Dreaming. CHARLOTTE LAMB

laughed at himself again. Oh, come on! he told himself—stop thinking nonsense. At this time of the evening it was easy to let the imagination run riot, especially in a state of heightened excitement.

      She was neither a ghost nor a witch-girl. But she had a strange, unearthly beauty; he couldn’t help being curious about her and wondering what she had been doing, walking alone in the twilight garden. Who had she been waiting for? A lover? There had been a sense of urgency in her fixed waiting, the intentness of those blue eyes—and yet at the same time Zachary’s antennae, the intuitions of an artist accustomed to reading what lay behind people’s faces, had picked up no passion, no sensuality. There had been something else entirely in that face. What? he thought, frowning, trying to pin down his shifting impressions. Something almost nun-like: a purity in the oval of her face, in her widely spaced blue eyes, in her gentle pink mouth, as if she came from another plane, a spirit world.

      Zachary remembered Dana, grimacing. There was a world of difference between the two girls! Now, Dana...

      The road turned sharply on a bend at that point, and as Zachary began to take the corner a dark red car hurtled towards him from the other direction, but much too far over on Zachary’s side of the road. Zachary swore, stiffening and turning pale. He slammed on his brake, swinging his wheel sharply to one side, but there was no chance of avoiding the red car. He hit it with a crash that sent his van skidding and spinning right across the road through a hedge.

      He was flung violently forward, into his steering-wheel, his chest slamming into the padded leather.

      His seatbelt held, though. He was pulled sharply back again as the impact of the collision filled the world with the sound of splintering glass, rending metal, screaming. His head hit the side of the door and he slumped, dazed, half unconscious for a moment, then his nostrils twitched, inhaling a pungent scent.

      ‘Oh, my God...’ he groaned, pulling himself together as he recognised the smell of petrol.

      White-faced, he struggled to undo his seatbelt and get out of the van, but even as he felt the metal clasp give way, releasing him, there was a sudden whooshing sound and a wall of flame shot up in front of him. Fierce, searing heat blazed through the broken windscreen and Zachary gave a scream of agony as it hit him, his hands flung up in front of his face in a vain effort to shield himself from the flames.

      * * *

      The phone rang as Luisa was just starting out on her round, which had already been delayed endlessly by one crisis after another. She sighed as she picked up the phone. What else could go wrong? But her voice was soft and calm, betraying nothing of her thoughts. ‘Burns Unit.’

      ‘Sister Gilbey?’ The voice was familiar and a faint smile touched her mouth and eyes, changing her whole expression.

      ‘Yes, Mr Hallows,’ she said demurely, because in the hospital they always tried to keep their outward relationship professional. David sounded tired, and no wonder. He had been in Theatre for hours.

      ‘He’s in Recovery and he’ll be coming down to you in half an hour or so. I’m just sending you the papers. Considering the nature of the burns, he stood up to the operation pretty well. He’s fit and tough; he should pull through. Shock’s the immediate threat, of course. If he gets through the next twenty-four hours without a set-back the prognosis is hopeful.’

      Luisa listened, frowning, her blue eyes dark with compassion. She had worked on this ward for several years now and was used to seeing men, women, and, even worse, children, with horrifying injuries, their faces and bodies badly burnt, but she never became hardened by custom; she was still moved and disturbed by what she saw.

      ‘Lucky we aren’t rushed off our feet at the moment. I’ll be able to have one nurse monitoring him closely all night. Whatever nursing can do we’ll do for him, poor man.’

      ‘I know you will—you have a very good team down there,’ David Hallows said warmly, then paused before adding, in a lower and more personal tone, ‘Talking about not being rushed off your feet, does that mean you will be able to come to the dance on Saturday, after all?’

      He had invited her several weeks ago and she had been hesitant, warning him that she might have to work this weekend because her senior staff nurse would be on holiday and she had another girl away with a broken leg. The ward roster had had to be rearranged, and Luisa wasn’t sure whether or not she could get anyone to take charge of the ward on Saturday night.

      ‘Well, I’ve had to compromise, David,’ she said wryly. ‘I’ve arranged with Staff Nurse Jenkins from Surgical to do a split shift. She was on this ward for a long time before she moved to Surgical, so she knows the routine. She’ll work here from eight until two, and then I’ll take over and finish the shift.’

      ‘So you’ll come to the dance with me?’ His voice was pleased; she could imagine the smile on his calmly attractive face. David Hallows was not handsome, but he had a face people instinctively took to on sight. Warm brown eyes, set wide apart, direct and friendly; wide, placid cheekbones, a firm but kindly look to his mouth, and smooth brown hair—he was one of the most popular members of staff at Whinbury Hospital.

      ‘I’d love to! Thank you for asking me, David.’ Luisa had been out to dinner with him quite often over the past months, but they both knew that this invitation was different. At the hospital dance they would be very publicly paired off; everyone would be watching them, fascinated. In this closed community, people gossiped endlessly.

      ‘A pity you can’t have the whole night off! We could have gone on somewhere afterwards. Everyone else will be going back to Mack’s place, I gather.’

      She laughed. ‘They usually do.’

      ‘Ending up with bacon and eggs for breakfast at dawn!’

      ‘Poor Mrs Mack—she’s a long-suffering soul.’

      ‘She seems to thrive on it, and being the wife of the chief consultant gives her a lot of status,’ David said drily.

      ‘I like her; she can be very kind.’

      ‘Hmm...well, she throws her weight around too much for me—thinks she’s Queen of Whinbury. I don’t like bossy women.’

      Luisa’s eyes were amused; this confession was not news to her. She had seen David bristling whenever Mrs MacDonald appeared at the hospital. That regal manner didn’t worry Luisa, who had spent her training being ordered around by autocratic senior nurses, but she knew it put David’s back up.

      He yawned then. ‘Oh, well, I’m going to bed now, but I’m on call all night, if I’m needed.’

      ‘You must be dead on your feet, poor David—I hope I won’t have to wake you up. Sleep well.’

      David hung up and Luisa replaced the phone and left her office. The ward was shadowy, curtains drawn around some of the beds, one of her nurses sitting constantly beside a patient who was still on the danger list. Some beds were empty, stripped down to the plastic cover and smelling strongly of the disinfectant with which they had been washed. In others, patients lay rigidly like Egyptian mummies, their bedclothes carefully raised over a cradle so that no weight should lie on their bodies. They were afraid to move: lay there, trapped in pain, only the sheen of their eyes as she walked past betraying that they were alive and awake, and suffering. Luisa walked from bed to bed on almost noiseless feet, at her customary measured pace, used to the half-dark of the ward, the pools of yellow light here and there. She whispered gently to those who were awake, soothed, promised pain-killers, paused to watch those who slept before walking on again.

      She liked working at night. There was a very special feel to a ward during those long dark hours when the rest of the world slept, and only you were awake. You came much closer to the patients than you could during the day. Then they had their guard up, were better able to hide their fears and anxieties. At night, though, they were at their lowest and needed reassurance, to know that they weren’t alone with their pain. She had become a nurse because she wanted to do a job that was more than just a way of earning money, and helping very ill people get through the long night made Luisa feel that she