Betty Neels - The Hasty Marriage

They greeted Mr Burnett in a cheerful chorus, assured him that they had never felt better, that Sister was an angel, and that they couldn’t wait for the pleasure of having her remove their stitches. All of which remarks Laura took with motherly good nature, merely begging them to refrain from tiring themselves out before steering her party forward to the neighbouring bed. Its occupant, Mr Blake, was thin and middle-aged, and although his operation had been a minor one, a continuous string of complaints passed his lips all day and far into the night.

Mr Burnett, his entourage ranged behind him, stood by the bed and listened with an impassive face to details of uneatable porridge for breakfast, the callous behaviour of the house doctors and nurses, and Sister’s cruelty in insisting that he should actually get up and walk to the bathroom. He shot her a look of great dislike as he spoke and Mr Burnett said quite sharply that since he was making such excellent progress he would do better to convalesce at home, where he would doubtless find nothing to grumble about. ‘Though I doubt if you will find a better nurse or kinder person than Sister Standish,’ he concluded severely.

He stalked away, muttering to himself, and Laura hastened to soothe him by pointing out the excellent progress the next patient was making.

‘I don’t know how you put up with it, Laura,’ said Mr Burnett, half an hour later, when they were all squashed into her office drinking their coffee. ‘For heaven’s sake get married, girl, before you lose your wits. That Blake—I’ll have him home tomorrow; he’s fit enough, and besides taking up a bed he must be driving you all mad.’

‘Well, that would be nice,’ conceded Laura mildly, ‘for he does wear one down, you know. But they’re not all like that, you know, sir.’

He passed his cup for more coffee and snorted: ‘If I wasn’t a married man and old enough to be your father, I’d marry you myself just to get you out of this ward,’ he assured her, and they all laughed, because Laura was considered to be one of the Sisters in the hospital whom no one could ever imagine leaving. Young but settled, the principal nursing officer had once described her, and Laura, who had heard of it through the hospital grapevine, had considered that it amounted to an insult.

They all got up to go presently, and Doctor van Meerum, who had said very little anyway, merely murmured vague thanks in her general direction as he went through the door. She went and sat at her desk again when they had gone, doing absolutely nothing until Pat came to remind her that she had expressed a wish to inspect the previous day’s operation cases.

She managed to forget the Dutch doctor more or less during the next few days; she had plenty of friends, she was popular in a quiet way and there was no reason for her to be lonely. And yet she was, and the loneliness was made worse when Joyce telephoned at the weekend and told her gleefully that Reilof van Meerum was spending it with them. ‘We’re going out to dinner,’ she bubbled over the wire. ‘I shall wear that blue dress—and on Sunday we’re going out for the day in that super car of his. Laura, do you think he’s rich?’

‘I really don’t know. Did he say anything about a dog?’

‘Yes—rather a bind, really; he has to bring the creature with him, he says, because it’s broken its legs. Still, I daresay we can dump it on someone.’

Laura didn’t answer. Somehow the doctor hadn’t struck her as being a man to opt out of something he had undertaken to do, and he had promised her… She said mistakenly, ‘It’s only a very little dog.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Joyce after a tiny pause, and Laura, sighing for her unguarded tongue, told her, ‘It was knocked down by a car just as we reached the hospital—we took it into Cas…’

‘Have you seen Reilof?’

‘He did a round earlier in the week with Mr Burnett. I didn’t talk to him at all—or rather, he didn’t talk to me.’

She knew exactly what her young sister was thinking; that no man, no young, attractive man at any rate, would bother very much about a young woman who was looking thirty in the face. Thirty, to Joyce, was the absolute end.

Laura went home again at the end of the following week without having seen the doctor again, although she had found a note on her desk one morning to tell her that he had gone back to Holland, and that he had the little dog, now in excellent health albeit hating his plasters, with him. He was hers, RvM. She put the note away carefully and told herself once again to forget him.

Easier said than done, as it turned out, for when she did get home he was Joyce’s main topic of conversation; they had had a super weekend and he was coming again just as soon as he could manage it. ‘I’ve got him hooked,’ declared Joyce happily. ‘He’s a bit old, but he’s very distinguished, isn’t he? and Uncle Wim says he’s carved himself an excellent career—he’s got a big practice somewhere near Hilversum. I imagine that the people who live round there are mostly well-off.’ She added dreamily, ‘I expect he’s rich.’ She smiled beguilingly at Laura. ‘Look, be a darling—I don’t dare to ask Uncle Wim any more questions, but you could, he dotes on you, and I do want to know.’

Laura shook her head; her godfather might dote on her, but he was the last person in the world to gossip about anyone. ‘Why do you want to know so badly?’ she asked.

Joyce grinned wickedly. ‘I wouldn’t mind being a doctor’s wife, as long as he was very successful and had masses of money and I wouldn’t have to do the housework or answer the door, like Doctor Wall’s wife does in the village.’

Laura kept her voice matter-of-fact; Joyce fell in and out of love every few weeks, maybe her feeling for Doctor van Meerum was genuine, but on the other hand someone else might come along. ‘Chance is a fine thing,’ she remarked lightly, and wished with all her heart that she might have that chance.

‘Like to bet on it?’ Joyce looked like a charming kitten who’d got at the cream. ‘I’ve bowled him over, you know; he’s thirty-eight and he had a wife years ago, only she died, and now he’s met me and discovered what he’s been missing.’

Laura had been sitting in the window, perched on the open window sill, but she got up now, shivering a little; it was still a little chilly in the April sun, but that wasn’t why she shivered. ‘I must go and get tea,’ she said. ‘Are Father and Uncle Wim still playing chess?’

Joyce shrugged and yawned. ‘How should I know? Why don’t you go and see for yourself?’

In a way it was a relief to be back at work again, although Laura loved being at home, but on the ward there was little time to bother with her own affairs. It was take-in week and the empty beds were filling fast, so that there was more than enough to do. She went her calm, sensible way, checking drips, seeing that the cases went on time to theatre and when they returned, were dealt with with all the skill available; and all the while being disturbed times out of number by housemen, George at his slowest, the Path Lab people, the lady social worker, and Mr Burnett, never at his sunniest during take-in week.

Moreover when she did escape to her office to catch up on her paper work, it was to be interrupted again by nurses wanting their days off changed, evenings when they had mornings, mornings when they had afternoons free…she did her best to accommodate them, for she could remember her own student days and the agonising uncertainty of days off not fitting in with one’s own private life. Staff was going to have a long weekend, which meant that Laura would be on call for a good deal of that period, something which she didn’t mind about, for to go home and listen to Joyce eulogising about Reilof van Meerum was more than she could bear. It would be better, she reflected, when he had either gone for good or he and Joyce…she tried not to think any more about that, but Joyce could be ruthless when she wanted something or someone.