A Surgical Affair by Shirley Summerskill Read Free Book Online

come to the hospital to work, not to worry about her registrar.
    But she could still feel the thrill and, at the same time, the deep contentment that had filled her body, when Mark held her in his arms. Nobody else had ever made her feel quite like that.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    It was always a horrible anti-climax to come off duty at the stroke of one o’clock. For three days and nights there had been a succession of operations, ward rounds and emergencies to cope with.
    Now Diana sat miserably in her room with nothing to do. The buzzer in her white coat was silent at last. The other surgical team had taken over. She remembered her mother always used to say, “Nobody is indispensable.”
    “You’re free!” Diana told herself. “You can sleep undisturbed until tomorrow. You can read that novel you bought six months ago and write some letters. You can see that new musical at the Odeon, or go to London for your favorite meal of roast duck, with two jam pancakes to follow.”
    But Diana didn’t move. She didn’t want to do any of those ordinary things she used to enjoy. She was quite happy to go on and on being a house surgeon. Her whole life and all her thoughts were bound up with Mansion House Hospital. The world outside seemed dull and lonely.
    Lonely, that was it. People rushing about, worrying about their own problems. Inside the hospital it was different. There was no time to be lonely. And Diana knew everybody there by sight even if not to talk to. They all had the same purpose—to make the hospital an efficient, happy place.
    Diana took off her white coat and hung it behind the door. Immediately, she felt uncomfortable and strange. Now she wasn’t a doctor any more. She was an ordinary girl, wearing a gray pleated skirt and a blue cotton blouse. She felt dull, uninteresting, stripped of her identity.
    She thought, “This is terrible! I’m behaving like a nun. Cutting myself off from the world. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be an ordinary person ... I must go out somewhere. I’ll just walk and walk, and r emember how things used to be.”
    It was a cold gloomy day, so she wore her thick coat and fur-lined boots. Even the air outside the building was like an enemy, stinging the face, chilling the throat with every breath she took.
    Across the road from the hospital there was a new housing estate, beyond that, open country. Diana walked past the rows of semi-detached houses with their neat, well-kept yards. Lights were on in some of the rooms, and the fires were flickering in the window panes.
    “It’s a good day for hot buttered crumpets,” she thought. “Richard always liked those.”
    At last there were no more houses; only green fields and narrow winding country lanes.
    Sometimes Diana had to think hard before she could remember where and when she first met Richard. He was one of those people who slid unobtrusively into a circle of friends and acquaintances. There was no dramatic meeting; no unforgettable moment when their eyes met across a crowded room. In fact it had all been very ordinary and unromantic.
    It was at a meeting of the English Club at Oxford, held one spring evening in a small hall. An eminent author (she couldn ’ t remember his name) had come from London to give a talk on Sir Walter Scott.
    At the beginning the Chairman said, “Now, I’d like nominations for the club committee.”
    To Diana’s amazement, a voice from the back said, “I’d like to propose the girl in the second row, Mr. Chairman. That is, if she’s willing to stand.”
    It was Richard’s voice.
    “Do you agree to be nominated?” asked the Chairman. Before she could answer, Richard said, “We must have a girl on the committee—to arrange our tea meetings.”
    Then Diana realized that she was the only girl at the meeting apart from the club secretary, and that tea-making is traditionally not a man’s job.
    So she replied, “All right, I agree,” and thought that to be on a club committee must be terribly