You Took My Heart by Elizabeth Hoy

thing or that, and hope somewhere persisting in spite of everything. Like nursing someone very sick, she thought, hoping against hope that way, achingly hoping day after day. And now the end had come, and it was all over.
    * * * *
    The next morning she was pale but conscientiously forcedly cheerful. At breakfast-time she joked with Gemma, teasing her about her wan, blue-circled eyes, her suppressed air of dissipation.
    “Shut up, idiot! Gemma whispered at last. “I didn’t get in till all hours. I came up the fire-escape, missing night-sister by the skin of my teeth!”
    Joan said, “Gosh!” in a suitably awe-struck tone, and Gemma looked pleased. She’d had a rip-roaring good time, she confessed proudly. “We went out to a place on the river. Didn’t get there until nearly midnight. There was cabaret and dancing, and a gorgeous moon and—oh—it was heavenly! I couldn’t possibly have missed it. Alan would have been furious if I had broken up the part for the sake of my mingy eleven-thirty pass.”
    Gemma went on to say that it was an especially gay party because Alan’s girl cousin was celebrating her engagement. “There were five of us altogether. The odd man out was Barney O’Crea, an Irish chum of Akin’s. I wish you’d been there to partner him. He’s awfully nice—a journalist. I know you’d like him.”
    “I’m sure I should,” Joan murmured a little doubtfully as they left the dining room. In the hall-rack the morning post peeped forth invitingly from the initialled pigeonholes. Joan searched her own and saw Garth’s handwriting. Her face went stony.
    “Then come and meet him with me on Sunday night,” Gemma was saying. “That is, unless you’re too taken up with your boy friend, Garth.”
    “I’m not taken up with any boy friend,” Joan answered steadily. “And I’d love to meet your Irishman.”
    “Good!” said Gemma delightedly. “Then that’s fixed. I’ll tell Alan when I go down to the dispensary for the boracic this morning.”
    They were laughing, talking, going up the stairs. In her apron pocket Joan clutched at Garth’s letter. It felt like a hot coal between her fingers.
    This was the interval for bed-making and room-tidying before getting back to the morning work on the wards. Joan flung the covers over her bed in double quick time, flipped a duster over her dressing table and fled. She couldn’t let Gemma see her face when she was opening Garth’s letter. She couldn’t let anyone see. In the lobby behind the big linen cupboards there was peace. She ripped Garth’s envelope and read the few lines he had written. He would be along in Dale about four that afternoon. Would she make a point of seeing him for a moment? It was desperately important to him that she should. “Darling, Joanna, please !” he ended. Joan tore the sheet of notepaper into a hundred fragments and went over to the hospital. In the gutters of the square as she passed through, she scattered the fragments of Garth’s pleading, to the indignation of the fat pigeons who had fluttered down hoping for crumbs.
    All morning she worked like a fury, polishing, cleaning, serving early lunches of milk and egg-flip, making swabs, packing surgical drums, fitting the trolley out for its round so perfectly that Scatty complimented her, and even Sister Millet looked mildly pleased and forebore to find fault.
    At noon for the first time in her training she was left alone in charge of the ward while Sister and Nurse Scatt went away to their midday meal. She felt proud of the responsibility, hovering over the old lady in bed number five who had had her operation and was now sleeping uneasily still under the influence of her anaesthetic. Scatty had told Joan to watch her pulse, to give her a sip of boiled water if she asked for it, to ring the Staff Nurse on the next floor immediately if any emergency arose.
    But there was no emergency. Only poor Mary Cree crouched under her bedclothes having one of her sobbing fits.