Betty Neels: Never While the Grass Grows

She knew there was nothing she would have liked better. All the same, she said instantly in a tart voice, “You’ve made me jump! Thank you for the offer, but I’ve already made arrangements.”

“Cancel them.”

She turned to look at him. “And supposing I don’t want to?” she inquired with deceptive mildness.

His mildness more than equaled hers. “I hope you will change your mind. I would like to talk to you.”

“What about?” She had turned away from him and was giving an answering wave to a passenger going ashore.

“Will you marry me, Octavia?”

She whipped round to stare at him blankly…

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality, and her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

SISTER OCTAVIA LOCK swept through the swing doors of Casualty on a wave of vague ill-humour; she had over-slept and as a consequence had had no breakfast save a cup of tea, drunk far too hot and as much toast as she could cram into her mouth with one bite, and over and above that, it was a glorious September morning with enough of autumn in the air to make her wish that she was at home and not in a London hospital, hemmed in by narrow streets and rows of shabby little houses. And now, to make matters worse, she could see at a glance that Casualty, even at eight o’clock in the morning, was already filling itself up fast. Her senior, Sister Moody, who tended to take her time in coming on duty after breakfast, would as a consequence doubtless live up to her name. Octavia’s eye lighted upon a small forlorn boy sitting by himself and, her ill-humour forgotten, she swept him along with her on the way to the office, asking his name and what was the matter as they went. ‘Stanley,’ he told her tearfully, and his mum had sent him along because he’d burnt his arm the day before.

Octavia sighed, popped him into a cubicle and began to take off his too-small jacket. It amazed her that although patients crowded into Casualty, a vast number of them took their time about it. And if I’d been this mum I’d have brought Stanley here pretty smartly, she reflected, gently laying bare a sizeable burn wrapped in a handkerchief. The blisters weren’t broken, and that was something to be thankful for; she slid the handkerchief away and replaced it with gauze, said: ‘OK Stanley, the doctor will come and make that much more comfortable for you,’ warned a student nurse about him, and went into the office. One of the night Sisters was already there ready to leave and Octavia listened carefully to the night report, happily short and fairly uneventful, before she remarked gloomily: ‘You may have had a good night, Joan, but I’ve a nasty feeling that we’re in for a perfectly foul day—are you on tonight?’

Her companion grinned smugly. ‘Nights off—you’ll have Snoopy Kate on…’

‘Oh, lord, and I’m on till nine o’clock. Sister Moody wants the evening; I’ll have to have a split.’ She paused and smiled suddenly: ‘It’s my weekend off, though.’

They parted then, Joan to breakfast and bed, Octavia into Casualty to cast an eye over the patients already being treated and then those who were waiting. There was nothing urgent; cuts and bruises, septic fingers, a fractured collarbone which a nurse had already put into a collar and cuff, a number of small children with earache, sore throats and the like and the usual sprinkling of elderly men and women for morning dressings and stitches to be removed. She had just finished her round when Sister Moody arrived, nodded briefly and retired to the office, to stay there for a good deal of the day, doing the paper work and only coming out when an urgent case came in; not that she did much to help then; explaining comfortably to Octavia that at her age it would be ridiculous to expect her to take too active a part in the work while Octavia was perfectly capable of coping.

Octavia started her daily round of the cubicles and dressing rooms and small theatre, checking this and that with care but not wasting time. Nurses would be going to their coffee break in an hour and the quicker the light cases were dealt with the better. She could hear the steady hum of voices through the theatre door and all the sounds that went with it; the clatter of bowls, the faint click of instruments tossed into receivers, the telephone—she would have to go and give a hand. All the same, she paused by a window and gazed out into the street outside, full of traffic and people hurrying to work, a tall girl with a splendid figure and a lovely face crowned by rich brown hair, drawn back neatly under her cap, although a number of small curls had escaped to frame her face. Her eyes were hazel, large and heavily fringed and topped by black brows and her mouth curved gently, and as though these weren’t enough, she had a happy nature, marred only occasionally by a fiery temper. She turned away from the window presently and went back into Casualty, rolling up her sleeves as she went.

The day went as most days went; a steady trickle of minor casualties, interrupted frequently by the more severely injured as well as a small girl with a perforated appendix and an elderly man who had been found alone, half starved and dirty in a pokey little room in one of the rows of small houses close to the hospital. He had opened weary eyes as Octavia bent over him and told her fretfully to leave him alone, ‘Because what’s the use of getting me on my feet again?’ he wanted to know. ‘I’ve nowhere to go and no one to bother about me.’

Octavia, taking his blood pressure, gave him a motherly smile. ‘You just wait,’ she admonished him kindly, ‘there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be fit enough to get a job. You just need fattening up, you know. How old are you?’

‘Sixty—who’d want the likes of me, I’d like to know?’

‘Let’s worry about that when the time comes—first we’ll get you better.’ She turned at the tap on her shoulder. ‘Here’s the doctor to have a look at you.’

He had pneumonia, not badly—nothing that a few days in hospital wouldn’t put right. Octavia arranged for him to be admitted to the men’s medical ward and when he asked her if she would visit him, promised cheerfully that she would.