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'I know,' Anna agreed, 'but Sister wants her trained nurses on this afternoon because Dr Tester is coming back off sick leave to do a round. Every
thing must be just so for him,' she added wryly, and Bryan snorted.

'I've met him! Tall and dynamic, with chilly brown eyes. Sister fancy him, does she?'

Anna turned surprised eyes on him. 'I'm not sure. I think she's married, but. . .' She hesitated. She had been about to say she thought Sister Noakes might fancy Dr Alexandre but she didn't want to repeat gossip—didn't want to believe it herself, either.

Yet it was possible. They were not far apart in age, she guessed. Dr Alexandre was in his early thirties, she judged, if that. He was obviously keen to get to the top. Sister Noakes could do worse than hitch her star to his. This Dr Tester sounded attractive, though. For some reason Anna fervently hoped that Sister
did
fancy the consultant rather than the senior registrar. The morning passed swiftly for Anna. Now that she was getting used to the ward routine she didn't find the work so hard. During the morning she saw the house doctor, Dr Wilmott, in the ward, together with Dr Alexandre, and hurriedly bent her head to her task of tidying Mr Cumming's locker. She didn't want to see Dr Alexandre—Rick. There was nothing she could say to him, other than to apologise, once again.

Anyway, she told herself crossly, he ought to be pleased she'd saved him a journey. He lived in so could hardly say he would have dropped her off on his way home. Where was his home, anyway? she pondered, trying to imagine him in a setting like her own. She had never been to the Channel Islands so had difficulty in visualising them.

She presumed Dr Alexandre didn't have a wife but did he have a girlfriend? Perhaps one in Jersey?

'Nurse!' At last Mr Cumming's voice penetrated Anna's private world, and she jumped up, smiling at the patient. Remembering he was blind, she put the smile into her voice instead, seeing from the corner of her eye that the two doctors were approaching with Pauline Wilson.

She turned her attention to her patient, hoping Dr Alexandre wouldn't stop at that particular bed. 'I've tidied your locker, Mr Cumming. On the top now is just your jug of fruit juice and a glass. Do get someone to reach it for you, though,' she warned, and the man nodded.

'Did I hear Dr Alexandre?' he asked loudly, and Anna squirmed, watching the registrar change direction.

'Good morning, Mr Cumming. A lovely morning with even a touch of bird-song, I believe!' Dr Alexandre laughed, and Anna lowered her eyes submissively, waiting for the registrar to move on.

'Never! Is there really, doc? Not in December. It isn't the courting season yet!' Mr Cumming chortled.

'It must be my hearing then,' Dr Alexandre agreed, not appearing to notice Anna, though she was really too tall to miss.

She swallowed nervously, knowing she ought to say something yet not knowing what.

'You must be in love, Doctor! That's what it is,' Mr Cumming assured him, and Anna's heart gave a funny little lurch and dropped several inches. She held her breath, waiting for the registrar to reply.

'Could be, Mr Cumming,' Rick Alexandre agreed, then moved away, still without acknowledging Anna, who silently carried away the rubbish Mr Cumming had asked her to dispose of.

He could be in love. But with whom? Sister Noakes? No. Anna shook her head, once in the safety of the linen-cupboard, which was also on her list for tidying. Indeed she had done little else that morning and wondered if her presence was strictly necessary.

'Anna.' Pauline Wilson followed her to the linen-cupboard a few minutes later. 'Sister says as you aren't busy she's going to lend you to Coppice, next door. They want a patient taken to X-ray and can't spare a nurse. Will you go now, please? Then you can take an early lunch and go off till four-thirty, Sister says.' The third-year vanished, and Anna gave an exasperated sigh.

Now she was to run general errands! Still, it was better than staying there, feeling Dr Alexandre's contempt. Four-thirty was early to return to duty, she mused, knowing it ought to be five o'clock, but Sister
was
allowing her to go to lunch early.

By the time Anna had wheeled her patient to X-ray and seen the queue she knew her lunch wasn't going to be an early one. Bryan and Sheila were there, from her set, and she edged her patient nearer to them.

The patient, Mrs Norton, was over eighty but sprightly enough, according to the Coppice Ward Staff Nurse. Her wrist had been troubling her so much in hospital that an X-ray had been ordered. The patient chatted non-stop about her stay at St Aidan's while they waited for the X-ray.

Anna listened attentively, even though the old lady tended to repeat herself. Consequently, she had little opportunity to talk to her colleagues, but she heard Bryan tell Sheila Haggerty about the split duty, and Sheila, a sharp-eyed troublemaker, raised her brows in disbelief.

'You're on again at five then?' she called across to Anna, who shook her head, her mind half on what Mrs Norton was telling her about her great-grandson.

'Half-past four,' Anna said, absently. If she had been alert, she would have noticed the pleased way Sheila sat back, lips pursed determinedly. Anna knew well that Sheila liked to complain about the hospital or the training if she could.

This was Sheila's second hospital. She had started her training at a London teaching hospital but found the discipline too restrictive. At least that was the reason she gave everyone. Anna had her doubts and believed Sheila and the hospital had parted by mutual consent!

It was nearly one o'clock by the time Anna returned Mrs Norton to the ward. Then she had to listen to the old lady's reminiscences once again, as Mrs Norton insisted that Anna should help settle her in a chair by the bed for her lunch. Eventually Anna was free, and dragging on her raincoat as she ran, she hared downstairs towards the entrance. Lunch would be ruined and Mother would be in hysterics. Anna could, from vast experience, picture the scene all too clearly.

She ran outside, glad to see the pale winter sun, then nearly collided With a man on her short cut across the car-park.

Strong arms steadied her when she would have fallen, and a deep, masculine voice asked if she was all right.

Flushed and breathless, Anna gazed up—into a handsome if heavy-featured face, and dark eyes. 'Oh! I'm very sorry!' she said, struggling to regain her breath. Was this a consultant? she wondered in dismay. Probably he was just admin, but he was very well-dressed.

'The devil himself chasing you, is he?' the deep, amused voice asked, brown eyes assessing her shrewdly.

'
No I'm sorry, really.
I
'm late for lunch. That's all.' Anna longed to resume her wild run but the dark man's hand was still holding her wrist, where her pulse was pumping away.

'Is lunch far away?' he asked, releasing her.

'Only Brightling Hill. If you will excuse me?' Without waiting for his permission, she scurried away. She wondered again, briefly, who the man was, but her thoughts were mainly for her mother, who was sure to be worried and distressed.

Mother
was
worried and distressed. Though distraught might have been a better word, Anna thought glumly, eyeing mother's pale, tear-stained face and shaking hands.

Jennifer Curtis had been an actress before
she
married and everything was over-dramatised. Even before her coronary every little setback was magnified a million times. Anna suspected her mother enjoyed acting, loved a meaty, tearful scene, but she would never voice her suspicions. Actresses and actors lived in a permanent world of make-believe, Anna reckoned, and who was she to insist they lived in this dreary world? Let Mother enjoy her scenes, insist on star-billing. If she was happy, then so was Anna.

The fact that Anna had no social life and few friends didn't matter just then, as she hugged her mother, smoothing back the still fine red-brown hair. Hair that was greying rapidly now, adding to her mother's grief.

'I got held up, Mother. I had to take an old lady to X-ray, then on the way out of the hospital I nearly knocked a man down!' Anna laughed, trying to cheer her mother up.

'Oh?' Jennifer's tears dried miraculously, as she signalled to Mrs Jenkins to bring in the lunch. 'What sort of man? A handsome consultant?'

'Well, he might have been,' Anna acknowledged slowly. 'Anyway he was well-built so I didn't knock him flying!'

Anna hurried upstairs to change, the brown-eyed stranger vanishing from her thoughts.

When a refreshed and well-fed Anna returned to the ward, she was immediately summoned to Sister's office, where Sister Noakes eyed her crossly. Anna's heart lurched as she met the cool gaze of Rick Alexandre, who was perched on a corner of Sister's desk, long legs swinging idly. He, too, appeared cross.

'Nurse Curtis,' Sister began, sharply, 'if you had some objection to working a split today why didn't you come to see me?'

Anna opened her mouth, but Sister waved her to silence. 'I have,' she continued, her scarlet mouth set, 'been taken to task by Mrs Lucas. She told me that no matter how short we are, first and second-years are not to do split duties. Except in emergency, of course. Unless . . .' She paused, and gazed reprovingly at Anna, who by now was beginning to see the light. Someone had obviously complained to Mrs Lucas, the Principal Nursing Officer (Education), and it didn't take much thought to work out who was the culprit.

'Unless,' Sister went on, 'the student agrees and provided it is only an occasional split duty. I was under the impression that you
did
agree, Nurse.'

'I did, Sister. Really. I could understand that you wanted your trained staff for Dr Tester's round, so I didn't mind,' Anna assured her. Sister raised her heavily-pencilled brows.

'Why, then, did you go behind my back and complain?'

'I did not, Sister. I. . . I happened to mention my split duty to someone else in my set and word of it must have got back to one of the tutors,' Anna explained hesitantly, not wanting to get Sheila or Bryan into trouble but not wanting to be in Sister's bad books, either.

'I see,' Sister said, doubtfully. Then she glanced at Dr Alexandre, who shrugged.

'The grapevine works quickly here. Or so I've found,' he said wryly. 'Even crediting me with a fiancée I haven't got!'

Sister laughed, good-humour restored, then told Anna she could go. Surprised and rather cross, Anna left, still wondering if Sister believed her. She was pleased to hear that the registrar wasn't engaged, anyway!

The evening hours were not long enough for everything that had to be done, Anna found. Ruth Barratt was on, she was glad to see, feeling that she had found a friend in the cheery nursing auxiliary.

'Mr Pearson has been moaning again, Anna,' Ruth said, chuckling. 'He's lost his lower set now, he claims. Says one of the nurses must have mislaid it.'

'That isn't true! He hides his dentures under the pillow, then complains when we put them in his locker!' Anna protested. 'I don't know why he doesn't wear them.'

'They don't fit, that's why. My father doesn't wear his dentures very often,' Ruth confided, keeping step with Anna as they walked down the ward. 'If people don't wear them for a long while then suddenly decide they will, often the dentures don't fit any more. The face changes shape without teeth to support it, as you know. Eventually the dentures seem too big and people go to their dentists, complaining that their false teeth don't fit their mouth any more!'

'It's their own fault for not wearing them regularly,' Anna agreed, wondering how she would cope if ever she had artificial teeth. It was something she didn't care to think about just yet!

Mr Pearson, of course, blamed Anna for losing his lower dentures. Although a miserable, unhappy man at the best of times, he seemed to take a special delight in annoying Anna, and took every opportunity he could to complain about her. As this was only her third day on the ward, she wondered ruefully what she'd done to deserve such treatment.

'You big 'uns are all alike,' Mr Pearson grumbled, as Anna patiently turned out his locker for him, but without success.

'I can't help being tall,' she pointed out, kindly. 'I'm sorry but your teeth aren't here. You didn't give them to your wife to take home?' she asked, hopefully, and was dismayed to see an angry red flush spread across the patient's cheeks.

'She ain't my wife and it's none of your business, you thieving monkey!' he cried, loudly enough to be heard in the office.

'Mr Pearson!' Anna said, severely. 'I don't
need
your dentures! There's nothing wrong with my own teeth. See.' She opened her mouth, displaying neat, even white teeth, and Mr Pearson had the grace to look ashamed.

'Well, they ain't here,' he muttered, picking up his newspaper and ignoring Anna's further efforts at conversation.

Who, she wondered, making her way to the day-room,
was
the big-boned woman who visited Mr Pearson so regularly? Visiting hours were very relaxed at St Aidan's, as the hospital authorities believed it was in the patients' best interests to have visitors at various times during the day rather than having them all sandwiched between seven and eight in the evening.

Despite her short time on the ward, Anna had seen Mr Pearson's visitor several times already so the woman obviously cared. She frowned, wondering if the big woman was his daughter. She just might be, but somehow Anna doubted it. Whoever she was, she deserved great credit for looking after such a miserable man!

Anna was soon engrossed in a game of ludo with two of the older men. The day-room was warm and comfortable, with plenty of old but still elegant armchairs and a settee, all donated by the local League of Friends.

One or two members of the League were coming in during the evening, and she'd been warned to keep an eye open for them. There were only two visitors in the day-room, both seemingly relatives so Anna relaxed a little.

When she won a hard round of ludo she beamed at everybody, pleased at her small success—the first that evening, and old Mr Mitchell chuckled.