On observing a different ward sister, pristine in a new uniform and immaculately turned out, with golden hair tied back from a face that was familiar from the day before, Daniel pondered if this could really be the tired and listless traveller he had taken under his wing and thought, Surely not!
The woman had been moving from bed to bed when he appeared, giving medication and taking temperatures, while members of her staff dealt with other duties allocated to them with regard to child patient care, but on hearing his voice she became still and turned slowly to meet his gaze.
Darcey had known it was the man from the train by the brisk and authoritative tone, and aware that she would be expected to accompany him on his round she went to stand beside him and introduced herself, praying that in a short space of time, namely the matter of hours that she had been on the ward, she would have remembered correctly the answers to any questions that he might have for her with regard to the young patients there.
But to her surprise what he had to say first referred to herself as he queried, ‘Why didn’t you say that you were coming here to work when we were on the train?’
‘I had no need to, or so I thought,’ she protested faintly. ‘And I was so tired.’
‘But of course you were,’ he agreed crisply. He glanced at the two registrars, who were chatting to a girl on the nearest bed with one of her legs in traction. ‘So, shall we proceed, Sister?’
‘Yes, Mr Osbourne,’ she said meekly, and as his companions wasted no time in joining them she smiled at the girl who’d had their attention and told him, ‘Olivia seems to be resigned to her plight for the moment and I’m told that when some of her school friends appear each day in the late afternoon there is a lot of chatter and news, which helps to get the hours over for her somewhat.’
‘Mmm... I’m sure that it must,’ he murmured, his attention on the young patient and the state of her leg, which was supported by attachments from an overhead frame. Turning to Darcey, he said, ‘The fracture of the tibia occurred during a hockey match and this is the result, the leg immobilised until healing of the bone is achieved. Have you dealt with this kind of thing before?’
‘Yes, a few times,’ she told him, thinking that her appearance of the day before hadn’t been one to instil confidence, but surely it might now. As they moved on to the next bed she went on to say, ‘I have trained and worked in orthopaedics ever since it became my specialist subject at university, and the opportunity to work in a hospital in a beautiful coastal area was too tempting to pass by.’ With a sigh, she added, ‘I wasn’t expecting to be alone in my change of scene but far countries seem to have got in the way of my plans, and, as you saw on the train yesterday, I was at a low ebb.’
‘Mmm, so it appeared,’ he commented, without showing much interest, and moved towards the next bed, followed by Darcey and the two registrars.
It was over. He had done the rounds and was about to depart, and his thoroughness had been no surprise to her, with his keen observations of the slightest thing that had caught his eye, whether it be good or not so good.
Once he had left there was a buzz of conversation amongst the nurses that was centred on Daniel Osbourne and all of it was complimentary so that she was left with no doubt regarding his popularity in spite of his no-nonsense approach.
With regard to herself, Darcey was cringing at the way she’d been so free and easy with her comments that might have given him the impression that it was a failed romance she’d been hinting at when it had been far from that.
When her lunch break came round, instead of making her way to the staff restaurant, Darcey went out into the cold air of the seaside promenade that went past the hospital and stood gazing out to where a choppy blue sea rose and fell in the distance.
As she turned to go back into the warmth of the hospital a smart black car pulled up beside her at the pavement edge and he was there again, the down-to-earth doctor who seemed to be everywhere she turned. Winding the car window down, he asked what she was doing out there in the cold without a jacket.
‘It is the first time I’ve been able to see the sea since I came,’ she told him. ‘When I arrived last night it was dark, and the same this morning when I reported to the ward, and I’ve only been out here a moment.’
Daniel was smiling and she thought that he was different away from his duties at the hospital and looking after lost souls like herself on the train, but he was right, the cold was biting and she was hungry. What did he do about lunch? she thought. Had he already eaten? He was pulling away from the kerb, giving her no time to ask, and she went inside with hunger calling and curiosity taking hold. Where did he live? she wondered, and with who, and was that his day finished?
* * *
It was not, by far. Daniel was about to make a brief visit to the sailing club that he had arranged for teens with time on their hands. He usually put in an appearance in the evening but having been away, and remembering his sister’s comments of the night before, he was keen to see the state of things at the place and what he observed there didn’t please him.
His helper with the running of the club was an old guy called Ely, a retired fisherman who was usually to be found on the premises, but not today it seemed, and the boat that was the magnet that brought young folks to the club was in a state of repair in the harbour.
What had been going on? he pondered. When he called at Ely’s cottage nearby to get up to date with the situation, his wife Bridget told him that her husband was in hospital with a heart problem, where he had been when the boat had been damaged.
‘With you both not around, the would-be sailors were impatient to be out there and they took the boat without permission,’ she told him, ‘and came unstuck on a rocky reef, which meant the lifeboat having to turn out. Two of the lads were injured and are in Oceans House.’ With that cheerful item of news to digest Daniel returned to the hospital to carry on bringing mobility to the immobile in one form or another for the rest of the day, and if Darcey had still questioned his movements after watching him drive away in the lunch hour she would have had her answer on seeing him moving purposefully along the main hospital corridor in the direction of the operating theatre in the early afternoon.
* * *
In the evening that followed, Darcey was restless. There had been no more phone calls from Alexander, no contentment at the end of her first day at Oceans House, nothing to brighten the last hours of it. Just a mediocre night of entertainment on the television screen in the small apartment that was now her home. Her time on the ward had been great, she thought, but what now?
On impulse she reached for the warm winter jacket that she’d travelled in and her knee-high boots and without another thought went out into the dark night where a moon hung over the sea that was less choppy than earlier in the day.
The promenade was well lit with a selection of bars and restaurants to choose from, but Darcey was not entranced at the thought of dining alone in a strange place where she didn’t know anyone, and when she came to the teenage meeting place at the far end of the promenade that, unknown to her, was Daniel Osbourne’s project she paused outside the wooden building and looked around her with interest.
Nearby was the harbour and she saw a roomy boat there in the process of being repaired, and as she looked around her she heard the sound of young voices on the night air. A short distance away was the lifeboat house, shuttered and locked until needed, and as she lingered curiously a deeper voice that was becoming familiar caught her attention as it spoke with authority into what had become silence inside the wooden building and she was rooted to the spot.
When Daniel Osbourne had finished speaking the young members of the organisation came pouring out as the clock on a nearby church