The Convenient Wife. Betty Neels

still,’ he told her. ‘The glass is out. I’ll put in a few stitches as soon as the local acts.’ He stared down at her. ‘Have you had ATS injections?’

      She nodded. ‘The last one about three months ago.’ She added urgently, ‘I’m going to be sick.’

      Someone tucked a bowl under her chin and the professor, taking no notice, began his stitching. Presently he cast down his needle. ‘That should take care of it,’ he observed. ‘Go home and go to bed, you’ll feel more the thing in the morning. See your own doctor.’ He smiled suddenly at her. ‘You were in a lot of pain, were you not?’ He said to someone she couldn’t see, ‘Get this young lady back home in an ambulance, will you?’ Then he nodded at Venetia, patted her shoulder with a surprisingly gentle hand, and went away, dismissing her from his powerful mind, already battling with the quite different problems of the operation he intended to do on the boy with the damaged brain.

      Venetia watched him go, head and huge shoulders above everyone else, his registrar beside him. It must be nice, she reflected, to give orders to people knowing that they would be carried out without any trouble to himself, although, she conceded, it was only fair that anyone with as brilliant a brain as his should be spared the mundane tasks of everyday life.

      Her rather hazy thoughts were interrupted by a brisk staff nurse.

      ‘You are to go home and go to bed for the rest of the day. Will you tell me where you live, and I’ll see if I can get an ambulance to take you?’

      Venetia opened her eyes. ‘The nurses’ home. Here.’

      ‘For heaven’s sake! Why on earth didn’t you say so hours ago? Whatever will Sister Bolt say? You should have told someone.’

      ‘Who?’ asked Venetia politely. ‘When you were all up to your eyes with the badly injured. And I’m perfectly able to go over to the home by myself.’

      ‘Don’t you dare. Professor ter Laan-Luitinga will raise the roof in his nasty cold way if he hears that he hasn’t been obeyed to the letter. I’ll fetch Sister Bolt.’

      Venetia closed her eyes again, trying to shut out a threatening headache. Sister Bolt was a veteran of St Jude’s and, although Venetia had never worked in Casualty, she knew that its senior sister had a Tartar’s reputation. It was therefore surprising when that lady’s amazingly sympathetic voice made her open her eyes once more.

      ‘Nurse? What is your name, and which ward are you on?’

      ‘Forbes, Sister and I’m on Watts Ward.’

      ‘You will stay here until the home warden comes for you. I will have a word with her. You fainted.’

      ‘Only because someone accidentally leaned on the splinter, Sister.’

      Sister Bolt said kindly, ‘You poor child. Very painful. You had better have the rest of the day off. Eight stitches inserted by Professor ter Laan-Luitinga…’ She uttered the words as though conferring an honour upon Venetia, and went on, ‘Did you become unconscious when the bomb exploded, Nurse?’

      Venetia drew her mousy brows together, thinking hard. ‘No, Sister. It surprised me, and I was blown off my feet, but there was a stand of winter woollies by me and they fell on top of me, so, except for the glass, I’m perfectly all right.’ She added apologetically, ‘I do have a headache.’

      ‘I’m not surprised. The professor has left instructions as to your medication. When you have been bathed clean and are in bed you will be given what he has ordered.’

      Sister Bolt sailed away, and very shortly the warden arrived. She was a nice, cosy, middle-aged lady who clucked sympathetically over Venetia and hovered round in a motherly fashion while she was transferred to a wheelchair, wheeled briskly into a lift, and then over the bridge which separated the hospital from the nurses’ home. Her arm began to hurt, and she was grateful to Miss Vale for the speed with which she got her into a bath, where she was soaped and sponged and then sat with her eyes obediently shut while her hair was washed. She felt much better when she was clean once more, and as Miss Vale turned back her bed she said, ‘I do hope all the other people in Cas have someone to help them.’

      ‘You may depend upon it,’ said Miss Vale cheerfully. ‘In you get, and I’m going to get you a nice cup of tea and some toast and give you those pills. You’ll feel as right as rain when you’ve had a good sleep.’

      So Venetia had her tea, nibbled at the toast and took her pills, and presently she slept. The October afternoon was sliding into dusk when she woke to find Sister Giles from her ward standing at the end of her bed.

      ‘Feeling better?’

      She was another nice person, thought Venetia, still half asleep. A bit brisk, but perhaps one got like that when one had been running a busy surgical ward for years.

      ‘How’s that arm?’

      Venetia levered herself up in bed. ‘Quite comfy, thank you, Sister.’

      ‘You’re on duty at seven-thirty tomorrow. I can’t spare you for two days off, but take tomorrow and come on duty the day after, Nurse. The ward’s bulging, and I’m having to cut off-duty for a few days.’

      ‘I’m sure I could come on duty tomorrow, Sister—’

      ‘If anything were to go wrong with your arm Professor ter Laan-Luitinga would be most annoyed. The day after will do; there’s quite a lot you can do with one arm.’ She added with kindly briskness, ‘Bad luck, Nurse Forbes. Luckily it’s no worse.’ She breezed to the door. ‘They’re bringing you something to eat. Have a quiet day tomorrow.’

      The prospect of a day in bed was inviting, the prospect of a meal even more so. When Miss Vale came presently with chicken and creamed potatoes, and a delicious cold pudding which Venetia felt sure she must have pinched from the doctors’ supper table, she ate the lot. When the day staff came off duty various of her friends came to see her and, over cups of tea, discussed the day’s excitement, sympathised with her and expressed envy that she had been stitched by the professor, who, as one of her friends pointed out, concerned himself with complicated operations on brains and left the easy stuff to lesser men. ‘Gosh,’ she added, ‘it must have been worth it. Did he say anything?’

      ‘He told me to lie still.’

      Her friends smiled at her in an indulgent fashion. Venetia was well liked both by her second-year set and by those junior and senior to her. She was good-natured and hard-working, and not in the least interested in catching the eye of any one of the house doctors, and when someone pointed this out to her she merely said that she hadn’t time. ‘I simply must get trained and get on the register,’ she had pointed out. ‘Besides, I’m not very exciting to look at, am I?’

      A truth which her friends kindly denied while privately agreeing with her.

      ‘I cannot think,’ she observed to her companions over a last very strong cup of tea, ‘why everyone is so scared of Professor ter Laan-Luitinga. He’s only a man, after all, and he doesn’t even live here. I mean, he’s kind of international, isn’t he? Here today and gone tomorrow.’

      Caroline Webster, the acknowledged beauty of their set, spoke kindly because she liked Venetia. ‘If only he’d stay for a month or two instead of the odd week here and there, Venetia darling. He isn’t only a man, he’s every girl’s dream.’ She peered at her pretty face in Venetia’s dressing-table looking-glass. ‘I wonder if he’s married, or has a girl? Such a pity that no one knows a thing about him.’

      Someone asked, ‘Are you sure that’s all he said to you, Venetia?’

      ‘Oh, he asked if I’d had ATS injections.’

      ‘What a waste,’ moaned Caroline. ‘Couldn’t you think of something to say?’

      ‘No, and I was being sick…’

      Horrified laughter greeted her, so loud that the night sister, coming to see that Venetia was all right, bade them all