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"Get away with you, Jim Graham! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and you a fully fledged doctor at last," but the grey-haired woman in the blue and white dress didn't sound as if she minded at all.

"He never changes, does he?" she said to Lesley. "You'll never be short of a laugh while this one's around, eh?" She held out her hands to both of them. "But come away in. I've got your rooms all ready." Mrs. Frazer was housekeeper to the doctors. She never got over the excitement of moving day when a new bunch of doctors came into the "mess".

"I've put you in number nine to be near to your friend," she told Jim. "I've practically had to bribe the workshop for a table big enough to hold all that paraphernalia." She nodded in the direction of the photographic stuff. "I've had a word with Miss Baillie, the head radiographer. I think you'll find that something can be worked out about the use of the dark room."

"Bless you, Mrs. F." Jim aimed a kiss in the direction of her cheek and she landed him a playful cuff on the ear.

"I'm far too soft with you, I suppose. Never let on to the rest now." She put a hand to Lesley's suitcase. "You come with me, my dear. I've put you in room eight." She opened a second glass door in the entrance hall and stood back to let Lesley precede her.

Once through the revolving doors Lesley found herself in a long corridor. Three sets of short passages intersected it at intervals. It was into the first of these on the right that Mrs. Frazer now led them.

"He's a nice boy," she said after Jim had left them. "Ever so helpful when he was here as a student. Almost had a strike in the electricians' shop when they discovered I was getting him to mend the fuses." She chuckled, and Lesley got the impression that the housekeeper would probably have little trouble getting the workmen on her side too.

The door which she opened for Lesley led into a tiny hall.

"I try to keep this suite for my lady doctors. It's more private like."

Three other doors opened off this vestibule. The one on Lesley's left already had her name on it. She pushed it open with her shoulder and dumped her suitcases on the floor inside.

"I've given you two wardrobes. I hope that's all right. I know the girls usually need more than the men." The housekeeper indicated two narrow units each no wider than a student's locker standing in the corner of the room. Lesley's eyes took in the plain deal dressing chest and the hospital iron bedstead with its regulation cotton coverlet matching the dark green curtains which edged the severe steel window frames.

"I think you'll find everything in order. If there's anything else that you need, Doctor?" (It was still the sweetest sound on earth, said matter-of-factly like this by someone who took it for granted.)

"Perhaps a small table?" Lesley said tentatively.

"I'll see what I can do. I won't promise anything. The workshop's almost at its wits' end trying to find enough tables for everyone, what with doctors writing novels and wanting to develop pictures. D'you know there's even one with a sewing machine - can you imagine? A man with a sewing machine!" Mrs. Frazer sounded affronted at the very idea. "I'll bet that's one thing the planners never reckoned on." She turned to leave. "Dinner's at six-thirty to seven. Breakfast eight to nine. You'll find coffee and milk on a hot plate in the kitchen from eight o'clock onwards in the evening. Not that you'll be using it much, I'm thinking. I notice Sir Charles's residents usually have theirs in the ward." Mrs. Frazer let herself out of the room quietly and Lesley lifted the first of her suitcases on to the bed and began to fill wardrobes and drawers. Now that she had time to look around she saw that she rated a carpet.

*

Half an hour later she became aware of a commotion outside in the corridor. Heavy things were being dragged along it. There were hurrying footsteps and high-pitched giggles. Eventually someone tapped on her door.

"Hallo there!" A slim dark-haired girl put her head round the corner. "I'm Nan Baillie, radiographer. I take it that you're -" she squinted back to read the label on the door, "- Lesley Leigh. Talk about alliteration!" She threw back her head and laughed. "I just popped in to tell you that they're moving in the rest of the medical auxiliaries to this block tonight - just in case you wondered what all the noise is about. Kate Ritchie, the haematology technician, and I have been in for a week. Some of the others came in last night. That's the rest of them you can hear now." She grinned in the direction of the scuffling.

"So that's what the ambulance was doing in the drive?"

"You saw that, did you? Getting a hand with the flitting, of course." The other girl chuckled. "Boy, oh, boy! We've certainly stolen a march on the Sisters this time. We're still eating with them in their dining-room, of course, but they're positively pea-green with envy - poaching on their preserves with the doctors!" She gave her infectious chuckle again, grabbed a chair and positioned it outside the bathroom door.

"Be a pal and hand me that hammer." She climbed on to the chair and took a notice out of her pocket. When Lesley had given her the hammer she began tacking the piece of paper to the door.

"Private. For the use of Nan Baillie and Lesley Leigh," it read.

"We've got to nip this thing in the bud before it goes any further. Took me almost two hours to get a bath last night."

"Can you do that?" said Lesley, only mildly interested.

"Of course. It's essential. We might be on call. We can't be held up because some dietician or physiotherapist decides that it's time she lolled in a bath." She gave a final tap with the hammer. "There, that ought to do it." She stepped down and surveyed her handiwork. "After all, this bathroom's supposed to be private to this suite. There are plenty of others at the end of the corridor." She closed the door which stood between them and the passageway.

"I notice these rooms are different from the rest. The others seem to open straight on to the corridor," said Lesley.

"This used to be an officer's suite during the war. Your room was the sitting room, mine the bedroom. Sometimes they have a registrar in it, but at the moment the seniors who live in have suites in the next corridor. When there are two women residents Mrs. Frazer usually lets them have it. Figures there's safety in numbers, I suppose. Doesn't like the idea of men and women in the same wing. And as for bringing in the auxiliaries ... " Nan Baillie raised her eyes heavenwards then gave her distinctive chuckle again.

The common rooms were situated at the far end of the staff block; the right arm of the T formed the dining-room while the left was the medical staff lounge. A kitchen between served only as a clearing station for meals cooked and brought in from the hospital canteens. Beyond this, Mrs. Frazer had her own suite.

The dining-room reminded Lesley of the high table at college. Tables were arranged in the form of an E. Residents took the two outer tables near the doorways while the long high table was reserved for consultant staff. Registrars and senior housemen used the smaller ones in the middle.

At this hour of the evening the only seniors likely to be dining were the Registrar Physician and Surgeon on call. As in most peripheral hospitals, though, there was always the odd bachelor consultant who lived in. She recognised the pleasant, grey-haired man at the top table as Dr. Ian McLaughlan, sub-chief to Sir Charles in the male ward. A dishevelled-looking man of sallow complexion and dark beetling eyebrows sat at the registrars' table. The two men appeared not to notice each other.

Quite apart from age, she could have told which ones were the residents. They were all talking at once and everyone seemed genuinely interested in the others' shoptalk.

"A bunch of extroverts if ever I saw any." Jim joined her as she hesitated in the doorway.

Sandy Williams looked up and caught sight of them. "Here come the new lambs being led to the slaughter." Sandy had been ahead of them in the dissecting laboratory. He spoke now with all the assurance of his six months' seniority.

"The Prof's blue-eyed twins." He began making the extravagant introductions. "Hugh Campbell, your opposite number in old Brown's unit - and an Edinburgh graduate to boot." The tall fair-haired boy nodded pleasantly to Lesley and scraped back his chair to make room for hers.

"And this is Pete Morrison - about to be released after six months' hard labour."

"I think I've left everything in fitting confusion." Lesley's predecessor in Ward Two grinned his welcome.

"Oh, boy! I'd rather you than me." Sandy gave his exaggerated sigh. The old hands were obviously bent on having a field day. The others were leaving or merely changing wards this term. Lesley and Jim appeared to be the only newcomers.

"I have to count myself lucky to get in at all," laughed Lesley. "For a time it was touch and go."

"You've just got to be kidding," Janet Blair, the only other woman at the table, chipped in. "Everyone knows why he's given you the job." The others laughed knowingly. "Can't get anyone else to work in that ward. Too many bosses, if you ask me."

"But that's ridiculous," protested Lesley. "Everyone wants to work in his wards."

"Do me a favour, sweetie. He eats women residents for breakfast. With his known allergy, why do you suppose you got in? It certainly wasn't for your ravishing red hair - nor for the scintillating grey matter underneath it."

"Poor thing!" Sandy turned to the others. "Your heart bleeds for her, it really does. Their mothers warn them about the wrong things." He wrung his hands in mock dismay. "Where do we begin to put these two wise?"

"First of all he'll lay down his rules about blood counts..."

"You're not allowed to send them to the lab," Morrison interrupted.

"Once a week you have to go to his anaemia and diabetic clinic in Snykes village."

"Then you have to titrate your own test meals and do all your own blood films." Sandy was counting them off on his fingers. "You have to write your own case sheets by hand."

"Give me a typist every time," said Campbell.

"And before his BMW coupe's roared out of the yard Harry D. will be on to you like a ton of bricks." Sandy lowered his voice and let his eyes slide off the morose-looking man at the centre table. "You'll be lucky if you get down the driveway once in every six weeks."

"Nobody's working me like a galley slave." Jim at least seemed to be taking it casually enough. Lesley was suddenly glad he was here. Now that the moment for starting was near she found she had butterflies in her tummy.

"And of course you have to take all your own night calls. As from tomorrow you can't have anyone from our unit in your wards," added Sandy.

"But that's ridiculous," said Jim. "I thought we alternated night duty."

"Oh, yes. We each receive new patients every second day, but
you
have to cope with any emergency that arises in your own ward, no matter who is on duty officially for the hospital."

"But that means -"

"Exactly. You might be up three or four nights in a row, while we're guaranteed every second night in our own little cots." Sandy leaned back to watch the effect of his bombshell.

"More than that really," said Hugh Campbell. "After all, Sandy, you and I are going to stand in for each other. That way we each have three out of four nights off duty."

"But you must be wrong," Jim was still sceptical. "There's a
limit to what
flesh and blood
can
stand. No one could keep that up."

"Surely the Medical Superintendent can't know what's expected of us. Why doesn't somebody report it?" said Lesley.

"That's what I like about girls - amongst other things," Sandy's grin spread from ear to ear. "No idea how to play the game. Talk about the law of the jungle! Six months in a boys' school would open your eyes. You can't go up to the Super and say, 'Please,
sir ...'
It's just not on."

"It's what's known as group loyalty," said Morrison, looking down his nose.

"You mean you'd work yourself to a standstill and put up with any silly old arrangement rather than point out how unreasonable it is?"

"Sure, honey. And if you want to survive, and grow old in the service, you'd better conform."

"It's all right for you to talk. You're not being asked to get up every night."

"You can hardly blame the Prof for not wanting any of that shower in his ward." Morrison dodged the bread roll with which Sandy Williams threatened him. "I mean, after all, their Chief's never been seen with a stethoscope in his hand." The others laughed. Dr. Brown was the hospital's number one joke.

"He's a dashed good physician for all that." Hugh Campbell sprang to the defence. "He sees more from the foot of the bed than your Sir Charles would see in a month of Sundays - well, almost." His voice trailed off in face of howls of derision from the group of St. Kentigern graduates.

"One thing anyway," he insisted, "every patient's a person to him, which is more than you can say for some people." He looked quickly in Harry Dayborough's direction.

"Ever since Dayborough ordered a milligram of that digitalis derivative for a patient admitted to Dr. Brown's unit the two chiefs haven't been speaking to each other. The grapevine has it that there was one almighty row."

"Well, it was a bit steep. You've got to admit it - one milligram!"

"You don't have to rub it in. I was the bloke who had to give the injection." Hugh Campbell refused to be drawn into lighthearted banter. "The patient died half an hour later. It was the most frightening thing that ever happened to me. There I was, at three in the morning, telling a man of thirty, with four kids, that his wife was dead. I wouldn't have felt so bad, but I knew before I gave it that the dose was too big. All the time I was injecting it I could see that page in my mat. med. notes and hear old Daddy Clegs warning us never to exceed a quarter of a milligram if the patient had ever been digitalised before 'One milligram', Dayborough insisted defiantly when I questioned it. And do you know what he said when I told him she was dead? 'Don't take it so hard, Doctor. She was going to die anyway.' "