Seize The Day

The girl seemed to have registered what Jenny was wearing, and her eyes came to rest on her name-badge. She looked slightly taken aback, but nowhere near as embarrassed as Jenny would have been in similar circumstances.

‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘You must be Sister.’

‘I am indeed,’ answered Jenny. ‘And now perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself?’

‘I’m. . .’ the girl began, but the phone on the desk started to ring. She made as if to pick it up, but one look from Jenny stopped her in her tracks.

‘Rose Ward. Sister Hughes speaking,’ she said smoothly.

‘Oh, Jenny—you’re back! Thank goodness!’

The voice she recognised immediately as that of Sonia Walker, the hospital nursing officer. ‘Of course I’m back, Sonia! What’s the matter?’ She saw the girl in white watching her warily. ‘And where’s Judy?’ she queried.

Sonia’s voice continued to sound worried. ‘I need to speak to you in my office, Jenny. Can you come down immediately?’

‘But I haven’t taken the report yet!’ Jenny protested.

‘This won’t take long. Tell the agency staff nurse that she can go to lunch in about ten minutes, when you’ll be back—but I must speak to you right away.’

‘OK, I’ll be right along,’ Jenny agreed, and as she replaced the receiver she glanced at the fair-haired nurse. ‘Are you an agency staff nurse?’ she enquired.

‘Yes,’ answered the other curtly, ‘I am.’

Jenny nodded. That would explain her uniform. ‘I have to go and see the nursing officer—I shan’t be long. Can you hold the fort until I get back?’

The girl had dead pale skin and her eyes grew fearful. ‘Hurry up, then, will you? I’ll drop if I don’t eat something soon.’

Jenny could believe that—the girl was so thin that she didn’t look as though she’d eaten a proper meal in months, let alone hours. She couldn’t help being a little surprised at the forthright response, though—in hospital it simply wasn’t done to clock-watch. Or at least it hadn’t been the done thing when she had trained—but things were changing all the time, even attitudes in as strict a discipline as nursing.

She smiled as she made her way to the central nursing office, and waited while the secretary buzzed through to Sonia. Moaning about the junior nurses—that made her feel very old!

She was shown into Sonia Walker’s office, and Sonia rose from behind her desk immediately, as immaculate as always in her smart blue dress, but with an anxious expression in her eyes.

‘Jenny!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do sit down. I’m so sorry to have had you come back from your holiday to such sad news.’

Jenny glanced at her, alarmed now. ‘Sad news? What news?’

‘You mean you haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sonia.’

Sonia rested both hands on the desk, her eyes compassionate. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this—I’m afraid Dr Marlow is dead.’

Jenny’s knuckles whitened as she gazed at the nursing officer disbelievingly. ‘Dead? Harry, dead? But. . . He can’t be. . .’ She stared at Sonia. ‘He was one of the fittest men around.’

Sonia shook her head. ‘I know. It happened so suddenly. He was driving to work. One minute he was fine—the next, gone. It was a terrible shock. The P-M showed that he had a massive stroke—he wouldn’t have suffered.’

Jenny let her head fall into her hands, willing the tears to stop, but unable to do anything to quench them. She had known Harry Marlow for as long as she could remember. He’d worked alongside her mother for years, and then with Jenny herself. He’d eaten his Christmas lunch with them every year, bar the time when he’d visited his sister in Australia. He had bought Jenny the engraved fob-watch, which she still wore, on the day she’d passed her finals.

Sonia moved from behind her desk to place a comforting arm around her shoulder, and handed her a wad of tissues.

Jenny wiped her eyes and blew ner nose. ‘I’m sorry, Sonia,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just come as such a shock. When—when. . .?’

‘It happened two days after you went away. We didn’t know where to reach you.’

Of course, she had left no word. She hadn’t even left a phone number.

‘So the funeral. . . ?’

‘Was last week. I’m so sorry, Jenny.’

So there wouldn’t even be a funeral for her to attend. No occasion for her to pay her last respects to the man who had been almost like a father to her.

‘And Dr Trentham thought it best not to try and trace you—to bring you back from wherever you were to be confronted with a funeral.’

Jenny had hardly been listening, but she raised her head a little. ‘Who?’ The tear-filled, green eyes stared at Sonia, who shifted in her seat a little.

‘Dr Trentham—he’s the new surgical attachment, replacing Dr Marlow. He didn’t think it wise to disrupt your holiday, and I agreed with him. He was right, Jenny. You needed the holiday. Everyone knew how hard you’d been working. What was the point of dragging you back?’

Sorrow, guilt and rage combined to form an icy hand which clutched at her chest. ‘This—Dr Trentham,’ she spat the name out as if it had a bad taste. ‘He had no right to make a decision like that, and I’m surprised that you allowed him to, Sonia.’

‘I wanted to do the right thing—and what he said seemed eminently reasonable at the time. I know you’re upset——’

‘How has Judy taken it?’ she interrupted in a small voice which seemed to come from a long way away.

Sonia looked as if she was about to wring her hands. ‘Judy has left, Jenny. She’s gone.’

Jenny looked blank. ‘Gone? What do you mean—gone?’

‘She’s left. She left when Dr Trentham joined. I think she found all the changes too much. She was only a couple of years off retirement, and I think that——’

Uncharacteristically, Jenny interrupted her nursing officer again, but Sonia Walker could see that the normally cool and efficient ward sister was in a state of shock.

‘Let me get this right.’ She spoke very slowly, as if checking her statement’s veracity while she uttered it. ‘Not only has this new doctor effectively prevented me from attending Harry’s funeral, but he has also made Staff Nurse Collins leave—after twenty years of loyal service?’

Sonia raised her eyebrows a little. ‘I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that. . . Listen, I can arrange for cover for your ward for today. Why don’t you go home and rest? It’s all been a terrible shock for you.’

Jenny had stood up, like an automaton, her eyes unseeing. Sonia sprang to her feet.

‘Jenny—Jenny, dear! Let me get someone to take you home.’

With a huge effort of will, Jenny shook her head. ‘No, honestly. I must get back to the ward; there must be so much to be done. And I want to speak to this—this Trentham man.’

‘Jenny—you won’t do anything foolish, will you? He acted in your best interests——’

‘He doesn’t even know me,’ Jenny pointed out coldly.

‘Yes, I know, but——’ her anxious expression returned ‘—Jenny, I couldn’t bear to lose you as well.’