A NURSE FOR DR. STERLING, by Ruth MacLeod

Chapter 1

He sensed the change of speed and altitude before the signal, in words of green light, announced it was time to fasten seat belts and stop smoking.

We’re there already! The brevity of the jet flight from the east coast hadn’t surprised him, but on this two-motor job from International Airport, he’d hoped for a little more time to assemble his thoughts.

Seeing that his hand wasn’t quite steady as he stubbed out his cigarette, he forced the fingers to relax, willing the same limpness into the muscles of his arms, shoulders, neck and the jaw that had clenched persistently since the first disastrous day of the trial that had gone so surprisingly and appallingly against him.

Peering from his window in the tail section, he watched the miniature town ahead grow to full size. Spanish architecture predominated, the red tile roofs partially hidden by tall palms and a lush growth of trees and shrubbery that seemed remarkably leafed out for February.

So that was Las Lomas, where he might manage to pick up the pieces of his career.

A wry grin slanted his tense mouth. The friends he’d left in the snowbound east would probably call him lucky to be here. Then the mild feeling of descent was intensified to sharp pain as he yearned to be back at his burgeoning practice in the modern suite of offices his grandfather’s bequest had provided, the incredible damage suit just a nightmare from which he could awaken; the word, malpractice, something he couldn’t possibly believe would ever be charged against him.

Luxurious homes gave way to orange groves and patches of bare new housing projects as the plane glided into a last low circle before landing at the airport which was some distance from town. He waited until all the other passengers had filed down the aisle, then leisurely gathered his belongings. He couldn’t stifle a certain reluctance over this meeting with Graham Burns whom he hadn’t seen for nine years, and whose help he had never expected to require. Nine years ago it was Dr. Burns who had desperately needed help. And Grandfather Sterling had generously bestowed it. This meeting was no doubt considered the discharge of an old obligation—but it was still irksome to have to be on the receiving end.

He was the last passenger to descend the steps and pass the waiting stewardess. “Nice flight,” he told her perfunctorily, scarcely hearing her gay, professional, “Glad to have you aboard, Dr. Sterling!”

He searched the crowd beyond the fence as he walked slowly to the gate, a tall, slender young man whose slight stoop had been recently acquired during the grueling ordeal in court. His eyes were dark brown, and bitter under the bright attention he tried to blink into them as he picked out his friend in the crowd.

Nine years had done things to Graham Burns. He’d grown heavier, his head more leonine, the shaggy, curly hair almost pure white now—and he was still in his early fifties. Though sun-browned and rugged, there were too many lines in his face, underlying the beaming smile as he came forward, hand outstretched.

“David!” he exclaimed. “David Sterling! I can’t say, ‘My how you’ve grown!’, yet you definitely don’t look like the stripling student I saw last.”

It seemed hardly tactful to tell Graham he’d changed too, for the change couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called an improvement. Nor could the change in my circumstances, David thought, and their mutual cognizance of that change swamped them with embarrassment as David tried to murmur something noncommittal.

Dr. Burns turned to the man beside him. “Cyril, David Sterling. David, this is Dr. Claibourne, head of the clinic I wrote you about. I think you’ll enjoy working with us.”

“Providing I qualify,” David said, then immediately wished he could bite the words back. There was no need of his being so damned modest. He was as good a doctor as he’d ever been, the unjustified verdict in an outlandish damage suit couldn’t change that!

“You’ll qualify!” Burns declared with a little too much enthusiasm. “Ever since you wrote me, I’ve been telling Cyril of your splendid record, your love of medicine from the time you were a little boy tagging your grandfather around on his calls. The thing that happened to you… Well, but for the grace of God, and a steady run of good luck… Well, anyone…”

Letting Burns’ chatter run down, David met the steady blue eyes of the other doctor. Larger than Burns, Dr. Claibourne was better proportioned. Probably older, too, though he didn’t show it. Almost bald, he seemed to trying to make up for the lack of hair on his head by a lush, old-fashioned mustache that gleamed white against his somewhat florid face, and scarcely hid the delicate curve of his thin lips. He and Burns both were hatless and wore casual, very unprofessional looking sports clothes.

“We’ve had a report from your Medical Society and State Board,” Claibourne said quietly, “and a transcript of the trial. We’ll discuss it on the way to town. My car’s over here.”

It was a long black Lincoln with a chauffeur waiting at the wheel. Clinic business must be pretty good, David reflected, but it did nothing to raise his spirits. Money had never been a prime consideration when he decided to study medicine.

“Well, now,” Dr. Claibourne said when they’d settled down in the back of the Lincoln, “I’d like to hear the case history from you just once—then we’ll forget it. According to your attorney, there was nothing to indicate massive spongioblastoma when the patient came to you for a complete physical.”

“Nothing whatever. Of course, if I’d done a spinal puncture I’d have caught it—but there was nothing to give me an idea one was indicated at that time, or an electroencephalogram either. His reflexes were all normal, and there was no disturbance of vision, probably because he’d lost the sight of one eye by retinal detachment. Otherwise he’d have suffered double vision and I’d have considered the probability that his symptoms were neurological rather than psychological.”

David paused, remembering the big, strapping electric company lineman with the body and muscular co-ordination of a boxer, a black patch over the eye in which only a scrap of distorted vision remained, the other eye filled with bewilderment as he made the shamefaced admission that he’d been having some “goofy daydreams—like my imagination went haywire” since taking over the housework so his wife could earn their living.

“Never was sick a day in my life, doctor,” he’d said, “until a red curtain shut down on half the sight of one eye and they stuck me in a hospital for an operation. Nearly killed me. Not the operation—I didn’t mind that. But they had me flat on my back with my head held steady between sandbags and I thought I’d go nuts! I ought to be glad now just to be up and around, but it’s tough not having a job. Everything I know how to do is something that might cause the same thing in the other eye, so my wife got her old job back—she’s a crack stenographer—and I fiddle around the house. I don’t really mind—only a big strong guy like me washing dishes, ironing the kids’ clothes, running the vacuum… I began to get these funny feelings.”

It had been while he was vacuuming a rug that he’d experienced his first disturbing episode.

“Oh, I’d had a sort of depressed feeling now and then before that,” he’d said, “but nothing I couldn’t shake off if I went out for a round of golf, or something. This time it seemed like I was hearing music off somewhere that wouldn’t quite run to a tune, then I thought I was out in space looking down at myself and I’d become an old, old man. It made me so depressed and sad I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of the house and walk around until the feeling wore off.”

There’d been other, similar episodes that didn’t seem too surprising in a man accustomed to vigorous activity, forced now by his endangered vision to do sedentary work. In addition he was in his late forties, at an age where a man sometimes may be afflicted by the sort of neurotic symptoms that occasionally accompany the menopause in a woman.

“So you prescribed hormones,” Dr. Claibourne said as David paused thoughtfully in his report.

“Yes—and it was probably the worst thing I could have done. But his blood-pressure, pulse, respiration, and temperature were all normal, his heart action fine and strong without a trace of a murmur, his chest expansion close to seven inches, blood count negative for any abnormalities, also abdominal and rectal examination. Chest X-ray…”

“I know—it’s all in the report.” Dr. Claibourne gave him a sharp glance. “You never saw the patient again?”

“No. I made a follow-up appointment for three weeks later, thinking I’d send him to an alienist then if the episodes persisted and no physical symptoms had developed. But a week before the appointment was due, he phoned to cancel it. Said the hormones had done the trick. He was feeling much better. His wife’s vacation had been rescheduled and they wanted to take the kids on a camping trip. He sounded so much better and more cheerful I thought it would be safe enough to postpone his appointment for a couple of weeks. He didn’t keep that appointment, and no one answered the phone when my nurse tried to call to remind him. When my bills went out at the end of the month I got his statement back with a bitter letter from his wife, charging me with having missed the boat completely in my diagnosis of her husband’s condition. He’d become suddenly worse while they were camping and was virtually paralyzed by the time they got him to the hospital. At her writing he was close to death following surgery for brain cancer. She figured I should have discovered it in time to save his life.”

David faced Dr. Claibourne squarely. “I honestly don’t believe that an operation on the day I first saw him could have saved his life. Might have prolonged it somewhat, in a state of partial to complete paralysis and mental deterioration. It was only eight weeks after I saw him that the craniotomy revealed a growth so massive it took up half the cerebral space, shoving the brain over to one side. The man had an unusually large skull; pressure didn’t build up early, and that’s probably why the initial symptoms were so mild. Plus the fact that he was in such good health otherwise, I suppose.”

“What the devil was the matter with your lawyer?” Burns expostulated. “He should’ve won your case!”

David drew a shaky breath and smiled. “The patient’s wife had a shrewd lawyer, too—and the damaging testimony of the surgeon.”

“I know.” Burns nodded. “Walter Peck. He’s had it in for you since the time you beat him out of that scholarship. But you won it fairly. Surely he wouldn’t stoop to perjury to get back at you.”

“He didn’t have to. All he had to do was decline to justify my failure to come up with the right diagnosis. Their lawyer did the rest, including the implication that the man would have been alive and well, had I sent him to a competent neurosurgeon right away.”

“Like Walter Peck!” Burns said wryly. “So they honked you for damages. What rotten luck!”

“I wouldn’t mind the money so much. If an oversight, or error in judgment, caused the family financial difficulties in addition to their grief, I was willing to help them, even though it left me broke. What knocked me out was the damage to my professional reputation. I was just getting a good start in my practice, but I had very few patients left by the time the trial was over. That’s why I wrote to ask you what the possibilities would be for a practice out here where I hope no one has ever heard of me.”

“I think you’ll like our set-up here,” Dr. Claibourne told him. “My father founded the clinic, but I no longer own it alone. It’s a cooperative affair, which I believe is a safeguard for patient and doctor alike, giving the patient the benefit of more than one expert opinion. It would virtually preclude the sort of disaster you’ve just experienced. We have no clinic beds, but use the facilities across the street at the Las Lomas Community Hospital. It’s a fine hospital, and could be still finer, I believe, if we had more clinic doctors on the staff to cooperate in a few innovations to improve standards of procedure and equipment. What we’re most in need of now is a promising young general surgeon. I understand you specialized in surgery, then dropped it for further study in diagnosis and internal medicine.”

“Yes, that’s right.” David squirmed inwardly; he’d hoped this wouldn’t come up. “A few trying experiences—nothing I goofed on myself, particularly, but a combination of things that convinced me I didn’t want to face a lifetime of a surgeon’s responsibility. I figured that medication and diagnosis were more in my line. And as a result,” he chuckled harshly, “I guess I blew my first big test.”

“Then I hope you’re willing to give surgery another try. I need a clinic surgeon who can not only make staff across the street, but qualify above Elwood Browne. I’m not saying anything against Browne as a surgeon; he’s done some brilliant work. But we don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of hospital procedure, and he’s considered a prime candidate to succeed Stan Matthews, the chief of surgery, who’s due for retirement soon.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’re picking a rather lame duck for such an ambitious flight?” David couldn’t hide the bitterness.

“If you considered yourself a lame duck—yes.” Claibourne’s tone was dry. “A surgeon needs confidence in himself. I’m making my offer on the strength of reports I’ve received, and Graham’s hearty recommendation. I hope you’ve sent your forms and fingerprints ahead to the California Board. Since you weren’t deprived of your license back home, there should be no problem getting it here. And if a period as clinic associate proves satisfactory, you’ll be offered full cooperative membership. That is, of course, provided you want to accept a position now on the terms I’ve laid down.”

“I’ll accept!” David said fervently. “I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t!”

Chapter 2

“Come on out to the patio for a drink as soon as you’ve changed into something comfortable,” Graham said at the door of the room he’d declared was at David’s disposal for as long as he needed it.

“Thanks, I will—and you’re sure it isn’t an imposition for me to…”

“Wouldn’t think of letting you go anywhere else. For one thing, there are angles to the clinic and hospital set-up I’d like to discuss. And you must meet my wife.”

“Oh, I remember Mildred well! It’ll be good to see her again. Has she gone back to nursing now that the kids are grown?”

A stiffness came into Graham’s manner as he moved further into the room, smoothing back his thick white hair. “That’s what I wanted to explain before…that is… Mildred has gone back to nursing, all right. In fact, she’s superintendent of nurses at the hospital. But… This will surprise you, David, but Mildred and I are no longer married.”

David felt his jaw drop. Of all the marriages he’d expected to endure, that of Graham and Mildred Burns could have headed the list. He remembered Mildred as a large, capable, delightful woman, genial, but with a quick, sincere sympathy that won the confidence of patients, doctors, and friends. She’d been a graduate nurse before Graham finished medical college, and her work had financed the rest of his education after their marriage. She’d postponed a family until his practice was well established, then devoted herself to rearing a couple of the best behaved children David had ever known. Mildred wasn’t a beautiful woman, but her personality made looks unimportant—and it had always seemed to him that she and Graham were deeply in love.

“I—I can hardly believe it,” he murmured, wondering how one should reply to this sort of announcement. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“It’s just one of those things,” Graham said, averting his glance. “We outlived our marriage, maybe became different persons from the boy and girl who once needed each other. Mildred took it very well when she understood, and of course she’s making a good life for herself.”

“Of course. Where are the children?”

“They’re not children any more. Don’s at U.C.L.A. and Peggy at Pomona. They didn’t approve of the divorce, but kids can’t be allowed to run their parents’ lives. I’ve married again. Coralee’s having a golf lesson this afternoon, but she’ll be along soon.

“Well,” he started for the door, “I’ll go mix us a drink.”

David blinked at the closed door for a moment, then turned his attention to the room. It was constructed and furnished in Spanish style like the rest of the house, and bore distinctive marks of affluence. As David showered in a bathroom that was half onyx tile and half mirrors, he couldn’t throw off a sense of hurt on Mildred’s behalf. Maybe it was as Graham had said; they outgrew their early love. But it seemed a dirty shame, after the financial struggles they’d been through, that they couldn’t enjoy these years of luxury together. Naturally she “took it well.” She was that sort of person. But she didn’t deserve to be junked because a younger model had come along—if that’s what had happened. David found himself resenting Coralee already.

The sunlight was dappled by the slender leaves of a white-trunked eucalyptus tree when David, attired now in gray slacks and a blue sports shirt, stepped through the sliding glass doors to the patio. Graham sat beside a kidney-shaped swimming pool, surrounded by an array of garden furniture. He gestured lazily toward a plastic-webbed chaise and handed David a cocktail from a portable bar.

“Let’s drink to your future in Las Lomas. I think Cyril liked you, right off. I can tell whether he’s pleased or not.”

“You’re the one who counts,” David said sincerely. “I hope you’ll never be sorry you recommended me for…”

“Don’t give it a thought! We need a smart young surgeon, and I’ve heard from friends back there that you did some remarkable work as resident. I can’t understand why you…”

He stopped, his face lighting, as a golden yellow convertible pulled into the carport beside the house, parking next to the conservative black Buick that occupied the other half.

David thought at first the girl at the wheel must be Graham’s daughter, back from Pomona. But he remembered Peggy as definitely blond, and the curls this girl wore tied back with a gauzy scrap of yellow scarf were ebony black.

“Here’s Coralee,” Graham said in a hushed tone that just missed being reverent. David knew he was staring, but couldn’t take his eyes off the girl as she stepped nimbly out of the car.

She wore tailored white shorts and a pale yellow sweater that fit her slim form snugly. She looked definitely more than Peggy’s age now, probably in her mid-twenties, and as beautiful a girl as David had ever seen.

“So you’re David,” she said when Graham introduced them. Her voice was in such flat contrast to her appearance that it brought him out of his near-trance and he could breathe normally again.

“Graham says I can help you find an apartment,” she went on in a tone that had neither resonance nor depth. If he had heard her first on the telephone, David thought, he’d have pictured her as a dull, drab, dishwater blonde, probably chewing gum.

“That would be nice of you,” David said cautiously, wondering if Graham had suggested, or simply consented to her offering help. “House-hunting’s a chore—but I don’t want to impose.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be an imposition!” Her eyes sparkled and her voice almost came to life. “I love looking at houses and apartments. You should have a bachelor studio—like some of those cute little houses in the Lomacita section.” She turned to Graham. “Don’t you think so?”

Instead of answering, Graham took her in his arms for the delayed kiss of greeting. Her response was no casual wifely peck. She lifted her arms to circle his neck as her lips parted beneath his and her lithe body tilted against him. Graham pulled her fiercely close, and David tore his gaze away from them on a surge of feeling that was half embarrassment, half vicarious thrill.

When Coralee had gone inside saying she’d be back for a cocktail as soon as she got into dinner clothes, Graham sighed deeply and sat down.

“Isn’t she a knockout?” he asked, picking up his drink and staring at the glass doors through which she had disappeared. “I tell you, David, it’s like starting all over to fall in love with a girl like that. It’s added years to my life.”

Or has it added years to your age? David wondered, again noting the network of lines under his leathery tan. And what about Mildred? She must have had to start life over too, but with no enchantment.

“I have to admit you can still pick ’em,” he managed to say lightly; then, in a tone of wonder, he added, “Where the devil did you find her?”

“Right in the clinic, believe it or not! She came to Claibourne as a patient, and when he found she was down and out, he gave her a job. She’s a top steno, but that isn’t the career she wanted. She damn near starved trying to get into movies or TV after winning a beauty contest back home. You’d think a girl with her looks could make the grade—but I guess beauty’s a drug on the market in Hollywood.”

“I’d say it was her voice,” David suggested, and Graham shrugged.

“I suppose so. I’ve had her taking vocal lessons, and she can achieve a richer tone when she tries. But she keeps forgetting, and the natural flatness creeps back. I’m so used to it now I hardly notice—but I guess it did shut a lot of doors in her face.” He smiled brightly. “Which was a break for me. Without that sort of trouble she’d never have fallen for a guy old enough to be her father.”

David heard the shower running inside, and a surprisingly brief time later Coralee came out looking like a Polynesian. She wore a dark red Hawaiian sarong dress that left her smooth, golden-tan shoulders bare. Her straw sandals revealed scarlet toenails, each a perfect oval. Her hair, wet from the shower, was an onyx cap that broke into clusters of curls at her neck. David was stunned anew at the beauty of her face as she lifted the Manhattan Graham had mixed for her, and smiled.

“To your success in Las Lomas, David,” she said, her flat tones softened to little-girl breathlessness. Then their glasses touched, and she drained her Manhattan in a few swift gulps.

“Not enough bitters,” she said, handing Graham her glass. “But I’ll take another. Emily says dinner won’t be for an hour, so that gives me time to catch up with you. Let’s go inside. It’s getting chilly.”

The sun had disappeared behind a magnolia tree, leaving the breeze a little sharp, but David couldn’t feel cold while Coralee’s presence set his pulses pounding.

Cut it out! he told himself as they went inside. Surely he had better sense than to get steamed up over the wife of his best, and perhaps only, friend here.

A fire had been lighted on the hearth, and Coralee sat on a pillow in front of it while Graham poured them each another drink. When he sat down, she moved her pillow close to rest against his knees.

“Where shall we start looking for David’s new home?” she asked, tilting her head to give her husband a smile that somehow had the intimacy of a caress. “If you won’t need the convertible tomorrow we’ll start out first thing.”

“Really, it won’t be necessary,” David protested, becoming alarmed at the idea of spending time alone with her. “I’ll find something.”

“Don’t be silly!” She cut him off lightly. “You won’t even have a car till they measure you for size and equipment. The bus service in this town is lousy. Too few people need it. And I come cheaper than taxi fare. Don’t I, darling?” Her voice was hushed again as she gave her husband the intimate smile.

Graham laid a caressing hand on her hair, then dragged his attention back to David. “What she means is that Cyril likes his clinic doctors to use cars equipped with safety belts and telephones. You won’t be going out on ordinary house calls. That is, if a stranger phones and wants a doctor, you refer him to the clinic office or the Physician’s Exchange. But there will be a few calls necessary among your regular patients, and it’s imperative that the clinic and hospital be able to get hold of you when you’re out in your car. Coralee will drive you to the agency that supplies us, and he’ll take your order. Then you might as well let her help you find a house or apartment. She has a wonderful faculty for tracking them down. Besides, if she’s made up her mind, you can’t escape.”

They smiled at each other in a way that momentarily left David out. When they came back to him, he started asking questions about the clinic and the hospital, trying to keep his mind, as well as his eyes, off the fascinating creature who lounged at Graham’s knees. She made it no easier by training her eyes on David, so that every time his glance strayed her way it was caught by her warm, probing gaze.

Las Lomas Hospital, David learned, as he struggled to keep his attention on the subject, was a two-hundred-and-twenty bed and twenty-eight bassinet edifice, founded in 1900 and incorporated in the State of California as a nonprofit charitable institution.

“Some day this week I’ll take you to meet Kurt Miller, chairman of the board,” Graham promised. “And if you drop around by the hospital tomorrow I’ll introduce you to Jimmie Bristow, the administrator, a good example of what it does to a man to remain a bachelor too long. Not that he isn’t highly efficient, and a fine fellow, but…oh, well… There’ll be a staff meeting Friday night, so you’ll meet your medical associates then. And… But to get back to this bachelor business…” His eyes narrowed quizzically. “How have you escaped marriage so long?”

“I don’t like that word ‘escaped’, darling,” Coralee chided, her sultry mouth pouting a little. “It makes women sound so—so predatory! Maybe Dave just hasn’t found the right girl.” She turned to him, her dark eyebrows arched inquiringly.

“I found her,” David said, his voice low with hurt that was diminished now, but had never quite left him, and perhaps never would.

“You remember Diane Pritchard, don’t you, Graham?” he asked.

“John Pritchard’s little girl? Sure, I remember. A sweet, blue-eyed child with golden hair. You mean she was old enough for you?”

“She was twenty-one when we discovered she had a congenital heart condition—Patent Ductur Arteriosus.”

“I know what that is,” Coralee broke in. “I learned a lot while taking dictation at the clinic. It’s when a big blood vessel that bypasses the lungs in an unborn baby, fails to close off after birth.”

“That’s right,” Graham told her, then he frowned at David. “Couldn’t it be ligated? It’s been done successfully even at that age, if no other cardiac anomalies are present, and if bacterial endocarditis hasn’t already set in.”

“I know. They ligated, and everything seemed to go fine. Two of the best heart surgeons I know did the job exactly as I’d have done it, but with more experienced skill. That’s when I decided to give up surgery, I guess—though I’d already considered it. A few days after the operation the duct ruptured and recanalization took place around the ligatures. Multiple pulmonary emboli developed and she was dead in two weeks. It was concluded on autopsy that the ligature had been tied too energetically. But how is a surgeon to know at just what degree of stress a ligature will hold without injuring a congenitally fragile duct?”

“A surgeon can’t berate himself for errors like that!” Graham said sharply. “It can’t even be called an error if he has used his highest skill and best judgment. That particular ligation is a gamble in an adult, anyway. It should be done when a child is four or five years old.”

“If it’s discovered, yes, but…”

“Excuse me, Dr. Burns!”

They all turned to the doorway where a plump woman had appeared. “Excuse me,” she repeated. “But dinner is ready.”

“Thank God!” Coralee exclaimed, scrambling nimbly to her feet. “You doctors were getting too damned technical!”

* * * *

David spent the rest of the week looking for a place to live, getting his bearings around the clinic, and preparing to start his own practice on Monday. He usually joined Graham for lunch and met various persons he would be working with: the Drs. Sam and Ida Brainerd, man and wife, who handled gynecology and maternity, Dr. Wilcox, the urologist, Dr. Deane, the pediatrician. He was introduced at a hospital staff meeting, and at a board meeting. He met the clinic technicians and office personnel, and supervised the refurbishing of the offices he would occupy. And he negotiated for a car.

Aside from that, his time was spent mostly with Coralee. Each morning after Graham had left to make hospital rounds, they set out in the yellow Ford convertible, answering ads, consulting real estate agents, and wandering through one house or apartment after another.

They confined their house-hunting to morning hours, leaving the afternoons for recreation. One was spent on the golf course of a beautiful country club where the fairways were green hills fanning out to the ocean. Another was spent at the Tennis Club where rows of courts were lively with players. One afternoon they rented horses from a swank academy and followed woodsy trails into the hills. On warm afternoons they usually ended with a swim in the Burns’ heated pool.

Coralee was fine company, and Graham didn’t seem to mind that she was spending most of her time with David.

In fact, he encouraged it so cordially it would have been embarrassing to protest.

“Have a good time while you can,” he told David heartily. “Monday you’ll have to buckle down to work. Your license will be in order, and Claibourne has you set up for hospital rounds. So, whether your car’s delivered and you’ve found an apartment or not, your drudgery begins. Meanwhile you couldn’t find a better guide than Coralee to help you get acquainted with Las Lomas. And take your time deciding on a house. You’re welcome here.”

He settled on a place Saturday, not because it was superior to all others, but because he knew further search with Coralee would be dangerous.

Their Lomacita agent was too busy with a buyer that day to bother with rentals, so he loaned David and Coralee the key to a small, studio-type house that had just been vacated in a wooded setting, and they drove there by themselves.

David liked the place right away. It was furnished in severe, masculine style, but with an eye to comfort. The huge, beam-ceilinged living room occupied the whole first floor, except for a small bath and a bachelor-size kitchenette and bar. An ornamental wrought-iron-railed stairway led to a bedroom and bath upstairs. As he followed her up, David was too sharply conscious of the slim thighs and delicately rounded buttocks undulating in tight red slacks just ahead of him.

“If you like seclusion,” she said as they came back down the stairs, “this should suit you fine. And there’s plenty of room for entertaining, too.”

She opened the french doors onto a flagstone terrace, beyond which a small yard was enclosed by a tall laurel hedge. He was standing directly behind her, breathing fragrance from the dark cloud of her hair. She turned suddenly, apparently not realizing he was so close, for as she swung about she bumped into him. He caught her shoulders to steady her against the jolt—and found himself too shaken to let go.

“David…” she whispered, then caught a sharp breath that ended on a whimper as she leaned against him, lifting her mouth so tantalizingly close he was kissing her before he could regain his control.

The next moment he had thrust her away and they were staring at each other wildly.

“I didn’t mean to do that!” he choked. “Graham’s the best friend I’ve got!”

“I know!” Her voice was harsh. “He’s mine, too—but some things just can’t be helped. Oh, David…” she stepped close again, her eyes imploring. “What are we going to do?”

He backed away stiffly. “Were going to rent this place, so we won’t need to look any further. And we won’t be alone together again. It’s nothing but propinquity. Graham is just too damned trusting. But after what he’s done for me, I’m not going to thank him by making love to his wife! Come on, let’s lock up and go make a deal with the agent!”

Chapter 3

The Las Lomas Student Nurses’ Home was on the opposite side of the hospital from the Claibourne Clinic. It had been remodeled from an old church, and still boasted a belfry, though no bell had hung there for many years. Scarlet bougainvillea climbed the sunny wall, and English ivy thrived on the shady side, the two meeting in the belfry where the ivy tendrils wound into a tangle with thorny runners of bougainvillea.

The lower floor of the converted building housed the senior nurses and the comfortable lounge and recreation rooms. Janet Raleigh and her roommate, Fern McCall, were relegated to one of the smaller rooms upstairs, for they had finished their probationary period scarcely two weeks ago.

It was six-thirty in the morning, but the girls had already showered and dressed, then made up their narrow cots, folding the sheets envelope style at the corners the way Miss Crenshaw, their instructress, had taught them to make hospital beds.

“There now! We ought to pass inspection,” Janet said, passing a critical glance over the neat, sparsely furnished room.

She ran her handkerchief once again along the edge of the box-like dresser, to be sure it came off clean, then picked up her starched white cap and nestled it proudly on her head of short, tight, auburn curls, where it clung as if it belonged there.

“Gosh damn it, Jan, I wish my cap would stay on like yours!” Fern complained from her own dresser across the room, where she was struggling to anchor her cap on limp blonde hair with bobby pins.

Janet laughed and took another glance at herself in the wavery mirror. She knew that she was attractive in a pleasant, wholesome way, and that generally people liked her. In fact, she had never come up against any noticeable dislike until she had started her first assignment as a student nurse.

Remembering, she found herself facing the day’s work with something less than enthusiasm.

“I wonder if Mrs. Burns would transfer me to a different ward,” she said, starting for the open door past which other students were chatting on their way to breakfast.

“I doubt it,” Fern said through the bobby pins she held in her teeth. “Old Dizzy getting your goat again?”

“Dizzy Andrews is the right name for her!” Janet declared hotly. “How anyone so uncouth ever got to be ward supervisor is more than I can see! I bet she’d enjoy sticking pins in babies just to make them howl! If I don’t do everything exactly to suit her, she tries to make me feel like something that crawled out from under a rock! Ever since that first day when…”

“Miss Raleigh!” The stern voice at the doorway brought Janet around, her cheeks flaming, as she saw the housemother standing there. Mrs. Carson was reported to be a close friend of Daisy Andrews. At the moment, with her angular face set in hard lines, she looked ready to do battle for her friend.

“I—I’m sorry,” Janet stammered, “but I can’t help the way I feel about…”

“You can refrain from airing such feelings,” Mrs. Carson told her furiously. “I’ll have you know that Daisy Andrews became head nurse by doing her work with skill and competence, and she learned that by respectfully following the advice and commands of her superiors. With your contemptuous attitude, you won’t last long here, I can tell you! Miss Andrews noticed it the very first day you…”

“I wasn’t contemptuous that day! I merely…”

“Don’t argue with me, young lady. Just learn to hold your tongue and do what you’re told, if you want to be a nurse. Hospital discipline, like army discipline, has to be strict, for safety’s sake and also to weed out the unfit. So if you don’t want to be weeded out quickly…”

She stalked off, leaving the sentence dangling like a threat.

Janet drew a shuddering breath and tried to grin. “Well, that’s telling me. I would open my big mouth! But my opinion stands. I don’t care how good a nurse Miss Andrews is, she needn’t treat the rest of us like worms!”

Fern jabbed one more bobby pin into her hair, grimaced at her thin face in the mirror, then linked her arm in Janet’s as they left the room. “We’d better hurry. We’re late for breakfast already, and we don’t dare be late on duty. I know how you feel about Andrews, but if you got a transfer you’d still have to come back to finish your stint on Second Annex before you graduate.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t be there by then.”

“Fat chance! She’s a fixture from what I hear. She’s some relation to the chairman of the board, I think—and they say the administrator, old Bristow, is sort of sweet on her. You’ll just have to put up with her, Jan. It’s tough, all right, and Andrews is extra hard on you because of the way you spoke up to her that first day.”

At the end of her first day’s work after probation, Janet and Fern had been called to the nurses’ station, along with the two newly-capped four-to-twelve nurses, for a stiff little lecture about nursing procedure on Second Annex. Miss Andrews had stood them in a row and sat facing them, a lean, handsome woman in her forties with straight black hair in a tight bun under a net.

“You may have heard that I’m unusually strict,” she had said pompously, and Janet couldn’t repress a giggle, thinking that was putting it mildly. As a “probe” she’d heard so much about the unrelenting tyranny of “Dizzy” Andrews that her heart sank when she read her first assignment on the bulletin board.

Janet’s nervous little giggle—hardly more than a catch of her breath—had subsided quickly under the baleful glare Miss Andrews turned on her.

“This does not happen to be funny, Miss Raleigh,” she snapped. “I consider it a matter of pride to maintain Second Annex as the finest and most efficiently operated ward in the hospital—or any hospital. That means I will not tolerate careless or slovenly procedure by untaught young women who think they can come here and turn in any sort of a sloppy job…”

“Sloppy!” Janet had exploded on an indignant breath. All day she had tried especially hard to do everything exactly the way Miss Crenshaw had demonstrated each task.

“That’s what I said!” Miss Andrews retorted. She turned to Fern. “Miss McCall, what did you do with each patient’s washcloth and towels and bath blanket after his bath?”

Fern looked miserable. Avoiding Janet’s concerned gaze, she said, “I rinsed out the washcloth and hung it on the rod with the towels. I folded the blanket and put it in a drawer.”

“Good.” Miss Andrews turned a saccharine smile to Janet. “What did you do with your patients’ towels, washcloths and blankets, Miss Raleigh?”

Janet saw her mistake. She’d precisely followed the bath procedure she’d been taught, but if there’d been any instruction concerning disposal of the equipment afterward, it had been lost to her under her old habit of dumping everything in the laundry at home.

“So,” Miss Andrews said tartly after Janet admitted her mistake, “if your patients need any sort of cleaning up attention the rest of the day, fresh towels and washcloths will be necessary, and each floor is issued only so much linen every day.”

“Then why didn’t someone tell me?” Janet burst out. “Anyway it’s such an unimportant, inconsequential thing to make such a fuss over!”

“Unimportant?” Miss Andrews stood up, seeming to tower over her. “Nothing is unimportant, Miss Raleigh, that serves to maintain a well-run hospital. You’re here to learn what needs to be done, not to tell us which rules are unimportant. Any more of your impudence and I’ll recommend depriving you of your cap.”

She had switched to another subject, and Janet had prudently kept still. But ever since that day she had felt the supervisor’s watchful, critical eyes upon her, rendering her so self-conscious that she was guilty of a few awkward mistakes she would not otherwise have made. And no matter how hard she tried, she had yet to receive a word of commendation, though in her studies and practical demonstrations under Miss Crenshaw, she had made the highest grades in the class.

The first thing Janet always did on reporting for duty, was to pick up her list of bed-bath patients from the desk. Today she found she had an entirely new list—none were patients she’d bathed before. Checking closer, she saw that a couple were patients usually trusted only to Karen Carruthers, the senior nurse.

“Think you can handle it?” Miss Andrews had come up behind her. “We’re short-handed today. It’s Carruthers’ day off and her relief is sick, so we’ll have to divide up her work.”

“I’ll do my best, Miss Andrews,” Janet promised. Miss Andrews gave her a frosty smile and Janet wondered if Mrs. Carson had reported the impulsive remarks she’d overheard. When she realized who the patient in Room 242 was, she couldn’t help but figure he had been assigned to her with malicious intent. Janet had heard the other nurses talk about him as the sickest, most miserable, cantankerous, and obnoxious patient on the floor. Janet hadn’t had to answer his calls herself, and knew only that his name was Arnold Crane and he was a post-appendectomy, having been brought in for emergency surgery due to ruptured appendix about eight weeks ago.

Knowing he would require extra time, since he hadn’t recovered as expected, and his condition was still serious, Janet left him to the last. She tried to hurry through the other baths, but since they were unfamiliar cases, and more demanding than her usual patients, she was late getting to Arnold, and afraid she’d never finish before the doctors came to the ward to make rounds.

The boy on the bed, with head-rest and knee-rest both raised to prop him into the Fowler position, couldn’t be much older than she. Probably about nineteen or twenty, she surmised. His rope-brown hair, badly in need of barbering, hung in clumps over his forehead, and stood up in untidy sheaves at the back of his head. His face was drawn and so thin the high cheekbones showed through the skin. His bony hands were clawing at the covers.

“What took you so long?” he whined in a voice that rasped along her already taut nerves. “I’ve kept calling and calling and they kept saying you’d be here soon, but it’s almost eleven o’clock!”

“I’m sorry. I came as soon as I could. I have other patients too, you know.”

“They aren’t as sick as I am. Miss Carruthers always does me first.”

She folded the spread and blankets to the foot of his bed, shook the bath blanket out over him, then slid the top sheet out from under it. “I’ll do you first next time,” she said, “if that’s what you want. I thought if I got the others out of the way I’d have more time to spend on you.”

“Am I gonna get well?” he asked her querulously.

“Of course you are! That’s why we’re here—to help you get well. Shall I put your bed down flat now?”

“No! I can’t be flat! I had peritonitis!” The urgency went out of his voice and he stated flatly, “I don’t think I’m gonna get well. Every day I feel sicker. It hurts—right here.” He laid his hand on his side and implored her, “What makes it hurt so bad?”

“You’ll have to ask your doctor,” she said. She untied his bed jacket at the back of his neck and gently pulled it off of him, then tucked the bath blanket up around his shoulders. “I’m just here to give you a bath and clean linen.”

She filled the basin with steaming water, laid the bath towel on the bed beside him and drew his long, painfully thin arm from under the bath blanket to wash it thoroughly. Speaking only when she had to answer his fretful questions, she progressed through the rest of the bath.

Then she tackled the N-shaped bed, wondering how she could possibly get the under-sheets on smooth with the mattress humped up. She loosened the soiled drawsheet, the rubber sheet under that, and the full-size sheet that covered the mattress and pad, rolling them lengthwise toward the middle of the bed to make as neat a roll as possible against the length of his body. Then she made up her side of the bed with clean linen, folding the other half along the roll of soiled linen.

“Now you’ll have to roll over onto the clean sheets so I can make that side of the bed,” she told him.

“I can’t roll over,” he whined. “It hurts to move.”

“Come on. I’ll help you.”

She sat on the bed to reach under his arms, and placed her hands firmly at the back of his shoulders, hoping she could hoist him further up on the raised head of the bed as she pulled him toward her.

Instantly his feverish arms went about her neck, clinging tight. She was almost overcome by the stench of his illness.

“Brace your feet and push yourself up as I lift,” she panted, tightening her hold to heave his thin torso upward.

“Oh, nurse, I’m so sick…” he moaned, making no effort to help himself, so her own struggle moved little but his shoulders, and left him slumped further down in bed.

“You didn’t try!” she scolded.

“I can’t—I hurt so! Kiss me and make it well!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” She tried to draw away, but his arms clung like burning thongs.

“Please, nurse… I’m going to die! Give me just one kiss to take with me—then I’ll push with my feet. I promise!”

Exasperation was clawing at her. She was already late. She’d heard doctors’ voices in the hall and knew they’d be in here soon. She couldn’t be caught like this, or with the bed in a mess. Andrews would have a fit!

“Look here, Arnold, I haven’t time to…”

“It won’t take long—then I’ll feel so much better I can help you. Please…?”

She felt like shaking him—yet at the same time, pity was gnawing at her. There was no doubt in her mind that he was desperately ill and might not live much longer. His breath and body odor were redolent of death.

She tried again to pull away, but his arms clung feverishly. With a sob of desperation she touched her lips briefly to his burning cheek. But that wasn’t enough. Planting his claw-like hands at the back of her head, he brought her mouth down to his parched lips for a long, nauseating moment before he let her go.

As she staggered back from the bed, gasping and pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, he inched his way over onto the clean sheets.

“You—you…” she gulped, glaring at him in fury.

“Don’t scold me, nurse,” he whimpered. “I needed that—and it didn’t hurt you none.”

She shook off her nausea and got back to work. After all, the poor kid was probably too sick to know what he was doing. But she’d see that he didn’t trick her like that again!

She hurried to finish the other side of the bed, but she still hadn’t cleaned the room when the whole procession came in, and in spite of her struggles with the bed, it looked far from neat.

She recognized Dr. Claibourne by his white mustache and bald head. She’d seen Dr. Matthews, chief of surgery, and guessed that the other familiar-looking doctor was Dr. Browne, the surgeon who, according to Arnold Crane’s chart, had performed the appendectomy. She knew Dr. Cole, the resident, too, and it was simple to identify the tall, lean, good-looking stranger as the new doctor she’d heard discussed in the dining room. Dr. Claibourne introduced him to Arnold as Dr. David Sterling.

Mrs. Andrews brought up the rear, her eyes sternly disapproving as she saw the unfinished state of the room.

“Whatever have you been doing with your time?” she scolded. “You should have attended to this patient first thing—and even if you left him till last you should be done before this! And do you call that bed properly made?”

“I—I’m not used to making a bed in that position,” Janet faltered.

“Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you roll it down flat? There are no orders against it now! Are you stupid? Or just lazy?”

Janet grabbed up the dirty linen and fled from the room. But even in her blind haste she couldn’t avoid the eyes of the new doctor who’d been standing near the foot of the bed. There was an unmistakable glow of compassion there as he watched her flight, and she found her heart pounding with embarrassment.

Chapter 4

David watched the little red-headed nurse rush out, her cheeks flaming. What sort of battle-axe was this head nurse, to bawl a student out in front of a patient and a group of doctors?

He turned his attention to the chart Dr. Browne handed him.

“I performed an emergency appendectomy here eight weeks ago,” Browne was saying. He was a small rotund man, excessively neat in his grooming, meticulous of manner, with a mouth like a button hole. “A gangrenous appendix lay behind the ascending colon. The pathology report is there.” He flicked over a thick sheaf of the chart pages.

“A drain was inserted temporarily,” Browne continued, “and we’ve controlled peritonitis with antibiotics. His progress has seemed satisfactory at times, yet each time he’s about ready for discharge, he flares up with chills and fever, and complains of pain again. We’ve used prontolyn, intravenous mercurochrome, and whole blood transfusions, but he continues to lose weight and run a low-grade fever. Poor appetite from inactivity might account for it. I’m about to write him off as psychosomatic at this stage.”

David cast a quick glance at the boy who was listening intently, his eyes wide and round as an owl’s in his skeletal face. Did Browne always speak as frankly as this before his patients? The kid probably didn’t dig the technical terms—but he was getting the gist of things.

David handed Browne the chart. “I’d like to study that a little further, outside. But first, may I palpitate the epigastrium?”

“I wish you would, doctor! Make any examination you like!”

Browne spoke cordially, yet there’d been a tenseness about his mouth ever since Matthews suggested that David join the consultation on Arnold Crane. David understood that Browne had asked for the consultation with Matthews and Claibourne because he was nonplussed over the case—but that didn’t mean he would welcome the opinion of a rank newcomer.

“Where does it hurt, son?” David asked, as Miss Andrews neatly folded covers and bed-jacket back to expose the emaciated young body.

“Right here,” Arnold whined, touching claw-like fingers to his abdomen. “I can’t get a good breath without hurting.” David pressed his hand against the liver and the boy bleated with pain.

“Has there been any jaundice?” he asked, looking up at Browne.

“No, and blood culture is still negative.

David finished his examination and the doctors went out to the hall. “What about the X-rays?” David asked. “May we see them?”

“We haven’t had him to X-ray since the laparotomy,” Browne replied. “The films and fluoroscopy then showed only a suggestion of some infiltration at the right base, suggesting perinephric or subphrenic abscess. But as I told you—no abscess was found. We don’t want to go through all that again. I tell you, I think the boy’s neurotic—maybe psychotic.”

David set his jaw grimly. He’d thought that about a patient once—to his great dismay afterward. “I believe it’s a mistake,” he said, his voice a little sharper than he intended, “to ascribe illness to neurosis before every physical source is thoroughly checked. I noticed on the chart that the patient suffered one severe chill before entry for the appendectomy. Sometimes when there’s a chill like that during the onset of an attack of acute appendicitis—Well, have you considered pylephlebitis? It’s my opinion there may be an abscess at the portal vein. I’d suggest a new set of X-rays, another blood count, and a check of the icteric index.” He turned to Matthews. “What do you think, Doctor?”

Matthews took the chart and thumbed through the pages, stopping here and there to frown over an entry. He was a tall spare man about sixty, looking far too young and fit to retire, David reflected.

“I think Dr. Sterling may have something,” he told Elwood Browne. “At least his idea is worth checking through.”

“As you wish, Doctor,” Browne answered stiffly. “But it rather looks to me like another futile laparotomy coming up—and if we cut that boy open again, he may not survive!”

“That’s true,” David thought sharply as they went on to another patient. Remembering how terribly wrong he’d been about a case once, his self-confidence took a nose-dive. But he couldn’t back down now. He had expressed a diagnostic opinion based on his years of study and prior experience that told him he was absolutely right. If further tests didn’t bear him out, the boy was Browne’s patient—there was no compulsion to operate.

“But it’s pylephlebitis as sure as my name is David Sterling,” he told himself stubbornly. An inflamed condition of the portal vein, possibly originating, or extending into the liver. With that history, and those symptoms, it just had to be! They’d been looking for infection below the liver and kidney because the ruptured appendix had started it. X-ray might not reveal the exact location of the abscess this time, either—but if they didn’t operate, he was willing to wager anything that an autopsy would disclose one at the portal vein.

He said as much to Claibourne as they were discussing it later at the clinic. “But I can see,” he added, “that Browne disagrees radically.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Dr. Claibourne replied with a placating smile. “I think Elwood simply hates to risk further surgery with the boy in such a weakened condition.”

“The longer he waits, the worse his condition will be. If he fools around with the idea it’s psychosomatic and takes time for a psychiatrist to work him over…”

“I think he has more basis for that idea than appears on the chart,” Claibourne broke in. “He’s been talking to the parents, and other relatives. The boy has always been a little off-beat, they say. There’s a good chance he’s subconsciously prolonging this illness because it’s a cover for the inadequacies that have plagued him.”

David shook his head. “That may be, but I wouldn’t want to depend on it. If the boy gets much worse, he’ll be beyond the help of surgery. I believe it’s justified right now. X-rays may not be convincing, or lab tests either, no matter how sure I am in my own mind.”

“Well, in that case,” Claibourne said, “it will be up to Browne, of course. But when doctors disagree, it always presents a challenge, and however the case turns out, that boy will have received a much more complete examination than would have been likely without a dissenting opinion. Which definitely improves his chances for survival. That’s what I meant about a clinic set-up offering a safeguard for both doctors and patients. And of course,” his smile was friendly, “I’m hoping your diagnosis turns out to be correct. It will be good for your own self-confidence, as well as for Stan Matthews’ confidence in you.”

Had Claibourne engineered this as a test? David wondered. If he had, David told himself with a chuckle, I stuck my neck out, but good!

He looked around his newly renovated, intricately equipped treatment and consultation rooms, modern like the rest of the clinic—and so far advanced from the shabby little rooms where his grandfather used to practice.

He could have a fine career here, providing he didn’t ruin his chances by some fluke the very first thing.

Just then Graham Burns poked his head in at the door.

“You’ll have to ride home with me again tonight, Dave,” he said genially. “Your car hasn’t been delivered yet. But Coralee said they just phoned and promised it tomorrow for sure. You about ready to leave?”

“I’ll take a cab later,” David told him. “And I’ll postpone moving my gear to my own diggings until tomorrow, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure, fine! You’ll be home to dinner, won’t you?”

“No, I’ll have a bite over at the hospital. I want to go over the Crane kid’s chart again, and check the lab and radiologist’s reports. I’ll see you later.”

No use postponing his extra study of the case until tomorrow, he reflected as he crossed the street to the hospital. Doing it tonight would serve two purposes. It would give him a jump on Browne and Matthews when they studied the reports together tomorrow. And it would keep him away from Coralee another evening. The less they saw of each other the better.

Chapter 5

Janet picked up her list of bed baths from the desk and scanned it anxiously. Thank heaven! Room 242 wasn’t included, nor any of the difficult patients she’d had yesterday. Karen Carruthers must be back on duty, and Janet could return to the type of patients she could handle more easily.

She was just leaving the desk, however, when Miss Andrews came up, frowning. “We’re short-handed again today, Miss Raleigh. I’ll have to divide your patients up among the other nurses, and you can take over treatments.”

“T-treatments?” Janet repeated. Her heart began to race. It wasn’t unheard of for a green student nurse to handle treatments and medication, but she hadn’t expected such an assignment from Miss Andrews. Usually it was saved for the senior students; and considered a high form of commendation when handed to a fledgling.

“Yes—treatments!” Miss Andrews snapped impatiently. “You’ve been taught to give medication, assemble trays, and attend doctors, haven’t you? Your list is posted in the treatment room.”

“Yes, thank you!” Janet hurried to the spotless white treatment room. A sterilizer was hissing in one corner, and she knew one of her first jobs would be to remove the instruments and lay them on sterile glass shelves ready for use, or wrap them in sterile towels as needed on the trays she was to assemble. There was a hopper on one wall, flanked with counters and a sink. Cabinets lined other walls, among a variety of portable machines. She removed the covering sheet on the treatment table in the middle of the room and replaced it with a clean one, then turned her attention to the list of trays to be set up.

There were to be two catheterization trays, three enemas, and one boric compress. Those were easy. There was also to be a tray each for several specific surgical dressings, and one for a spinal puncture.

In the big pocket of her blue-and-white-striped uniform she carried a small folder listing the items necessary for each tray. She checked the list as she worked, to be sure everything was set up exactly as she had been taught by the instructress. She took time out at eight o’clock to prepare a tray of medicines according to the list on the door of the medicine cabinet, and gave each patient the prescription ordered. Then she came back to finish setting up the trays before the doctors came in to make rounds.

The treatment room was in order, the trays set up ready for use and covered with clean or sterile towels, when the first doctors arrived. Miss Andrews accompanied them on their rounds, and was still busy with them a few minutes later when Dr. Burns came in with the new young doctor who had witnessed her mortification yesterday.

“Dr. Burns, Dr. Sterling,” she murmured breathlessly, hoping her cheeks weren’t flushing, “Miss Andrews is busy, but I’ll accompany you if…”

“Is the spinal ready for Mr. Gamer?” Dr. Burns asked.

“Yes, Doctor—it’s all ready,” she told him, selecting the spinal tray from the counter and setting it on a stand.

“Not here,” Dr. Burns said. “No use moving him. Just set screens around the bed and we’ll do it out in the ward. Dr. Sterling’s going to assist. You’ve met Dr. Sterling?”

Without waiting for either of them to answer, Dr. Burns started talking to Dr. Sterling about the case. Janet held sterile gloves and tied sterile gowns on each of them, then rolled the tray, on a wheel-based cart, down to the ward.

By the time the doctors followed her she had the screens set up around the bed for privacy, the patient curled up on his side, his back at the edge of the bed, the lumbar region painted with merthiolate, and she was rechecking the tray for all the necessary items. The spinal punctures were usually done in the treatment room, where extra items were easily available. Of course, there was also a table of supplies at the center of the ward, if the doctor should ask for something not on the tray. She supposed his decision to do the puncture here was because of poor old Mr. Garners arthritic condition—it was painful for him to move.

“You didn’t want him to sit up?” she asked Dr. Burns. That was usually the position for the beginning of the puncture where the treatment table was used, but it would hardly be practical in this case, she reasoned.

“That’s right,” Dr. Burns said, his smile approving her preparations. “This is fine. Look, Dave, at the deformity of this fourth lumbar.” He went on talking as he picked up the small hypodermic she had prepared to anesthetize the site of the puncture.

Suddenly Dr. Burns turned to the tray, gave it a quick glance and said, “Bring me the usual Hoffman’s, will you please? Stat!”

Janet gulped and hurried around the screen to the table in the center of the ward. Hoffman’s, she thought—Hoffman’s! What did he mean? What did he want? She should have asked him, but he’d taken it for granted she knew, he probably thought she was one of the more experienced nurses—so she took a chance on finding something labeled Hoffmann’s on the center table. There were bandages, gauze pledgets, sponges, instruments…

“What are you waiting for?” Dr. Burns had stepped out from behind the screen to call to her. Janet was about to ask him to explain more fully what he wanted, when Miss Andrews came stalking over leaving the two doctors she’d been attending at another patient’s bed.

“What is it, Doctor?” she asked solicitously.

“I wanted the usual dose of Hoffman’s anodyne,” he said apologetically. “I guess I should have been more specific, but I thought…”

Miss Andrews swung to Janet. “You won’t find it standing there,” she said crisply. “Go to the medicine cabinet in the treatment room, measure out 4cc’s and bring it back.”

She found the bottle quickly. Hoffman’s Anodyne—Compound Spirit of Ether. She was sure she had never heard of it before, but if Dr. Burns had said, “Spirit of Ether”, she would at least have known where to look. She wouldn’t have been searching the center table for an instrument or dressing.

Miss Andrews was still with Dr. Burns when Janet returned. “I’ll take over here,” she told Janet coldly. “Go on with the rest of your work. And next time you don’t understand a request, have the common sense to ask what is meant; don’t just stand around like a dumbbell wasting the doctor’s time!”

Once again Janet caught the new doctor’s compassionate glance as she turned away, and her cheeks burned more hotly than ever. By now he must surely figure her for the dumbbell Miss Andrews had called her.

That won’t be the last I’ll hear of it from Andrews, either, she thought as she went back to the treatment room. She’d be lucky if she were allowed to remain on medication the rest of the day, and she’d probably never be treatment nurse on Second Annex again. Maybe Andrews just gave her the job today in hopes of showing her up as stupid. Well—she’d succeeded.

She blinked back the tears of frustration and did one of the scheduled catheterizations. It was the first one she’d ever attempted, but Miss Crenshaw’s instructions had been explicit, the patient was cooperative, and Janet had no trouble.

She was feeling better by the time she returned to the treatment room with her tray. But her spirits sank when she saw Miss Andrews there in a scowling conference with Karen Carruthers.

“Come here,” Miss Andrews said sternly. “I want Miss Carruthers to tell you something.”

The senior nurse looked embarrassed. She was a big-boned blonde who flushed easily.

“I don’t like to be a tattletale,” Miss Carruthers said, beginning to fidget, “but I just couldn’t believe—surely you wouldn’t—I mean…”

“Oh, come on, Miss Carruthers, out with it!” Miss Andrews snapped. “Tell her what your patient in 242 told you.”

Arnold Crane, Janet thought, beginning to feel a painful pounding under her ribs. What had that obnoxious, pitifully sick boy said about her?

“When I started to help him move over to the clean side of the bed,” Miss Carruthers said through tense lips, “he asked me to—to kiss him! When I refused, indignantly, he said the nurse yesterday had sat on the bed and hugged and kissed him!” She shuddered.

Janet stood swamped with shame. Why hadn’t it occurred to her the boy would tell—making it sound as if she’d been the aggressor! She felt the blood burning in her cheeks and knew they must be flaming red. Glancing at Miss Andrews, she saw the woman’s handsome face set tight with outrage.

“So you don’t even deny it!” she barked. “I’m surprised at you, Miss Raleigh! I never felt that you were cut out for a nursing career, but I thought at least you had common decency. I didn’t think you were the sort of girl to indulge in liberties with a male patient. If I report this to the superintendent it could mean your immediate dismissal!”

“Go ahead!” Janet choked. “I didn’t do it the way he made it sound! I was only trying to help him move over, and he… But you don’t want an explanation! You’re probably glad for a chance to…”

She couldn’t hold back the tears. They flooded to her eyes, to her throat, choking off the angry words she wanted to fling at the head nurse. Helpless against the heavy sobbing that shook her, she turned and fled, passing the elevator to dash wildly down the stairs, along the basement corridor that led to the lower street door.

As she passed the door to Pathology, she crashed headlong into someone just coming out, the jolt momentarily knocking the breath from her.

Firm hands steadied her, and after a taut moment of clutching the lapels of a starched white jacket and pressing her burning face against a warm, hard chest, she caught her breath and managed to regain a measure of her control.

“It can’t be that bad,” a low, vibrant voice said above her. She jerked her head up in new dismay and found herself looking into the dark compassionate eyes of Dr. Sterling.

“Oh…” she whimpered, flinging herself away from him to complete her wild dash down the basement corridor, out the door into bright sunshine, across the street to the sanctuary of her own room in the nurses’ home.

Of all people to bump into just then, she thought as she sobbed on the bed. The new doctor seemed destined to witness every moment of shame in her brief career.

Chapter 6

David stood watching the little redhead’s sobbing flight down the hall, his arms still pulsing with the warmth of holding her close.

As she disappeared beyond the basement door, he found that Dr. Ross, the pathologist, was beside him.

“Do you know that nurse’s name?” David asked.

“No, but she certainly seems upset about something.”

“I’ll bet that sourpuss on Second Annex bawled her out again.”

“Andrews?” Dr. Ross cocked an eyebrow quizzically. He was a neat gray shadow of a man whose initial shyness with David had given way to enthusiasm as they discussed the findings in Arnold Crane’s tests.

David told him now about Miss Andrews’ caustic remarks to the little nurse in Arnold Crane’s room the day before.

“The bed was in Fowler position, and must have been the devil to make up. From the look on the girl’s face when Andrews asked why she hadn’t rolled it down flat, I presume she’d thought Fowler position was mandatory. It had been, of course, when he was draining after the appendectomy. There was no such necessity by the time the second laparotomy was done, but the girl may not have been informed. She probably hasn’t been in training long. This morning when Burns asked for Hoffman’s, she didn’t know what he meant, and Andrews took the opportunity to bawl her out again in front of doctors and patients. Burns felt bad about it afterwards—said he should have realized she was green and not given orders in abbreviated terminology. It’s a bad habit doctors fall into sometimes when they’re working with nurses who are used to them.”

“I know.” Dr. Ross leaned against the door jamb, his mouth grown tight. “And I can just see Daisy Andrews making a thing of it, especially if she disliked the girl already. I don’t know who the little redhead is, but if she got off on the wrong foot with Andrews, I feel sorry for her.”

“I do too, but I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Maybe there is. Let’s go talk to Mildred Burns. Not just for the sake of the redhead, but it’s time something was started that will put Daisy Andrews in her place. I’ve heard her compared to an army sergeant—but she’s more vicious than any top sergeant I ever heard lambast his company.”

“Well,” David said thoughtfully, “nurses have to learn to follow orders meticulously. But they don’t have to be trained with a bullwhip.”

“That’s my idea exactly, so let’s go talk to Mildred. If it was something Andrews said that sent the girl flying out of here in hysterics, there’re likely to be repercussions. Andrews will give her version of it—I’ve an idea the girl skipped out before she was off duty. Maybe we can lend a little authenticity to her side of the story. Besides, I’d like to see if Mildred’s aware of all that Andrews is up to.”

“And I’d like to see Mildred,” David agreed as they started up the stairs. He’d been in Las Lomas a week and hadn’t yet looked up his old friend, mostly because it was awkward as long as he was living with Graham and Coralee. He’d meant to call her as soon as he moved to his own place, but this gave him an excuse to renew his acquaintance sooner.

The door of the superintendent’s office was open, so they went into the anteroom where a couple of girls sat typing. Mildred’s private office was beyond, her door closed, but after speaking into the intercom, one of the typists told the men to go on in.

Mildred glanced up pleasantly. Seated at her desk, she scarcely looked a day older than when he had last seen her. There was very little gray in her hair, and her serene, broad-templed face was unlined. She smiled at Dr. Ross, who preceded David.

“Hello, Milt,” she said, breaking his name off abruptly as her glance went on to David, her eyes lighting with recognition.

“Well, David Sterling!” she said softly, lifting her hands to his. “I heard you were here and wondered when I’d get to see you.”

“I’m inviting you to dinner just as soon as I move to my own house. Some day this week.”

“I accept!” Her face beamed with friendliness; then the expression softened. “I understand why you didn’t look me up sooner, David. You’re living at Graham’s now, aren’t you?”

“So you two know each other!” Dr. Ross said shyly. “I was just about to introduce you!”

Mildred laughed. “I could almost say I knew David in diapers—but I guess he was in kindergarten when his grandfather was our friend in need. And you were in high school, weren’t you, David, when he helped us with our move out west?”

“I was in pre-med. We’ll have a lot of fun reminiscing when you come to dinner. But right now, Dr. Ross and I would like to talk to you about a little redheaded nurse on Second Annex. She just dashed to the nurses’ home in tears, and we think Miss Andrews may have been too hard on her. Of course it’s really none of our business, but we thought… ”

“I’m glad you came.” Her face had lengthened and she spoke gravely. “You’re speaking of Janet Raleigh, aren’t you?”

“If I heard her name, I don’t remember. But she’s cute looking, snub nose and freckles, and a nice figure…” He delineated her curves with his hands, and Mildred smiled.

“That’s Janet. Anyway, she’s the only redhead on Second Annex at present, and I’m afraid I may have made a mistake giving her that assignment so soon. Susan Crenshaw called her the best student in her class, the most brilliant academically, at least. And the most poised and self-confident and dedicated. I suppose that’s why I chose her for Second Annex—that’s the toughest assignment the new student nurses have to face, and I thought it would be easier for her than for some of the other girls.”

“Why should there have to be such a tough assignment for any of the girls?” Dr. Ross inquired mildly. “They’re here to be taught nursing, not to be whipped into slaves.”

Mildred grinned up at him. “Oh, come now, Milt—you’ve never heard of Daisy whipping a girl!”

“It seems to me,” David said, “that to a sensitive girl a tongue-lashing can hurt as much as a cat-o’nine-tails.”

Mildred sobered. “I know—and it’s always upsetting when I feel that a girl who might have made a good nurse is goaded into quitting. However, they do have to learn to take orders, and to accept criticism.” She smiled at David. “Suppose you were performing a delicate operation, so intent on your work that you spoke sharply to your scrub nurse when she handed you the wrong instrument—and she was so sensitive she dissolved in tears. By the time Daisy Andrews is through toughening a girl’s skin, that could never happen.”

“Perhaps not,” David said stiffly. “I’m not saying there shouldn’t be stern discipline, and strict adherence even to minor regulations; but what about this tendency of Miss Andrews’ to pick on a student if she happens to take a special dislike for purely personal reasons?”

Mildred’s eyes clouded. “That’s too bad, of course. And I’m afraid it may be the case with Janet. They come from entirely different economic levels. Janet’s parents are so wealthy there’s no necessity for her to earn a living. She entered training from purely idealistic motives. Her interest was first aroused when her baby sister spent several months here with rheumatic fever and a prolonged aftermath. Janet watched the nurses care for her sister, and was entranced with the idea of a career devoted to alleviating suffering. In fact, I’m sure she’ll be a splendid nurse.”

“If she can hurdle Andrews,” Dr. Ross said gently.

“I think she can,” Mildred countered firmly. “A girl from a family such as hers, with a cultured background, wealth, social position, should have the necessary self-confidence to hold her own in any skirmish.”

“You wouldn’t think so if you’d had her crash into your arms, crying so hard she couldn’t see where she was going,” David protested.

“Oh, she’ll probably cry it out and make her peace with Daisy. As I started to say, their coming from such different backgrounds may be part of the trouble. Daisy came up the hard way. She and one sister were the only members of their family who made the grade. Her sister, as you know, Milt, married Kurt Miller, who owns a chain of local stores and is chairman of our Board of Directors. Daisy graduated from a small nursing school where, at the time, not even a high school diploma was required for entrance—let alone the two years of college credit we demand. Daisy studied hard, and has continued to study ever since graduation. She’s a competent, conscientious nurse, probably as close to being infallible in her work as a human being can be. She has no use for girls who enter training with a lot of romantic notions and little practical talent—she thinks the more quickly they’re weeded out, the better. And she may have figured Janet for such a girl because of her background.”

“And she may be just enough of a snob,” Dr. Ross interrupted mildly, “to resent the wealth and prestige she’s been denied herself, to be taking it out on the girl.”

Mildred sighed. “I hope you’re not right on that score. I’m glad you came to me on Janet’s behalf—I’ll have a talk with both of them as soon as an opportunity is presented. But don’t expect me to tell Daisy how she should run her ward. She’s extremely strict, and not always tactful, but there isn’t a more dedicated or capable nurse, and the students might as well learn to take her criticism. After all, they’re bound to make mistakes as they learn. We all do, don’t we?”

She glanced up at David and he wondered if the thoughtfulness in her dark eyes signaled a special message to him as she went on, “Actually, it’s by having our mistakes pointed out, corrected, and evaluated, that we make progress in life. The more sharply our mistakes are brought home to us, the better we learn our lesson, developing character in the process.”

She wasn’t speaking of Janet now, David knew as the blood pounded to his temples. “You’re referring to—Graham must have told you about the case where I—”

“Oh no, David!” Her voice sharpened with obvious alarm as she saw that he was taking her remarks personally. “Graham hasn’t told me anything. I haven’t seen him for—not to speak to personally, that is, for ages. I was simply speaking from my own experience.”

She broke off as a buzzer on her desk rang demandingly. Flicking a switch brought the secretary’s voice, sounding a little shaky now. “Miss Andrews is waiting to see you, Mrs. Burns. It’s urgent, she says, and she hasn’t time to wait long.”

Mildred reversed the switch and said, “All right, Alice. Tell her to come right in.” She smiled wryly at David and the pathologist. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’d better let Daisy blow off steam before she explodes.”

As the men filed out, Miss Andrews brushed past them without a glance.

“I want a replacement for Janet Raleigh—stat!” They heard her say in tones of ill concealed fury. “I was short-handed already, and Miss Raleigh has gone off duty without permission three hours before her relief is due! If you ask me, that girl was never cut out to be a nurse. She won’t make the grade in a hundred years!”

Chapter 7

Janet sat up and blew her nose. “I’m just not meant to be a nurse,” she told her flushed, weepy-eyed reflection in the mirror. “I can’t do anything right!” She knew that was an exaggeration—but she felt like exaggerating. In fact, she felt like quitting! Why should she take all that guff from an old biddy like Andrews just to follow a quixotic desire to be a nurse!

It had been pleasant and gratifying to work as a teenage volunteer and be welcomed with squeals of delight by the children out at the county hospital. The harried nurses had welcomed her too, showing appreciation for the countless tasks she could take off their hands, relieving them for more technical duties. And the old people, whom she’d pampered with little services the nurses had no time for, had called her an angel, their blind or bleary eyes lighting up at her arrival. She had thought then that being a nurse was the most glorious work in the world.

It had been almost as fine working four hours a day as an uncapped probationer. No one expected too much of her. The senior nurses were indulgent, the patients appreciative. And the classes were unmitigated pleasure, especially the academic subjects such as biology, physiology, anatomy, pathology, nutrition.

Maybe she should be studying to be a doctor, she thought wryly, for she could learn all that stuff so easily, receiving top grades with no special effort. But when it came to the practical and mechanical phase of doctoring, she reflected, she might find it just as confusing as the duties of a capped ward nurse.

And just as humiliating, she added, her cheeks flaming all over again.

Never in her life had anyone spoken to her contemptuously the way Miss Andrews did.

I don’t have to take it, she decided as she got up to wash her face and comb her hair. She stripped off her uniform and donned a simple street dress; kicked off the flat-heeled white oxfords and stepped into high-heeled slippers that matched the blue of her dress. Then she started resolutely for the superintendent’s office.

When she entered the outer office the secretary looked up from her typing and paused, her smile a little too bright as she said, “Oh, Miss Raleigh, Mrs. Burns is expecting you. Go right in.”

So old Dizzy Andrews had been here already, she reflected as she opened the door of the inner office—or maybe was here now. She sighed with relief when she saw that Mrs. Burns was alone.

“Hello, Janet,” she said, looking stern and sorry. “I’m glad you came in before I had to send for you. It’s a serious breach of regulations, you know, to leave the floor without permission before it’s time to go off duty.”

“I’m leaving for good, Mrs. Burns. I’m giving up the idea of becoming a nurse. It just isn’t my field, I guess. I can’t do anything right.”

“I suppose Miss Andrews gave you that idea?”

“She certainly did—and she probably said the same thing to you!”

“That’s true. And you propose to prove she’s right?”

Janet felt herself flushing. “I just don’t propose to let her go on treating me like a—like a mental incompetent! The trouble is, when she treats me like that, and breathes her contempt down my neck all the time, I begin to act like the fool she takes me for! I can’t even do the things I know how to do! I suppose she’s been telling you all my faults!”

“Her chief grievance was that you had deserted your post, and left her in the lurch when she was already short-handed. She had a right to be furious about that, Janet. The only other criticism she voiced in particular was over your tendency to be impudent—you don’t behave with the modesty becoming a student nurse. You have a lot to learn, you know.”

“I’m willing to learn, but I won’t be a bootlicker! I won’t grovel! I won’t toady to an old—”

“You’re not expected to grovel, Janet. Sit down and let’s talk this out.” She indicated a chair beside her desk, and Janet sat down stiffly, clenching tight fingers in her lap.

“There’s one thing you must understand, Janet,” Mrs. Burns said, the kindness in her eyes tempering the stern set of her lips. “A certain amount of protocol is as necessary in hospital work as in—well, say, the army. As a graduate nurse you would be taking the doctors’ orders, following them automatically and implicitly. In training for that as a student, you take orders from nurses who have learned more than you have, and you treat them as your superiors professionally, whether you can feel they’re your superiors personally or not. You understand what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.” Janet moistened her lips, but they still felt dry. “You mean that even if Miss Andrews were a boor who ate with her knife, I should be obsequious because she knows more about nursing than I do.”

“Not obsequious, Janet. Respectful is the word. In respect for her professional knowledge and standing, you follow her orders meticulously, listen carefully to all she says, refraining from comment or retort if you don’t agree. You accept her criticism gracefully, knowing it’s for your own benefit eventually.”

“Maybe I just can’t do that,” Janet said miserably. “When she says something contemptuous or unjust, I feel like fighting back.”

“Why? What’s more important? Asserting yourself against your supervisor when you disagree, or perfecting yourself in your chosen career? What Miss Andrews thinks about you or says to you is really of little consequence compared with your whole future, isn’t it? Janet, before you make a decision that you might regret, I want you to go through that door into the little private office and write out two lists for me. Here—”

She handed her a pencil and two sheets of paper.

“On this page list all the reasons you’ve ever considered for wanting to be a nurse. On the other sheet list all your reasons for wanting to quit. Then bring your lists to me.”

The little office was hardly more than a cubbyhole, a desk and chair at one side, the walls lined with books and files. Janet sat down at the desk and labeled the top sheet, “Why I want to become a nurse.” Then she laid the pencil down and sat back to think.

She had admired the nurses who took care of baby Linda after that bout with rheumatic fever, and she’d thought how wonderful it would be to serve like that. She had joined the Candy Stripe volunteers because it gave her an opportunity to feel she was easing the suffering of the sick, offering a valued and needed service. Was that when she’d decided to make it her life work?

No—the urge had still been nebulous and transitory then. She hadn’t really considered it seriously until the summer after graduation from high school when she’d had to make a decision of some sort.

Her mother was urging her to go to an exclusive finishing school to prepare for life as the wife of some man in their social group, preferably Allan Hargrove, who was courting her, and with whom she felt herself mildly in love. He was a young investment broker in her father’s office, member of a good family, approved as a suitor by both her parents.

I want to do something important, she thought; not just to keep occupied, but to make my life count for something. I want to be a nurse and take care of sick people. Help them get well. Ease their suffering. Assist the doctors in performing their medical miracles. Be a part of the exciting, mysterious, consequential world of the hospital where the human body, the most important thing in the world, really, is given the attention it needs to be kept in good running order, mentally, physically, and—yes, spiritually.

Her parents had been both amazed and amused at her decision.

“Janet, you don’t want to be a nurse!” her mother had urged. “It won’t be like pampering a few patients as a Candy Striper! You’ll have to do awful things!” She shuddered. “And the drudgery will be more than you can take. Why, you’ve never made a bed or washed a dish at home—we’ve had servants to clean up after you. As a nurse you’d have to make hundreds of beds, and bathe all sorts of dirty people, empty bedpans and emesis basins, and listen to people whine about their aches and pains!”

“I know all that,” Janet had insisted. “Drudgery doesn’t scare me—and it’s only a small part of a nurse’s job. I’ve been in hospitals enough to know it’s the only life I really want.”

Considering it a whim, her parents consented to the preparatory years of college, then tried to dissuade her again before she actually entered training. They wouldn’t be surprised—in fact, they might be highly pleased to see her come limping, home—a failure.

By the time she got that far in her thinking, Janet found she had scribbled on both sides of one sheet, and spilled over onto the second. She turned that page over and wrote on the top, “Why I want to quit nurses’ training.” Under that she made a single entry: Miss Andrews.

She was serene again as she laid both sheets on Mrs. Burns’ desk. “You might as well throw these in the wastebasket,” she said. “They’ve served their purpose. I won’t let Miss Andrews buffalo me out of finishing my course. No matter what she says, I’ll keep my mouth shut and resolve that someday I’m going to be a better nurse and a better supervisor than she is!”

Mrs. Burns stood up and laid a friendly arm across the girl’s shoulder. “I’m so glad, Janet. I was sure that if you thought it over seriously you had too much spunk to be tripped up by the first obstacle you had to hurdle. I want you to go put on your uniform now and apologize to Miss Andrews for leaving her short-handed. Tell her you’re ready to make up for the lost time—no matter how many punitive hours she requires.”

It wasn’t easy, and Miss Andrews did nothing to make it easier. When Janet had recited the brief little apology she had composed and memorized, Miss Andrews snorted and said, “You don’t sound very penitent to me. Let’s hear you go through that again—as if you really mean it.”

Rebellion was suffocating pressure against her ribs, pushing up to her throat, but she swallowed it and said, in as humble a tone as she could muster, “I behaved badly, Miss Andrews. I did something I knew was against the rules, because I was in a hurry and I felt sorry for the boy—but that’s no excuse. I’ll never do such a thing again, or anything else I know is strictly taboo. I won’t leave the floor again without permission, either. I know that was inexcusable, no matter how upset I was at the moment. I’ll try harder to do my work competently, and not take offense at criticism. Right now I want to go back to work and make up for the time I’ve cost you.”

“All right, Miss Raleigh, I’ll have to accept that.” She looked as if she hated to, Janet thought. She looked angry, and somehow chagrinned, as if she’d hoped she had seen the last of an unsatisfactory student.

“I had to call for an extra nurse to replace you,” Miss Andrews went on. “You must have known it would be necessary. I’ve put Miss Carruthers on treatments for today, and turned her patients over to the extra. Since the bed baths and medications are taken care of for the day, I’ll give you a job that has needed attention for some time. Take all the bedpans and urinals from the patients’ stands, scrub, and sterilize them in the lavatory. Take them one by one, and have the patients use them first whenever possible.”

Scrubbing bedpans isn’t a nurse’s job, Janet reflected furiously as she got to work. She’s just trying to rub my nose in it so I’ll quit!

But I’ll do it! she vowed. She can’t make me quit again!

Chapter 8

Elwood Browne had asked for a conference on Arnold Crane after the lab and X-ray reports were completed. He and Dr. Matthews were studying the films which Dr. Meadows, the radiologist, was flashing, one after another, on the lighted viewer.

“Good morning, doctors,” the radiologist said as David and Dr. Ross entered. “We’ve been comparing yesterday’s films with those made before the laparotomy. We’ll go through them again now. You’ll notice that they’re quite similar,” There were greetings all around, then the doctors turned their attention to the series of films, Dr. Meadows explaining each one.

“What do you think, Stan?” Dr. Browne asked when the radiologist had finished. “There’s still only a suggestion of some infiltration at the right base. There was that much in the films before the laparotomy—and we found no abscess.”

“I think you’re overlooking something,” David said. “May we see that film of the diaphragm again, Dr. Meadows?”

When it had been lighted on the viewer, David pointed to the juncture of the portal vein with the fiver. “It’s my contention you’ll find the trouble right there,” he said firmly. “Remember, the pain was in the upper right quadrant. He’s not my patient, but if he were, I’d make a small incision about three inches above the old one, and look for an abscess in the portal vein or the right lobe, or part of both. I’ve seen it happen like this before.”

Dr. Matthews was studying the film intently. “He may be right, Elwood,” he said, rubbing his chin. “There’s a slight shadow—it could mean…”

“How can there be an abscess?” Browne expostulated.

“They used to be fairly common after ruptured appendix, I grant you, or after any other infected organ dumped pus into the peritoneum. But with all the antibiotics we’ve given-penicillin, aureomycin, terramycin—I told you peritonitis was controlled quickly.”

David faced the antagonism in Browne’s eyes with stubborn calm, still sure in his own mind that he was right. “I suppose you’ve taken into consideration the tendency of bacteria to develop an immunity to the various antibiotics?”

“Of course we have,” Browne snapped contemptuously, his round face flushed. “That’s why we’ve switched to a different antibiotic each time the symptoms recurred.”

“But meanwhile sufficient bacteria could have escaped to wall themselves off in an abscess and propagate wildly, immune now to almost any antibiotic you could use. The only way to clear it up is to incise and drain.”

Browne turned to Dr. Matthews, his small mouth pouting. “I’m not ready to take the responsibility of opening that abdomen again. His relatives are on my neck already because his recovery has been so slow in spite of two trips to surgery. If you think another laparotomy is advisable, I wish you would do it yourself.”

“All right,” Dr. Matthews agreed, smoothing his sparse gray hair back with a lean hand. “I’d like for you and Dr. Sterling both to assist. And we should do it right away. If Dr. Sterling’s diagnosis is correct, we’ve delayed too long already. So, if you have nothing urgent on tap for the next couple of hours…?”

They nodded, and he went to the desk phone. “I’ll tell Miss Preston to prepare for emergency surgery. And I’m going to order whole blood transfusions before and after. That boy’s anemic.”

“In fact,” Dr. Browne said bitterly through his pinched little mouth, “he’s not in condition for surgery at all.”

* * * *

David felt as if he were on trial for his life as he stood at the sink scrubbing his hands and arms up to his elbows with antiseptic soap and a hard brush. The nurse helped him don the sterile gown and rubber gloves.

His heart jolted as he saw Cyril Claibourne come in wearing a green surgery suit and start scrubbing.

“You—are you going to assist, too?” David exclaimed.

“Oh, no.” Dr. Claibourne’s white mustache lifted as he grinned broadly. “I think everybody on staff is interested in the outcome of this case. I asked Stan if I could scrub in as observer. With you and Elwood assisting, he won’t need my help.”

So I really am on trial, David thought soberly. There was no doubt in his mind as to why Dr. Claibourne was scrubbing in. He’d heard about the disagreement between David and the surgeon earmarked to replace Matthews, and wanted a first hand view of the outcome.

If my diagnosis is wrong, I’m sunk, he thought. And if this third operation is too much for the patient—if there’s no abscess to justify it, and he doesn’t survive, I’m as washed up here as I ever was back home after that abominable damage suit.

But I’m not wrong this time, he told himself stoutly. There’s got to be an abscess! The patient was already on the table, anesthetized. The anesthetist was listening through a stethoscope, the assisting nurses bustled around the brilliant circle of light in the center of the room. David took his place across the operating table from Browne and Matthews. The operational area had been painted with crimson antiseptic. Dr. Matthews called for the scalpel.

He made a neat incision through the skin, his gloved hand firm and steady. David ceased conscious thinking, becoming an automaton who manipulated hemostats to clamp off each vein as the surgeon severed it. There was very little fatty tissue in the boy’s torso, and for a split second David wondered at the bulge of yellow that pressed upward through the wound, before the thin layer of the peritoneum was dissected.

Then he knew. It was pus. Walled off as yet, but under such pressure that an injudicious puncture now could send it spurting. He glanced at Matthews and met the same knowledge in the keen blue eyes above the mask.

“Suction ready?” Matthews asked, and as Ann Preston nodded he went on, “We’ll need more hot wet towels—and the patient had better have oxygen, Mac. Dr. Sterling, I’ll handle the suction if you’ll make the smallest incision feasible, and Dr. Browne, please be ready to incise deeper after we’ve relieved the pressure. Now.”

David took the small blade scalpel from the instrument nurse and waited as Matthews adjusted the tip of the small glass tube of the suction machine. He heard the click of the valve as the anesthetist gave oxygen, noted the slurping sound of the suction machine, and laid the thin blade gently against the pulsing yellow bulge within the ring of hemo-stats.

For long moments the room was tense with activity as the bulk of suppuration was drawn out, then the infected area cleaned, the small slit in the portal vein repaired with tiny guy sutures. After that came the long tedious, anti-climactic job of finishing up.

“I’m going to leave that to you two,” Matthews told David and Dr. Browne. “And I want to comment you both for the excellent teamwork. We were lucky that no more of the liver tissue was involved, with its load of blood vessels so susceptible to hemorrhage.” He turned to the anesthetist. “How’s the patient, Mac?”

“Excellent. Almost better than when you started, I’d say. I discontinued oxygen some time ago.”

“Good—but he’d better have a post-op transfusion, just for insurance. I’ll see you doctors later.” He peeled off his mask and gloves as he left the room.

David felt the tension draining out of him as he put on his street clothes in the doctors’ room. Elwood Browne had tendered grudging congratulations with a forced heartiness that fooled nobody as he lauded a diagnosis he called nothing less than brilliant. Dr. Matthews had commended him warmly, the quiet respect in his eyes more gratifying even than his words. Now only Claibourne was left in the room with him.

“I suppose you know how I feel about this, David,” he said. “I’ve been telling Stan for a long time that Browne wasn’t his man, and I hope this will help to prove it. Of course, Stan Matthews doesn’t have the final say as to who’ll replace him when he retires, but his recommendation will go along the Board.”

“I’m not out of the woods yet,” David said modestly. “This is only one instance. I may give the mistaken diagnosis next time. I’m not infallible.”

“Who is? Doctors are human, too. But I wasn’t thinking only about your diagnosis—and the stubborn way you clung to it against disagreement. You were magnificent during surgery. When Matthews commended the teamwork, his eyes were on you.”

“Oh, Browne did his share, too!”

“Of course. But we already knew what Browne could do. Since you’re here on my recommendation—and Graham’s, of course—I’m happy that you came through with flying colors today. Incidentally, are you still staying with Graham and Coralee?”

“Up to now, yes. But I understand my car is ready for delivery this afternoon, so I’m moving my stuff to my own place right away.”

“I see. Well, don’t forget to change your address on the clinic and hospital records.” He paused and regarded David thoughtfully, chewing at his white mustache.

“I’ve been wondering, David—what do you think of Coralee?”

David pulled on his jacket and adjusted his tie, wondering how he was supposed to answer that. “I think she’s beautiful,” he said cautiously, “and would be more so if her voice matched. As a person, however, I wouldn’t stack her up against Mildred at all.”

“You knew Mildred quite well?”

David shrugged and smiled. “As well as a teenage boy would know the wife of a good friend several years older. I admired them both and thought they were an ideal couple.”

“So did everyone, until Coralee came along. I feel responsible in a way. The poor kid was down and out when she called on me for treatment. She’d married some rotter, thinking he could help her get into the movies after everything else had failed. When she got sick he abandoned her in a motel here, no money, no food, and weeks of back rent due along with stacks of other bills. Then it turned out he’d married her without bothering to get a divorce from a former wife.

“For a while the girl didn’t seem to care whether she lived or died. I think what she hated most was facing the necessity of crawling back home a failure, broke and in debt. So, when I found she could type, and one of our girls quit, I gave her a job in the clinic. It never occurred to me she’d break up the home of one of my best friends. Though actually, I guess their infatuation was as much Graham’s fault as hers. Maybe more. You could hardly blame the girl for accepting all he offered, after what she’d been through. It was a measure of success—and I think she’s really fond of him too, in spite of the disparity in age. And of course, he worships her.”

“Why are you telling me this?” David asked wonderingly.

Dr. Claibourne sighed and started again for the door. “You’d learn most of the details eventually. I thought the sooner you comprehend the whole situation, the better. She was asking me some questions about you the other day, with just a little too much interest, I thought. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your budding career here.”

He smiled and went on out.

Chapter 9

So I’m being warned off, David thought, lighting a cigarette and drawing on it thoughtfully. Had he betrayed any emotion over Coralee himself, or was it simply Coralee’s interest that had alerted Dr. Claibourne?

David tried to think back to the few times Claibourne had seen him in Coralee’s presence. There’s been the time when she had come to the clinic to meet Graham, and they’d all inspected the progress on David’s new offices. And there’d been dinner one night when Dr. Claibourne and his wife, Julia, had joined them in the Burns’ spacious dining room. On both occasions, as well as at any time that Coralee was with Graham, she had played the devoted wife so convincingly that not even Graham could have felt the least uneasiness.

Since Saturday, when he’d leased the little house, David had taken great care not to be alone with Coralee, and she’d given no indication that she remembered that tense and treacherous moment in his arms.

She’s probably as ashamed of it as I am by now, he decided, stubbing out his cigarette. He was just starting for the door when the intercom speaker hummed into life and barked his name. “Dr. Sterling, you are wanted on the mezzanine. Dr. Sterling…”

He strode out of the room and heard the continuation of the message as he took the elevator down to the second floor, wondering why he was being paged. He hoped it wasn’t another emergency, for he was anxious to pick up his car and move into his own home.

It was Graham and Coralee waiting in the small lounge halfway up the wide stairs from the first floor lobby. Graham stood up and held out his hand, grinning. “Congratulations, Dave! I just heard about your brilliant coup. You’ve made a good start toward Cyril’s hopes for you. I suppose it’s only fair to warn you that you’ve made an enemy too.”

David nodded. Elwood Browne wasn’t the sort of man to take kindly to being put in the wrong.

“Accept my congratulations too, David,” Coralee said, her eyes showing no more than friendly interest in David as she clung to her husband’s arm. “But of course, we already knew you were wonderful. Didn’t we, darling?” She smiled up at Graham and he patted the fingers that lay in the crook of his elbow.

“We knew you were busy today,” Graham told him, “so Coralee picked up your car for you. It’s out in the parking lot, and she’ll go with you to move your gear to your own diggings, help you stock up and everything.”

“Oh, that—that won’t be necessary!” David stammered, alarm catching at his throat. “I don’t want to put her to all that bother!”

“It’s no bother, and you know it,” Coralee chided gently. “You need a woman’s touch to get settled—and it’ll be fun for me.”

Graham laughed. “Ever see a woman who thought a man could set up housekeeping without her help? You’ll have to give in, Dave, to keep her happy, and you’ll find her a real help, too.”

How could he think that, David wondered, when she apparently turned all their own housekeeping over to Emily? However, in the face of their combined stand, he saw no gracious way to refuse her help, or the cordial invitation to have dinner with them afterward.

The car was a little beauty, a wine-colored Rambler, equipped with the safety-belts and phone specified by clinic regulations, and with the extras he’d ordered himself.

“I sort of cheated on you, didn’t I?” Coralee asked, as he held the door open to help her into the passenger seat. “I got to drive your new buggy before you did.”

He grinned in answer and indulged in further admiring inspection as he walked around the car to take his place at the wheel.

“Want me to show you how all the push-buttons work?” she offered, sliding closer.

“No—I’d rather guess. It’s more fun that way.” He switched on the ignition. The motor hummed into life.

“I suppose you think it’s safer that way, too,” she said in a small voice, moving away from him. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been avoiding me.”

“You know that isn’t it,” he said, pushing the button that put the car in motion. “And you know the real reason, so let’s not discuss it. And let’s cut out this nonsense about my needing help to move a few suitcases. I’ll take you home.”

“It isn’t the moving, David. We should shop at a supermarket on the way. You said you’d be having your breakfast at home, and plan to do some light entertaining. It takes more than a batch of frozen TV dinners in your freezing compartment. I’ve made a list, and I can help you choose the best brands. Maybe you think I don’t run our house because you don’t see me doing the work. But I plan everything, tell Emily and the cleaning woman what I want done, and I supervise all the marketing, do most of it myself. Let me get things started for you, David. I’ll keep my distance. If you refuse now, after Graham suggested it and found me willing, he’ll wonder why.”

“Graham suggested it?” he asked sharply.

“Well, sort of, after I…”

“After you gave him the idea! Okay, you win this round, but let’s get something understood. Graham and I are good friends—and I need to make a go of my job here!”

“You will!” She spoke softly and patted his arm. “Everybody is impressed with you already. I can tell!”

* * * *

The shopping expedition was without incident, also the time they spent putting things away and rearranging the furniture. Once again Coralee was the cheerful, witty, undemanding companion of the earlier days when they’d gone house hunting in the mornings, and golfing, riding, or playing tennis in the afternoon.

It wasn’t until everything was set and they were about ready to leave that Coralee turned to him impulsively, her fingers clutching at his lapels as she said in a harsh, tragic voice, “David, I can’t stand it! I just simply can’t stand it!”

“What?” He tensed and swallowed hard, clenching his fists at his sides to keep from touching her as he looked down into the wide dark eyes, luminous now with imminent tears. “What can’t you stand?”

“I’ve made a terrible mistake, David.” She released his lapels and slid her hands under his jacket, her palms feverishly hot against his chest through the light material of his shirt. He felt them moving sensuously along his ribs, and stood transfixed, powerless to halt their progress as she went on urgently, “I’ve tried my best to do what’s right—truly I have! But doesn’t it seem as if the longer you work on a mistake, the worse it gets? I mean, the only way to correct it is to back up and start all over again?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders and tried to ease her away, but she clamped her arms tight around him and buried her face against his shoulder.

“Please, David, hold me just a minute.” She caught a shuddering breath and nuzzled her face up against his chin. “I’ve got to see how it is again to feel the arms of a young man around me! Oh, you can’t imagine how it is to be married to a man so much older.”

“You knew his age when you married him!”

“I knew his age—and yet I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t know how it would be! He seemed so wonderful, David. He is wonderful! I never knew a finer man, and I love him, only not the way a wife loves her husband. I adore him the way I did my father until he died. He died when I was so young, and I missed him terribly. Graham is a lot like him. I know that’s why I loved him.”

She was sobbing now, and his grip on her shoulders softened to the comfort of a caress. He couldn’t help it. “You’ve got to help me, David!” She was crying frankly now, her dark eyes brimming with tears that coursed on down her cheeks, her mouth beautiful even though twisted with weeping. “Somebody’s got to help me. And David—”

She crept closer, her eyes huge and imploring. “I’m in love with you! I can’t help it!”

He saw her intention as she lifted her arms to fling them about his neck, and he caught them just above the elbows, holding them firm.

“Listen, Coralee,” he said harshly, “I said this once, and I don’t want to say it again! I will not repay Graham’s kindness by stealing his wife! I’m not going to be a party to hurting him, and that’s final!”

“Then what can I do?” she whimpered. “I don’t want to hurt him either—and I know it would break him up if I left him. But I can’t go on like this!”

“Yes, you can! Before I turned up you seemed quite willing to, so you can just forget I turned up! From now on we’ll avoid each other like poison, and you’ll abide by the bargain you made with Graham to love and honor and cherish—in return for all his worldly goods as well as his love. You’ve gained as much by that bargain as he has—probably more! So count your blessings, and grow up!”

“You’re mean!” she sobbed, twisting her arms from his grasp. “You don’t care how terrible it is for me!”

“No, I can’t say that I do. I’m more interested in seeing that Graham isn’t hurt. Go wash your face and blow your nose now and I’ll take you home. We don’t want Graham to know you’ve been indulging in an emotional orgy at his expense.”

Her face tightened to fury. “That’s all you think it is!” she snapped through clenched teeth. “You think I made a scene just to be dramatic!”

He drew a sharp breath, clutching at straws. “Didn’t you?” he asked, pushing his mouth into a grin. “Be honest now, weren’t you just practicing some of the dramatics you learned for the movies? Hoping I’d be an appreciative audience of one?”

She grabbed a pillow from the couch and flung it at him, then slammed into the bathroom. But the tension had eased, and he hoped he’d found a way to salvage a little of her pride. He didn’t want his best friend’s wife hating him in the role of a woman scorned.

She was more beautiful than ever when she came out, all traces of tears removed except that her eyes had a brighter and more glowing depth.

“Okay,” she said, with a smiling attempt at nonchalance. “Let’s go! Emily will probably have dinner ready by the time we get there, and Graham will be fuming at the bar.”

Graham wasn’t fuming, but he was ready for them with a batch of chilled Manhattans. He took Coralee in his arms for their usual loving caress before he served drinks, and David noted that she clung to him even more lovingly than usual. For David’s benefit, perhaps? Or was she really going to work harder at her marriage?

“Well, here’s to your new bachelor quarters!” Graham said as they raised their glasses for a toast. “And may they not be bachelor too long!”

They laughed and drank, then Graham set down his glass and said with a sly glance at David, “I hear there’s a little red-headed student nurse at the hospital you’ve been showing special interest in. Anything to it?”

He heard the sharp intake of Coralee’s breath, but Graham didn’t seem to notice.

“Good lord! What a grapevine there must be over there!” David said with a chuckle. “What on earth did you hear?”

“Only that you and Milt went to Mildred to plead her cause against Andrews. But from what I gather, you could do a lot worse, David. She’s not only cute, but comes from a family of wealth and influence.”

“I don’t intend to marry a woman for her wealth and influence,” David said dryly.

“Of course not! But it’s always nice if such things come packaged with the woman you fall in love with!”

“Graham, how you talk!” Coralee pouted. “You didn’t marry me for wealth and influence, I hope!”

He laughed. “I’m kidding, of course. No man with any pride marries for what a woman can do for him in that line. But darling,” his eyes glowed on her fondly, “I’d still have married you, even if you were the richest, most powerful woman in the world! Only then, I probably wouldn’t have had a ghost of a chance with you.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to deny that, but she simply handed him her glass and said, “How about another drink, lover? We were late getting started and I’m thirsty as a camel after the long haul.”

Coralee continued to be thirsty, and for some reason dinner was late. David called a halt after the second drink. He watched uneasily as Coralee downed cocktails like punch. At her urging, Graham mixed another batch, and joined her in one more which he obviously didn’t want.

“Really, dear, isn’t that enough?” he asked cautiously when she poured them each still another one. “Dinner must be almost ready by now.”

She laughed and held her drink to the light to stare through it. She was standing at the small bar, facing the men who had remained seated as she moved restlessly about the room.

“I can’t promise you anything about dinner,” she said, taking a gulp and setting her drink on the bar. “Emily forgot to take the meat out of the freezer in time to thaw, so it got a late start. That’s what happens when I’m not here to run things. But who cares? We got David settled all nice and cozy. Didn’t we, Davey?”

She moved languidly to his chair and brushed her fingers over his crewcut. David fidgeted until finally, to his relief, Emily arrived to announce dinner.

Coralee toyed with her food, so obviously tipsy now that Graham was embarrassed, especially when she began to wax sarcastic. A little tight himself, Graham tried to cover for her by talking shop to David, but she would have none of it.

“Who cares who had what operation in your stinking old hospital?” she cried, her voice raspy and nasal as it went out of control. “It’s a damn good thing Davey’s moving to a place of his own! Ever since he’s been here there’s been nothing but talk about sickness and surgery and treatments until I’m ready to heave!”

“But sweetheart,” Graham protested, “you’ve never minded medical talk! You got used to it when you worked at the clinic. I thought you were interested!”

“You thought I was interested!” she mimicked. “So you tell me about your precious David draining pus out of a man’s liver right while I’m eating lunch! As if I had no feelings at all! I’ve tried to pretend I was interested because it made you happy!”

“All right, darling, I understand—but let’s not talk about it now. We…”

“You just think you understand! And why shouldn’t we talk about it now? You afraid David will think we’re not happy as a couple of love-bugs?”

“That’s enough!” Graham half rose from his chair and glowered at her across the table. “We have a guest—and if you can’t behave like a civilized hostess you’d better leave the room!”

She returned his stare for a long, tense moment, pouting like a child. Then with a wide sweep of her arm she sent her plate of food crashing from the table, at the same moment jumping up so abruptly her chair flew backwards with a bang.

“You can’t talk to me like that!” she cried thickly. “I won’t have it, I tell you! I won’t have it!” Covering her face with shaking hands, she ran sobbing from the room.

Graham stared at the broken plate of food on the floor and rang for Emily. “My wife had an accident,” he told the woman calmly. “Dr. Sterling and I will have dessert and coffee in the den, please.”

In the den he started pacing the floor. “You’ll have to excuse Coralee,” he said, plowing distraught fingers through his shock of white hair. “She’s never like that unless she’s had too much to drink on an empty stomach.”

“I understand,” David told him comfortingly. “Think nothing of it.”

“But I don’t believe she’s really unhappy, David, do you? I mean, of course, I am a lot older…”

“I know she loves you, Graham. I’ll be out of here now so she won’t have to listen to so much shop talk. You can’t blame her for being upset. We doctors forget sometimes how things sound to the uninitiated. And in spite of her work at the clinic, Coralee’s still a lay person, actually.”

“If I lost her, David, I think I’d die! Not only because I’m so crazy in love with her—but it cost so much for the privilege of having her! I don’t mean in money—though I took a beating there too. But Mildred’s happiness, my children’s love and respect… They called me an old fool, and it would just about kill me to find they were right. As long as I’m sure Coralee loves me, it’s worth everything I…”

He broke off as Emily came in with a tray of pie and coffee. When she’d left, David managed to change the subject and keep it in more comfortable channels. As soon as he felt it would be polite, he took his leave and went home, hoping that Graham would forget enough about tonight not to suffer embarrassment when they met again.

Chapter 10

David had scarcely arrived at his clinic office the next morning before Graham poked his head in at the door and, seeing that David was alone, came on in.

“Look, boy, about last night—I hope you’ll forget it. Neither my wife nor I were exactly ourselves and we…”

“It’s already forgotten,” David assured him. “Don’t give it another thought!”

Graham smiled his relief and launched into a discussion of one of his patients. Not long after he left, the phone rang.

It was Coralee. “Are you alone?” she asked cautiously.

“For the moment, yes. But I’m pretty busy.”

“I know. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about, well, about everything! I hope you’ll come to dinner again soon so I can prove it.”

“I’d rather not. I think it will be better if…”

“Graham will think it strange if you don’t, David. Please, you’ve got to help me keep up appearances!”

“Well, we’ll see. But let it rest a while.”

I’ve got to avoid her as much as possible, he told himself. And above all, avoid being alone with her. He was still thinking about it later in the day as he walked down a hospital corridor and saw a trim little red-headed figure ahead of him.

Perhaps the best way to avoid one woman was to spend his time with another one, he thought whimsically. And that little nurse with the cute freckled nose and her feud with her supervisor might be good company for a while.

He caught up with her at the elevator and said, “You going my way?”

Her smile made her eyes sparkle. “I might consider it. Which way are you going?”

“Whichever way you are,” he answered with a chuckle, and they both laughed.

The elevator doors yawned open and they stepped in.

“Four, please,” she said as he reached for the button.

“Four it is.”

He gazed down at her reflectively as the cage started its upward journey. “Would you by any chance be free this evening, Miss Raleigh? I might see what kind of seats I can get for that new musical everyone’s raving about.”

“Why—why—” She sounded suddenly breathless. “That would be lovely!”

For over a week he stalled each time Coralee phoned to invite him to dinner, saying he had a date with Janet. And Janet obligingly kept him from being a liar as they found interesting little cafés, sometimes dancing, or going to movies afterward.

But one evening, before he had an excuse ready to stall him off, Graham insisted on taking him home to dinner.

“Coralee will have my scalp if I don’t bring you home soon,” he stated flatly. “She’s anxious to make amends, too.”

“There’s nothing to amend,” David protested, but he saw that his friend would be offended if he refused.

The evening was without incident until Coralee began to insist that he must give a housewarming to initiate his new apartment.

“I’ll be glad to help you,” she offered cordially.

“You’d better take her up on that,” Graham chimed in. “She’s an expert in the field.”

“I’m sorry,” David said stiffly, keeping his fingers crossed and hoping that once again Janet would change his lie into the truth. “I’ve made all my plans and Janet Raleigh has promised to help. You’ll be getting your invitation soon.”

The next morning Janet responded eagerly to his hasty request, and they had fun making plans together. She confessed to very little cooking experience, so she looked up a good catering service. Her capable handling of the rest of the hostess duties did more to make it a good party than if she’d been the best cook in the world.

At the end of the gala evening, while other guests were leaving, Coralee congratulated David and Janet on the party’s success. But her eyes had been hard as marbles as she watched Janet play the role she’d wanted herself.

“How about you two playing golf with us some Sunday morning?” she invited, linking her arm in Graham’s as she faced Janet and David. “How about next Sunday?” David and Janet agreed.

It was a warm March morning and the Lomacita golf course was crowded. So was the shady terrace in front of the clubhouse where players waiting their turn to tee off sat drinking at the small tables.

“Ye gods, it certainly should be our turn soon,” Coralee grumbled as the foursome at the next table got up in answer to a name called over the loudspeaker. “We’ve been waiting almost an hour.”

“Maybe we’ll be up next,” Graham said, patting her hand. “At least we have a pleasant place to wait.”

Janet hadn’t been talking much. She seemed content to sip strong black coffee and let her gaze roam over the hills studded with golfers and their carts.

Janet was an easy girl to be with, David reflected. She didn’t make demands, and was at ease in any social situation.

It’s her poise that makes her so darned attractive, he thought, watching her. Of course, the red curls helped, and that cute, freckled nose. But she wasn’t seductively beautiful like Coralee who was exciting even when she fidgeted and fussed as she was doing now.

There was a typical difference in the way they dressed, though they both wore sports clothes. Coralee’s lime green skirt and sweater molded the contours of her slim body. She wore large disc earrings of the same color, and a heavy jangling bracelet that she’d probably dump in Graham’s pocket after her first swing with a club.

Janet’s gray jersey outfit was more loose-fitting, but faultlessly tailored, with an inconspicuous elegance that indicated she was more interested in value than display. Her discrimination in clothes seemed a part of her poise, though she didn’t lose it when garbed in the uniform of a student nurse. That is, he hadn’t seen her lose her poise since that day, about six weeks ago, when something Miss Andrews had said was more than she could take.

The thought of Miss Andrews reminded him of a rumor that had been going around.

“Say, Graham, what’s this I hear about Daisy Andrews being transferred to surgery?” He gave Janet a teasing grin. “That should be good news for you.”

“Is it true?” she asked, looking startled.

“I’ve heard it’s pretty definite,” Graham admitted thoughtfully. “She’s to assist Ann Preston, beginning a week from tomorrow. I can’t imagine Daisy’s very happy about it. She doesn’t hanker to be anybody’s assistant—she likes to be the whole cheese. But I think Mildred has finally concluded that the old gal hasn’t the right temperament for a supervisor.”

“I hope I wasn’t the cause of her transfer,” Janet said in a small, uneasy voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” David told her. “She can’t hurt you in surgery, and it will take the pressure off for a while.”

“For a while, yes—but I’ll be working in surgery someday, if I last that long.”

“Well, by that time…” Graham began, stopping short as the loudspeaker squawked his name.

“Dr. Burns… Dr. Graham Burns…”

They gulped the last of their coffee and trundled their carts over to the number one tee. The girls played first, both of them driving fairly straight. The men outdistanced them, Graham slicing to the left, David hooking far to the right.

“I’ll meet you all on the green some day,” David chuckled as they started down the fairway.

They paused for Janet to play her ball, which headed for the green. A few feet further Coralee took her second shot, which veered sharply to the right.

Coralee laughed. “David’s hook must be contagious! We’ll see you folks later.”

That was no hook, David told himself grimly. He could be mistaken, but he had a sneaking hunch she had deliberately aimed her ball that way.

He hoped he was mistaken. They hadn’t been alone together since her tantrum the day he moved into his apartment.

For a while she said nothing as they walked together toward their balls. Then she sighed deeply and said, “This is like old times, David—like that first week, when we looked at houses all morning and—well, before anything happened. I wish it was still like that.”

“So do I!” he agreed fervently. “I’m as sorry for what happened as you are.”

“Could we pretend it never happened?”

“Sure!” He grinned down at her. “That’s fine with me.”

Her flashing smile answered his grin. “You mean we can go back to playing golf, swimming, going places…”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort! Not unless Graham’s along, of course.”

“Oh.” The old flatness was back in her voice.

They found his ball first and he lofted it with a good shot toward the green. When they came to hers she took a practice swing, then paused with her club resting behind the ball.

“You like that little nurse pretty well, don’t you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed slightly.

“She’s a nice kid. We have fun together.”

“She’s the one with all the money, isn’t she?”

“I’ve no idea. We haven’t discussed finances. Go ahead and play.”

“Are you in love with her, David?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake! I haven’t considered the subject! Will you please take your shot, Coralee? Graham and Janet are watching, and there’s another foursome waiting to tee off.”

She took an easy swing that sent her ball after his. She was a good golfer, especially her short game. She could control her ball like a pro.

For the next half a dozen holes her ball control was too good for David’s peace of mind. And even when she dubbed a shot, it was becoming increasingly clear what she was trying to do. Her drive from the tee was never as long as his, but her second or third shot was deliberately aimed at the spot where his ball had landed. Then she’d stall and chat while he politely waited for her to play on.

It was when they both had to blast out of a sand trap that he finally called her on it.

“Look, Coralee, you’re being pretty obvious, don’t you think? From your last lie, a simple shot with your seven-iron should have taken you to the green. So why did you deliberately aim for this trap?”

She smiled up at him provocatively, making no move to play her ball. “You said it’s obvious, Dave, so why ask?”

“Can’t you see how it’s irritating Graham?”

Her eyes darkened reproachfully and she thrust her lower lip into a pout. “If you’d spend a little time with me now and then when he isn’t around, he wouldn’t be irritated.”

“That would be worse! Coralee, you promised…”

“I didn’t promise to let a mistake ruin my whole life! David, I told you this marriage was a mistake, and it gets worse all the time. I can’t go on any longer. I’ve made up my mind to give Graham back to Mildred. That’s where he belongs!”

“Coralee, no! A man can’t be handed back and forth like property! You married for better or worse, and it’s up to you to make him happy! Now go ahead and blast your ball out of this sand before Graham comes over to see what’s holding us up. He’s watching now—can’t you see?”

She took a tense grip on her club, addressed the ball for a long moment, then relaxed and raised a tear-drenched gaze to him.

“David, if I were free… I mean, when I’m free, because I’ve got to have my freedom! Will you wait for me, Dave? Will I have a chance with you?”

He’d better end this once and for all, he thought grimly, alarm over the situation making his voice harsh as he said, “Coralee, get this straight! You wouldn’t have a chance in the world! I’m not in the market, and I wouldn’t want you anyway! I don’t like girls who throw themselves at me. So cut out this monkey business and be a decent wife to the man you…”

He didn’t see the club start its swing. He was so startled by the ugliness of the rage that twisted her face he almost didn’t sidestep in time to dodge the swinging clubhead aimed straight for his temple.

He caught the shaft of the club and wrenched it from her grasp to slam it to the ground. Sobbing, she flew at him, slapping him wildly first on one cheek then the other before he could grasp her flailing arms and pinion them.

“For God’s sake, stop it, Coralee! You’re making a scene, and people are waiting for us!”

“You—you brute!” she sobbed, struggling to free her arms. “I hate you!”

“That’s fine!” He released her so abruptly she staggered back and almost fell. “Just keep on hating me—then maybe you won’t make a mess of everything!”

He turned to look for her club just as Graham came striding up, bewilderment and exasperation furrowing his brow.

“What the devil’s going on over here?” he demanded.

Coralee whirled about and flung herself in his arms. “Graham, darling!” she gasped on a sobbing breath. “He insulted me! I’ll never speak to him again!”

“What’s this all about?” Graham asked, scowling at David over Coralee’s head as he held her close.

“You’ll have to ask Coralee,” David said stiffly. “I meant no insult.”

“He’s lying!” Coralee sobbed. Then, lifting tearful, beseeching eyes, she said, “Graham, darling, let’s play on by ourselves. I can’t stand being with him now.”

“Of course, dear.”

Giving David a hard, suspicious, but still bewildered glance, he picked up Coralee’s club and ball, carried them back to her cart, then on to the green where he was ready to putt out. Coralee clung to his arm, chatting nervously all the way.

David wondered how she was reporting the incident. He couldn’t very well hurt Graham by telling him the truth, so he supposed their friendship would be strained from now on.

But remembering the night after Coralee’s drunken tantrum, when Graham had persisted in confiding how very much his wife meant to him, it seemed better to sacrifice their friendship than to endanger his marriage.

David waited until Graham and Coralee had putted out and replaced the flag. Then he exploded his ball out of the trap, up onto the green.

Janet was waiting for him, her ball lying on the apron.

“Dr. Burns says we’re continuing as twosomes,” she said wonderingly. “What on earth happened?”

“Coralee took exception to something I said,” he told her wryly. “Sometimes she’s rather hard to get along with.”

“I had an idea she might be,” Janet said sympathetically. “It’s too bad, too. Dr. Burns seems like such a wonderful person. I hope this won’t spoil your friendship.”

She took a nice shot that sent her ball near his, both so close to the cup they conceded the putts, for players behind were waiting.

He was glad that Janet asked no more questions about the incident, for he didn’t want to explain.

Graham and Coralee kept just ahead of them all the rest of the way, often making them wait to putt or drive. No words were spoken, the couple ignoring them as if they weren’t there.

The seventeenth was a short par, three hole, with the tee on a hill above the green. Graham and Coralee were still waiting for the foursome ahead to putt when David and Janet arrived at the tee. The foursome following had joined them behind the bench when Coralee got up to drive. Her ball landed neatly on the green, and Graham took his place at the tee.

Something about Graham’s stance alarmed David immediately. The man didn’t seem quite steady on his legs as he shuffled his feet about, and he was definitely off balance as he brought his club up for the backswing.

He stood there for a long, insecure moment, as if posing for a photograph, then the clubhead began to shake. He brought it down in a swift but uncertain arc, missed the ball completely and sent his club hurtling down the hillside as he collapsed in an unconscious heap on the tee.

“Phone for an ambulance, quick!” David told Janet as he rushed to his stricken friend. “Get someone with a motored cart to drive you to the clubhouse!”

Janet was gone before he’d finished speaking. Coralee was gasping beside him as he bent over Graham and felt for a pulse.

“Is he dead?” she moaned on a sobbing breath. “Oh, David, have I killed him?”

“He’s not dead,” David said, feeling the strong but irregular beat of the pulse. Noting the whiteness of his skin, however, the blue lips and purple-tinged eyelids, David added shakily, “He’s not dead—but it looks like one hell of a coronary!”

Chapter 11

Coralee was waiting for him in the solarium when he came from Graham’s room.

“Oh, David, how is he?” she cried, starting to fling herself upon him, then holding back. “Is he going to be all right?” Her lashes were still damp, her face was pale, her full lips red with weeping, and she was wringing her hands in anguish that looked genuine.

David’s voice was gentle as he answered, “I really don’t know, Coralee. He seems to be pulling out of it okay. Dr. Claibourne thinks it’s heart block, but I’m not sure.”

“Don’t be technical, Dave, please! Just tell me—was I the cause of his—his heart attack?”

He sighed and regarded her with helpless compassion. “I can’t answer that either, Coralee. You should be able to judge better than I. Emotions are often a factor in heart disease, but there are others, some may even be congenital. However, a strong emotion added to the factors already present is often the precipitating cause.”

“I said don’t get technical!” Her voice had risen, but she controlled it as she went on unhappily, “Dave, I’m sorry about my lousy behavior this morning. I’d apologize all over the place if it would do any good. I want you to know I’m sorry, anyway.”

“Okay. If you really mean that, we’ll forget it.”

“I do mean it, Dave. I’m afraid I helped bring on his attack—fouling up your friendship. Though I’m sure the real trouble is in our marriage itself. We just aren’t suited to each other. He’d be a lot better off with Mildred—but here I am trapped with him now because he’s sick!”

“Trapped?” he chided, anger stirring in him again.

“I can’t help it, Dave!” Her tears spilled over once more. “That’s the way I feel. I’d made up my mind to ask for a divorce, but how can I now? Not till he’s all well—and no one will tell how long that will take!”

“Is that all you’re concerned about? How long before he’s well enough for you to get a divorce?”

She shook her head. “No, Dave, I’m not that callous. I told you I’m fond of him—that’s why I didn’t break up our marriage long ago. It would be better if I had, better for him, too. Because even if Mildred wouldn’t take him back before, this illness would bring her around, and she’d mother him and care for him the way I—I just can’t.”

“You can try.”

“I will, David! Believe me, I’ll do my best! I’ll do everything I can to make up for our terrible mistake. And when I say our marriage was a mistake, I mean it was my fault. I came between him and the wife who is right for him. She helped him become a success. She bore his children…” Covering her face with her hands to stifle a sob, she drew a shuddering sigh and gazed up at him with such misery in her tear-drenched eyes he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

“David, you don’t know how horrible it is to realize you’ve done a terrible thing, and not know how to undo it. Sometimes I despise myself so bitterly I don’t see how I can go on. If I had the courage I’d blow my brains out or—”

“Coralee! Don’t talk like that!”

“I would!” Once again she covered her face with her trembling hands and sobbed, swaying as if she might fall.

He took her shoulders in a stern grasp. “I know it’s tough, Coralee, but this is your chance to prove what you’re made of. Do what you know is right; help Graham get well by behaving like an adoring wife. Treat him as if he’s the most precious person in the world to you, and by the time he’s well, maybe you’ll find that he is.”

She relaxed and leaned against him. “I’ll try, David. I promise you, I’ll try my very best!”

“Good girl.” He patted her shoulder comfortingly, his compassion putting him momentarily off guard as her arms went impulsively about his neck.

“Oh, David,” she choked, clinging to him. “I don’t know how I…”

A harsh sound brought their startled attention to the door.

Miss Andrews was standing there, malicious disapproval gleaming in her eyes, making her mouth a tense straight line. She cleared her throat roughly, and he realized that was the harsh sound that had caught his attention.

“If you weren’t so busy,” she said tartly, “you might have heard yourself being paged on the P.A. Dr. Matthews wants you in surgery immediately. There’s an emergency and he wants you to scrub.”

It would have to be that old biddy who busted in on them, David reflected furiously on his way to surgery. And he might as well talk to a stone wall as try to explain that he was merely offering sympathy to his friend’s worried wife. He hoped Andrews wasn’t the kind to start a lot of backstairs gossip. But he wished he’d been more cautious when Coralee rolled those big tearful eyes at him! If there was anything he didn’t want cluttering his new career, it was petty gossip.

Well, here’s hoping that Andrews would keep her mouth shut about the cozy scene she’d walked in on. He’d see that Coralee didn’t get another chance to put him in a compromising position—no matter how sorry he felt for her. She probably didn’t rate much sympathy anyway. She’d hurt a number of people to achieve this marriage she now found unsuitable, so it was up to her to make the best of it.

Chapter 12

Janet glanced at the clock on her dresser and put her book away. Time to go on duty for her four-to-twelve shift.

Already in uniform, she pinned her cap on her coppery curls and touched her lips with lipstick. She’d be glad when she was on duty somewhere beside Second Annex, so her feet wouldn’t drag reluctantly when it was time to go to work.

Then she remembered. According to David’s conversation with Dr. Burns yesterday, old “Dizzy” Andrews would be leaving Second Annex in another week. She had almost forgotten that in all the excitement later.

She still didn’t know what had made Coralee Burns so furious. But she had a pretty fair idea it had something to do with the way the woman was trying to follow David’s ball. It had become obvious enough to irritate her husband. David was probably fed up with it and had told her so.

Had something in that situation been the cause of Dr. Burns’ heart attack? Coralee must be in love with David, and her husband had just found out.

Well, who wouldn’t fall in love with David? Janet thought as she gave her room one last inspection before leaving. She had already admitted to herself that her own heart didn’t behave in exactly a normal manner when he was around. That’s why it had been so devastating when Andrews humiliated her in front of him. After they became acquainted, the feeling grew—though at first it was just a little extra fillip in their friendship.

Then he’d been so appealing and sort of shy when he asked her to help him give a housewarming. And it had been such fun planning it together that she couldn’t stop herself from dreaming of how it would be if it were her house too. She was careful not to let him sense that, however, and she was still waiting for the first sign that his feeling for her was anything beyond a simple, casual friendship.

One of the things she liked and admired about him was that, since he had no serious intentions, he kept the association on a friendly basis. None of this necking just for the fun of it, or pretending emotions he didn’t feel. When he told a girl he loved her, she could be sure that he meant it.

She was still thinking of him when she came face to face with Miss Andrews in the treatment room.

“Well, Miss Raleigh, you certainly make it a point never to come on duty a few seconds early!” the woman said caustically, and to Janet’s surprise she closed the treatment room door, shutting them in alone.

“There are a few things I must say to you, young lady, so you’ll understand why I can’t give you full recommendation when I turn this ward over to the new supervisor.”

“You can’t give me a recommendation?” Those words stood out.

“Certainly not! It’s my opinion that you haven’t the qualities of a good nurse.”

“Why not? What have I done now? If you think I had anything to do with your being transferred—”

“What did you think would happen, the way you ran bellyaching to Mrs. Burns every time your toes got stepped on? But that isn’t what I’m talking about. It’s such habits as this—barely showing up in time for duty. An interested nurse will arrive early enough to discuss the condition of the ward with the nurse going off duty. She’ll perform a lot of little extra tasks that never seem to occur to you. And on top of your negligence and lack of interest, you’re inclined to be impudent, and your rebellion against criticism and discipline could very well render you completely undependable in emergencies.”

“But Miss Andrews—”

“Don’t interrupt! That’s another of your faults! I’m doing the talking, and you should profit by listening. A girl with your background of wealth and position…”

“So that’s it!” Janet cried. “You believe that because I had it easy as a child, and don’t have to work for a living, I can’t learn how to work! That kind of jealousy is just snobbery in reverse!”

“That’s enough!” Miss Andrews shouted, her face thrust so close that Janet backed away, realizing it was futile to lash back, no matter what the woman said.

“I told you I’d do the talking, Miss Raleigh, but it’s plain that you don’t intend to profit by what I say. Why don’t you admit that you have no real yen to be a nurse? What you want is to be some bright young doctor’s wife, and now that you’ve looked the field over, you’ve settled on this new doctor you’ve been running around with. Well, you’d better get busy and snag him then, before he makes a mess of everything by playing around with Dr. Burns’ wife. Wrecking his own career and bringing on the heart attack that the poor man had yesterday. The way it looks from here, he’s just using you as a cover-up for his affair with her!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Janet choked, the blood pounding to her throat.

“Oh, don’t I!” Miss Andrews sneered. “Then what was he doing cuddling her in his arms in a solarium last night? They were so absorbed they couldn’t hear the P.A. blasting his name up and down the halls. I had to burst in and tell him he was wanted in surgery.”

Janet whirled about and headed blindly for the door, but Miss Andrews stopped her before she could open it.

“I’m not through with you yet—and I don’t want you deserting your post as you did once before.”

“I’m not deserting,” Janet cried, her forehead pressed against the door, her hand clenching the doorknob. “I thought you wanted me to go to work.”

“I do. Report to Carruthers. She’ll remain on duty until after you’ve gone down to dinner. Step back, please.”

Janet stepped back to allow Miss Andrews to precede her through the door. With relief she watched the supervisor stalk down the hall to the elevator. Janet made her own way to the nurses’ station, her knees still shaking.

Miss Carruthers looked up unhappily from the chart desk.

“I heard her yelling. Every time she chews you out I’m afraid I’m to blame. I started it all when I reported what that Crane kid said about you.”

“Forget it,” Janet said brusquely. “You didn’t start anything. She took a dislike to me the first day I came on duty here. But I’m not going to let her make me quit. Let’s get to work. Andrews says you’ll tell me about all the patients.”

She tried to put David Sterling out of her mind as she worked. There was probably some explanation for his having Coralee in his arms. It probably wasn’t as bad as old Dizzy tried to make it sound. David wasn’t the type to indulge in a clandestine affair with his friend’s wife.

Or was he? What did she know about him actually? She’d thought they were becoming good friends, but did he really care about her? Or was Andrews right, and he was just using her?

Andrews was a malicious old gossip, she told herself firmly, and once again put the whole thing out of her mind to concentrate on her work.

* * * *

She was on her way to the dining room, detouring through the lobby to answer a call from the main desk, when a young man stepped in front of her.

“Good evening, Miss Raleigh,” he said cordially. “Don’t you remember me?”

She stared at him, puzzled. He was tall and slim, impeccably dressed in brown slacks and beige sports jacket, his hemp brown hair neatly combed, his dark eyes alert and friendly under long sweeping lashes.

“Arnold Crane!” she exclaimed, hardly able to believe this nice-looking boy was the whining patient who’d given her a bad time about six weeks ago. Good health can make a huge difference in a person, she reflected, marveling.

“I’d almost as soon you didn’t remember me,” he said with a wry grin. “I’ve been told I was a real creep while I was sick. You nurses were all so nice—but I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again.”

Janet smiled. “You weren’t that bad. Anyway, a man can hardly be blamed for being ornery when he’s as sick as you were.”

She turned to leave, but he touched her arm and begged, “Please don’t go yet. Give me a chance to erase a bad impression. I’d hate for you to think I always acted like that.”

“I’m sure you don’t, but I…” She was about to move on to the desk, then she saw David coming down the hall.

She felt frozen to the spot. She knew, dimly, that Arnold Crane was talking urgently, saying something about going out to dinner, but all she could think of was David Sterling standing in a solarium with Coralee Burns in his arms.

I mustn’t let it throw me, she told herself sternly. What he does is his own business. He has no obligation to me. He’s never indicated that I mean anything to him seriously. Maybe I never will…

He was standing in front of her then, recognizing Arnold Crane, and they were all talking about the boy’s splendid recovery. To her surprise she could join in the conversation, her voice steady and sounding quite normal in spite of the way she felt inside.

“I’ve been trying to wangle a date with my favorite nurse,” Arnold said, his eyes on her though he was speaking to David. “I want to prove I’m not the crumb-bum she must have thought me while I was sick. I think she ought to give me a chance to make a better impression, don’t you?”

David smiled down at her, amusement twinkling in his brown eyes, giving them golden highlights. “I’d say that’s entirely up to her,” he said, sounding quite indifferent.

He doesn’t care, she thought starkly. It wouldn’t meant a thing to him if I fell in love with this goof! Or was he taking it lightly because he didn’t believe for a minute she’d accept the date? Was he taking it for granted that their association would preclude her dating anyone else?

He had no right to take her for granted, while he felt free to hold Coralee in his arms! Besides, she had to know just how much she did mean to him.

She managed a bright smile for Arnold while she kept a wary eye on David, to gauge his reaction as she said impulsively, “Okay, I’ll give you a chance to make amends, Arnold.”

She immediately regretted the impulse, for there was no reaction from David. He continued to look amused.

If he had frowned, protested, or even looked disappointed, she would have promptly retracted her acceptance. But he merely smiled and said, very casually, “Well, have fun, you two,” and walked away.

At first Janet was scarcely aware of Arnold’s babbling there beside her suggesting time and place. Her heart was pounding with a sickening thud as she watched David walk down the hall to disappear around a corner.

She’d taken a stupid way to try to gauge his feelings. All she had accomplished was to appear shallow and flighty before him. If she’d ever had a chance to win his serious interest, she’d probably thrown it away now. She’d never done such a foolish, impulsive thing before. But of course, she realized bleakly, she’d never been in love before.

“I’m sorry, Arnold,” she said, breaking into something he was saying about a dance band. “I forgot—I’ll be on duty. I can’t go out with you after all.”

“Oh, please!” he cried in alarm. “Don’t back out now! You’re not on duty every night! I know you’re off Friday because,” he smiled sheepishly, “I got that out of the girl at the desk before I had her phone up for you. I wanted this date with you so much! You can’t turn me down!”

“I’ve got to, Arnold,” she began—but he looked so crestfallen that she relented. After all, what difference would it make now? The harm had already been done. If it would make this poor kid happy to spend an evening with her, why refuse? She’d had no business accepting the date, but it would be worse to renege.

“Okay, I’ll go,” she said. “Call at the Nurses’ Home for me Friday night.”

Chapter 13

David stepped into the elevator feeling vaguely perturbed. Why would Janet make a date with a punk like that? Not that it’s any of my business, of course…

Or maybe it is, he corrected himself. Just how emotionally involved was he getting, anyway? The girl must have got under his skin more than he realized, or he wouldn’t be baffled by this strange possessive feeling the first time she showed an interest in another man. Or rather, in this twerp who was about her own age.

He realized he’d been thinking of Janet as a kid, much too young for him. She was even younger than Diane. Since Diane’s death he’d found himself unable to consider any girl seriously, or work up much enthusiasm for marriage. But now that he thought of it, he recognized the emotions Janet stirred as the same sort of affectionate, protective concern he’d had for Diane before his love superseded all other emotions.

Would he ever feel like that about Janet? If he did, the ten years or so difference in their ages wouldn’t matter. But did he want to feel like that about her? Until now he’d been quite complacently happy to go it alone. His association with Janet had started mostly as a means of protecting himself against the fascination Coralee had for him. It had continued and progressed because they found each other companionable. He had no idea how deep her feeling for him might be. The alacrity with which she accepted a date with the Crane boy might be an indication—or it might not. Somehow he felt that he’d better be absolutely sure of his own feelings before he made any overtures she could take seriously. For she wasn’t like Coralee who could become passionately involved with any man who took her fancy. If Janet gave him her heart, he was sure he could depend on it being his forever.

He’d reached no conclusions when he arrived at Graham’s hospital room. Planting a professional smile on his face, he opened the door and looked in.

Graham was propped up in bed, appearing quite normal. His color was good, and his smile, though a little uncertain, was, on the whole, friendly.

“Come in, David,” he said. “I’ve been hoping you’d stop by. I’m sorry I gave you all such a scare yesterday. I feel fine today. In fact, I see no point in staying in bed, letting my work pile up.”

“Don’t worry about the work,” David said. He listened through his stethoscope, finding less irregularity in the heartbeat which was good and strong now.

“I suppose Claibourne gave you a report on his findings?” David asked.

“Yes, for what they’re worth. The symptoms don’t seem to follow a standard pattern.”

“Have you had any previous symptoms?”

“Yes, but nothing so spectacular. Just occasional shortness of breath on exertion, with a feeling of constriction around the heart. The old pump’s wearing out, I guess.”

“It shouldn’t—not at your age. Graham, I’ve studied the X-rays and I believe there’s a tumor of the left ventricle wall. The shadow isn’t conclusive, but might show up better if the blood is dyed with a radiopaque substance. So how about some further studies with diodrast?”

“Sure, be my guest. But I don’t have to stay in bed, do I? If I’d had a coronary I wouldn’t object—but dammit, nothing makes me so weak as unnecessary bedrest!”

“That’s up to Claibourne. He’s letting me do the diodrast studies, but otherwise he’s in charge.”

“Okay.” Graham lay back on the pillow, his eyes clouding. “David—About yesterday. What happened between you and Coralee?”

“Didn’t she tell you?” David felt his mouth growing tight.

“She said she’d been teasing you by following your ball, and kidded you about being too strait-laced to make a pass. She said you took her seriously and called her a two-timer. She isn’t, really, you know. She can’t help being a coquette, it’s just her way, but…” He paused and swallowed hard, setting his jaw as he asked desperately, “There’s no—no emotional involvement between you two, is there?”

“Absolutely not!” David did his best to sound convincing. Then, relieved that he had his cue, “I’m sorry I didn’t realize she was kidding. I wouldn’t cause any trouble between you for anything in the world.”

Graham smiled. “I know that, David. And I don’t want to lose your friendship. Coralee may be mad for a while, but she’ll get over it. She doesn’t hold a grudge.”

David remained to chat for a few more minutes, then wished he hadn’t. There was a light knock on the door, and Coralee walked in. She gave David one hostile glance, then disregarded him to sit on Graham’s bed and bestow an ardent, wifely kiss.

David started to leave, but Graham called him back.

“Wait, David! I’m sure that Coralee…”

“Let him go, darling,” Coralee snapped, her face tight with fury as she turned to David, then melting to tenderness as she looked back down at her husband.

“This is the first chance we’ve had to be alone since you scared me to death yesterday,” she said softly, then laid her lips on his with a great show of fervor. David escaped hurriedly from the room.

* * * *

Janet found herself infinitely bored as Arnold Crane propelled her around on the dance floor. He may have been a pretty good dancer before his illness—at least he talked about the latest steps with assurance and enthusiasm. But he was still taking it easy because of his operation, so they waltzed to everything.

She would have been bored with him anyway, no matter how well he danced. He was young and callow, with little to talk about except his long stay in the hospital. She had listened to that all through dinner, through most of a dull movie, and was completely fed up by now.

“Let’s call it an evening,” she said when they went back to their table. “You mustn’t the yourself so soon after your operations.”

“I’m not tired—this is fun!” he assured her. Then he added wistfully, “But I guess I shouldn’t dance too much. We could drive around a while.”

“No, take me back to the hospital. This has been enough for one night.”

“There’ll be other nights, won’t there?” he asked confidently.

“We’ll see. I don’t have many free nights, you know.”

Maybe it would be best to tell him she never meant to go out with him again. If he persisted in asking for future dates she’d have to make it plain. But she hated to hurt his feelings unnecessarily.

He grinned and stood up. “Don’t you go giving me the runaround, baby!”

Making his way among the tables to the exit, he let her follow. From the first he’d shown bad manners, but she attributed it to his youth and poor training, feeling all the more compassionate. He wasn’t going to be able to hold any girl’s interest for very long.

She followed him across the parking lot, and got into her side of the Cadillac he’d said belonged to his father. He was already at the wheel by the time she took her seat.

“I’ll sure be glad when I get my own bus, instead of driving this old klunk,” he griped, his voice taking on some of the whine it had shown constantly while he was sick.

“I wouldn’t call this a klunk,” she said, judging that it wasn’t more than two or three years old.

“Oh, it’s loaded with power,” he conceded. “But I want one of these keen little sports cars—a Jag, or a Porsche. I’d even settle for one of the new M.G.s. Dad says I could’ve had one for what my three operations cost.”

So we’re back to that subject again, she thought as he drove out of the parking lot saying he guessed it was better to spend a fortune on operations than not to be alive; and it’s a good thing that new doc came along to find out what was really the matter with him…

She settled wearily in the seat and closed her mind to his chatter; closed her eyes, too, thinking this was more comfortable than she’d be in one of the sports cars he wanted.

The comfortable seat, and the utter boredom of his monologue almost put her to sleep. She opened her eyes suddenly with the feeling that something was wrong.

“Where are we?” she asked, staring at the moonlit countryside. “This isn’t the way to the hospital!”

“Well, cripes, I don’t see why you wanta go straight home! It’s still early.”

“No it isn’t! It’s after midnight and my late leave is up at one. Turn around right now and take me back to the hospital!”

“Don’t be like that,” he whined. “The way you talked sounded like you wouldn’t be able to go out again very soon so…”

“I’ll never go out with you again if you don’t take me home right now!” she said furiously.

“Maybe you didn’t intend to anyway. You’re not as friendly as I hoped you’d be.”

He braked the car and made a sharp turn through an entrance flanked by stone pillars. She recognized the place as Rocky Dell Park, where there were tables and barbecue pits for picnics under huge old gnarled oak trees draped with climbing vines. She had been there with a group of student nurses one Sunday, and had nearly worn out a pair of shoes following the winding rocky bed of a stream, dry at the time, but which was said to be flooded during torrential rains.

It was dry now, too, she could see as Arnold parked beneath the spreading limbs of an oak tree. The dry stream bed loomed up in front of the car, and even after he’d turned off the headlights, the rocks gleamed white in the bright moonlight. They ranged in size from huge boulders to small pebbles.

“If you don’t start home right now,” she said through clenched teeth, “I’m going to get out and walk!”

His answer was to thrust his arms clumsily around her and jerk her close.

“You don’t think I’m gonna take you home without a goodnight kiss, do you?” he mumbled as his mouth avidly sought hers, his weight pushing her off balance.

She tried to shove him away, but he was suddenly all arms and legs, pressing her back with more strength than she would have believed possible this soon after a severe illness.

“Cut out the stalling, Jannie,” he panted. “You nurses weren’t born yesterday—you know the score. You must’ve known I wanted to make up for that puny little kiss at the hospital.”

The remembered humiliation gave her strength to push free and get the door open. She was no sooner out of the car than he was out after her, grabbing her again, his weight thrusting her down to the ground.

She dug her nails into his cheek until he bleated and let go. She scrambled away, but he lunged after her, shouting hoarsely in rage and frustration.

When he threw her down this time, her hand closed on one of the rocks of the river bed. Finding it loose, she swung it in an arc that landed a glancing blow against his head.

That stopped him for a moment. He stood over her, slowly shaking his head against the moon-bright sky. He called her unspeakable names. When he started kicking at her, she rolled over and got to her feet.

For a blessed instant she thought she was free, but she stumbled and had to catch her balance. By then he was after her again, grabbing her about the waist, flinging her backwards.

There seemed to be nothing behind her. When his arms let go she was still falling, down into endless space. The stars and moon were lighting the dark sky above her until, in one tremendous crash, they were shattered to bits, and the world seemed to come to an end.

The stars and moon were still bright when she opened her eyes, she had no idea how much later. Her head was down in the dry creek bed; her body seemed to be somewhere above it. Gradually she managed to pull herself together and sit up.

She ached all over, but the greatest ache of all was in her head, which felt several times its normal size. She got groggily to her feet and stumbled over to the road. The car was gone, and so was Arnold.

Good riddance, she mumbled, holding her head between her hands to keep it in place as she walked back to the highway.

She never knew who picked her up and brought her to the hospital. The car stopped when she stood in front of the headlights and flagged it down. There was a man and woman, she remembered. She had vague recollections of trying to explain what had happened, and of their sympathetic advice, telling her she should notify the police. But she never really saw their faces.

The next she knew she was standing under the window of the room she shared with Fern. It was after one o’clock, so the door of the Nurses’ Home was locked. She dare not ring the bell and face the housemother. Mrs. Carson would take one look at her disheveled appearance and demand to know exactly what had happened. Then she’d lose no time reporting it to various authorities and making the whole thing as public as possible. It would be just too humiliating.

She picked up a few pebbles from the graveled driveway and tossed them at the window beside Fern’s bed, glad that the moon still gave her some light.

After a third pebble struck the window a lamp was switched on and Fern’s head appeared.

“Open the door!” Janet called softly. “I’m locked out.”

She waited at the door until Fern had it open and guided her in with a pencil-flashlight.

“What on earth happened?” she whispered as they made their way to the alcove where the register book was kept open on a small desk.

“I’ll tell you in our room,” Janet answered, picking up the pen and finding her name where she had signed out at six o’clock. How long ago that seemed!”

She had just written, “1 a.m.” when the alcove was flooded with light. She whirled about to find Mrs. Carson in the archway, her bony frame swathed in a purple chenille bathrobe, her square face stern with condemnation.

“That’s a lie!” she declared, pointing to Janet’s entry. “It’s after three! I noticed you hadn’t signed in when I locked the door, so I couldn’t go to sleep. Now, just what kind of a cock-and-bull story are you going to tell me to explain this?”

Janet drew herself up with all the dignity she could muster. “If you’ve already made up your mind it will be a cock-and-bull story, there’s no use in my saying a word.”

“All right, then. Report to the superintendent’s office first thing in the morning for disciplinary action.”

“I’ll do that,” Janet said, adding to herself that she’d a damn sight rather explain to Mrs. Burns than to this boor of a housemother who was such a close friend of Dizzy Andrews.

Linking her arm in Fern’s, she crowded past Mrs. Carson to get out of the alcove and head for their room.

Chapter 14

David hesitated just before he reached the superintendent’s office. Mildred had sent word she’d like to see him some time this morning, but the woman who had turned in just ahead of him looked like the old battle-ax who had it in for Janet. He didn’t particularly want to meet up with her in Mildred’s office, so he walked on past, deciding to look in on a couple of his patients first, then come back.

He had a pretty good idea of what Mildred wanted. Even though she and Graham were no longer married, she was deeply concerned about his heart attack, and probably wanted David’s personal report on Graham’s condition.

Fifteen minutes later he was again heading for Mildred’s office. This time, just before he arrived at the door, Janet came rushing out.

She didn’t see him. She looked as though she had been crying and would burst into tears again the moment she had privacy. Her cheeks were crimson, her eyes glazed, her pretty lips crushed to a tight line as she brushed unseeingly past him to dash on down the hall.

David had an impulse to follow and try to comfort her, but he stifled it and went on into the office. Maybe he’d better find out what it was all about first.

Mildred’s secretary glanced up and smiled. “Mrs. Burns is expecting you, Dr. Sterling. Go right in.”

Mildred was leaning back in her swivel chair, her eyes thoughtful and perturbed as she gently tapped a pencil on her desk.

“So the top sergeant’s making trouble for Janet again,” he said, drawing up a chair to sit across the desk from her.

“What do you know about it?” Mildred asked, looking surprised. “Did Janet tell you?”

“No, but I saw her dash out of here blind with tears about fifteen minutes after Miss Dictator stalked in.” He gave the room a quick glance. “She isn’t still around here somewhere, is she?”

“No. Daisy just dropped in long enough to add her two cents worth.” She leaned forward, studying him quizzically. “David, just how interested are you in Janet Raleigh?”

He grinned. “That’s something I’ve been asking myself lately. She’s a nice kid. If I wanted to get serious about a girl, she’d be a good choice.”

Mildred made a face. “That’s putting it cautiously, so I guess you’re not in love. I knew you’d been going out with her. But then, I’ve also heard rumors that you and Cora-lee…” She spoke the name as if it numbed her tongue.

“Good Lord! There’s no place as hot for gossip as a hospital!” he exclaimed. “Has this got anything to do with what Janet’s upset about?”

“No, I guess not. How is Graham, David? I can’t bring myself to question Cyril about him. I’ve an idea you can tell me more anyway.”

“He went home Wednesday—you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes. That’s why it’s so hard to get any information. I kept track while he was in the hospital. I understand you did some diodrast studies Tuesday, but I’ve heard nothing about a report on your findings.”

He shrugged. “The results were disappointing. That is, the tumor I still suspect didn’t show up definitely. I think we should open his heart, and I’ve advised it. That’s all I can do. If he doesn’t want to submit to surgery, it’s up to him.”

“What will happen if you’re right, David?”

“The tumor may grow until it causes real damage. If he waits until another attack, it could be too late.”

“Have you told Cyril and Matthews?”

“Yes, but they’re not sure they agree. And of course, I could be wrong. So, don’t worry, Mildred. Graham’s back to work, part time, but he promised that if the slightest symptoms return he’ll let us know. Now, what kind of trouble is Janet in?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you, David. It’s all very humiliating to her, and she’s frantic in her anxiety to avoid publicity. Yet I still think I should have insisted on calling the police.”

“The police! Is the kid really in serious trouble?”

Mildred sighed and leaned back in her chair. “She went out with a former patient who displayed such vile temperament while in the hospital that I can’t imagine what possessed her to make a date with him.”

“The Crane boy!” David exclaimed. He’d wondered several times whether or not Janet had made a definite date with the boy, and kept it. He’d been on the verge, several times, of getting in touch with her to advise her against it. But he’d reminded himself each time it was none of his business—unless, of course, he wanted to make a permanent claim on her time.

“What happened?” he asked sharply. “Don’t tell me that tin-horn sport attacked her!”

“He certainly tried to. Drove out to Rocky Dell and threw himself all over her. In the process of getting away she seems to have been dumped backwards into the dry creek bed. She had a lump the size of an egg on the back of her head where it hit a rock. She was unconscious for a few minutes, and he drove off and left her there!”

“Good Lord! She could’ve died! Has she had the injury examined?”

“No, she says she’s had worse bumps than that which never amounted to anything. She admitted a dull headache this morning, though, and I tried to get her to consult Graham, if he’s able to see her. I also advised her to report Arnold Crane to the police. I think I almost had her persuaded on both counts; and then Daisy Andrews had to come barging in and spoil everything.”

“How did she figure in the deal?”

“Oh, she took it upon herself to convince me that the whole thing was Janet’s fault. She referred to the day Janet had to give the boy a bed bath while he was desperately sick.”

“I remember that day—it was the first time I ever saw Janet, and I felt like wringing Miss Andrews’ neck when she bawled the kid out in front of a couple of chiefs as well as all the rest of us.”

“That wasn’t the worst,” Mildred said, her mouth tensing a little. “The next day Andrews really landed on the girl when she learned that Arnold had somehow managed a kiss while Janet was trying to lift him onto the clean sheets. The obnoxious kid tattled to the next nurse who bathed him, making it sound as if Janet had deliberately held him in her arms and kissed him. Janet swears that wasn’t the case, but Andrews chose to believe the boy, and she claims that intimacy gave the boy the idea of taking her out and attacking her.”

“Hogwash! If she kissed him at all it was in pure compassion, and probably under duress. I hope you didn’t let Andrews bulldoze you.”

“No, but she scared Janet into a shell, so frightened of a lot of humiliating publicity she won’t see a doctor or report to the police. She threatened to leave the hospital if anything further is done about the incident. She has the makings of a good nurse. I’d hate to lose her.”

“You could lose her in a more tragic way if she doesn’t see a neurologist. Is she on duty now? I’m going to have a look at that head injury whether she likes it or not.”

He found her in the treatment room on Second Annex. Walking in quietly, he came up behind her as she stood lifting instruments out of the hot sterilizer with a pair of forceps. He had his fingers under the copper curls and was gently touching the back of her head before she knew he was there.

“David!” she cried, swinging away from him. Then, as a sterile speculum dropped from the forceps and clattered to the floor, “Damn it! See what you made me do!”

“I’m sorry.” He picked the speculum up, found it too hot to handle, and juggled it over to the sink. “You can toss it in with the next batch. After you’ve gone with me to consult Dr. Burns. That lump on your head could be serious.”

“Don’t be silly!” she scoffed. “It’s practically gone now—and so’s my headache. Haven’t you ever bumped your head without dire results?”

“Not hard enough to be unconscious for… You probably don’t even know how long you were out.”

Suddenly her face flamed. “Who told you about it? How much do you know?”

“Enough to figure I’m partly to blame. I should never have let you make a date with that punk in the first place.”

“How could you stop me? It wasn’t any of your business! And nobody had any business telling you about it, either! Who was it? Mrs. Burns?”

“She had only your welfare at heart. She’s worried about you, Janet, and so am I. Please…” He took the forceps from her fingers to lay aside. Her hand was shaking, so he captured it in his and drew her close with an arm about her slender shoulders. “Let’s go over and see Graham right now.”

A harsh sound, which was becoming all too familiar, brought him around sharply to face the door. Miss Andrews was standing there, her face once again tight and hostile.

“Well, Dr. Sterling,” she said caustically, “if I don’t find you with one woman in your arms, it’s another. This time you’re trespassing in my territory. Miss Raleigh is supposed to be on duty.”

Janet had already wriggled from his grasp. She walked over to Miss Andrews and said in a shaky voice, “I’m going off duty right now. I’ll go straight to Mrs. Burns’ office and ask her to send someone to take my place.”

She brushed past the woman and walked on out, her head high. David started to follow, then paused to stare down into Miss Andrews’ grim, disapproving countenance.

He could think of a dozen cutting remarks he’d like to make, but none would cut her down as devastatingly as she deserved. Rather than spouting something that would make him sound childish and ineffectual, he satisfied himself with matching her venomous gaze for a long, tense, and bitter moment, then stalked out.

By the time he was admitted to Mildred’s office, Janet had gone.

“She asked for a few days off to go home and sort of pull herself together,” Mildred explained. “It sounded like a good idea so I granted a week’s leave. When she gets back, Andrews will be in surgery.”

“What if something develops from that head injury?”

“She promised to see their doctor right away. She’ll be in good hands, David. She comes from a fine family, with plenty of money.”

“So I’ve heard. Where is she now? At the Nurses’ Home? I’d better go say good-bye.”

“No—you’d better not. I’m afraid it was a mistake to tell you about last night’s escapade. Having you know seemed to be the crowning humiliation. By the time she comes back next week, maybe you’ll both be a little surer of how you feel about things.”

He stood in uneasy silence for a moment, then shrugged and smiled. “I’ll take your advice, though I have a feeling I shouldn’t. If I hadn’t been so damn chicken about committing myself, I would never have let her make that date in the first place.”

* * * *

Janet sat wearily at the table, watching a floor show without seeing it, sipping a cocktail she didn’t really want.

So why am I drinking it? she asked herself derisively.

She glanced at her watch. Five minutes after midnight. If she’d remained at the hospital she would just be going off duty, and not half so tired as she felt right now.

The house burst into applause as the floor show ended, lights came on, and the band struck up a dance number.

“This is our dance,” Allan Hargrove said, taking her hand as the other couple left their table and moved onto the small square of dancing space.

She stood by obediently and nestled in his arms to follow as expertly as he led her through the intricate steps they had learned together long ago.

“Having a good time?” he asked, smiling down at her.

She nodded. No use telling him how bored she had been all this week. He’d done his very best to make it a gala week for her.

Everyone had. She had phoned her mother before making the brief trip home by bus, and both parents had been at the station to meet her.

“If you’d called earlier I’d have driven up after you,” her mother had said, hugging her tight.

Her father hugged her too. “We’ve been begging you to come home for a week-end,” he’d said, laughing, “and here you suddenly turn up for a whole week!”

“Not quite!” she had corrected quickly. “I’ll have to go back Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure what shift I’ll be on Monday.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay for good?” he’d asked. “Aren’t you tired of nursing yet?”

“No—just tired. I’ll be rested in a day or two.”

She hadn’t told them about the bump on her head. They’d have insisted on her going through some big clinic for tests, and she’d have felt silly. Her headache was practically gone now, and the lump had subsided to negligible size. She wanted to forget the whole affair.

She’d had one full day of rest before anyone else knew she was home. Since then she’d hardly had a minute to herself. There’d been a hastily arranged party of her friends to welcome her, and dates with Allan every night.

“Do you really have to go back tomorrow?” Allan murmured in her ear, drawing her a little closer as they danced.

“Of course I have to!” she declared firmly. “I was lucky to be granted this much leave.”

“It’s been a wonderful week, Jan, and it could go on like this if you’d just get over your crazy idea of wanting to be a nurse.”

“It’s not a crazy idea! I am a nurse, and I love it!”

“Well, if you had to train, why didn’t you pick a hospital here in the city? So I could see you more often.”

“You’ve been answering that all this week—you and the rest of my friends. I can’t take nurses’ training and keep up my old social life at the same time. It’s easier to be out of reach than to keep saying no.”

He gave her a last whirl and stopped at their table, facing her seriously as they sat down.

“Jan, honey, I don’t like the way you lump me with the rest of your friends. I used to think I had a special place in your life. I thought after you got this nursing bug out of your system, we were going to get married and settle down. But lately you haven’t even answered my letters. And when I can’t reach you by phone, and leave a message for you to call back, you seldom do. What’s the matter? Is there someone else?”

She returned his gaze gravely.

“Answer me!” he said, his voice sharp as she hesitated. “Is there someone else?”

“I think there is, Allan. I’m not sure how he feels about me yet. But I know that he’s the man I want.”

His face was bleak for a moment before he managed a grin. “Then I hope you get him, Jan,” he said softly. “You deserve the best. I hoped you were going to be for me—but if you’re not, I guess I’d better start looking around for second best.”

Chapter 15

David sat at his desk beside the spacious window of his private office and watched Graham Burns cross the street from the hospital.

Seven weeks, he thought, marveling. Seven weeks since Graham’s collapse on the golf course, and not another symptom had developed. Unless you could call that slow, tired gait a symptom. But Graham insisted that he felt fine. And any man his age might be chronically weary with a wife like Coralee.

Graham stopped at the curb and looked as if he were panting. Shortness of breath? Was the man suffering symptoms he wouldn’t admit?

There were three steps from the street sidewalk to the walk leading to the clinic door. Graham took two of the steps, then paused, his hand pressing suddenly to the left side of his chest. It dropped just as abruptly, and he glanced around furtively, as if afraid he might have been observed. He took the last step and walked sturdily until he was too close to the entrance to be in David’s view.

David opened his private door and intercepted him in the hall. “Have you got a minute, Graham? I’d like to talk to you.”

Graham smiled and turned in. “I have two minutes if you want them. Haven’t you any patients?”

“I just sent my last patient to the hospital—and I’m about to go over there myself. But I was watching you come up the steps, Graham.”

“Snooper!” Graham made a wry face.

“You grabbed your left side as if you had pain.”

“Hell, no! Not pain, doctor. Just a slight feeling of constriction now and then. It doesn’t amount to anything.”

“You’re still short of breath, after just walking over from the hospital. How about letting me listen to your heart?”

Graham grinned. “Help yourself, doctor.”

There was still an occasional extrasystole, but no cardiac murmurs. David took his blood pressure and found it one-thirty over eighty.

“Let’s do another electrocardiogram,” he said.

“And then what?” Graham scoffed. “You’ll want more diodrast studies to mull over that shadow again. Don’t you get tiled of chasing shadows, doctor? I’m all right, David. I ought to know.”

He stood up and patted David’s shoulder. “Sorry I can’t accommodate you, and I’ve enjoyed this little consultation, but I have patients waiting.”

Before checking on his hospital patients, David went to Radiology and once again studied the roentgenograms of Graham’s heart. Diodrast had been injected into a vein at the left elbow, giving a clear picture of the innominate vein, the vena cava, and the pulmonary artery. There was definitely something. Possibly a tumor that didn’t communicate with any of the cardiac chambers. There also seemed to be some calcification of the heart wall. He wished Graham was willing to let him operate. But as long as Matthews and Browne and Claibourne didn’t agree to the necessity…

He returned the films and went up to Third West where he knew Janet was on duty, and doing fine now that Andrew was out of her hair.

She was standing behind her chair at the desk, staring with an expression of horror at her left hand, which she was gripping with her right hand.

“What on earth’s the matter?” he demanded in alarm.

She gazed up at him, bewildered. “It keeps getting numb,” she said. “It’ll be all right in a minute, but it keeps going to sleep.”

“How long has this been going on?” he asked, taking her left hand in both of his to massage it gently.

“I—I don’t know. At first I thought I must have been lying on it, or something. But now it goes numb right while I’m using it, sometimes all the way up my arm. And today my left leg did the same thing.”

“Do you have a headache?” he asked sharply.

“Well, yes, but not bad. I’ve been feeling as if I’m coming down with the flu or something. Could that make my hand numb?”

“No. Where does your head ache?”

She laid her hand above her right temple. “Not where I got bumped, if that’s what you have in mind. Besides, that was at least six weeks ago!”

He nodded. “Has anything else been bothering you? Do you stagger when you walk? Bump into things?”

She flashed him an amused grin. “You think I’ve been drinking?” Then she sobered abruptly. “I almost forgot—I did bump the door going through it this morning. And one other thing—I tried to type a letter last night on my portable, and it came out looking like a foreign language. The fingers of my left hand kept getting on the wrong keys without my knowing it. I finally had to give up.”

He dropped her hand and turned to the phone. “We’ll get someone to take your place here. You’re going straight to bed for a complete neurological examination!”

“Oh, David, don’t be silly!”

“Listen to me, Janet. Six weeks ago you had a severe blow at the left of the base of your skull. Now you’re having a headache at the opposite pole—the front right region. That, plus your central nervous symptoms, is just about a classic picture of subdural hematoma. It’s imperative to have it diagnosed promptly and aggressively, for if that’s what it proves to be, the sooner we get you to surgery, the better.”

She had grown pale as he spoke, and her eyes seemed enormous. “What—what exactly is subdural hematoma?” she asked shakily. “It sounds like a blood tumor under the dura mater. That’s the membrane covering the brain, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and put simply, you’ve got the right idea. You see, when your head crashed against a rock…” He laid his hand at the remembered spot. “Right here?”

“Yes, but that isn’t where my head aches now.”

“I know. Think of a—well, a box of loose eggs, let’s say. Hit the box at one end, and the force of the blow might break the eggs at the other end. Just so, your head injury could be at the opposite pole.”

“Why didn’t I feel it there right away?”

“The injury wasn’t severe enough to cause massive bleeding. Just a tiny slow leak that formed a small clot in the subdural space which, as you probably learned in your anatomy, is between the dura mater and the arachnoid, two of the membranes covering the brain.”

“Yes, I know.” She felt her head gingerly, her eyes still wide and wondering.

“In the weeks since the clot was formed,” he went on, “it may have been absorbing fluid, by a process similar to osmosis, and in the protective way the body has of behaving, it covered the bloated clot with new tissue, or neoplasm, to wall it off. So, in effect, it has become a tumor. Get the picture?”

“Yes, but I don’t like it. What do you have to do?”

“First, Graham will have to make sure I’m right. This is just my snap diagnosis, you understand. He’s the neurologist and will do a painstaking job of medical detection to establish the exact nature and location of your trouble. If I’m right, the only thing to do is a craniotomy—open your head and remove the clot.”

She shuddered.

“Don’t be afraid, honey. Burns is an expert.”

“I know.” She smiled tremulously. “I can’t help being afraid—but I’ll let him do whatever is necessary.”

“Good girl. And Janet, we should notify your parents.”

“No, please, not yet! No use worrying them until—Maybe this will all turn out to be nothing.”

“Maybe,” he conceded dryly, turning to the phone. “But don’t bank on it.”

Late that night Janet lay flat on her back in a hospital bed, feeling tears scald her eyes.

For the past week she had been trying to bury her fright and ignore the strange symptoms. Now Dr. Burns was trying to confirm her worst fears, and she’d end up having brain surgery. What if it left her an idiot? Or paralyzed?

Her first test had been an electroencephalogram. A neurological nurse had settled her on a couch in a small cubicle of a room, then fastened a number of tiny, needle-sharp clamps in her scalp, and read the graph made on a machine across the narrow room. The nurse wouldn’t give a report, but Dr. Burns had told her later that some abnormality had been indicated.

He had also run a pencil up the sole of her foot, telling her he was looking for a Babinski sign, but not saying whether or not he found it. He’d done a spinal puncture without mentioning any results on that either.

He had pricked her arm lightly with a needle, from hand to shoulder, asking her to specify where the point felt sharpest. And he had questioned her minutely about her fall, how long she may have been unconscious; and about her present symptoms, just when each had started. Finally, he had given her a pencil and paper telling her to write the whole thing out in precise detail.

Does he think I can’t tell it the same way twice? she wondered, recalling his repetitious questions. Is my mind affected already, and I don’t know it? She’d always understood that a mental patient seldom recognizes his own insanity.

When David peeked through the door, she wiped her eyes hurriedly and told him to come in.

“I hoped you might be asleep by now,” he said softly. “How do you feel?”

“Ignorant! Dr. Burns hardly tells me a thing! What has he found out?”

“Nothing conclusive. He’ll make more tests tomorrow. Meanwhile, I really think we should notify your parents.”

“Not yet! If they think I might be facing brain surgery they’ll be scared to death. Wait until you’re sure!”

“You’ll have to go to surgery tomorrow for the tests, Janet. Graham wants to do a pneumoencephalogram first.”

She drew a sharp breath. “That’s putting air in the brain, isn’t it? Through the spinal column?”

“Yes, it’ll be like the spinal puncture. You didn’t mind that, did you? You won’t be anesthetized at first, except for some pre-op drugs to make you very sleepy and un-caring. You’ll have to cooperate by sitting up with your legs drawn over the edge of the table so the air, when introduced, will go up to your brain. After X-rays of that you’ll be put completely under for some arteriograms.”

“Radiopaque substance in the arteries?” she asked, remembering her classroom studies.

“That’s right. It will be injected into a carotid artery in your neck, to dye the circulatory system of the cranium and show just what the situation is there.”

“With I have a terrific headache afterwards?”

“You may, for a while. And you might have a sore neck for a day or two. But Burns is clever and careful. He won’t hurt you any more than he can help. And of course, you won’t know anything about it at the time. Now, don’t worry.” He bent and kissed her on the lips, a light, comforting kiss such as a mother might bestow on a hurt or anxious child.

He was gone before she could quite catch her breath. She set her mouth grimly.

If I live long enough, David Sterling, she said behind her clenched teeth, you’re going to kiss me again—but not like that!

* * * *

David stood beside Graham and Dr. Browne, studying the row of arteriograms that hung wet and dripping from the developer. Janet had been wheeled to the recovery room, not yet awake after being put under for the films to be made.

A sensation of pressure built up under his ribs, sending a wave of dizziness to his head as he realized the significance of the thick, dark shadow breaking up the neat pattern of blood vessels on one side of the cranium.

“Looks like massive subdural hematoma,” Dr. Browne declared confidently. “I’d say there’s no time to lose.”

“There certainly isn’t,” Graham agreed. “We’d better bring her back from the recovery room before she wakes up, and keep her under for immediate surgery. Where are the girl’s parents? We’ll want their signed consent.”

“They’re downstairs,” David told him, thankful that he had gone against Janet’s wishes and notified them this morning that the tests were to be made. He’d had a strong suspicion that a crisis like this might arise.

“Good!” Graham said. “Dave, you get their signature while we check with Ann Preston for an available O.R. Then come back and scrub. Elwood, I’d appreciate your help, too.”

Graham had to ask Dr. Browne, David thought as he went down to see Janet’s parents. The moment Browne had heard that one of the student nurses might have to be scheduled for craniotomy, he’d been hovering around. As senior staff surgeon next to Matthews, he had the right to observe any operation in the hospital. For some reason he seemed particularly interested in this one. Perhaps because it was the first major surgery Graham had scheduled since his collapse on the golf course. It was only recently that he’d resumed full practice.

Within a satisfyingly brief time the operating room was set up, the operating team ready to proceed. Janet’s beautiful copper-red curls had been shaved off smoothly and her poor bald head painted crimson. She looked pathetically childish, or rather, more like a battered doll some careless child had mistreated, her body draped in a sheet, her eyes closed, the silky lashes shining gold against the blue circles beneath; the constellation of freckles across her nose looming up in the pallor of her skin. Her lips were pale, too, but beautiful in repose. He remembered how they had felt beneath his own last night, warm, vibrant, questioning, and a new rush of tenderness almost overwhelmed him.

Then he had to forget about Janet as a person as he took his place across the operating table from Graham to concentrate on the work at hand. The sight, sounds and smells of the operating room were completely familiar: the bright, steamy warmth, the occasional hiss of steam from the sterilizer, the light click of the instruments against the tray, the murmuring sound of the waiting suction machine, Graham’s crisp orders to the scrub nurse. The routine itself was not so familiar. He had studied the craniotomy along with the rest of his surgery, but in his practice he had turned that over to the neurological surgeons.

So now, instead of holding a scalpel, he was watching Graham cut neatly between marks he’d painted on Janet’s skull, their location decided from his study of the arteriograms. David felt a hemostat slapped into his hand by the scrub nurse, and clamped off the severed vein, stopping the flow of blood. Then Graham was pulling back the scalp with a retractor, exposing the bone while David reached for gauze to pack the opening.

He set his teeth as Graham called for the burr trephine and, using it like the brace and bit it resembled, started drilling through the bone.

Suddenly the noise stopped, and the room was filled with another sound—the hoarse, unnatural breathing of the surgeon.

“Watch it!” Dr. Browne cried as he appeared from somewhere to rush up behind Graham.

David just managed to get a firm grasp of the trephine before Graham released it and collapsed backward against Elwood Browne.

For a moment all was confusion, then an orderly and a float nurse had somehow managed to get Graham out of the room, and David found himself breathlessly completing the drilling that had been started.

“Collect the bone dust, Miss Preston,” he snapped, removing the drill. “Where’s the elevator?”

He started to reach for it, then noted with relief that another nurse was scrubbed to preside at the instrument tray. She handed him the elevator and he used it to lift the bone and enlarge the opening he had drilled.

“We can’t go on with this alone!” Dr. Browne cried. “We’ve got to have a neurological surgeon! Or at least consult Matthews and get his—”

“If there’s a good brain surgeon in the hospital, call him quick,” David said without stopping his work, “but I’m not going to sit around waiting for him with this girl’s head sawed open. If you’ll give me a hand we can complete this before you could get another surgeon here to scrub.”

“I’m not having anything to do with it! I refuse to take the responsibility!”

“I’ll take the responsibility,” David said, trying to sound a great deal calmer than he felt as he caught a glimpse of the pulsing red membrane, filled with blood, that would have to be extracted. “I don’t care how much seniority you have, Dr. Browne, this operation has to be completed—right now!”

“All right—you heard that,” Dr. Browne said grimly. “If this girl dies, everyone in the room is witness to the fact that you have taken complete responsibility. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

Browne was out of David’s mind the moment he quit speaking. David was too busy excising the abnormal tissue, draining the free blood and making sure there would be no further bleeding, then closing the wound as neatly as possible. Long before he was through the anesthetist started reporting a drop in blood pressure that not only increased the need for hurry, but made him thankful he had not let Browne force him to wait for another surgeon. Even though his fingers may have fumbled on the unfamiliar task, Janet had a chance to survive. He knew that delay to call another surgeon in to scrub, would most likely have proved fatal.

* * * *

Two days later he was standing over Janet’s bed, looking down into the pale sleeping face below the turban of bandages that swathed her skull.

She was still in a coma, and it seemed to him he had spent most of the last forty-eight hours here. She had special duty nurses around the dock, and her parents remained in almost constant attendance.

“When do you suppose she’ll ever wake up?” Mrs. Raleigh mourned. She was a small, neat, auburn-haired woman who looked as Janet probably would in twenty years. If she lived.

“She’s holding her own,” was all the comfort he could give her as yet.

“I’m not going to wait any longer to place charges against that boy!” Mr. Raleigh said angrily. “I’m going to file a report with the police right away, leaving the charge open. If she doesn’t pull through, it will be murder or manslaughter. If she does—well, there’ll be time enough then to settle on a lesser charge. But he needn’t think he’s going to get off scot-free after a brutal attack like that!”

“I don’t blame you,” David said. “I had a strong feeling that the incident should be reported at the time. But Janet wouldn’t hear of it.”

“That was no excuse for someone not reporting to us!” Mr. Raleigh said belligerently. “As I understand it now, you knew of the attack and her injury, and so did the superintendent of nurses, and others. But no one did a thing about it! No one told her parents, or placed charges against that boy! The first we knew of it she was practically on the operating table. And nobody told us that the surgeon who was going to drill her head open had just had one heart attack and was due for another!”

“Nobody knew he was due for another,” David said mildly. “He’s as good a brain surgeon as any in the state.”

“But you aren’t! You aren’t a brain surgeon at all, and judging by Dr. Browne’s remarks, you had no business going ahead with that surgery by yourself! If my daughter doesn’t live through this, by God, the hospital is going to hear from me—through my lawyer!” He turned sharply and stomped from the room.

Chapter 16

David stood beside the bed watching Janet breathe. Her father’s angry words still echoed in the room which was otherwise silent, except for her mother’s occasional muffled sob, and the quiet sounds made by the nurse who was replacing the suspended intravenous feeding bottle.

Gradually her breathing deepened, and finally she drew a long, shaky sigh and opened her eyes to gaze about wonderingly. When her eyes met David’s she blinked and murmured, “David?”

Her mother was immediately bending over the bed. “Oh, baby! Baby!” she choked, “You gave us such a bad tune!”

“Why, mother!” Janet’s eyes widened. “How’d you get here so quick?”

“So quick!” her mother echoed on a sobbing breath. “Your father and I have been here almost three days!”

Janet’s bewildered gaze returned to David. “Three days? What day is this? Isn’t it Thursday?”

“It’s Saturday, honey—almost Saturday night.”

“Where’ve I been? Didn’t they do the arterio…”

Her lips continued to move but her voice had failed completely. Panic clouded her eyes.

“Don’t be frightened, Janet, and don’t try to talk. Your voice gave out because you’re so weak. You’ve been desperately ill, but you’re going to be all right now. I’ll tell you what happened, then I want you to go back to sleep.”

Her eyes were closed before he finished explaining. He felt the pulse at her wrist, finding it stronger and considerably slower than its frightening pace of the past hours. He checked her blood pressure, assuring her mother it was almost back to normal.

He was smiling as he left the room. He would have to keep careful watch as her recovery progressed, of course, check and double-check her condition and reactions. But from the way it looked now, Janet was going to be all right.

Now he could concentrate on Graham and the heart condition that had caused a second collapse—this time at a most inauspicious moment.

He found Graham sitting up in his hospital bed.

“How’s the girl?” he demanded anxiously, then relaxed as he scanned David’s beaming face. “She must be better.”

“She was awake for a minute, and now her sleep seems normal. I think she’ll recover okay—and no harm done because I had to take over.”

“You probably did as good a job as I could, David. You’re a born surgeon. That’s why I told Matthews I’d go to surgery only on condition that you do the job.”

“You’re finally giving in!” David exclaimed with relief. “I checked the new films this morning, Graham, and I’m more convinced of my diagnosis than ever. I don’t know why the tumor doesn’t show up more clearly, but I’m sure it’s there.”

“I know, and Matthews is inclined to agree now. Browne’s still holding out for sclerosis of the coronary artery, and nothing would make him happier than to see you open my heart and search for neoplasm in vain. He’s bound to scrub in, David, and Matthews is in favor of it.”

“That’s all right with me,” David said, though he wasn’t particularly happy about it. Browne was now an avowed enemy, searching desperately for anything that might discredit his young rival.

“When will you schedule me?” Graham asked. “I suppose the sooner the better?”

“No, I’d like for you to rest in bed for about ten more days. There are a few further tests I want to run, and—well, there’s always the possibility that I could be wrong. If Browne’s diagnosis should be correct, surgery wouldn’t be safe too soon after your attack. Better to wait for a quiescent period. The rest in bed will be all to the good anyway. And I want you scheduled when the mechanical heart is available. Just in case. When your doctors disagree on diagnosis, we’d better prepare for any eventuality.”

* * * *

The night before Graham was scheduled for surgery, David finished his work and headed for Janet’s hospital room. He had already checked on her twice today, and at least that many times each day of the past two weeks, but he could always find some excuse for looking in on her again.

Her rapid recovery had been nothing short of marvelous. Each day she had gained in strength until now she was able to be up walking around in her room. Her special duty nurses had been released, and her parents had gone home, planning to return for the court hearing on the charges they had filed against Arnold Crane. They had left Janet a box full of attractive scarves and turbans to wear on her bald and bandaged head. This morning he had removed the sutures, and left off part of the bandages.

He heard voices before he opened the door, and recognized the angry one as belonging to Daisy Andrews. What business did she have in here bothering Janet!

He thrust the door open and the strident voice stopped in mid-sentence. Standing at the bed where Janet sat in obvious dismay, she had been saying, “…and if you don’t resign without further delay…”

“What are you doing in my patient’s room?” he demanded.

“She shouldn’t have been your patient!” The woman tinned her wrath upon him. “You’re no brain surgeon, and the Medical Board doesn’t approve of your unauthorized surgery.”

“That’s no concern of yours! Now please get out!”

Locking a tense gaze with him, Miss Andrews clenched her teeth, practically whistling through them in her rage as she backed toward the door.

“David! She’s going to testify for Arnold Crane!” Janet cried. “She’s going to tell about…”

“I’ve offered an alternative!” Miss Andrews snapped. “I’ve known from the beginning that she isn’t good nurse material. If she won’t resign immediately I’ll testify as that boy’s lawyer requested. For when a young woman, under cover of the nursing profession, indulges in sordid intimacies with a male patient, she’s not only a disgrace to her calling, she’s asking for exactly the sort of attack she claims…”

“That’s enough!” David broke in, managing to keep his voice and hands under control. “I can’t stop you from making a fool of yourself on the witness stand, but who’s going to believe you when there’ll be plenty of witnesses to refute you?”

“If you expect to be one of them, Dr. Sterling,” she rasped, moving forward belligerently, “you’d better think again. Unless you wouldn’t mind some publicity about your affair with Dr. Burns’ wife, and about the malpractice suit against you in the east. Don’t forget, my brother-in-law is chairman of the Board. I got him to write for a report on you from the Medical Society there—and he’s also been in correspondence with Dr. Walter Peck. They don’t want to discredit the hospital by publicizing a malpractice suit against one of the staff doctors, but…”

“Then you’d better keep quiet about it, too. There’s such a thing as loyalty.”

“Don’t talk to me about loyalty, Dr. Sterling! I’ve been a loyal servant of this hospital for years, and to my mind it’s more loyal to rid an institution of undesirable elements than to hide them. When people are guilty of the sort of mistakes you both have made, they shouldn’t be trusted with human life!”

“That’s not for you to judge,” David said sternly. “Anyone can make a mistake. Do you consider yourself infallible?”

“I certainly make it a point to be!” she stated righteously. “I give my very best efforts, and I expect those who work with me or under me to do the same.”

He stared at her in stark incredulity and disgust. “If you’re through now,” he said tightly, “suppose you get out before my patient has a relapse.”

Her mouth made a hard straight line as she turned to the door. She opened it, then paused. “I’d better have assurance of Janet’s resignation before my eleven o’clock appointment with that boy’s lawyers tomorrow morning, or, I warn you, I’m going to testify in his behalf!” She closed the door behind her without looking back.

Janet stared at him bleakly. “I’d better resign,” she quavered. “She could ruin us both.”

“Don’t you dare resign! We’ll fight for all we’re worth!”

“But she’ll make such a stink, David. And she could wreck your career.”

“Never mind about that! We’ll fight it out, even if it means my being publicly tried all over again for the mistake I made back home.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, taking her trembling hands in his. “Don’t let her frighten you. You’ll be a good nurse, and I’m a good doctor, and we’re not going to let her scare us. Chin up, and that sort of thing.”

He tucked a long forefinger under her chin and tilted her face to look down into the gold-flecked brown eyes lustrous now with tears. Her lips trembled, and impulsively he laid his own upon them, feeling the tender warmth as she responded to his kiss.

His heart began a wild clamor that made him want to draw her in his arms and kiss her in a different way, a far more fervent way. But he remembered, just in time, that she was his patient, and still weak from her recent surgery. So he kissed her again, lightly, as he’d kiss an adored child, and gently forced her back on the pillow.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, dear—and don’t you do anything drastic in the meantime! We’ll fight this out together.”

Chapter 17

On reporting to surgery the next morning, David found Elwood Browne in the scrub room, zealously brushing his nails in a cloud of lather.

“Matthews said I should assist,” Browne said smugly. “He’ll scrub in too, in case he’s needed.”

“Okay,” David agreed, though he wished it would be Matthews working with him instead of Browne. Was this to be some sort of test? Did Matthews want to stand back as an observer, checking their work against each other? He had already shown a preference for David’s work, but perhaps he’d heard too much about his personal involvements and his past career. And if Andrews couldn’t be stopped, he’d be hearing more.

“Has Preston got everything set up?” he asked, more to fill the rather hostile silence than for information.

“Ann Preston was called away on some family emergency,” Browne told him, more smugly than ever, “So Andrews has taken her place.”

“Damn!” David couldn’t stop the exclamation that exploded from his lips. Andrews was efficient, of course. He’d operated with her several times and had no technical complaints. But he was in no mood to have her at his elbow this morning. He’d be working with his two bitter enemies, and if his controversial diagnosis should turn out to be wrong…

But it’s got to be a tumor! he told himself firmly, once again reflecting back over the symptoms, seeing the action of Graham’s heart under the fluoroscope, visualizing the shadow in the various films.

When he finally stood with the rest of the operating team over Graham’s draped and painted chest, which was all that was visible of his friend now, he resolutely put all personal feelings aside. Elwood Browne became simply a pair of sterile gloved hands assisting him as he removed the third and fourth left costal cartilages to enter the pericardial cavity. And Daisy Andrews was merely the means by which the right instruments were slapped into his hand at the precise moment they were needed.

Draining the cavity which contained an increased quantity of clear, slightly yellow fluid, David found a bulge where something was embedded in the myocardium, or heart muscle, at the left ventricle.

“That could be our tumor,” David said.

“Or maybe not,” Browne snapped. “Let’s try aspirating before you cut into it.”

David found the aspirating needle in his hand, and introduced it carefully, but nothing could be sucked out.

“We’ll have to cut and ligate this artery before I can excise anything,” David said, noting that a branch of the coronary was embedded in the fat at the base of the mass. As soon as Browne had completed the ligation David began dissecting sharply to separate the excess tissue from the heart muscle, careful not to tear through the myocardium into the cavity of the heart.

“Are you going to be much longer?” the anesthetist asked.

“I don’t know yet. What’s his condition?”

“Pressure’s been dropping—but not radically. If it won’t be too much longer…”

“Here it is!” David exclaimed. To save time, he had cut into the lesion before completing the dissection, and there was the tumor. The wall was tough and calcified. Opening it, he found a thick, cheesy substance.

“That’s why it made an indistinct shadow,” he said, “and didn’t fill with diodrast. I’ll have to curette and wash it out before dissecting the wall from the myocardium.”

“Pressure’s dropping faster now,” the anesthetist warned.

“I’ve got to finish this!” David groaned. “Miss Andrews, prepare an intravenous drip of Noradrenaline, four milligrams per thousand milliliters of five percent glucose.”

“There isn’t any time!” the anesthetist protested. “Pressure’s falling too fast—he’ll go into heart failure.”

“All right then, Andrews,” David snapped, realizing that Graham could die while she was setting up the intravenous flow. “First bring me a five cc Coramine injection—twenty-five percent solution.”

She was fast, but even so, before she handed him the prepared syringe, he was having to massage the heart to keep it beating. He couldn’t complete his surgery while the heart was being massaged, but if the Coramine would keep it stimulated until the Noradrenaline drip could take over and bring up the blood pressure…

He rammed the needle into the myocardium and pushed the plunger.

The effect was instantaneous—but not what he had expected. Graham went into a violent convulsion, making further surgery momentarily impossible.

“What the devil did you give me?” David cried, whirling to Andrews, finding her staring at him with mouth and eyes wide open.

“You—Did you say twenty-five percent?” she quavered, grabbing the box of ampoules from the tray and staring at it horrified. “You’d just given the Noradrenaline order… I must have got confused…”

“You mean you gave me Noradrenaline?” he snapped, his mind quickly checking on reactions and antidotes.

“No! It was Coramine—but the wrong solution—it was too strong—it…” Her voice gurgled off as she stared at the writhing body being held forcibly on the operating table.

“Oxygen!” David shouted at the anesthetist. “And phenobarb!”

“Here’s the phenobarb,” Matthews said, plunging a needle into Graham’s arm. He must have got it from one of the other nurses, David thought, for Andrews seemed to have disappeared.

As the convulsions quieted, David went on with his dissecting, working as swiftly as possible, but with great care.

Graham’s heart was still beating when he had finished and they could close the wound.

It was only then that someone asked worriedly about Miss Andrews.

“It isn’t like her to walk off the job,” Matthews said. “Even after a mistake like that.”

“I’ve heard her claim she never made a mistake,” David said, “so how does anyone know how she’d act?”

They had turned their sutured patient over to the anesthetist and jerked off their sweaty masks before anyone left surgery. Matthews was the first to open the door into the scrub room.

“Here she is!” he exclaimed, and the startled tone of voice brought them all to the door. His voice was low and tremulous as he added, “This is how she acts when she has made a mistake.”

She was on the floor, her body distorted as if it had writhed in convulsions before it went rigid in death. A hypodermic syringe, probably the same one he’d used to inject Coramine into Graham’s heart, David thought, stood upright on her chest where she had accurately gauged the exact intercostal space to plunge the long needle and inject a lethal dose straight into her heart. There were broken Coramine ampoules on the floor beside her.

Matthews knelt and took gentle hold of her wrist. “It’s too late for antidotes now. She must have done this immediately after the mistake was discovered. If we hadn’t been so busy bringing Graham out of his convulsion, we’d have heard hers. I’ll send word to Pathology—they’ll take care of her until the coroner comes.”

* * * *

As they dressed in the doctors’ room, glum and shaken, they could talk of nothing else.

“She must have made a fetish of infallibility,” Matthews said thoughtfully. “Her ward was always run like a machine, and she brought the same efficiency to surgery. To her, any mistake was inexcusable. Someone should have told her that even machines can go haywire.”

“I doubt if anyone could have told her anything,” David said, remembering the woman’s arrogance last night. Well, she was no longer a threat to Janet’s career, or his own, but he couldn’t be happy about it ending like this.

“I know what you mean,” Matthews said, smiling sadly. “Daisy wouldn’t listen. She wanted to do the telling. For doctors and nurses, a mistake can be such disaster that we’re inclined to harbor an inordinate fear of them. We try to put on infallibility like a white jacket, but it doesn’t fit, because we’re still human. The shock of finding that out can bring disastrous results. It caused Daisy to kill herself.” He looked directly at David. “It lost you a malpractice suit.”

David heard the sharp intake of breath where Elwood Browne stood beside him, but he didn’t glance at the man. He met Dr. Matthews’ intent gaze.

“So you knew about that too,” he said wearily.

“Of course.” Matthews sounded quite casual. “I couldn’t recommend a surgeon to the post I’m vacating without thoroughly investigating his background. I’m satisfied that you would never have lost that suit—it wouldn’t even have been filed against you—if you hadn’t been overwhelmed by the thought that you had made a mistake. It was an honest mistake. You should have maintained that the best doctor in the world, faced by the same symptoms, would have drawn the same conclusion.”

He was right, David realized with the insight that sometimes follows incredible blindness. He had been too apologetic to the man’s wife. He had reacted to her censure by blaming himself—and she had taken advantage of that.

“Each time you’ve taken a stand here,” Matthews went on quietly, “you’ve turned out to be right. But you may not always be correct in your diagnosis—no one is. Do you think you could admit to a mistake now, without losing your equilibrium, or worse?”

David drew a long thoughtful breath before he answered.

“I honestly believe I could, now,” he said at last. “I think I’ve been maturing professionally ever since I arrived here to work in Cyril Claibourne’s clinic. I’ve learned that doctors can disagree without any of them being actually wrong. It usually turns out that we just haven’t followed our findings far enough.”

“I understand Claibourne is going to offer you full membership in his clinic. Are you going to accept?”

“I certainly am! I believe a group of doctors might come closer to infallibility than one alone, though not even a group can actually claim it.”

David was still thinking of that as he walked down the corridor. He seemed to have lost his old dream of building a great reputation through a practice of his own. The anonymity of clinic practice no longer bothered him for through it his work had become more important than ever, and that was what counted. Working with other doctors made it simply more stimulating and fruitful.

He needn’t be alone in his personal life either, he realized, finding that his feet had automatically carried him to the door of Janet’s room.

The empty bed was made up neatly, and for a moment he was staggered by a tremendous sense of loss. Then he saw her at the window, wearing a sheath dress of beige wool, matched by a turban of the same material.

“I was afraid you’d gone,” he said, his voice sounding strangely thick and shaken. The blankness of that bed where he’d expected her to be sitting up to greet him, had somehow unnerved him. For he knew now that if she had been gone, he would have had to follow.

“I had to wait for you to sign my release,” she said, her voice light and casual in contrast to the poignancy of his own emotions. She offered her hands, which he took in both of his, knowing he never wanted to let her go.

“Janet, I’ve got to tell you…”

“About Andrews? I’ve already heard. News travels fast in a hospital, you know. It—it makes me feel sick, somehow. That’s why I want to go home for a while. You say I can’t go on duty yet, but surely I don’t need a hospital bed! I’d like to go home and persuade my father to drop the charges against Arnold Crane. Maybe Arnold’s been scared enough to learn his lesson. And after all, I did do a damn fool thing that day giving him his bed bath. I broke a rule of nursing that was made for a nurse’s protection. I learned a lesson too, and now I’d like to put the whole thing behind me. So will you sign my release? Then I’ll ask Mrs. Burns for leave.”

He was gazing at her intently, her words making less impression on him than the appeal of the lips that uttered them.

“You weren’t listening!” she accused him. “David, I don’t believe you heard a word I said!”

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was husky. He moved his hands gently up her arms to take a firm hold of her shoulders and drew her close. “I only came in to tell you I love you. I want you to marry me.”

“Oh David!” she cried, her breath like a sob as she snuggled close. “I was afraid you were never going to say that!”

Working in his clinic office a week later, he rang for his next patient and was surprised when Coralee was ushered into his consultation room.

“This seemed to be the only way I could get to see you,” she said apologetically, “you’re so busy all the time. David, how is Graham? Is he getting along all right?”

“Just fine. His operation was a complete success. In a month or so he’ll be good as new.”

“How long before it will be safe for him to know that I—I can’t go on with our marriage?”

He felt his mouth tighten angrily. “So you’re going to start that again. I thought you were trying to…”

“David, it’s just not right! We don’t belong together, we never did, and the sooner a mistake is corrected, the better all around. Pretending to love is—Well, he knows it’s phony as well as I do. It’s time we both admitted it. I simply can’t go on being his wife.”

Her eyes implored him tearfully. He set his jaw. “You must know by now I’m engaged to marry Janet.”

“I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that my marriage is a horrible mistake. I’m all packed up ready to leave, but I just can’t tell him, David! Please tell him for me!”

He shook his head. “That’s not my place. If you can’t tell him yourself, there’s only one other person who should do it. So suppose you tell her.”

“You mean Mildred.” She swallowed hard. “That would be pretty humiliating.”

“No more than you deserve. And it would give her a chance to set things straight. She has known Graham for a long time; she understands him better than anyone. I think she’s the one to handle it, if you won’t do it yourself.”

* * * *

He didn’t see Graham until the next day. He went into his hospital room then, half expecting to see his friend crushed and broken. But he was no such thing.

“Come in, David, and don’t look so concerned,” he said, with a brave show of heartiness. “I suppose you’ve heard that Coralee left me flat, but I’m not going to let it get me down.”

“That’s good,” David said cautiously. “Personally, I think you’ll be better off. She’s a beautiful girl, but she hasn’t the strength of character you deserve in a wife.”

“Don’t gloss it over. I know I was an old fool, and I don’t deserve half the good luck I’m having.”

His eyes suddenly filled with tears which he blinked away sheepishly. “Believe it or not, David, Mildred is going to take me back. We’ll be remarried as soon as the divorce goes through. No man is fine enough to deserve a woman like her, and I’m never going to forget it again!”

“I’m sure you won’t!” David said fervently. “And I’m awfully happy for you, Graham. For Mildred, too.”

Graham sighed and smiled tremulously. “It’ll be like a miracle, going back to the old life, with the kids coming to see us between semesters and all that… All this other business will slip into the past like a nightmare. I made an awful mistake, but Mildred’s so damn sweet about it. It’s wonderful when we get a second chance.”

“I know,” David said gently, remembering that it was through this friend he’d got his own second chance. And this time he was making good.