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‘GLAD TO see you back,’ Sherryl O’Neill said with a smile when Hester returned to duty at the hospital the following evening. Then she frowned. ‘You don’t look so good. Trouble is we really can’t do without you. Bad accident on one of the navy ships. Five men injured.’ She peered forward, studying Hester’s face, the tone and colour of her skin. ‘That horrible Mr Rand didn’t hurt you, did he? I mean . . .’ She stopped, not wanting to put her thought into words.
Hester could not help laughing at the idea. Hamilton Rand had about as much sexual passion for her as for a bucket of mud. ‘You have no cause to be concerned,’ she said, still smiling widely. ‘The very idea is the funniest thing I’ve heard in months. Please don’t be offended. I needed to laugh.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Sherryl was very direct. She was used to dealing with urgent and very personal matters. There was no room for prudishness or euphemisms in nursing.
‘Someone murdered Adrienne Radnor,’ Hester said quietly.
‘I thought you didn’t like her,’ Sherryl observed, ‘which I can heartily understand.’
‘I didn’t, at least not much. But I might have, if I’d known her better. Either way, I was sorry for her.’
Sherryl shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think you’ve got more heart than brains. But I’m glad to see you. We’ve got enough to do for six of us.’
And so it proved. Doing whatever was possible for seriously injured men, dressing their wounds and listening to their camaraderie, bad jokes and laughter laced with pain, reminded her of the Crimea and the desperate courage needed there. Hester had no time even to remember her own feelings, let alone consider them important.
At the end of a long night, when the sun was already risen, she met Magnus Rand for the first time since she had been smothered with ether and taken to the cottage. She was walking along the corridor on her way towards the entrance, having handed over her notes to the day nurses. She encountered him coming out of his office. He stopped short at seeing her.
‘Good morning, Mrs Monk,’ he said quietly. There was no mistaking the embarrassment in his face, but he did not avoid meeting her eyes.
‘Good morning, Dr Rand,’ she replied. She was too tired to be evasive. She had seen too much suffering to speak in euphemisms. ‘The patients are doing as well as men with such injuries can. We lost no one, but they are a long way from safe. All the notes will be on your desk.’
He was clearly unhappy, but he stood directly in front of her so she could not pass him without physically brushing by him. If she took even a step he could block her way.
‘It was not about the patients I wanted to speak to you.’ There was a definite flush in his cheeks. ‘I am sure you will have done all that you could. I think we may save those that are left. It is not an easy task, and I am very grateful that you came back. I would hardly have blamed you if you had not.’
‘It is not a question of what you think, Dr Rand,’ she told him calmly, no anger in her voice. ‘It is the patients’ wellbeing that is important. Those men had no part in your brother’s experiments.’
‘They might benefit from them,’ he pointed out. ‘Or other men in the future, once the technique is perfected. At least there is hope.’
She looked at his face. For a moment she wanted to agree with him, say that it had been worth it. Perhaps for those people it would be. Now she was still too raw, too bruised by fear and loss, to think of such a distant future.
‘Not until you know why the Roberts children’s blood always worked, and other people’s does sometimes and not others,’ she said. ‘The rest I already know.’ She made a move to pass him.
He still blocked her. ‘I know. I owe you a debt I can’t pay, and I am very aware of it. My brother Edward died of white blood disease.’ His voice was thick with emotion. ‘I never really knew him, but Hamilton loved him deeply. Hamilton gave up his own career to look after me, and then to see that I had the education that he had not.’
‘I understand your loyalty to him, Dr Rand,’ she said sincerely. ‘Perhaps you can then understand my family’s loyalty to me? The son I . . . I was going to say adopted, but that is not really true. I think he adopted us. The Roberts children were your patients too. I think Maggie wanted to save her brothers just as much as you wanted to save yours.’
His face was white. ‘I know all the arguments, and you are right. I don’t know why I imagined that saying anything would help. My conscience prompted me, I suppose. It was not so much anything to do with you. I don’t expect you to pardon what happened or find excuse for it. I am grateful you returned. Accept that at least.’
‘I do accept it, Dr Rand. As I said, I didn’t come back for you, I came for the patients. I suppose even more I came back for myself.’
‘For yourself?’ He was momentarily confused.
‘You must be whoever you want to be, Dr Rand. I will not let you choose who I will be. Whatever I do, it is my . . . failure . . . if I let you dictate my actions.’ She did not avert her eyes but stared straight at him.
He looked for a moment as if she had struck him, then he lifted his head a little. ‘How easily you say that – as if the choices were always so clear. Is it so easy for you, Mrs Monk? Right and wrong! No shadows you can’t escape, no debts of love or gratitude where you don’t have to weigh one against another?’
Now it was she who was embarrassed. Her tiredness and her grief had made her far too quick to judge. ‘I’m sorry. Of course there are. And I have made mistakes. We can all be wiser in hindsight, as well as on behalf of others. I suppose I should be more grateful that I have the chance to come back. You need not have offered it to me. Good morning. I’m going home to sleep.’
He smiled with a warmth she had not seen in him before. ‘Good morning,
Mrs Monk,’ he replied.
Hester returned to work a little early that evening and went to report to Magnus Rand before going into the ward. She wished to hear directly from him what had happened during the day, rather than read it from notes she could not question, or hear only the opinion of the nurses going off duty.
She stopped in the corridor just outside his office. The door was not quite closed, but she would not push it open without knocking first. She had her hand up and had almost touched the wood when she heard Hamilton Rand’s voice with its now highly familiar quiet sarcasm.
‘Really, Magnus, the issue has been decided. You are fighting against the tide. I accept that my methods were unconventional, but—’
