cross-matched two pints in case something like this happened." He was half under the bed now trying to find his shoes.

"I'll get over there and collect them for you. You'd better make straight for the ward."

"Bless you!" He was pushing his arms through the sleeves of the freshly laundered white coat. "Drat these things. Where did I put the buttons?" He looked round feverishly.

"You haven't got time. You'll have to go without them."

"Don't be silly, I can't go like this." He was getting exasperated. "Why does it always have to be laundry day when I get a panic night call?"

"You should leave things ready before going to bed."

"Now, don't you start. Things are bad enough as it is. Ah, here they are." He started fumbling with one of the ring fastenings.

"Will you hurry up?" she whispered urgently. "You'll have Staines herself over here in another minute."

She dashed back to her own room. It took only seconds to pull on her skirt and white coat. A moment later she was walking swiftly across the courtyard.

As she turned the corner of the Superintendent's block, she saw the Night Super flapping her way across the backyard. The red-lined cloak was billowing out behind her.