Nurse in Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

course.”
    “Then it’s agreed?” His grin was cheekily confident.
    “What is?”
    “That two off-duties equal one date?”
    Sara flushed furiously. “No, of course not !”
    He remained unperturbed. “All right, have it your own way—for now. Meanwhile what’s your name? Mine’s Simon Glenn.”
    “It—it’s Sara Spender. But you needn’t remember it, because it doesn’t signify — ” And Sara snatched the ward’s property from him and fled, furious with him for his presumption and even more furious with herself for having told him her name.
    She left Dr . Simon Glenn, house physician of six months’ standing, slightly abashed—but only slightly. “You rushed your fences, lad,” he adjured himself. “But if she’d really meant to slap your face she wouldn’t have told you her name. Sara—sort of old-world—Ah, well, there’s plenty of time — ” And he went upon his way, twirling his stethoscope and whistling “If You were the Only Girl in the World” just off-key.
    Sara’s day — a whirl of disjointed impressions which she was going to have to sort out later—ended at eight - fifteen, just when her feet, she felt, were about to utter their own protest against running about ceaselessly and achieving very little.
    But before she went off duty Sister Bridgeworth found time to say approvingly: “Well done, Nurse. You’ve worked well. That’s what I always say—a nurse who can work alone and completely without supervision will always be valuable to me!” Clearly Sister Bridgeworth had no inkling that she had snatched at least half Sara’s work from her and had done it herself!
    At supper Sara compared notes with a fellow student - nurse who had been sent to Kathryn’s ward and who claimed that Kathryn was a “marvellous” Sister to work under. But all day Sara had not seen Kathryn until she was in her room after supper and a knock sounded at her door.
    Kathryn came in, her dark eyes bright with eagerness to hear how Sara had “got on”.
    Sara took a deep breath of despair. “I shall never learn anything'.” she declared dramatically. “You said Sister Bridgeworth was grand. I think she’s impossible !”
    “She is grand. Why, what happened?”
    “Well, for all she allowed me to do, I might as well not have been there. But as I was there, she was on my tail all day, doing everything for me!”
    Kathryn threw back her head and laughed. “Oh dear, has she been at it again? I warned her that you were intelligent and keen, hoping to fend her off! But it’s really her only fault as a Sister—that she is so capable and quick herself that she can scarcely bear to see anyone work at their own pace. Even then she never nags—she just falls to and helps.”
    “ I’ll say she falls to!” declared Sara with feeling. “What’s more, she had the audacity to congratulate me on being able to work alone. Alone—I ask you !”
    Kathryn laughed again. “Poor Sara! You see, that’s another thing about Bridgeworth—half the time she doesn’t realise that she has to have her finger in every pie on the ward.” Privately Kathryn resolved to say a word to Sister Bridgeworth, but for discipline’s sake she would not tell Sara so. She added gently: “All the same, forgetting Sister’s oddities, how did you really like it?”
    Sara sat down on the bed and stared at her fists c urled childishly between her knees. “I think I loved it,” she said slowly. “Only — ”
    “Only ? ”
    “Well, nothing really happened. And somehow I didn’t get the feeling—which I expected—that I was really nursing. Nothing I did—or Sister Bridgeworth did for me—seemed to add up to actually curing people or saving their lives.”
    Kathryn understood. She said: “But Sara dear, nursing is like that. I’ve always thought of it as a gigantic pattern that is made up of bits—you and me and the other nurses, the patients themselves, the house surgeons, the registrars, the specialists and even other