Betty Neels - No Need to Say Goodbye

He looked tired, but at the same time unshakably calm. “We have to talk, Louise.”

“I’m busy.” The sight of him standing there had shattered her dreams, and reality held no comfort. “Another time,” she insisted.

“You’ve been crying. Why?” Aldo wanted to know.

“That is my business,” Louise said. Then she contradicted herself. “You’ve no good reason and no right not to warn me the housekeeper was back. And if it wasn’t for my sister—”

“What has your sister to do with us?”

“Well, you’re— That is, you and she… I thought…”

He smiled. “Yes, I’ve been watching you think for quite a time, and a more muddled lot of ideas I have yet to guess at….”

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. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit lives on in all her stories.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

IT SHOULD have been the quietest hour or so of the night in the hospital, when the ill and the not so ill slept, the accident centre was temporarily quiet and the busy nurses could pause for a snack, meal or a cup of tea. Tonight, as so often happened, an ambulance with its flashing lights brought the staff nurse to her feet, ready to meet the ambulanceman as he got to the doors.

‘Coronary,’ he told her briefly. ‘In a bad way, too.’

The nurse nodded, said over her shoulder to the student nurse on duty with her, ‘Get hold of Sister Payne, tell her it’s a coronary, ask her to come,’ and then she went out to the ambulance.

So it was that Sister Louise Payne, sitting at her desk in her office, her shoes off, a mug of tea at her elbow, and writing the beginnings of the report, put down her pen with a little sigh as the phone rang, lifted the receiver, listened with composure, said with calm, ‘I’ll be down at once, Nurse. Go back to Staff and help her. I’ll get hold of Dr Giles,’ and dug her feet into her shoes once more.

Dr Giles, the medical officer on duty, had just got to his bed; he grunted his displeasure at being roused from the brief snooze he had hoped for and, in answer to Sister Payne’s firm voice telling him that she would meet him in the accident room, grunted again. She put down the receiver, knowing that despite the grumbles he would be there, and took herself off to the accident room.

Staff Nurse was glad to see her; the man was in a bad way and she hadn’t had much experience of coronaries; Sister Payne took over without a fuss, and when Dr Giles arrived, trousers and sweater over his pyjamas, they worked together.

‘Who is he?’ asked Dr Giles, not pausing in his work.

Sister Payne didn’t pause either. ‘Staff?’ she asked without turning round.

‘The ambulance was called by someone who saw him lying in the street. A Mr Tom Cowdrie… They found an envelope in a coat pocket. I’ve not had time…’

‘No, of course you haven’t, Staff.’ Sister Payne’s glance flickered briefly towards Dr Giles. ‘Ted, it’s the MP…Staff, get the police, will you? Ted should you get Dr van der Linden?’

‘Yes. Could Staff take over? Nurse can get the police, can’t she?’ He looked down at their unresponsive patient. ‘No, better not—I’ll stay here. Let Staff take over from you. You telephone.’

Sister Payne nodded her approval and sped to the phone, dialled a number and waited. The voice in her ear was tinged with irritation, to be expected at three o’clock in the morning, but her own remained admirably calm. She didn’t waste time in apologies. ‘A Mr Tom Cowdrie has just been brought in—the MP. A coronary. Dr Giles would be glad of your advice, sir.’

‘Ten minutes,’ said the voice in her ear, and the line went dead.

If anyone had had the leisure to look at the clock they would have noted that it was, in fact, nine minutes later when the senior medical consultant of St Nicholas’s Hospital came silent-footed into the accident room. He was a massive man, well over six foot and heavily built, with fair hair already silvered and splendid good looks with a high-bridged nose, a firm mouth and blue eyes half hidden by their heavy lids. He was wearing a thin polo-necked sweater and trousers, but no one looking at him would have known that he had been wakened from a deep sleep, driven his car for the mile through London’s streets which separated his house from the hospital, and still contrived to look as though he was on the point of doing an unhurried ward round.

He nodded to Dr Giles, smiled briefly at Sister Payne and bent over the patient, at the same time listening to Dr Giles’s brief résumé.

He nodded his approval, while issuing his orders in a manner which allowed of no hanging around by his supporters. Whoever was on call in X-ray was to be roused, so too whoever was on night duty in the path lab. ‘And, Ted, if the police are here, give them Mr Cowdrie’s address—his wife must be told. Deal with it, will you?’

Dr van der Linden had dragged off his sweater, the better to deal with his patient. ‘Warn intensive care, Sister, will you? As soon as he’s fit to move, we will get him up there.’

It was more than an hour later when Mr Cowdrie was borne carefully away to the intensive care unit; Sister Payne watched Dr van der Linden’s broad shoulders disappear through the door after the trolley, listened with sympathy to Ted Giles’s rueful comment that there wasn’t much point in going back to his bed, made sure that the nurses in the accident room were starting on the clearing up, and went tiredly up to her office; it was very nearly time for her early-morning round, and she still had the report to write. Mr Cowdrie’s wife had arrived, but so far hadn’t seen her husband; Dr van der Linden would talk to her first, and then in all probability bring her along for Sister Payne to solace with tea and sympathy. She penned the report with the speed of long practice, answered an urgent summons from the women’s medical ward with her usual calm, and was just on her way back to her office, expecting to have a quick cup of tea before commencing her rounds, when Dr van der Linden bore down upon her with Mrs Cowdrie beside him. Sister Payne paused, stifling an urge to gallop briskly in the opposite direction; it was all very well for Dr van der Linden; he would in all probability take himself off home to a couple of hours’ sleep and a tasty breakfast cooked by a loving wife…

She greeted him pleasantly and Mrs Cowdrie with sympathy; she was a much younger woman than she had expected, fair and fluffy and nicely made-up and dressed with care. Surely, thought Sister Payne, she wouldn’t have stopped to do her face and dress so carefully, knowing that her husband had just been dragged back from death’s door, and even now, for that matter, had a foot still inside it?

Mrs Cowdrie was summing her up, too: a handsome girl, tall and with a splendid figure, her dark hair a little untidy. Her large brown eyes had shadows beneath them from tiredness and her straight nose shone; all the same, she had a serene beauty which Mrs Cowdrie would never achieve.