Nurse in Love by Jane Arbor Read Free Book Online Page B

to her office and sat down at her table, her arms outstretched before her, her fingers clasped. When Adam Brand entered she did not look up, and his voice came almost harshly to her ears: “You should go off now, Sister.”
    She looked wearily up at the clock. “Yes, I’m just going. I—had to stay until we knew.”
    He came across to stand beside her, looking down at her. “Surely you can’t allow yourself to take individual cases so hardly? It’s not a virtue in someone with your weight of responsibility, you know.”
    “Each case is individual in the sadness and the regrets it creates,” she murmured. “The mother of that child—how she blamed herself! And all there was for her to do was wait—as we had to.”
    His hand came down upon her shoulder, its pressure firm and reassuring but surprisingly gentle. “Do you think that that sort of waiting is any easier for me than for you knowing that at such times I’m as powerless and empty-handed as if I were really empty-hearted and did not care?”
    “I know. I’m sorry,” she murmured.
    He turned to rest against the table-edge so that he faced her. He said musingly: “You may not believe it, but I’m not completely case-hardened. And with each one I find myself with an old lesson to be learned — again.”
    Kathryn’s glance was an unspoken question.
    “Humility,” he explained briefly. “Nowadays we know so much, and yet there are still limits to what we can use. Nature and Time have to play their part. To-night they were on our side. But even if they hadn’t been, we’d still have no right to despair of their being so in the next case—and the next—and the next. You might find that the thought helps.”
    “I shall, I think. Thank you.” Kathryn stood up, but caught her foot awkwardly and stumbled as she did so. Adam’s hand shot out, catching at her wrist, steadying her.
    “All right?” he queried.
    “Yes, thank you — ” She broke off as, after a perfunctory knock, Thelma Carter stood in the open doorway.
    Thelma was hatless, her auburn hair clustering about her head in the latest fashionable short cut; she wore a black trouser suit with scarlet shoes and bag: she nodded briefly to Kathryn, but she addressed Adam Brand.
    “You don’t mind my coming up?” she asked. “I had to come back to the office for something I had forgotten, so I thought I’d call and collect you if you were ready, or wait for you if you weren’t.”
    “I warned you I should be late. We have had an emergency case which might have gone either way.”
    “ I’m sorry.” The words were the merest convention, and Kathryn momentarily envied Thelma her self-interest which could remain so little touched by near-tragedy. She went on smoothly: “Of course, I shouldn’t have come if I hadn’t hoped to save you time, as we’re very late already.”
    “It couldn’t be helped. But shall we go now?” Adam’s gesture towards the door invited Kathryn as well as Thelma, but Kathryn excused herself, saying that she must see Night Nurse before leaving the ward.
    Had she been surprised that Adam Brand’s postponed appointment was with Thelma, she asked herself when they had gone. Not really, she admitted. What more likely than that they should be seeing each other often—dining together, as no doubt they were to-night? As they left, Adam’s hand had been lightly beneath Thelma’s elbow, his head bent towards her as she was speaking, and suddenly Kathryn had been reluctant to go with them even as far as the main entrance hall, where their ways would part.
    She told herself that she magnified her own importance if she saw their intimacy merely as an alliance against her, but her sore pride insisted on being hurt by it. For before Thelma had come upon them so unexpectedly she and Adam Brand had been, she believed, upon the edge of an understanding of their own. Different, of course, in every way from any feeling he must have for Thelma; far less personal and really no