Spencer's Hospital E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 377

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    When Harriet went to Spencer's Hospital she had no professional regrets, but it would mean the renewal of her love affair with Randall Spencer; and after more than two years' separation she had every reason to believe that Randall was a very different person from the man she had known.

Leseprobe

Spencer’s Hospital

Spencer’s Hospital

© Vivian Stuart, 1961

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-476-7

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

CHAPTER ONE

THE GLENVILLE HOSPITAL was much larger and a good deal more impressive than Harriet Lothian had imagined an American small-town hospital would be. The town itself hadn’t excited her interest, but the hospital certainly succeeded in doing so.

Built of mellow red brick, its tall buildings covered several acres of ground, the various blocks connected to each other by covered passage-ways. High, wide windows and glassed-in sun balconies suggested modern additions to an older structure, but the two blended in pleasing harmony. Together they gave the impression of a well-planned centre for the treatment of the sick which, while keeping pace with contemporary medical thought and progress, yet retained much of its original simplicity of design.

The statue of a bearded man, in the frock coat and elongated top hat of a bygone age, stood at the head of a flight of stone steps leading to the main reception hall. This was, Harriet knew, a memorial to Dr. Luke Spencer the First, the hospital’s founder, and she looked at it curiously as her taxi drove past, recalling some of the tales which Randall Spencer had told her of his paternal great-great-grandfather. And, with a little inward smile, she remembered also his story of having climbed to the top of the statue with two of his fellow-interns, in order to celebrate Foundation Day by placing a somewhat indecorous ornament on the flat summit of the old fashioned top hat . . . .

Her taxi came to a halt at a side entrance, pulling up with the usual squeal of protesting tires that, already, she had come to associate with American taxis, and the driver said, over his shoulder, “This is it lady. You want I should take your bags in for you?”

Harriet thanked him and descended from the cab. A notice on the door immediately facing her announced that she was in H block. She was moving towards it when two young nurses in the pert, frilled caps of students, emerged from the building laughing and chattering together, and she hesitated, glancing uncertainly at her cab driver.

“These are the . . .” she stumbled over the unfamiliar word, “the interns’ quarters, aren’t they?”

The driver nodded. “Sure they are. This whole block is for resident medical staff.” He slipped from behind the wheel, leaving the motor running and reached into the cab for her two suitcases. “Go right in,” he invited. “There’ll be a girl on duty at the switchboard who’ll tell you anything you want.”

Harriet pushed open the swing doors to find herself in a panelled foyer, at the far end of which a fair-haired girl sat buffing her nails in front of a telephone switchboard.

From somewhere in the distance a radio was playing a popular dance number, and a colored janitor, in his shirt-sleeves, hummed the tune softly and melodiously to himself as he guided an electric polisher in slow, rythmic movements across the floor. He eyed Harriet and her escort with sleepy indifference, but stood aside when they drew level with them, giving them a deep-voiced “Good day” which sounded like part of the song he had been singing.

The cab driver set the cases down beside the reception desk, nodded to the girl on the switchboard and, turning to Harriet, said with businesslike briskness, “That’ll be a dollar seventy-five, lady if you please.”

She paid him, adding a twenty-five cent tip a trifle doubtfully and was rewarded by his friendly, disarming grin.

“Thanks, lady . . . and welcome to Glenville! I sure do hope you’re going to like it here.” He went off, whistling cheerfully, and leaving Harriet to echo his hope.

She was committed to spending the next six months at Glenville, as an exchange resident surgeon, whether she liked it or not, she reflected. Her professional commitments worried her very little. While it was not in the same class as Johns Hopkins or the Massachusetts General, Glenville was an old established medical school with an excellent record in post-graduate training, so that it was unlikely that professionally she would have any cause to regret her decision to come here.

Personally, however, she was far less confident. Her personal commitment was to Randall Spencer, and, now that it came to the point and she was here at last, she began to question the wisdom of that decision once again. Coming here would mean the renewal of their tentative and casual but strangely enduring love affair which, kept alive solely by letters, had stood the test of almost two and a half years’ separation.

People could change a great deal in two years. She herself had undoubtedly changed, Harriet reflected, and she had not suffered the blow which fate had inflicted on poor Randall. He had contracted polio soon after his return to the States and it had been a severe attack, which had left him partially paralyzed.

Harriet stifled a sigh. A stricken, invalid and perhaps embittered Randall must inevitably be a very different person from the attractive, energetic young man she had known and with whom, two and a half years ago, she had come perilously close to falling in love. He hadn’t said much about his illness in his letters, but she knew that he had been compelled to give up the cardiac surgery in which he had hoped to specialize during his residency, and this, to one with his qualifications, must have been a bitter disappointment, since it meant virtually starting again at the beginning. Now he was a pathology resident at this hospital, and, in his recent letters at all events, he appeared to find his new specialty of absorbing interests. Not that letters could reveal much, of course. Even in those he had dictated, when he was in an iron lung, he had sounded a note of optimism, had refused to accept defeat or visualize anything but complete recovery. Randall had always been an enthusiast, he had always put everything into his work, but . . . Harriet sighed again, audibly this time, and approached the desk.

“Yes?” The girl on the switchboard, who had been dealing with an incoming call, looked up enquiringly. “Can I help you?” Her voice was flat and expressionless, the mechanical voice of a telephone operator, remote and uninterested.

“Please,” Harriet rejoined politely, “if you would.” She saw the girl’s eyebrows lift in surprise at the sound of her accent and added, in explanation, “I’m Miss . . . that is, I’m Dr. Harriet Lothian and I—” “Say, are you from Edinburgh?” The switchboard operator put in. She pronounced the word as it was spelt, giving it a harshly unfamiliar, alien sound. “From Edinburgh, Scotland?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, what do you know?” The blonde girl exclaimed ruefully. “That call was for you . . . and you standing right here all the time! I said you hadn’t gotten here, but”—she reached up to a mail rack on the wall behind her—”I have a note for you, Dr. Lothian. Delivered by hand and marked to await arrival, so I guess you’re expected all right. Seems queer they didn’t send to meet you at the airport, though—kind of inhospitable, when you’ve come all the way from Scotland.”

“I came by train from New York,” Harriet told her briefly, “and I didn’t ask to be met.” She hadn’t wanted Randall to meet her, hadn’t been sure, even, if he could still drive a car. And, in any case, she had wanted time to compose herself before seeing him again . . . . She tore open the envelope the girl had given her and saw that, as she had expected, the note it contained was from Randall.

There were only half a dozen lines, hurriedly scrawled on a lab. report form, bidding her welcome and giving her his telephone extension, with the request that she call him as soon as she arrived. She was about to ask the girl on the switchboard to get the number for her and then thought better of it. She could put the call through from the privacy of her own room, when she had unpacked and changed, she decided.

The girl, as if guessing her unspoken thoughts, consulted a typewritten list. “I have a room reserved for you, Dr. Lothian. You’d like to go up right away, wouldn’t you? I’ll have the janitor take your bags and . . . “ the telephone interrupted her. “Excuse me, please, Doctor.”

A light flashed on the switchboard and she juggled deftly with the plugs, saying into the mouthpiece of her headset, “Who’s calling, please? Why, yes, Dr. Spencer, right away, sir.”

A note of respect, amounting almost to awe, crept into her voice. There was a moment’s silence as she inserted a plug, withdrew it and tried another. Harriet, hearing the name, moved closer, expecting to be asked to take the call, but the girl shook her head, still busy with her switchboard. She said apologetically, “I’m sorry Dr. Spencer, I’ve called his room, but he doesn’t answer. Can I take a message? Very good, sir, I’ll tell him you called . . . but Dr. Lothian is here now, Doctor. She just got here from Edinburgh, Scotland . . .” there was a pause, during which the girl listened intently. Finally she said, “Why, yes, Doctor, I understand. I’ll tell her that, I’ll explain that you’ve been delayed and that Dr. Molloy . . . yes, sir, I’ll do that, Dr. Spencer.”

The light flickered out and the switchboard operator pushed the head-set back from her blonde, carefully waved hair. She smiled at Harriet. “That was Dr. Spencer, Doctor.”

“You mean Dr. Randall Spencer?” Harriet suggested.

“Why no.” The girl looked surprised. “Dr. Randall is over in Pathology. That was Dr. Luke Spencer, the Head of Surgery . . . Dr. Randall’s father. He asked me to tell you that he has to attend a Board meeting right now—Dr. Spencer is President of the Medical Board—but he’s hoping to be free to see you in his office in about an hour or so. He was wanting to have Dr. Jason, his chief resident, introduce himself to you, but I’ve called Dr. Jason all over and I can’t raise him. He’s off duty this morning, so I guess he must have left the hospital. But Dr. Molloy will be coming to show you round whenever you’re ready, and he’ll take you across to Dr. Spencer’s office, just as soon as the meeting gets through.”

“Thank you,” Harriet acknowledged, a trifle puzzled that Randall’s name had not been mentioned by his father. But of course, Randall was a pathologist now, not a surgeon; it would not be in his professional province to receive her, although presumably the earlier telephone call had been from him. She would have time to answer it before her officially appointed guide arrived, perhaps. She thrust his note into her pocket as the blonde switchboard operator called the janitor over. The negro dropped his polisher with alacrity and came shambling across to the desk, his very white teeth bared in a wide, good natured grin.

“Take Dr. Lothian up to one-seven-one, Ben, will you?” the girl requested, “and see she has everything she wants.”

The janitor obediently picked up the two suitcases and led the way to an elevator. He clicked back the gates and stood waiting for Harriet to follow him.

“Just ask for any little thing you need, Doctor,” the switchboard operator called after her. “If Ben can’t handle it for you, then you’ve only to tell me. And when Dr. Molloy gets here, I’ll have him wait until you’re ready.”

She was obviously impressed by the fact that the great Dr. Spencer had taken the trouble to telephone personally concerning her, Harriet thought, and smiled as the elevator bore her swiftly upwards. Randall had told her a number of things about his father which had aroused her interest and curiosity, but at the time she had never imagined that she would meet him in the flesh, so she hadn’t taken all of it in. She wondered again what sort of man he was, unable to conjure up a picture of him from the few things she remembered Randall’s having said, since so many had been contradictory and Randall himself oddly bitter on the subject of his father.

But there was one conversation she did recall quite clearly. It had taken place only a few days before Randall was due to leave Edinburgh and return to the States, and, probably on this account, had remained in her mind ever since.

Harriet frowned, remembering. He had been telling her about Glenville, trying even then to interest her in the idea of arranging an exchange, so that he might see her again. Suddenly his voice had hardened and he had said almost derisively, in reply to some question she had asked about his father’s status, “Oh, he is Glenville. They call it Speńcer’s Hospital, you know—and not only because his great-grand-father founded it. I guess it goes deeper than that, a whole lot deeper.”

“What do you mean?” she had asked, and had been completely unprepared for the outburst which her innocent enquiry had provoked.

“I mean that he’s a sort of tradition in Glenville, a living legend,” Randall had flung at her, whitefaced and tense.

“Luke Spencer the Fourth—Doctor Luke, the beloved physician! The man who’s never wrong, who never makes a mistake — the man who plays God and gets away with it. I find him impossible to live up to, and heaven knows I fall pretty far short of his expectations . . . I guess that’s what’s wrong between ns. I’m supposed to carry on the tradition, just because my name’s Spencer and I’m his son. I can’t do it, Harriet, don’t you see? I just can’t do it.”

“But why not?” She had been honestly bewildered, Harriet remembered, at a loss to understand the reason for his bitterness. “Why can’t you, Randall?”

“Because I haven’t got it in me to play God,” he had returned painfully. “Because I make mistakes and I’m often wrong. Worst of all, I suppose, in my father’s eyes, because I’m not my brother Luke. Luke could have carried on the tradition, only he got himself killed in Korea. Darn it, Harriet, I didn’t even want to become a doctor, you know that? I didn’t want to, but that’s what I am. Sometimes I feel that if I don’t escape, if I don’t break away from Glenville and from my father, I’ll never amount to anything in my own right. Yet here I am, going back, aren’t I? Going back after six months, leaving you . . . simply because my father says he wants me with him. Yet I’m supposed to be a man!”

Harriet caught her breath. Poor Randall! It had been less than two months later when he had collapsed and they had diagnosed his illness as polio. He . . .

The elevator came to a halt. Ben, the colored janitor, picked up her bags and gestured with his free hand in the direction of a door-lined corridor. The doors were cream-painted and all exactly alike, save for the numbers they bore which, Harriet saw began at 150. Her own room therefore must be some distance from the elevator. She found it without difficulty and was pleasantly surprised when she went inside. While impersonally furnished, it possessed many luuries which her room at St. Ninian’s had not boasted — a shower room leading off it, for one thing, a writing desk and a comfortable-looking armchair, set in the window, and a magnificiently commodious bookcase with a sliding glass front, built into the wall. Judging by the temperature, the room was air-conditioned, which would be a boon if the weather got really hot, as Randall had warned her it frequently did in summer.

Ben put her suitcases on to a folding luggage rack and turned to flash her another toothy smile.

“Anythin’ you want, you jus’ sing out, Doctah,” he fold her, edging towards the door. “Coffee, iced water, anythin’ like that, you c’n git it over here. But meals is served in the staff cafeteria, over in de main buildin’, see? Is there anythin’ you’d like right now? A cup of coffee, maybe?”

Harriet shook her head, thanked him and let him go. She would have liked a cup of coffee, for it seemed a long time since she had breakfasted on the train, but if she were to unpack, change and report to Dr. Spencer’s office in an hour’s time, she would have to bestir herself, she realized. First though, she would telephone Randall, tell him she was here and listen, once again, to his voice, even if she couldn’t see him until after her interview with his father. There was a telephone on the bedside table. Harriet picked it up, aware that her hands weren’t steady, and when the girl on the switchboard answered, she asked for the extension Randall had given her in his note.

It took a moment or two to get through, and when she did, it was to be answered by an unfamiliar voice which told her, with crisp politeness, that Dr. Randall Spencer was engaged. She left her own extension number and her name, and the voice promised that it would have Dr. Randall call her s soon as he was free.

Feeling unreasonably disappointed, Harriet let the receiver fall back on to its rest. She unpacked, quickly and methodically, decided that there would just be time to take a shower and, feeling much refreshed, was donning her white coat when the telephone rang a strident summons.

Quite steadily this time, she picked up the receiver.

“Hullo,” she said, “Dr. Lothian here,” and waited for Randall to echo her name.

“Well, hullo there,” a cheerful male voice responded. “This is Franklin Molloy, Dr. Lothian. I’ve been asked to show you around, until Dr. Spencer’s free. I’m right here in the foyer, completely at your service. But don’t hurry — I’ll wait until you’re through with your unpacking. I just thought I’d let you know I was here.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Harriet promised, liking the sound of his voice, with its slow, casual drawl. “It’s very good of you to look after me, Dr. Molloy.”

“All part of the service, Doctor,” he assured her. “So think nothing of it. I’m sure it’s going to be a pleasure.”

Harriet glanced at her watch as she cradled the receiver. It would obviously be no use trying to telephone Randall again. If he had been free, he would have called her, so that all she could do now would be to leave a message for him with the girl on the switchboard. She did so before leaving her room and then went in search of Dr. Molloy.

He was waiting, watching the door of the elevator expectantly when she stepped through it, and he came towards her, holding out a large hand in welcome. He was tall and fair, with the easy, loose-limbed movements of a man in the peak of physical condition. His face, more homely than good-looking, was deeply and evenly tanned, as if he spent all his spare time in the open air, and Harriet put his age at about twenty-six or seven, in spite of the absurdly boyish crew-cut. Like most Americans of his age, he made not the smallest attempt to be formal nor did he trouble to hide the frank admiration her appearance had evoked.

He said, smiling, when greetings had been exchanged, “I guess this must be my lucky day, Dr. Lothian! Mike Jason was to have had the pleasure of receiving you, I understand, but as he seems to be tied up, Dr. Spencer picked me as a substitute. Just why I wouldn’t know, but I’m darned glad he did. Well, now . . .” he studied her face, the smile widening, “where would you like to go first? Or, seeing you’ve had such a very long journey, how would it be if we stopped by the cafeteria and had ourselves a bite to eat? Apart from any other consideration, it’s not a bad place to start off from. Most of the staff drift in there at some time during the day—attending as well as resident — and you get a chance to meet them when they’re relaxing. I’ll be able to give you the lowdown on them as they come in, without having to worry about being overheard.”

“That sounds most interesting. But”—Harriet hesitated, glancing again at her watch—”I was to report to Dr. Spencer when his Medical Board finished.”

Franklin Molloy took her arm. “Then we’ve all the time in the world — Medical Board meetings never finish on schedule. Still, if it’ll make you feel any easier in your mind, I can arrange to have Dr. Spencer’s secretary call us at the cafeteria when he gets through. Maybe he’ll come over there himself, anyway, when the meeting’s over — he usually lunches around one o’clock.” He glanced at her curiously as they crossed the foyer side by side. “How come the great man’s taking such a personal interest in you, Dr. Lothian?”

“You mean it’s unusual?”

“Well, let’s say he mostly doesn’t bother all that much over resident staff.” The young doctor’s tone was dry. “But of course, I was forgetting — you come from the hospital where Randall Spencer worked a couple of years back, don’t you? You’re from St. Ninian’s, Edinburgh?”

“Yes,” Harriet admitted Cautiously, “I trained there.”

“Did you meet Randall when he was over?

“Oh, yes. We were very good friends.”

“You were? That’s fine. He’s a good guy, Randall, one of the best there is, only . . . well, you know what happened to him, I guess? You know he had polio and had to quit surgery?”

“Yes, I was most terribly sorry to hear that, Dr. Molloy. In fact I—” realizing that she had spoken with more emotion than she had intended to betray, Harriet broke off, coloring faintly. She added, her tone deliberately flat, “It must have been a great blow to him.”

“It was a blow all right,” Franklin Molloy confirmed, “but he’s making out pretty well as a pathologist, you know.” His blue eyes, searching her face, became suddenly wary. He said no more, but Harriet sensed that he was thinking a good deal. She wanted to question him further about Randall, but he gave her no opportunity. As they crossed the sun-baked expanse of concrete, with its rows of parked cars, which separated them from the main building, he pointed out various objects of interest to her, naming the different blocks and departments. Halting fifty yards from the statue of the hospital’s founder, he gestured to it with a grin.

“I guess Randall will have told you about him? Glenville’s grown some, since his day. Old Doctor Luke started off the hospital in a one-storey frame building, with a small shed in back, where he lectured his students. He was a great anatomist and he drew students here from all over the country as his fame began to spread. During his lifetime, he wasn’t exactly beloved by the ordinary citizens of Glenville, who didn’t approve of his methods of obtaining subjects, but nowadays, of course, he’s practically canonized and there are statues to him all over town. We’re kind of proud of ours, because it was the first.”

Harriet regarded the statue in silence for a few moments. Then, seeking to draw him out, she asked with studied casualness, “And his descendents carry on the tradition, I suppose?”

Franklin Molloy’s broad white-coated shoulders rose in an elaborate shrug. “Some of them do,” he agreed. “It’s not such a bad tradition, after all, is it? When you look around you and see what it’s become today.” Not waiting for her answer, he proceeded to give her a succession of impressive facts and figures, illustrating some of these by taking her on a brief tour of the Out-Patient Department, where the packed waiting room bore eloquent testimony to the truth of his words. Then, a hand on her elbow again, he guided her through the main reception hall to where a finger-post pointed the way to the staff cafeteria.

They entered through double glass doors and found themselves in a vast, airy room, set with tables and chairs, with a self-service counter running the length of one wall. It was crowded with medical and nursing staff who, however, seemed in the main to occupy different tables, and as he picked up two trays and led the way to the end of the queue at the service counter, Dr. Molloy said, pointing, “Those tables at the end are reserved for attending medical staff and department chiefs. You don’t sit there unless it’s by invitation. Residents and interns have the tables in the middle—we’ll try and find one that’s strategically placed, so that I can identify some of them for you. This end of the service counter is for medical staff—the nurses take the other—and coffee’s served from that counter over there, with Cokes and soft drinks and so on right beside it. Reckon you’ve got your bearings? Right, then what’re you going to eat?”

Harriet, with memories of the warmed-up, often unappetizing meals at her own hospital, was amazed at the choice and variety of the food on display. The service, too, was swift and efficient, most of it automatic. She carried her laden tray in Franklin Molloy’s wake and he led her to a table by one of the wide, low-set windows, which afforded cm excellent view of the whole room, as well as of the hospital gardens outside. He left her for a moment, excusing himself politely, and she saw him cross to a telephone booth beside one of the exits. Returning, he told her, “Take your time, Doctor — the Board meeting is still going on. I’ve left word of your present whereabouts with Dr. Spencer’s secretary and she’s said she’ll call me. So relax, won’t you? The Whole Board will be along pretty soon for lunch, I’d imagine, which will give you a great opportunity to take a look at them before you’re formally introduced. Now then, let’s see who we have so far, shall we? We’ll take the Department of Surgery first, since that’s likely to be of most interest to you. At the next table”—he lowered his voice—”are the chief surgical residents. They’re the equivalent of what you call registrars, I guess. Facing us is Cal Conway, who’s chief Orthopaedic resident, and the dark guy beside him is Dwight Hellman, who’s just gone over to O.BGYN. from E.N.T . . . .”

Harriet listened with only half her mind. Franklin Molloy was a conscientious guide, but she found the sea of faces about her bewildering, and the babble of voices, all talking at once, added to her inability to concentrate on what he was telling her. After a while, he grinned at her and said ruefully, “You’re not on my wave-length, are you, Doctor?”

“No,” Harriet confessed, “I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I guess it’s a bit much, right at the start, to burden you with so many names. You’ll get to know us in time, when you’re working with us. Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

“If you like. What shall we talk about?”

“You,” he suggested, with disarming innocence. She shook her head, flushing under his scrutiny. “Oh, no! There’s very little to know about me, honestly, Dr. Molloy. Nothing of . . . of interest.”

“On the contrary,” he assured her gravely, there’s a whole lot of interest that I don’t know.”

“Well . . .” she owed him that much, Harriet supposed. “What, for instance?”

“Oh . . . age, first name . . . marital state, medical experience. All I’ve got so far is that you’re Dr. Lothian and you trained at St. Ninian’s in Edinburgh.”

Harriet laughed at him. “That’s easy. I’m Harriet Lothian, aged twenty-six and qualified for three years. I was junior house surgeon to Sir Malcolm Thompson at St. Ninian’s and became his assistant registrar at the Chest Unit just before I left to come here — an appointment I’ll resume, I hope, when I go back. I’m also hoping to sit for the final part of the Edinburgh F.R.C.S. then, too, having managed to get through the preliminaries last year. There, that’s all. I told you it wasn’t very interesting, didn’t I?”

“It’s interesting,” Dr, Molloy insisted, “since it suggests an admirable devotion to your work. Devotion, not to say dedication, in fact. Is that what it’s been for you, Harriet—all work and no play?”

Harriet felt her color deepening under his direct and challenging gaze. “No,” she returned stiffly, avoiding it, “of course not. One can play as well as work, Dr. Molloy.”

“My friends call me Franklin,” he pointed out. Then, brows creased into a thoughtful frown, he went on, “Sure, one can play as well as work . . . and I should know! But women surgeons don’t as a rule, if they’re any good. You’re good, aren’t you?”

“I’m not outstanding. But I love my job.”

He studied her afresh, blue eyes quizzically narrowed.

“Yeah, I guess you must, at that! To get an Edinburgh Fellowship at your age would be quite a thing, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s been done before,” Harriet assured him.

“Not by so many women though. I’ll bet. Well, I sure hope we’ll be able to help you on your way to it, Dr. Lothian.” He grinned, pushing away his plate. “I’ll go get us some coffee, shall I? How do you like yours, black or with cream?”

“With cream, please. But can’t I—”

“No.” Franklin Molloy said firmly, “you can’t. This is America and you’re a woman.” He rose, to stand for an instant looking down at her, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. “And an unusually attractive woman, Dr. Harriet Lothian, if you’ll pardon me for saying so! I should esteem it a privilege if you’d allow me to show you how we work and play over here. It’s not difficult, I promise you, and I’d be a very willing teacher, because I always did go for just your color of hair. Kind of copper, isn’t it?” He relaxed his light pressure on her shoulder and added, still smiling. “Think it over, anyway, while I go after that coffee. With cream, you said, didn’t you?”

“I . . . yes, please,” Feeling absurdly shaken by his directness, Harriet watched his tall, white-coated figure threading its way through the crowded tables with something akin to relief.

Of course, what he had said didn’t really mean anything and could scarcely be taken seriously, but . . . she gave vent to a tiny, frustrated sigh. There was Randall. She wished suddenly that she could see him, talk to him and bridge, once and for all, the gulf of their long separation. Her admission just now to Franklin Molloy that, for the past two years at all events, she had devoted herself with complete-single-mindedness to her work was in itself an admission of how she had felt about Randall. Had felt and, surely, still felt? Hadn’t she come here on Randall’s account, to see, to make sure? Hadn’t she come because she had been unable to forget him? Because, after all this time, he still meant more to her than any other man she had ever met and . . .

Franklin Molloy returned to the table. He carried a tray, with three cups of coffee on it. Setting Harriet’s in front of her, he said, “One with cream and two black. We have a mutual friend coming along to join us, Dr. Lothian.”

“A mutual friend?” Harriet echoed. Her heart quickened its beat, pounding in her breast now like a living thing, vainly seeking escape. “Do you mean Randall?”

“Who else?” Franklin Molloy smiled. “I just had a call from him to say he’s on his way over. He asked if he could join us for coffee—it seems the girl on the switchboard told him you were here with me.” He seated himself opposite her and his smile faded. “I reckon I talked a bit out of turn to you just now, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t know,” Harriet answered, not attempting to deny the implications of his question. But she was again aware of the betraying color rising to suffuse her cheeks and added contritely, “I didn’t tell you.”

“No, you didn’t. But I ought to have guessed, I —” he hesitated, watching her intently. “Is it serious—between you and Randall, I mean?”

She answered him honestly. “It could be, I suppose. But we haven’t seen each other for over two years, so I don’t really know.”

“Sure, I understand.” Again he hesitated. Then, evidently reaching a decision, he said abruptly, “Dr. Lothian, your coming here may be the best thing in the world for Randall. I hope it is. On the other hand, it might be . . . well, little short of a disaster. There’s quite a situation been building up here over the past year or so. I think maybe I should warn you, because if you jump right into it unprepared, you’re liable to get hurt—and so is Randall. He’s changed, you know . . . but I guess you must have expected that, in the circumstances. Er . . . sugar for you or don’t you use it?”

Harriet spooned sugar into her cup blindly, scarcely conscious of what she was doing. She shook her head to the cigarette he offered her. “Please tell me,” she begged, “in what way Randall has changed, Dr. Molloy. Is he badly crippled?”

“No,” Dr. Molloy denied, “not so badly, considering the severity of his attack. He has a limp and . . .” he explained, in impersonally voiced technical terms, the extent of Randall’s physical disability, and Harriet’s fears receded, only to return when he added, with brusque reluctance, “Physically I’d say that his rehabilitation was complete and that he has adjusted himself very well, but psychologically, I’m afraid, it’s a rather different story. I don’t pretend to know much about these matters, I’m just a simple general surgeon, you understand . . . but even I can see what’s at the root of the trouble. Randall’s relationship with his father was never what you’d call a particularly happy one, and now . . .” he spread his big hands helplessly. “Maybe he told you something about it?”

“Yes, he told me. And he told me about his brother who was killed—in Korea, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, Luke was killed in Korea. That was a tragedy for old Doctor Luke and for Randall, too, I guess.” Franklin Molloy’s voice was harsh. “It’s no use mincing words. Doctor Luke’s my chief and, like the rest of us here at Glenville, I think the world of him, I always have. He’s a great man and a great surgeon, but what he’s doing to Randall isn’t human. Nor is what Randall’s doing to him, and it’s all mixed up with hospital politics. There’s one hell of a row brewing up between them and it only wants a spark to set it off.” He glanced at Harriet unhappily. “You,” he told her, “might provide that spark if you don’t watch your step, Dr. Lothian.”

CHAPTER TWO

RANDALL SPENCER came slowly out of the autopsy room, his limp more noticeable than usual. He had been standing for more than two hours and his right leg, encased in a heavy surgical boot, always stiffened up on such occasions, however hard he tried to save it. He looked at it distastefully as he finished buttoning himself into his white lab. coat, hating it more today than he ever had.

He hadn’t told Harriet about his leg and he wondered how she would react to it. Well, in a little while he would find out, he reminded himself, and his mouth tightened. He could not put off their meeting for very much longer. It had to come, but, for perhaps the hundredth time, he found himself praying that he wouldn’t have to see, in her eyes, the bitter scorn that burned in his father’s. His father couldn’t —or wouldn’t—accept the fact that he was crippled; it was a constant source of friction between them although neither ever spoke of it.

The intern who had assisted him and the little group of student nurses who had been watching the autopsy emerged from the room at his heels and Randall stood aside to let them pass. The nurses were pale and silent, a trifle awed, but, once outside in the white-tiled basement corridor, their natural high spirits returned and they were laughing and even teasing each other mildly, as they made for the elevator lobby in a chattering bunch.

The intern looked after them, frowning, but Randall took no notice of their burst of levity and aid not reprove them for it. It was, he knew, defensive and born of relief. The student nurses were young and in their initial months of training. For most of them, this had been their first close sight of death, their first realization of what it meant when one of their patients died, from causes sufficiently obscure as to require a pathological investigation. They laughed that they might not weep. They made jokes because an ordeal they had all dreaded was over and because they were returning to the world of living where, even amongst the sick and suffering there was hope. Hope and, God willing, other lives for them to save . . . .

Randall understood exactly how they felt and sympathized with them, for he himself had experienced much the same emotions when he had first been compelled to exchange their world for the one in which he now spent his working hours. He, too, had regarded death as an enemy, but, after nearly eighteen months as Pathology resident, he had become accustomed to its close proximity and recognized the truth of the Latin tag he had learnt at school—Mortui Vivos Docent . . . the dead teach the living.

The dead had taught him much and he was as keen on his present job as, in the old days, he had been on surgery, for he was aware that few of its lessons were ever wasted. The patient, meticulous work of the pathologist could also save lives and, indeed, he knew from experience that it frequently did.

He would have been perfectly happy and satisfied where he was, if only his father would leave him alone, Randall reflected bitterly. If only his father, just once in a while, would remember that he wasn’t Luke and would let him run his own life and be himself, without the endless comparisons and the futile regrets to which, try as he might, he could find no answer. Probably because there wasn’t one. He glanced down at his hands, flexing the fingers experimentally. His hands, with the exception of two fingers on his left—the two middle ones —had regained full mobility now, but those two stiff, useless fingers must preclude for ever any chance of his returning to surgery. They could do everything that was required of them in the Pathology Department, because he had mastered their awkwardness, trained them to obey his will, and his dissections were as skilful as those of his chief—only they took him longer.

He hadn’t the speed a surgeon had to have and would never be able to again to command it, but he would not have minded this . . . if his father hadn’t. Surgery was not, save in his father’s eyes, the only branch of medical science that mattered. He hoped it wasn’t in Harriet’s. He . . . Randall shrugged impatiently and turned to his assistant, who was saying something he couldn’t catch, holding out a clip board to which, with the case history records, he was now attaching the autopsy report.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What did you ask me, Joe? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

The younger man repeated his question. “I was wondering if you wanted me to call Dr. Jason about this report or whether you’d prefer to do it yourself. He’ll have to be told, won’t he?”

“I’ll call him,” Randall decided. He glanced ruefully at his watch, wondering what Harriet would think if he delayed their meeting any longer. She was with Franklin Molloy, the switchboard operator had told him, so she would be in good hands. Frank would look after her, and, if anyone could, he would make her feel at home. But all the same . . . with a resigned sigh, he held out his hand for the sheaf of papers. “Thanks, Joe. Now be a good guy and take a look at those staph. cultures from Male Medicine B. before you go off, will you? Dr. Harper wants the report on his desk right after he gets back from lunch and I shan’t have time to do it. I’m running late as it is.”

“Sure thing,” Joe Dalgety promised readily. “Harper seems to be running late, as well, doesn’t he?” He gestured to the open door of the Pathology office in which, normally, the department head spent most of his time. “I guess the Board meeting must still be going on.”

“I guess so,” Randall agreed absently. He was studying the case history, weighing it up against his own findings and wondering by what process of reasoning Mike Jason had arrived at his diagnosis. It hadn’t been an easy one to make.

Ignoring his abstraction, Joe went on, “They’ve had quite a session. Makes you wonder what they find to talk about sometimes, doesn’t it? Although I shouldn’t have thought it would have taken them all this time to make up their minds to appoint Tony Martelli to the attending staff, would you?”

“Huh?” Randall looked up at him in surprise. “What makes you so certain that he’ll get the appointment, Joe? There are others in for it, you know—and not only from this hospital. There’ll be applications from outside as well, shoals of them. It’s a plum job.”

“But Martelli’s in line for it,” Joe protested. “He’s senior and he was old Dr. Kramer’s chief resident for four years . . . that ought to count in his favour, surely? If a man can’t reckon on stepping into his chief’s shoes in his own hospital, then there’s no justice. They must appoint him!”

“He must have a good chance, but don’t forget, nothing’s a cut-and-dried certainty in medicine,” Randall informed him. He thought fleetingly of his father, who was President of the Board, and then returned to his perusal of the autopsy report, a wry smile playing about his mouth. Following the direction of his gaze, Joe Dalgety jerked a thumb at the last two lines.

“It seems queer,” he suggested, his tone puzzled and faintly resentful, “that he wasn’t even interested enough to come down and watch us, don’t you think?”

“Who d’you mean?”

“Why, Mike Jason, of course. It was his case, after all. You’d have thought that he’d want to know if he was right about it, wouldn’t you?”

Not Mike, Randall thought. Mike Jason modelled himself on his chief and he didn’t have any doubts.

“Oh,” he returned, “it’ll have slipped his mind, I guess. Anyway, he was right, so what difference does it make?”

“Yes, but he couldn’t be sure,” Joe persisted obstinately. “No surgeon ever can be in a case like this, and you just said yourself that nothing’s a cut-and-dried certainty in medicine.”

Randall suppressed a smile. Joe Dalgety was a bright boy, but already he was developing the pathologist’s unconsciously superior attitude towards his colleagues on the wards, forgetful of his own brief apprenticeship there. “Come off it, Joe,” he reproved mildly. “There are exceptions to every rule — you know that.”

“Meaning Jason?” Joe challenged.

“I didn’t say so, did I?”

“No, but—”

Randall lost patience with him. “For Pete’s sake,” he pleaded, “go and check up on those staphs., will you, and quit wasting my time. I want to eat, even if you don’t.”