tree by it where sparrows sat, waiting for the crumbs on the window sill. It had a wash-basin in one corner and a small gas stove in an alcove by the blocked-up fireplace. There was a small gas fire too, and these, according to Miss Phipps, added up to mod cons and a flatlet. The bathroom was shared too by the two flat-lets on the floor below, but since she was on night duty and everyone else worked during the day that was no problem. She dumped her shopping on the small table under the window, took off her coat, kicked off her shoes, stuck her feet into slippers and bent to pick up the small tabby cat which had uncurled itself from the end of the divan bed against one wall.
‘Mabel, hello. I’ll be back in a moment to get your supper…’
The phone was in the hall and to hold a private conversation on it was impossible, for Miss Phipps rarely shut her door. She fed the machine some ten-pence pieces and dialled her home.
‘Sophie?’ her mother’s voice answered at once. ‘Darling, it isn’t anything important; I just wanted to know how you were and when you’re coming home for a day or two.’
‘I was coming at the end of the week, but Sister Symonds is ill again. She should be back by the end of next week, though, and I’ll take two lots of nights off at once—almost a week…’
‘Oh, good. Let us know which train and someone will pick you up at the station. You’re busy?’
‘Yes, off and on—not too bad.’ Sophie always said that. She was always busy; Casualty and the accident room took no account of time of day or night. She knew that her mother thought of her as sitting for a great part of the night at the tidy desk, giving advice and from time to time checking on a more serious case, and Sophie hadn’t enlightened her. On really busy nights she hardly saw her desk at all, but, sleeves rolled up and plastic apron tied around her slim waist, she worked wherever she was most needed.
‘Is that Miss Phipps listening?’
‘Of course…’
‘What would happen if you brought a man back for supper?’ Her mother chuckled.
‘When do I ever get the time?’ asked Sophie and allowed her thoughts to dwell just for a moment on the man with the cold blue eyes. The sight of her flatlet would trigger off the little smile; she had no doubt of that. Probably he had never seen anything like it in his life.
They didn’t talk for long; conversation wasn’t easy with Miss Phipps’s wig just visible in the crack of her door. Sophie hung up and went upstairs, fed Mabel and opened the window which gave on to a railed-off ledge so that the little beast could air herself, and put away her shopping. What with one thing and another, there was barely time for her to get a meal before she went on duty. She made a pot of tea, opened a tin of beans, poached an egg, and did her face and hair again. Her face, she reflected, staring at it in the old-fashioned looking-glass on the wall above the basin, looked tired. ‘I shall have wrinkles and lines before I know where I am,’ said Sophie to Mabel, watching her from the bed.
Nonsense, of course; she was blessed with a lovely face: wide dark eyes, a delightful nose above a gentle, generous mouth, and long, curling lashes as dark as her hair, long and thick and worn in a complicated arrangement which took quite a time to do but which stayed tidy however busy she was.
She stooped to drop a kiss on the cat’s head, picked up her roomy shoulder-bag, and let herself out of the room, a tall girl with a splendid figure and beautiful legs.
Her flatlet might lack the refinements of home, but it was only five minutes’ walk from the hospital. She crossed the courtyard with five minutes to spare, watched, if she did but know, by the man who had retrieved her shoe for her—in the committee-room again, exchanging a desultory conversation with those of his colleagues who were lingering after their meeting. Tomorrow would be a busy day, for he had come over to England especially to operate on a cerebral tumour; brain surgery was something on which he was an acknowledged expert, so that a good deal of his work was international. Already famous in his own country, he was fast attaining the highest rung of the ladder.
He stood now, looking from the window, studying Sophie’s splendid person as she crossed the forecourt.
‘Who is that?’ he asked Dr Wells, the anaesthetist who would be working with him in the morning and an old friend.
‘That’s our Sophie, Night Sister in Casualty and the accident room, worth her not inconsiderable weight in gold too. Pretty girl…’
They parted company presently and Professor Rijk van Taak ter Wijsma made his way without haste down to the entrance. He was stopped before he reached it by the surgical registrar who was to assist him in the morning, so that they were both deep in talk when the first of the ambulances flashed past on its way to the accident room entrance.
They were still discussing the morning’s work when the registrar’s bleep interrupted them.
He listened for a minute and said, ‘There’s a head injury in, Professor—contusion and laceration with evidence of coning. Mr Bellamy had planned a weekend off…’
His companion took his phone from him and dialled a number. ‘Hello, John? Rijk here. Peter Small is here with me; they want him in the accident room—there’s a head injury just in. As I’m here, shall I take a look? I know you’re not on call…’ He listened for a moment. ‘Good, we’ll go along and have a look.’
He gave the phone back. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I took a look? There might be something I could suggest…’
‘That’s very good of you, sir; you don’t mind?’
‘Not in the least.’
The accident room was busy, but then it almost always was. Sophie, with a practised glance at the patient, sent the junior sister to deal with the less urgent cases with the aid of two student nurses, taking the third nurse with her as the paramedics wheeled the patient into an empty cubicle. The casualty officer was already there; while he phoned the registrar they began connecting up the various monitoring tubes and checked the oxygen flow, working methodically and with the sure speed of long practice. All the same, she could see that the man on the stretcher was in a bad way.
She was trying to count an almost imperceptible pulse when she became conscious of someone standing just behind her and then edging her gently to one side while a large, well kept hand gently lifted the dressing on the battered head.
‘Tut, tut,’ said the professor. ‘What do we know, Sister?’
‘A fall from a sixth-floor window on to a concrete pavement. Thready pulse, irregular and slow, cerebro-spinal fluid from left ear, epistaxis…’
Her taxing training was standing her in good stead; she answered him promptly and with few words, while a small part of her mind registered the fact that the man beside her had tied her shoelaces for her not two hours since.
What a small world, she reflected, and allowed herself a second’s pleasure at seeing him again. But only a second; she was already busy adjusting tubes and knobs at the registrar’s low-voiced instructions.
The two men bent over the unconscious patient while she took a frighteningly high blood-pressure and the casualty officer looked for other injuries and broken bones.
Presently the professor straightened up. ‘Anterior fossa—depressed fracture. Let’s have an X-ray and get him up to Theatre.’ He took a look at Peter Small. ‘You agree? There’s a good
