She stood pondering, pushed to and fro by the hurrying people around her. She had been silly; she should have asked for her salary and her fare sooner. But she hadn’t liked to, even though the money was rightly hers. And now she had landed herself with only a few pounds. Supposing the professor had changed his mind about employing her for his next patient? She had been rash enough to buy herself a pair of shoes the day before, and now she was left with less than her fare to England. She moved at last, back to the reception area to fetch her case. She had been foolish twice over; the professor had said that she would be fetched from the airport, but how was she to know who was looking for her? Supposing they couldn’t find her and she was left—supposing they forgot all about her, supposing … Her gloomy thoughts were cut short by the professor’s voice. She hadn’t seen him, but here he was beside her, taking her case from her as relief as well as delight flooded through her, although her quiet ‘Good morning, Professor,’ was uttered in her usual voice. She received an ill-tempered grunt in reply and a brief, ‘Come along, Nurse,’ as he made for the door.
She trotted beside him because otherwise she could never have kept up with him, and to lose him now would be unthinkable. There were a great many cars outside and she wondered which of them was his.
He stopped in front of a black Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, sleekly and unobtrusively perfect among the other cars, opened its doors, told her to get in with the cold courtesy she had come to believe was the only alternative to his ill-humour, and went to put her case in the boot. He didn’t speak when he got in beside her, and was still silent as he edged the car away from the crowded bustle of the airport and on to the main road. They were tearing along the motorway to the capital when she ventured helpfully:
‘I expect you came yourself so that you could save time telling me about the patient.’
She looked at him as she spoke and he turned to meet her gaze briefly. She wished that he would smile again, but he didn’t, although when he did speak she had the impression that somewhere, deep down inside him, he was laughing. Imagination, she told herself roundly; why should he laugh?
‘A doctor,’ he stated flatly. ‘Professor de Wit, seventy years old. He’s to have a gastroenterostomy—CA, of course, but everything’s in his favour, he’s got a sound heart and chest and a great desire to live. He is to have a room in the private wing and you will be working under Zuster van Rijn with whom you will arrange your off-duty, please.’
Having thus given her the bare bones of the case he fell silent once more, and Abigail, not knowing if he was occupied with the intricacies of the day’s operating list, forbore from disturbing him. It was only when he drew up in front of the hospital entrance and called to the porter to come and collect her case that she said:
‘Thank you for posting my letter. I heard from—that is, it arrived safely. I’m very grateful to you.’
He looked at her with quick annoyance. ‘There’s no need to say any more about it,’ he stated with such finality that she felt snubbed, so that she too was annoyed. ‘I shan’t,’ she told him crisply. ‘Obviously gratitude and thanks are wasted upon you, sir.’
She walked briskly into the hospital, not waiting to see what the porter was going to do about her case. She was half way across the width of the entrance hall when she was amazed to hear the professor laughing. It was a deep bellow and sounded perfectly genuine.
It was surprising to her how quickly she slipped back into the routine of hospital. She had been given the same room again and this time it was so much easier because she knew some of the nurses and they greeted her as an old friend. Zuster van Rijn seemed glad to see her again too; they were short-staffed on the surgical side, she told Abigail, and specialling could be awkward unless there were enough nurses.
‘Will you work as you did before,’ she asked, ‘and take an afternoon off? I know it’s not quite fair that you shouldn’t work shift hours as the other girls do, but that way I can spare a nurse to take over while you’re off duty. There will be the same night nurse as you have already worked with, and you shall have your days off, of course, but how or when I do not know at the moment. You are content?’
‘Quite content,’ Abigail told her. Days off didn’t matter, not for the first week at any rate, for she hadn’t any money to spend. The problem of how to get the money over to Bolly was looming heavily again too; she had done nothing about it because she had expected to return to England, now she would have to start all over again. She dismissed her problems and followed Sister, prepared to meet her patient.
She liked him on sight. He was lying in bed and although his face was pinched and white with his illness, he was still a remarkably good-looking old man. Excepting for a thick fringe of white hair, he was bald, but the fringe encircled his face as well in rich profusion and his blue eyes were youthful and sharp. She shook his hand—gently—because she could see that he was an ill man, and despite his alert expression and merry eyes, probably in pain as well.
Zuster van Rijn left them together after a few minutes and Professor de Wit said, ‘Pull up a chair, my dear, and let us get to know each other. I believe Dominic wishes me to spend a week in bed before he operates, physiotherapy and blood transfusions and all the other fringe benefits of his calling which he so generously offers.’
Abigail laughed with him. So the professor’s name was Dominic—she stored the little piece of information away, though what good it would do her she had yet to discover. She listened to the old man’s placid talk in his slow, almost perfect English and by means of gentle questions of her own found out that he slept badly, ate almost nothing, had lost his wife twenty years previously, had a doting housekeeper to look after him, and a dog and a cat to keep him company, as well as a half-tamed hedgehog, a family of rabbits and a pet raven. They were discussing a mutual dislike of caged birds when Professor van Wijkelen came in.
The two men, she saw at once, were old friends. It was also apparent that the older man trusted the younger completely. He lay listening quietly while the professor told him exactly what he was going to do and why.
‘It sounds most promising, Dominic. I gather I am to be a new man by the time you have finished with me.’
‘Shall we say soundly repaired, and fit for another ten or fifteen years—and that’s a conservative estimate.’
‘And what does Nurse say?’ It was her patient who spoke.
Her smile lighted her ordinary face with its gentleness and sincerity.
‘I never think of failure—Professor van Wijkelen will operate and it will be a complete success, just as he says.’ She looked across at him as she spoke and found him staring at her, and there was no mistaking the faint sneer on his face, but because she liked him, she saw the hurt there too. Someone at some time had turned him into a cold, embittered man; she wondered who it was and hated them. Once, just once, he had smiled at her and she wanted him to smile like that again, but that, at that moment, seemed unlikely.
She settled down to a steady pattern of work, the same work as she would have been doing in a London hospital, even though the language was different, but all the doctors and a good many of the nurses spoke English and she herself, with the aid of her dictionary and a good deal of good-natured help from everyone else, managed to make herself understood. The days passed quickly. Under her patient’s kindly direction she went each afternoon to some fresh part of the city, sometimes to a museum, sometimes to gaze at the outside of some old house whose fascinating history he had described to her delighted ears while she was fulfilling the various duties which made up her day. He was looking a little better, mainly due to the blood transfusions, to which he submitted with an ill grace because they interfered with his movements in bed. He was a great reader and an even greater writer and a formidable conversationalist. Abigail became fond of him, as indeed did anyone who came in daily contact with him. The day before his operation he paid her, handing her an envelope with a word of thanks and a little joke about him being strong enough to do it the following week, which touched her soft heart because although she had complete faith in Professor van