sat down on the edge of her desk and cast his eyes casually over its contents. Humphrey’s diet sheet was still lying there and he picked it up.
‘Good God, who’s this for? A bit drastic, isn’t it? I didn’t know any of my patients were on a diet.’ His eyes were suddenly frosty.
‘They’re not, sir, it’s for me,’ and at his enquiring look: ‘Humphrey thinks I’m overweight…’
Mr Grenfell said strongly: ‘Bunkum and balderdash, does he want you to fade away? You’re perfectly all right as you are.’
Eugenia said seriously: ‘Well, I’m the right weight for my size—you must have noticed that I’m—well, big.’ She sighed. ‘Most women these days are awfully slim, like wands.’
‘So I’ve noticed.’ He tore the diet sheet across and got up. ‘You can tell your Humphrey what I’ve done. Now shall we take a look at this girl—Barbara, isn’t she? Any news as yet as to who stabbed her?’
‘None, sir, and she refused to say a word to anyone about it.’
He grunted deeply to himself, and when they reached the girl’s bed, spent ten minutes there, joined by Harry, who had been warned that his chief was on the ward. Eugenia stood impassively while they examined Barbara, doing everything expected of her with a minimum of fuss. At length Mr Grenfell drew himself up to his great height. ‘I think we’re out of the wood.’ He took Barbara’s hand in his and smiled kindly at her. ‘You’re going to be all right, my dear, although you won’t feel quite yourself for another few days. I’ll see you again in a day or so, and Mr Parker will look after you, together with Sister.’
He turned away with Harry and at the ward door bade Eugenia a polite good morning in a remote manner, leaving her standing there with very mixed feelings. He had behaved in a most high-handed manner, tearing up her diet sheet in that fashion—and what was more vexing, she had had no chance to so much as protest. Truth to tell, he had seemed so different from his usual self that she hadn’t quite known how to take him. Until now she had never taken a lot of notice of him; she had admired him as a surgeon, agreed with everything everyone said about his good looks, even felt a little sorry for him because he seemed, in her eyes, to be marrying the wrong kind of girl, but she had very seldom thought of him as anyone else but a surgeon for whom she worked. Indeed, she could hardly remember an occasion when he had discussed anything else with her but the condition of his patients. She found it vaguely unsettling.
It was a good thing that she didn’t see Humphrey that day, for she hadn’t made up her mind what to say to him; he was going to be put out, even angry, although he was never actually bad-tempered with her. All the same she shied away from having to tell him. And she still had to let him know that she wouldn’t be free on Friday afternoon.
They met the next morning when she was on her way to X-ray and he was coming down from the Medical Wing. He said at once: ‘How’s the diet?’ and smiled in a satisfied way.
‘Well,’ began Eugenia guiltily, ‘I haven’t started it yet, in fact I’m not going to—Mr Grenfell says…’
‘What the hell has Grenfell got to do with it?’ demanded Humphrey so sharply that she stared at him.
‘I’ll explain,’ she said, and did so, making light of the whole thing.
‘He had the nerve to tear my diet sheet up?’ Humphrey usually so pleasant, looked like thunder, and she said smoothly:
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Such a little thing to fuss over…’
‘I never fuss,’ he reminded her coldly, ‘and it’s not a little thing—’ He looked her magnificent person up and down. ‘If you chose you could be as slim as that lovely girl he was dancing with.’
Eugenia caught her breath. Humphrey had never spoken to her like that before; even if he didn’t mean it, and she was sure that he didn’t, it hurt. At the same time it hardened her resolve to stick to her guns. She said quietly: ‘Don’t be silly, Humphrey. If you don’t love me as I am, you know what to do.’
She turned on her heel and marched off down the corridor.
She was far too busy to give it another thought that day. An elderly woman with multiple chest injuries after a road accident came in before lunch, and needed to be got ready for an emergency operation, and when Mr Grenfell came to examine her, he was wholly concerned with his patient, and so for that matter was Eugenia. And there was a bewildered elderly husband to deal gently with. He drank cup after cup of tea, quite unable to take it all in. ‘She was only popping down the road for the groceries,’ he told Eugenia. ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’
Eugenia comforted him and offered him a bed for the night, and phoned sons and daughters who ought to be told. ‘If anyone can get her well, it’ll be Mr Grenfell,’ she assured him, and meant it.
The woman came back from theatre just before supper and Eugenia stayed for a while until the night nurses had got the other patients settled. By the time she got off duty it was too late to meet Humphrey; perhaps that was as well, she mused, going soft-footed through the Hospital towards the nurses’ home; they’d be able to laugh together about the whole thing in the morning. She was in bed, half asleep, when she remembered that she had never told him that she wouldn’t be free on the following afternoon.
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