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Deborah spoke her thoughts aloud and quite involuntarily. “Oh, dear—I wasn’t expecting anyone and I simply…” She broke off because he was smiling nicely at her. “I must look quite awful,” she muttered, and when he laughed softly, she asked, “Is it another case?” He shook his head. “You want to borrow some instruments—half a minute while I find my shoes…”
He laughed again. “You won’t need your shoes and I don’t want any instruments.” He came a little farther into the room and stood looking at her. She looked back at him, bewildered, her mind noting that his Dutch accent seemed more pronounced than usual, although his English was faultless.
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That was true; Clare’s was on call until Thursday. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she promised him. ‘And now be off with you, I want to clear up.’
It was very quiet when the nurses had gone. Deborah tugged her cap off her dreadfully untidy hair, kicked off her shoes, and sat down at her desk. Another ten minutes or so and she would be free herself. She dragged her thoughts away from the tantalising prospect of supper and a hot bath and set to on the operation book. She was neatly penning in the last name when the unit doors swung open and her tired mind registered the disturbing fact that it was Mr van Doorninck’s large feet coming down the corridor, and she looking like something the sea had washed up. She was still frantically searching for her shoes when he came in the door. She rose to her stockinged feet, feeling even worse than she looked because he was, by contrast, quite immaculate—no one, looking at him now, would know that he had been bent over the operating table for the entire day. He didn’t look tired either; his handsome face, with its straight nose and firm mouth, looked as good-humoured and relaxed as it usually did.
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