Seize The Day. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ taken aback by her hostile tone. ‘Such as?’

      She willed her voice not to have a quaver of emotion in it. Somehow she felt that for him to see her vulnerable would be a disadvantage. ‘Such as why you directed the nursing officer not to recall me from my holiday in order to attend Dr Marlow’s funeral.’

      He looked surprised. ‘She asked my opinion, and I gave it. You weren’t related, were you? And you’d only just gone away.’

      ‘I’d worked closely with him for years!’ She spoke in an unnaturally high voice.

      He chose to ignore that. ‘I’d already spoken to some of your staff. They told me how devoted you were to your work, how you worked unpaid overtime if the ward was short-staffed, which it frequently was. One doesn’t meet with that kind of dedication much these days, and I rather liked the sound of you. And I certainly didn’t imagine that you’d look the way you do.’

      There was a murmur of appreciativeness in his voice and she was furious. ‘Just stick to the point,’ she hissed at him.

      He shrugged. ‘You may or may not agree with me, but I’ve always tended to think that all nurses need their hard-earned holidays. They feel better and then they do their jobs better. Weighing everything up, we thought it better for you to continue with your holiday. I can’t see what the problem is, unless you’re one of these super-women who feel that the ward simply can’t run without their presence. Indispensable is the word, I think.’

      ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

      He remained unperturbed. ‘Oh, I dare all right. You asked me a question, and I’m giving you an honest answer. I’m just sorry you don’t agree with me. You may be sister of the ward—but I certainly don’t come under your professional jurisdiction.’

      She bit her lip. ‘And Staff Nurse Collins? What did she say? She knows me almost better than anyone. Did she recommend that I continue on my holiday, blithely unaware that the man who was almost—like a father to me——’ her voice broke a little at this ‘—was dead?’ she finished in a whisper.

      He moved over to her side then, his face soft with sympathy. ‘Hey—I certainly didn’t mean to cause you this much pain. I’m sorry if you think the wrong decision was made. But you know yourself that attending a funeral doesn’t change anything. You still have to grieve. Don’t you think that perhaps you might be misdirecting your grief, and it’s coming out as anger against me?’

      ‘You can keep your cheap psychoanalysis,’ she said bitterly. ‘And please answer the question—did Staff Nurse Collins agree with you?’

      ‘Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘She did.’

      ‘I don’t believe you!’

      ‘Then ask her.’

      ‘Oh, believe me—I shall. And I shall also ask her why she felt she had to leave so suddenly, but that will be academic, since I feel pretty sure I already know the answer to that one.’

      He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

      ‘Because she realised that she wouldn’t be able to bear working for an arrogant, overbearing doctor like you, Dr Trentham!’

      For one moment there was an answering flash in his eyes, and she thought that he was going to respond with an equally angry retort, but he evidently changed his mind, for he shook his head very slightly.

      ‘Why don’t you smash a plate or something?’ he enquired mildly. ‘It might make you feel better.’

      ‘Then I should get out if I were you,’ she said between gritted teeth, ‘because if I do choose to smash something it’s very likely to be over your head!’

      ‘I’m going, I’m going!’ he said, in mock alarm. ‘Women with green eyes and hot tempers have always terrified me—and, honey, you are one very angry young woman!’

      Before she could screech at him ‘don’t ever call me “honey”,’ which she was intending to do, he had slipped quietly out of the door, leaving her sitting there, her cheeks flushed with rage, feeling ever so slightly a fool.

      What on earth had made her over-react like that? Why hadn’t she been her normal calm, unflappable self, telling him that his behaviour had been out of order, and would he mind being a little less familiar in future?

      In fact, what was it about the man which made her feel such a strong and genuine dislike for him? Apart from the fact that he was overbearing and quite disturbingly masculine. Something about the way he had looked at her when he had made the comment about women with green eyes and hot tempers, as if he would like to. . . She shuddered very slightly.

      She had better stop wasting time thinking about him. Roll on Dr Marlow’s replacement, please—the sooner they could get rid of this unconventional locum, the better.

      She stood up to straighten her hair and her cap, and to do up the button of her dress. Calm down, Jenny, she urged herself. It was time to get on with the job in hand. She had better have a quick walk around the ward and say hello to all the patients before she gave the report.

      Rose Ward, like all the other wards in the cottage hospital, was small compared to those in some large district general hospitals. The hospital itself was unusual in that it had survived its original small state—the current trend to centralise small units into large hospitals had passed Denbury Hospital by, partly because of the vociferous support of the local community, and partly because an extremely wealthy ex-patient had bequeathed his massive fortune to them. An added point in Denbury’s favour was that the surrounding countryside consisted of notoriously impassable hilly areas, which often became cut off during heavy falls of snow—and the powers that be had decreed that it was better to have a hospital which was accessible to all the farms and small villages around, rather than risk patients being marooned in transit to the nearest large DGH.

      People often asked Jenny how she could bear to settle in such a God-forsaken part of the country, being so young and so well-qualified, but she simply couldn’t imagine life in a busy town or city. She loved the simple calm of country life—the predictability of seasons merging into the next, not obscured or deafened by the intrusion of inordinate amounts of cars and machines. She liked knowing which hen had laid the eggs she ate! She liked knowing people she had grown up with. And, above all else, she liked continuity and order.

      Sometimes she questioned why it was that she never felt the burning desire to marry and settle down, and produce children of her own. There had been overtures, of course, two from young men she’d known all her life, and one from a doctor she had gone out with while she was training. But she had not felt deeply enough about them to want to disrupt the solitary peace of her existence. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that her mother had lived on her own all her life—perhaps she had liked that role-model so much that she was prepared to choose it for herself. And, when you’d spent your whole childhood hearing how awful men were, it tended to influence you a bit.

      She was aware that, at twenty-six, she was considered by some of the younger nurses to be ‘on the shelf’, but it rarely bothered her. Indeed, she’d had to cope with so many red eyes and such morose behaviour when nurses’ love-affairs were not going so swimmingly that she often felt glad that that side of life seemed to have passed her by.

      She put a new notebook into the pocket of her dress and walked briskly on to the ward, fixing a smile on her face, not wanting the patients to see СКАЧАТЬ