Seaside Hospital Read Online Free PDF

striped dress, Mary in an apparently demure button-fronted frock, which turned out to be, beyond the precincts of the hospital, merely a top covering a very daring, low-cut sundress.
    “Well, no one can see us now,” Mary said, shedding her special “best ward manner” and becoming hilarious. “Those boys will be along in their old car in a minute, and I’m not going to look stuffy and hot for anyone. Here they come!”
    A series of bangs and crashes hit the air. An old car screeched its way around the corner, and two young men, looking no more than irresponsible schoolboys, waved madly to Mary, who waved back at them.
    “Jump in, girls! Hurry up, if you want to make the most of your break,” the dark boy shouted. Lisa and Mary climbed into the back seat, and they chugged their noisy way through the town to where, at the end overlooking the park, the massive newly painted scenic railway and water chute could be seen, gay with flags and bunting. Beside it, model airplanes wildly circling the central pole flew out farther and farther, and the occupants’ screams grew more shrill. Shots from the shooting range and the cries of the barkers added to the general pandemonium as the boys parked their old car, and they all trooped through the main entrance.
    “Just the thing to help you girls get away from it all,” Mike, the fair boy with glasses, chuckled.
    Lisa stayed with them for a little while, but she found the noise exhausting. She wondered whether this was what the rest of the medical staff were like as students—gay, noisy, and so desperately young and unworried. Could Randall Carson have ever been like this? If so, what had happened to make him change so much, or had he always been grim and efficient, expecting too much from everyone?
    She didn’t know what had made her think of him just then. Impatiently she decided to break away and do her shopping for the children.
    “Don’t you come, Mary,” she said, explaining to the others what she wanted to do. “Stay here and have fun. I’ll go back to the hospital when I’ve finished my shopping. Thanks, boys, for a lovely time.”
    She watched her friends for a few minutes, as the boys whisked Mary off to the water chute. It was easy to realize that Mary had been brought up, as an only girl, among a crowd of brothers.
    Lisa wandered through the toy department of one of the big stores and finished her shopping with an hour to spare. But on her own, she found she was remembering everything she had done in Barnwell Bay with Derek. His face seemed to be everywhere: in the new open-air swimming pool, dancing in the new pier pavilion, cocktails in the big hotel on the front, and lastly even in the Coronet Theatre, when he had presented her sister with a basket of flowers.
    Lisa felt she must get away from all the memories at all costs. There was one place where Derek had never taken her. Down in the old part of the town, where the harbor, almost abandoned now, stretched out green gray arms, was a huddle of white cottages belonging to the local fishermen. In the end cottage, lived old Simeon Eddy, who had been a favorite patient at St. Mildred’s a year ago.
    He was sitting on an upturned lobster pot, mending his nets, as Lisa made her way across the shingle. There was a strong salty tang in the air. The stone walls were green with fine moss left by the heavy tides; upturned boats scattered the sharply sloping beach, and a few small craft bobbed prettily at anchor beyond the jetties. This was Barnwell Bay as it had been, before the carnival and the swimming pool.
    “Hello, Simeon, how’s that leg of yours? ” she smiled.
    The old man’s vivid blue eyes twinkled at her. “Nay, my lass, you’ve never come down here just to ask about that leg of mine, I know,” he said, removing his clay pipe from his mouth and stretching the injured leg to show her how well it now was. “Why aren’t you out with some young fellow on your afternoon off, now?”
    She flushed