the Dutch girl agreed; she would lend a nurse for a few minutes to show her the way to her room.
“Tomorrow we treat you better, Sister Dawson,” she said kindly. “Today is bad, no time to yourself, for I must ask you to stay on duty until the night nurse comes on, but tomorrow do not come on duty until ten o’clock, so that you will have an hour or two to yourself. I think that Professor van Tijlen told you that he wishes that you stay on duty until midnight; it is better for the patient, you understand? It will be a long day for you, but there is a good nurse to relieve you, and after the first day it will be easier. Now if you wish to go to your room? and when you return we will go to supper together.”
Fair enough, thought Charity, accompanying the little nurse detailed to take her to the Home where she was delighted to find its dull exterior concealed a very modern and bright interior. Her room was on the fourth floor in the Sisters’ wing, an airy, fair-sized room, nicely furnished and with the luxury of a shower concealed in one of its cupboards. The little nurse, whose English was fragmental, having pointed out this amenity with some pride, grinned, said “Dag, Zuster,” and scuttled off, leaving Charity to tidy herself. She would have liked time to unpack, but it seemed she was to have none for the moment; she wasted no time therefore in getting back to the ward, where she found Zuster Doelsma bowed over the Kardex.
“I’ll just go and see Mr Boekerchek,” Charity suggested. “When do you want me back?”
“Supper in ten minutes,” the Dutch girl smiled at her. “That is a funny name which your patient has.”
Charity chuckled. “Yes, I expect his ancestors came from Russia, but the Arthur C. makes it very American, though, doesn’t it?”
Mrs Boekerchek was on the point of leaving. “But I’ll be here tomorrow—about six o’clock, that nice young doctor said.” She looked anxiously at Charity. “You’ll be here, won’t you, honey?”
Charity assured her that she would. “I’m coming on a little later in the morning and I shall stay with Mr Boekerchek until quite late in the evening, and there’s a very good nurse to relieve me at night, so don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
Her companion’s pleasant elderly face crumpled and then straightened itself at the warning: “Now, baby,” from the bed, and Charity turned her back and busied herself with the flowers, thinking that she wouldn’t much like to be addressed as baby, not by anyone—anyone at all; the professor was hardly a man to address anyone endearingly… She checked her galloping thoughts, telling herself that she must be tired indeed to allow such nonsense to creep into her head, and bestirred herself to accompany Mrs Boekerchek to the lift at the end of the corridor, where the little lady clasped both her hands and asked: “It is going to be OK, isn’t it, honey?”
“Of course,” Charity sounded very certain of it. “Professor van Tijlen is just about the best surgeon for this particular operation, you know.”
Her companion nodded. “I’m sure he is—such a dear kind man, too. He came today and explained to me just why he had to operate on Arthur, and when I cried like the old silly I am, he was so comforting. I trust him completely.”
Charity, diverted by her speculations concerning the professor comforting anyone; made haste to answer and was a little surprised to hear herself agreeing wholeheartedly with Mrs Boekerchek, and still more surprised to find that she believed what she was saying, too.
She met a number of the Dutch Sisters at supper; they all spoke English in varying degrees of fluency and she found herself with more invitations to do this, that and the other than she could ever hope to have time for, so that she went back to Mr Boekerchek quite cheered up; even if she wouldn’t have much time to go out, at least the other girls were friendly.
She set about the routine of getting her patient ready for the night and when the night nurse, one Willa Groene, arrived, a sturdy fair-haired girl of about her own age, she relinquished him to her with a relief which, though concealed, was none the less real. It had been a long day—and a surprising one, she reminded herself as she was on the verge of sleep.
Mr Boekerchek wasn’t in a good humour when she reached his room the next morning. His surly “What’s good about it?” in answer to her own greeting told her all she needed to know. His surliness, she had no doubt, hid a nasty attack of nerves; that terrible last-minute rebellion against a fate which had decreed that the only way out was to trust the surgeon. She had encountered it a hundred times: it passed swiftly but she had learned to help it on its way. She began the task of doing just that. There was quite a lot to do before they went to theatre; and she began, with cheerful calm, to do the numerous little jobs which would lead finally to his premed, talking unhurriedly for most of the time, pretending not to notice his silence, and after a while her patience was rewarded; he asked about her room in the Nurses’ Home and was she being well treated?
“Like a queen,” she assured him, and led the conversation cunningly away from hospital. She had succeeded in making him laugh, telling him about the professor’s Lamborghini and her father’s opinion of those who travelled in such splendid cars, when she realized that there was a third person in the room—the professor, filling the doorway with his bulk and looking as though he had been there for some time. He had.
“Your father’s stricture makes me feel every year of my age,” he remarked good-humouredly as he advanced to the bedside. “My only excuse for driving a Lamborghini is that I was given one when I was twenty-one, and twenty years later I haven’t found a car I like better.”
“What about a Chrysler?” asked his patient, quite diverted from his own troubles.
“A good car—but I think that I am now getting too old to change.” He stared at the wall, thinking his own thoughts. “Perhaps—if I were to marry—the Lamborghini is hardly a family car.” His manner changed and he began at once to talk to Mr Boekerchek, to such good effect that that gentleman remained cheerful until the moment he closed his eyes in the peaceful half-sleep induced by the injection Charity had given him.
The theatre, when they reached it, reminded her forcibly of quite another sort of theatre; there was the audience, peering down through the glass above their heads, and the instruments, while not the musical variety, tinkled musically as they were laid out in their proper places. Charity, who had remained with her patient in the anaesthetic room, his hand comfortably fast in hers, took up her position by the anaesthetist and watched Mr Boekerchek’s unconscious form being arranged with due care upon the operating table. This done to Theatre Sister’s satisfaction, a kind of hush fell upon the group of people arranged in a kind of tableau in the centre of the theatre.
Into this hush came Professor van Tijlen, dwarfing everyone present, his mask pulled up over his splendid nose so that only his eyes were visible. He paused by the table, greeted Theatre Sister, said a few words to his registrar, murmured briefly to his houseman, hovering nervously, stared hard at Charity—a stare which she returned in full measure—and turned his attention to his patient.
Charity watched him make a neat paramedian incision and then, stage by stage, demonstrate his actions to his audience. It was a pity that she couldn’t understand a word he said, but she was kept so busy that it didn’t really matter; blood sugar samples had to be taken every fifteen minutes, blood pressures had to be read, and the anaesthetist kept her on her toes with his requirements. But she managed, all the same, to see something of what was going on. The professor was a good surgeon, with no pernickety ways; he was relaxed too, even though his concentration was absolute. There was a little sigh of satisfaction as he found and removed the adenoma which had been the cause of Mr Boekerchek’s illness; he spent some time searching for any more which might be there, with no success—presumably everything was as it should be;
