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She was a little nonplussed, caught between the desire for complete equality with her male colleagues and the obligation to accept gracefully this little courtesy extended to her as a woman. It had the strange effect of making her feel momentarily a little less sure of herself as a doctor.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Jim accompanying Dr. McLaughlan to the far side of the car park. They were engaged in animated conversation, no doubt about the round they had just completed in the male ward. As she watched from the corridor window she saw the sub-chief hand over his car keys. Jim opened the door, put the key in the ignition, and stood back with a flourish to let his senior enter the sleek grey saloon. He closed the door almost nonchalantly and raised his arm in salute as the powerful Mercedes Benz swept out of the courtyard. She found herself wistfully envying her colleague as Sir Charles Hope-Moncrieff shut himself into his own coupe.

She turned and walked slowly back to the staff room. After the high-pressured concentration of the ward round, the release of tension brought awareness that she was tired though exhilarated. Silly to have allowed herself to become depressed this morning. After all, this was _the chance she'd fought so hard to obtain. She must expect to start at the bottom rung of the ladder. Just because everyone had made such a fuss when she won the prize she mustn't forget that here she was nobody until she had proved herself again. No matter what it cost her in time, effort and persistence she was determined to do just that.

It was too bad that she'd had that brush with Dayborough, but the damage wasn't irreparable. Already the morning's incident had taken on a paler complexion. It tied in with what the boys had said about him. Once he saw that she was serious about her work, he would learn to respect her as a doctor. In the meantime she'd be careful to give him his place as Registrar of the unit. She would behave towards him as though nothing unusual had happened at all.

A few minutes later Jim had rejoined her and they were draining the dregs of the staff room coffee pot when the door was thrust open and Dayborough swaggered into the room.

"Where are my minions?" was what he said.

'I can't very well admit to him that I've never done one before." It was lunchtime, but Lesley didn't feel much like eating.

"I don't see why not." Jim had just run her to ground in her own room. She was scanning the textbooks for "paracentesis". "After all, it's part of a registrar's job - showing housemen the ropes."

"You heard what he was like in the staff room this morning. 'I take it you are the owner of this pretty thing'. I nearly died when I saw it was my stethoscope he was dangling in his hand."

"I must say that was a bit of a pantomime." Jim threw himself into her armchair and picked up Pim's
Surgical Techniques.
"What was it all about anyway? One minute you had your hand out to take it. Next, it was lying on the floor. Your face was a study. If the whole thing weren't so silly I'd swear that he'd dropped it on purpose."

"I think he's got it in for me," Lesley said carefully.

"That's too ridiculous." He dismissed the suggestion with a snort.

"It's becoming a favourite word of yours. Why else do you think he made no move to pick it up?"

"I suppose that's why you never took your eyes off his face - just put out your foot and pulled the tubes slowly towards you, instead of bending down to pick them up like any normal person." He was still incredulous. "How did he get your stethoscope in the first place?"

"It fell out of my pocket when he examined me this morning."

Jim looked up quickly. "What really happened over there? He didn't make a nuisance of himself or anything, did he?" For a moment it appeared as if he might be taking it seriously at last.

"No, nothing like that." Lesley spoke quickly. For some reason she was reluctant now to tell him the whole truth. "He's just trying to put me in my place, I think," she finished lamely.

"If you're sure that's all it is?" Jim settled back into the armchair. He seemed only too glad to be reassured like this.

"But you can see it makes it difficult for me to ask for his help this afternoon."

"It wouldn't be that the Duchess is too proud to admit that for once she doesn't know all the answers?" He threw her a sly, sideways glance.

"That's an unfair crack, Jim Graham, and you know it." She threatened him with a cushion.

"Pax, pax!" He shielded his head with his arm.

"It's not that at all." Her brow puckered in a frown. "It's as much a question of the patient's reassurance as anything. The way he's been today," she shrugged. "It's not right to have her confidence undermined by doubts. Besides, there's Sister." She made a determined effort to steer the subject away from Dayborough. "If she's standing over me I'll muff it for sure."

"There's certainly something about all that brisk, aseptic efficiency." Jim took an apple from the bowl on her dressing table. "It positively gives me the creeps," he said between bites.

"I haven't quite got the measure of her yet. She makes me feel nervous. I'd rather do it when she's not around." Lesley grinned sheepishly at him. "She's off duty from two till four. I could have it all over by the time she gets back."

"For such a bright girl you're a mass of inhibitions." He swung his leg off the arm of the chair and stood up.

"All right, I'm a coward." She looked up from the book lying open in front of her and smiled back at his reflection in the mirror. "Nothing to do but face up to it. That's what I came here for, remember? Experience."

He looked over her shoulder at the page she was studying. "I don't really see that you can go very far wrong. It looks simple enough."

"According to this there's nothing to it. With all that fluid about, if I keep well away from the liver, there's nothing else I can hit by mistake."

He slapped her on the back with affection. "That's right. You go ahead, old girl, have a bash. It's amazing what you can do when you're pushed."

"I think I will. Whichever way you look at it delay only makes this hurdle loom larger."

"Good. I'm glad we've got that settled. Now d'you think we might have some lunch?"

"If you don't mind, Jim, I'll give it a miss. Now that I've made up my mind I won't rest content till the job's finished."

He shook his head. "You take everything too seriously, Duchess. The way you're going on you'll have ulcers before your time. Me? I'm easy. It would all seem that much less pressing if only you'd get some grub inside you first." He went out of the room whistling slightly off-key.

Lesley reached for her raincoat and slung it quickly over her shoulders. Now that the decision was taken, she felt better. No use in telling Jim the whole story about Dayborough. Much safer to keep all that to herself - even if it did make her seem rather foolish. She closed the door swiftly behind her. Once through the swing doors she put her head down and hugged her coat close to her as she stepped out into the rainswept courtyard.

Carol Bell was still smarting from the disclosures of the night before. Fresh back from leave, she had heard the news in the washroom. The Nurses' Home had been a flurry of hair-do's in preparation for tonight's big dance. They had waited till all the rollers were in before they let the cat out of the bag.

She had looked at them incredulously.

"What do you mean, I'm wasting my time?" The laughter had stung most of all.

She was Sir Charles' staff nurse, after all. It had never crossed her mind that the new resident might be a woman.

At twenty-three she was just a shade older than the rest. Underneath a rather plain exterior she knew she was an incurable romantic at heart. Many a nurse had met her man on the day the new residents came into the wards. Women residents meant not only competition but one less man about the place. With the face and figure she had glimpsed this morning, Lesley Leigh would be even fiercer competition than usual. That kind always had men running after them. In her experience they accepted it as their natural right.

It still rankled that she'd wasted her time for the last six months running after Pete Morrison, only to find at the last minute that he had a student girl-friend tucked away somewhere in Glasgow. That clot wouldn't know how to set up a blood drip single-handed if he tried, she thought disparagingly. All those embroidered tea-cloths "and cadging titbits from patients for his afternoon tea! She still burned at the memory of it.

She was in no mood to cooperate when Lesley finally unearthed her in the urine-testing room at the far end of the ward.

"I'm much too busy to do it myself," she snapped in reply to Lesley's request for help. "Nurse Duncan will get the tray ready if you wait." She summoned her probationer from the other end of the ward. "By the way," she said coldly, "just so as there's no mistake, I've taken your name off the list for the party tonight. No one told us to expect a woman. I should have thought
you
- a St. Kentigern graduate - would have known better. Women medicals aren't invited to
their
corridor dances."

After the encounter with Staff Nurse Bell, little Nurse Duncan was a pleasant surprise. "I've got my pocket book on tray and trolley setting, Doctor." She patted the bulge underneath her uniform pocket. "I'll have everything ready in ten minutes."

"Thank you, Nurse. While I'm waiting I'll let Mrs. Brent know what to expect."

She poked her head round the door of the side room and caught her patient unawares. Supported by pillows in the sitting position, Mrs. Brent was breathing with difficulty. Veins stood out on her neck. Her hands were clutching her abdomen. She moved them quickly as Lesley came into the room.

"It's yourself, Doctor. To what do we owe the pleasure of this little visit? More blood-sucking, I suppose." She did her best to make a joke of it.

"No shortage of blood at the moment, I'm glad to say. We're on the look-out for some peritoneal fluid today."

The woman's face sobered, and Lesley put her hand on the coverlet.

"You're not very comfortable, are you, my dear?"

"To tell the truth, Doctor, my tummy's as tight as a drum. My Tom says it's bigger than it was with the twins - and I've got nothing to show for it this time." She started to laugh, but it ended in a fit of coughing.

"Sir Charles wants me to take some of the fluid away. You won't feel so uncomfortable. You'll be able to breathe and sleep more easily tonight."

The woman looked anxiously at Lesley's face.

"You won't feel a thing. We'll put a little local anaesthetic into the skin. After that you'll feel nothing, I promise you."

"A local anaesthetic? Is that freezing the skin, like at the dentist's?"

"Exactly," said Lesley, injecting confidence into her voice.

The patient settled back on her pillows reassured.

"I'm glad you're doing it today," she said confidentially. "Sister's very nice - I wouldn't say a word against her for the world - but between you and me, Doctor, she's a bit of a dragon. She flusters me."

Lesley laughed in spite of herself. "Between you and me, she fusses me too." Her tone belied the words but drew her patient into an easy conspiracy which helped to alleviate her tension.

"Do you mind if Nurse Obanyke watches, Doctor?" Jane Duncan came into the room with her trolley. She had mustered her friend from Ward Three. This was a new experience. It had to be shared. "Neither of us has had a chance to see one done before," she said eagerly.

"Of course not. Come on in." Lesley refrained from pointing out that that put the three of them in the same boat. "Always glad of another pair of hands." She beckoned the Nigerian nurse who was hovering in the doorway.

Now that she had started her hands were quite steady. She took her time. She percussed carefully, mapping out the area of dullness. When she knew exactly the extent of the fluid, she scrubbed her hands and applied the skin antiseptic. Choosing an area well clear of any important organs, she inserted her anaesthetic under the surface of the skin. She felt the old heightening of the senses which always came with intense concentration and the facing of a new challenge. Silently she handed the syringe back to the nurse and straightened her back.

"We'll just give that a moment or two to work." She grinned down at her patient. "This is where the dentist talks about the weather and where did you go for your summer holidays ?"

"You've no idea how glad I am that it's a lady doctor," said Mrs. Brent. "It was one of the things I was real scared about. My Tom says it's silly - and me with four kids. But somehow it's different when you're in to have a baby. You don't mind the doctor seeing you then - well, everything else goes out of your head realty; You're too busy for a start. Me, I was always too tired to be bothered looking at them even. Used to think me funny, they did. 'I'll see him later', I'd always say." She squinted down at the bleb on her tummy wall. "Coming into hospital like this is different." Lesley let her ramble on. It helped to take her mind off the matter in hand. "Mind you, Sir Charles has been very kind. Always very understanding. Never uncovers you more than he needs to - and then never without using screens. Some of the others - like that Dr. Dayborough - whip off the bedclothes as if you had no feelings. You might just as well be a lump of wood lying there. 'They never think about it at all', my Tom says. 'All in the day's work for them', he says. Still, I'll thank God tonight it was you."

"You've no idea how pleased it makes me to hear you say so." Lesley pricked the surface of the skin with' her needle. "You've quite made my day saying that. Feel anything there?"

"Not a thing, Doctor."

"Or that?" Lesley grew bolder and tried it with forceps.

"No. Can't feel a thing."

"Right, Nurse. You stand by with the jug and the rubber tubing."

Nurse Obanyke helped her turn the patient on to her side. "You won't feel anything more now, except relief."

Slowly and steadily she inserted her wide-bore needle through the bleb of anaesthetised skin. It was almost as though someone else guided her hand. A jet of bright straw-coloured fluid rewarded her. The two nurses exchanged jubilant glances.