Strangers When We Meet, page 2
“I understand how it is with you,” he had volunteered, “since I, too, once had a nickname I did not like or, indeed, consider that I deserved. They used to call me ‘The Kraut’—by comparison with which to be known as ‘Duchess’ in infinately to be preferred. They call me ‘The Prof’ now, disrespectfully but with affection, so that at last I feel I am one of them. Americans may be racially mixed, Dr. Hamilton, yet they are suspicious of strangers, as you’ve already learnt and will learn again, if you go to Granville. There, however, you would be starting with an advantage which is not possible here. You’d be judged as an individual and vouched for by a man who is respected and loved. Dr. Mason”—his lips curved into a smile of singular warmth—“is known to the whole of Granville as ‘Doctor John.’ And that is better even than being called ‘The Prof,’ do you not agree?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” Sarah had confessed. “Perhaps that will make it harder for me to try to take his place.”
“That is possible. Eventually, of course, you will be assessed on your own merits.” The shrewd old eyes met hers, a question in them. “Understand, Dr. Hamilton, I can find another locum—I am not telling you to go, nor am I urging you to remain here. The decision is yours, though I should, in fairness, warn you that you may jeopardise your degree if you leave. In a general practice you will have far less time for study and, in the evenings, you may be too tired to continue work on your thesis or even to read for it. However, you will still have four months of your fellowship left and I have a high respect for your intelligence and capacity for hard work. It should be possible for you to make up the time lost in Granville when you return here and you might well find that very little time was lost, when you came to make the final assessment. Any experience is of value and, in our field, can be of particular value when balanced against theoretical knowledge, nicht wahr?”
“Then”—Sarah had seized eagerly upon his last words—“would you advise me to go, Professor?”
To her chagrin, Professor Friedlander shrugged his thin, bowed shoulders. “I cannot advise you, my dear young lady. All the members of our profession are tempted to experiment. It is a temptation to which pyschiatrists are especially susceptible—they long to fit human beings into theoretical concepts of what is best for them, to suggest, to advise or, put another way, to play God with other people’s lives. Few of us are immune to this temptation, including Dr. Burger, but I am an old man and I try to resist it. So I am not going to attempt to influence you. Much depends on the sort of doctor you wish, eventually, to become, and only you can know what that is. You have a good brain, a sense of high dedication and you are fortunately very talented. This hospital is a forcing ground for talent. We can send you back to England with some impressive letters after your name, or we can take a chance on these and send you back with something less tangible but, perhaps, of more practical use in the long run. Which it is to be only you can decide. Perhaps you will let me know your decision, when you have thought the matter over?”
Sarah laid down the letter, expelling her breath in a long-drawn sigh. She had been thinking the matter over, at intervals, all day. Half a dozen times, between patients, she had put out a hand to lift the telephone receiver on the desk at her side, only to withdraw it, still not quite certain. Now the clinic was over and she had to decide; Dr. Mason would be waiting for her to call him. He was himself due to enter hospital in a week and although, no doubt, his temporary locum could carry on, he . . . there was a tentative tap on the door.
“Oh, Doctor!” Miss Jefferson, the Head Nurse from Reception, peered in, her eyes widening in surprise when she realised that the office was still occupied. “I figured you must have gone to the canteen for a meal, when I saw the waiting room was empty.” She sounded unexpectedly pleased, and Sarah rose to her feet at once.
“What can I do for you, Miss Jefferson? Or do you need the office? Because I’ve finished, apart from a phone call I must make.”
The nurse smilingly shook her head. “No, it was you I was looking for, Dr. Hamilton. We’re finally discharging Captain Gresham today and he’s asked to see you before he goes. You remember him, don’t you? The Atlantic Airways pilot who was in that bad crash . . .” she outlined the case history, with brisk competence, but Sarah needed no reminders. Captain Stephen Gresham had been a surgical case to whom she had been called in an advisory capacity when he was found to be suffering from traumatic amnesia and she regarded him as, perhaps, her worst and most distressing failure.
She had wanted so much to help him to regain his lost memory, aware that he would have to face an enquiry into the cause of the crash, upon the findings of which his whole future as an airline pilot would depend. But she had achieved nothing, with the result that Steve Gresham had lost his job. On the evidence available, the enquiry had returned a verdict of “pilot error” and a medical board, held shortly afterwards, had declared him unfit for flying duties. He had returned to the hospital for a series of facial skin grafts, still suffering from severe headaches and in a state of acute depression, for the treatment of which the advice of the Department of Psychological Medicine had again been sought by the surgeons.
And . . . Sarah felt the hot, unhappy colour rising to flood her cheeks. As ill luck would have it, she had been the resident on call and Captain Stephen Gresham—or ex-Captain Stephen Gresham, as he was by then—had refused even to allow her to examine him. Gene Burger had taken over the case, roused from sleep to do so, and she had not seen the one-time pilot again, although she had followed his progress, reported at the monthly case history discussions, and knew that he had shown considerable improvement. Now he was being discharged and, according to Miss Jefferson, had asked to see her before leaving. Why, she asked herself wretchedly, what possible reason could have prompted his request? As suddenly as it had come, the colour drained from her cheeks and she turned to face Miss Jefferson, forcing an uneasy smile.
“Are you sure he asked for me, not Dr. Burger?”
“I’m quite sure,” Miss Jefferson returned tartly. “He said Dr. Burger visited him yesterday, on his round.”
“Oh, well, I’d better see him, I suppose. You don’t know what he wants, do you?”
“He didn’t tell me, Doctor, and I didn’t enquire. It could be that he wants to thank you, couldn’t it?” There was no hint of sarcasm in the Head Nurse’s tone, which was brisk and a trifle impatient. She glanced at her watch and added pointedly, “Why not ask him yourself I’ll bring him in and, if you’ve no objection, I’ll leave him with you. My desk is piled a mile high with admission and discharge cards and I’d like to get through on time for once—I’m going to a movie. I had the switchboard call a cab for Captain Gresham and his suitcase is in the foyer, the porters will take care of it.”
With a reluctance she could not hide, Sarah gave her assent, and a moment later, the door opened once more to admit her one-time patient. She had never seen him out of bed before and, indeed, had never seen his face and head free of bandages, so that both his height and his good looks came as something of a surprise to her. Only a small scar on his right cheekbone remained to show where the skin grafts had been made; the surgeons, her mind registered, had done a remarkably fine job on Steve Gresham, and she found herself hoping that Dr. Burger had been equally successful in treating his depression and the agonising headaches which had accompanied it. Again forcing a smile, she motioned him to a chair, but he shook his dark head.
“No, thanks, Dr. Hamilton. I won’t take up more than a few minutes of your time. It was just that I—well, I felt I couldn’t leave here without offering you an apology. My attitude wasn’t rational at the time or I wouldn’t have acted as I did to you, because you’d been very good to me. More than good, you went out of your way to try to help me. I wanted you to know that I’m grateful now.”
Sarah did not pretend to misunderstand him. “That’s perfectly all right, Captain Gresham. You needn’t apologise or be grateful, honestly. You—”
“I owe you an apology,” he insisted. “And it’s Mister, not Captain now, if you wouldn’t mind. I have to get used to it myself. Might as well start the way I mean to go on.”
He no longer sounded bitter, Sarah thought, but he did not look well. The intelligent grey eyes held pain and there were lines about the mouth, indelibly etched there. His manner was easy and relaxed, however and, she was relieved to observe, although still too thin for his height and build, he had put on a little weight since the last time she had examined him, lying silent and unresponsive in his hospital bed. Conscious of a pity she knew she must not show, she asked gently, “How do you feel now that you’re up and about again, Cap—Mr. Gresham?”
“Oh, I’m in fine shape, all things considered.”
“And the headaches?”
He shrugged. “I get them occasionally and at times they black me out. But they’re becoming less frequent and your Dr. Burger assures me they’ll pass, given time. One good thing—I mostly get warning when one’s about to hit me and your colleagues have prescribed some capsules, which seem to be pretty effective. Anyway, I’m considered quite safe enough to hold a driving licence, even if I can’t fly airplanes. They made me take a test, of course, but I passed that—with flying colours—yesterday. Just as well, because I’m going to have to drive a car in my new job.”
“You’ve got a job already!” Sarah hadn’t meant to betray her surprise, but aware that she had done so, went on hastily, “Oh, I’m so glad . . . what sort of job is it, Mr. Gresham?”
The sensitive mouth hardened. “Selling insurance, Dr. Hamilton. Not exactly what I’d have chosen, but I got the chance through a friend, and since I was hardly in a position to choose, I accepted. The airline offered me an executive job in their passenger department, which would have paid better, but I didn’t fancy sitting behind a desk watching other guys take the airplanes out, so”—his face relaxed briefly into a smile—“I figured I’d give insurance a go. It’s quite an opportunity, I guess, provided I can learn to reel off the patter with the right amount of conviction. The company put me through a course in salesmanship while I was in here—occupational readjustment, Burger called it, a step-up from occupational therapy—and I passed that with flying colours, too. They’re sending me to open a new branch office in Granville, after I’ve—”
“Where,” Sarah interrupted, startled, “where did you say you were being sent?” “Granville,” Steve Gresham repeated. He spelt it slowly. “You won’t have heard of the place. It’s just a small, up-state country town, the centre of a rural area, with a population of . . .” he started to quote statistics, but she again cut him short.
“Yes, I know all that.”
“You mean you actually know Granville?” It was his turn to display surprise. “I didn’t imagine anyone here did . . . and you’re British! How come you’ve been there?”
“Oh, I haven’t,” she amended. “Not yet. In fact, I’m not sure that I ever will, but, by an odd coincidence, I’ve been offered a job there too.”
“You have? Well, for crying out loud! What would you want with a job in Granville?”
“Well, you see, Dr. Burger thinks I ought to learn about the American way of life, at first hand, by working in a general practice for a time. And it happens that a friend of the Professor’s is ill and needs a locum, because he has to have hospital treatment . . .” She told him about Dr. John Mason and then, a trifle wryly, explained the reasons underlying the suggestion that she should act as his locum tenens.
Steve Gresham listened in silence, a faintly puzzled expression on his face. When Sarah broke off, remembering that he was a patient and fearful lest she had said too much, he seated himself in the chair he had earlier refused and, leaning across the desk towards her, asked quietly, “Surely I don’t figure on the list of patients you failed to communicate with?”
“You know the answer to that better than I do.” She tried but could not quite keep the note of reproach from sounding in her voice. “You head the list, Mr. Gresham. I never began to get through to you, did I?”
“Ah!” He sighed, and Sarah noticed suddenly that he was white and tense, as if for some reason what she had said had hurt him unbearably. All her professional instincts belatedly alerted, she endeavoured to reassure him, to gloss over the implied reproof, but he silenced her with a swift, imperious wave of the hand.
“I’m not your patient any more, Dr. Hamilton—I’m not anybody’s patient. They just discharged me, remember— discharged me as fit to go out into the great big world again and start earning a living.”
“I’m sorry. Truly, I—”
“It was I who came to apologise to you,” Steve Gresham put in. “But I never got around to it, did I?” His voice softened. “For the record, Dr. Sarah Hamilton, you got through to me all right . . . so far and so deep, you made me remember things I didn’t want to remember, things I was trying to shut out of my mind. That was why I asked for you to be taken off my case. It was no reflection on your professional competence, believe me—the reverse, in fact. I wanted to go on wallowing in self-pity, instead of facing up to what I had to at that enquiry. Instead of admitting that I was responsible for the loss of twenty-three lives.” He rose, a tall, commanding figure, his emotions perfectly under control now. “My taxi will be here. I’d better go. But tell me—are you going to take that locum in Granville?”
Sarah rose with him, feeling strangely at a loss.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet, though I must very soon. If I go, I must leave here tomorrow. But in the circumstances, perhaps you . . . perhaps you would rather I didn’t. I mean—”
“Take it,” he begged. “Call Dr.— what’s his name? Dr. Mason now, right away, and say you’re coming. Please.”
“You want me to?” She stared at him in disbelief, but Steve Gresham’s eyes met hers, lit with sudden, shining warmth. “Yes, I do. More than I can tell you.”
“But why?” He had refused her professional services, rejected all her efforts to help him in the past, and now . . . “I don’t understand, Mr. Gresham. Why should you want me in Granville?” Her question was sceptically voiced, but his gaze did not flinch from hers.
“Maybe I’m being selfish, Doctor, but it would be great to have you there—a friend, one person I can talk to and trust.” She could not doubt his sincerity, it was in eyes and voice. “Not that you’d have to acknowledge me, if you didn’t feel like it . . . our paths wouldn’t necessarily have to cross. Granville is a small place, but I guess it could hold us both and we could be—how does that song express it? ‘Strangers when we meet,’ huh? So far as I’m concerned, just knowing you were there would be enough.” He held out his hand, and Sarah, putting her own into it, felt the strength of his fingers as they closed about hers. A small thrill, which she hadn’t expected to feel but engendered by his handclasp, coursed up her arm and sent the colour rushing to her cheeks. “I shan’t be there for around a week,” he told her. “I have to pick up a company car, attend a weekend course of instruction here and then stop off for a day or so, to get my briefing from the District Manager in Ellis County. But I hope I’ll see you, even if it’s at a distance. Good luck, Doctor!”
Before she could think of an answer, he had gone. Sarah sat down again, her thoughts in momentary confusion; then, uncertainty resolved at last, she picked up the phone. “I’d like an outside line, please,” she told the hospital switchboard operator and, her voice quite firm, she gave Dr. Mason’s number. He had evidently been waiting for her call, since he answered at once.
“I’m very glad,” he said, when she had identified herself and announced her decision. “My old friend, Professor Friedlander, speaks most highly of you, Dr. Hamilton. I’m sure I could not leave my practice in better hands and I shall look forward to meeting you tomorrow. That will give me a week to show you around Granville, and, there’ll be a car waiting at the station when your train gets in. So till tomorrow, Doctor.”
Sarah replaced the receiver. Before leaving the office, she rang through to the Professor.
“I believe you’ve reached the right decision,” he assured her. “So it only remains for me to wish you luck in your new field of endeavour . . . and this I do, with all my heart.”
1
“WHAT’S the matter, kid? You’re not scared, are you?” The man’s voice was soft, persuasive, deliberately calculated not to frighten her, yet in spite of this, the child shrank from him.
By the faint gleam of light from the dash, she could see his eyes and the expression in them sent swift waves of a nameless fear coursing down her spine. She shivered, wishing fervently that she had refused his offer of a lift when the black car had pulled up beside her. Now that it was too late, she knew it would have been better to have stood in the rain at the surburban bus stop than to have trusted herself to this strange man with the soft voice, whose cold eyes belied the gently spoken promise to deliver her safely to her home.
He leaned closer, smiling, and she felt his warm breath on her cheek. “What’s your name? You didn’t tell me, did you? Seems kind of silly to go on calling you kid, when we’re going to be friends. You do have a name, don’t you?”
The little girl nodded, fighting back the tears and answered with a brave show of defiance, “Of course I do, everybody does. It’s Mary—Mary Ellen Scott. And please, I—I want to go home.”
“All in good time, Mary. We’ve hardly gotten to know each other yet and I want us to be friends—real friends. I guess you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” When she did not reply, his tone sharpened and he asked abruptly, “How old are you?”
