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"It was a different story when she was bringing you tea every morning."

"Harry Dayborough can always be expected to liven things up." Pete scorned to answer the last remark.

"Are the seniors going?"

"Of course. Need every man we can muster. As it is, we'll be gravely outnumbered."

"That will make a novel change," said Pete. "Just like the good old days my dad's always telling me about, when there were always more birds than men at every dance."

"We've had to invite the medical auxiliaries. That's upset the balance even further. Still, we couldn't by-pass them - not with them stabled in the same quarters."

"Come off it," laughed Lesley. "What you mean is that they're helping to foot the bill."

"You certainly are learning fast," grinned Sandy.

At the far end of the corridor a telephone began to ring.

"I thought it was too good to last." Pete sighed as he half rose. "Bet you a dollar it's for me."

But when Mrs. Frazer opened the glass door it was Lesley she beckoned. Harry Dayborough had already been kept waiting too long.

"Come on, come on. I asked you - what do you see on the X-ray plate?" Harry Dayborough tapped his foot impatiently and waited for Lesley's reply. "You call yourself a doctor, don't you? Is there or isn't there an active ulcer crater?" He held out the X-ray frame which Nan Baillie had just hung at the foot of the new patient's bed. "Don't tell me we've been wasting the taxpayers' money on your medical education." He spoke loudly, enjoying his captive audience of patients.

Lesley was acutely aware of every eye and ear trained on this little drama taking place in the centre of the ward. Her face burned with shame and indignation. She could no longer think straight about the X-ray in front of her. The boys were right, there was a limit to the indignities one should meekly endure for the sake of the desired quiet life. It didn't work. Today had amply demonstrated that. The more she tried to accommodate him, the more churlish became the invective he hurled at her. It was almost as though he took a vicious delight in seeing how far she would let him go.

"Dr. Dayborough," she forced herself to speak quietly in contrast to his own loud, hectoring tones, "would you mind coming outside the ward for a minute?" She walked quickly towards the entrance, giving him no chance to argue with her.

Once through the swing doors she toned to face him, not sure till she did so that he had in fact followed her out.

"Dr. Dayborough, if you've anything like that to say to me again I'd be obliged if you'd wait till we're out of earshot of patients. You're the Registrar of this ward and I've always respected your position and authority, but it's unfair of you to undermine mine."

His face was suffused with rage.

"You little upstart!
Your
authority? What authority do you think you have?"

"I'm sorry. Authority was the wrong word." Lesley took it back. "That wasn't what I meant. But you try to make me look small in front of patients. Ordinarily that wouldn't matter She struggled to go on, "but you impair their confidence in what's being done for them. That could affect their rate of recovery. You're cutting away the ground from under their feet."

He took a step towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her.

"You little fool!" His hand dropped. There was even more menace in his lowered tones. "I'll talk to you however and wherever I like. You, on the other hand, will live to regret that you ever saw fit to speak to me like that." He turned to reenter the ward, but the door of the duty room opened and Sister Bishop stepped out in his path.

"You are not going back into my ward in that frame of mind." Her tone was icy. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what you think you're doing, creating a scene like this in the corridor." She glanced pointedly at the glass partition which opened on to one of the side rooms. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." She gripped the sleeve of Dayborough's white coat and took the still wet X-ray out of his other hand. "You can just come in here and wait until you've cooled off." She turned to the probationer nurse who had come out of the sluice. "Nurse, please ask the ward maid to brew a fresh pot of tea." She gave Dayborough a firm push in the direction of the duty room. "Stop sulking. You know perfectly well that I'm right. You're so pig-headed. You wouldn't have a cup at four o'clock and now everyone has to suffer because your blood sugar's low and your temper high."

"Stop fussing, woman." He tried to shrug off her restraining hand. "You females sicken me. You seem to think a cup of tea - like a baby's comforter - is the answer to everything." He turned truculently towards the duty room. "Always trying to mother somebody. Beats me why you don't go off and have kids of your own."

Lesley held her breath, but Angela Bishop did not seem to be perturbed. Instead, she prevented Lesley from following them into the room.

"There's no need for you to stay, Doctor. It's been a trying day for you and it's not over yet. If I were you I'd take the
chance to rest in your room until dinner. There's no saying when you'll get to bed tonight."

"If you're sure it's all right, Sister?" Lesley glanced uncertainly towards the duty room door.

"Leave this to me. I'll know where to find you if you're needed." She was about to enter the room herself and then she hesitated. "Doctor Leigh," she spoke less briskly now, "I should go carefully, if I were you." She seemed about to enlarge on her warning, then shrugged her shoulders. "Put it this way." The grin she gave Lesley was a trifle lop-sided. "With some folk their bite can be even worse than their bark."

When
Lesley woke some hours later the room was in shadow The deceptive calm of late evening pervaded the building. No one had called her. She listened, but there were no sounds at all. The travelling clock on her bedside table showed that die dinner hour was past. Sleep had obviously been more important for her than food. She stretched deliriously. The muscles of her neck, arms and legs ached with that tired feeling of work well done. She turned over and pulled up the covers for another few moments of reflective peace.

Snippets of the day's conversations began the inevitable play-back in her head.

("I'm dashed sure I wouldn't let him make a doormat of me.") Sandy Williams' nonchalance had been a snare and a delusion. She saw that now. How could she ever have imagined that she could challenge Harry Dayborough's treatment of her? In the drifting half-awake state her own defiant words came back to mock her. ("It he's trying to break my spirit, he's still got a long way to go.") Surely she had never been as confident as her words implied. Whistling in the dark - that was all the empty bravado had been. Now in the quiet shadowed room all her earlier doubts returned to plague her. She had no more chance of getting the better of him than she had of winning one of the senior house posts. She sat bolt upright in bed. Where had that unbidden thought come from? The intuitive core of her being which knew in this cold shaft of saneness that she was right? She propped herself up on one elbow. How could she hope to achieve her ambition with Harry Dayborough's face set against her like this? Everything she did only served to exacerbate an already impossible situation. Calling his bluff was what the boys had recommended. Whatever had made them suppose it was bluff?

She tried to glimpse the possible outcome of her response to Harry Dayborough's derision this afternoon but her mind steered resolutely away from it. Try as she would she could get no further than the echo of his last threat. ("You'll live to regret ... regret ... regret ... ") It became inextricably intermingled with the words of Sister Bishop's warning. ("With some folk the bite can be worse than the bark.")

She was fully awake by now. There was nothing to do but get through the rest of this interminable day. The pleasantly drowsy feelings had passed, and she found herself longing again for the oblivion of sleep.

She rose and decided to run a bath. Now that she was actively engaged in doing something the misgivings and doubts receded. Such thoughts were foolish. Of course she would win. What could he do to prevent it? It was Sir Charles Hope- Moncrieff she had to satisfy. How could Harry Dayborough harm her if her work was good?

No sooner had she stepped into the tub of steaming water than the interlude was over. A hammering on the door recalled her to duty.

A general practitioner on an emergency call was speaking from Snykes village two miles away.

"Is that the duty physician?" the unknown voice at the other end of the line was asking. "Look, Doctor. I'm sending you in this elderly woman - a Miss Twill. The policeman on his rounds noticed that her usual light wasn't burning. He found her unconscious on the kitchen floor. I'm not sure how long she's been out. Anyway, I've called for an ambulance. She should be with you in half an hour."

"Is it a cerebral haemorrhage?"

"I don't think so."

"She isn't a diabetic by any chance?" Lesley was racking her brains for all she knew about the causes of loss of consciousness.

"I thought of that. Unfortunately, her own doctor's on holiday - I'm just here on an emergency service call. I've spoken to the neighbours, of course, but they're new to the district. No one knows about the previous medical history. Apparently her brother died a couple of weeks back. They seemed to keep themselves very much to themselves. That's as much as I could learn. Afraid it's not much help. The coma's pretty deep. I don't have facilities here for further investigation. She's really a case for hospital admission."

"Of course. We'll do what we can."

Lesley went back to her room to finish dressing. After the lovely day there was now a distinct nip in the air. The past month had flown; yet in another way it seemed as if she'd been here for ages, almost as though the summer holiday had never been.

As she stepped out into the courtyard she was already reviewing all that she'd ever learned on the subject of coma. "A.E.I.O.U." - she was grateful now for the mnemonic - apoplexy, epilepsy, injury, opium, uraemia, drink, drugs and diabetes. From what the doctor had said she couldn't really exclude any one of these yet.

When she reached the ward she found Nurse Duncan on her first spell of night duty. She warned her to prepare for an unconscious patient.

At half-past eleven at night she had her hand on a cold, white, clammy arm as Miss Twill was wheeled on a trolley into the corridor of Ward Two.

"You the doctor, miss?" The ambulance man was fumbling in the breast pocket of his tunic. "There's a line here from the G.P." He handed Lesley a crumpled note.

Her face lifted. "The family doctor got back in time?" He would almost certainly know what the diagnosis was.

She tore open the envelope, but it was only the confirmatory letter from the doctor who had spoken to her on the phone. It contained no new information at all.

"If a general practitioner of some years' experience doesn't know what's wrong, how can I hope to make a diagnosis?" She found she had spoken her doubts aloud.

"Doctor?" She became aware of Nurse, Duncan's anxious expression. "We don't have an empty bed left in the side room. I've had to put her into the ward. Is that all right?"

"Yes, of course, Nurse." Lesley braced herself. "Let's have a look at her now." She led the way through the swing doors into the darkened ward.

A single light in the centre cast pools of shadow on the rows of beds. Behind white screens, just inside the entrance, Miss Twill lay heavy and inert. When they tried to move her she was a dead weight.

"We'll see if we can rouse her first." Lesley raised the eyelids and shone her pocket torch. There was no response. She pinched the skin, then shook the patient gently by the shoulders.

"Miss Twill, Miss Twill! Wake up," she whispered urgently. The soft even breathing coming from the surrounding beds warned her to lower her voice. She turned to the nurse.

"Bring some of the flowers - strong-smelling ones if possible."

Jane Duncan looked puzzled, but scurried off without questions.

"Will these do, Doctor?" She returned with a bowl of delicately fragrant pink roses.

Lesley wafted them in front of her patient's insensible nose. At last she straightened.

"It's no use, Nurse. We're not getting through to her. All five gateways to the mind are closed."

(Cold, pale, clammy - it should be an insulin coma. The signs were all there, almost classical, it seemed.)

"If only we knew she was on the stuff!"

"The stuff?" In her searchings she'd forgotten the nurse again. "Sorry. I was thinking out loud, I'm afraid." She smiled reassuringly at Jane Duncan. "I was wishing we knew whether or not she was being treated for diabetes. It looks like a coma due to an overdose of insulin. Sometimes it happens when a diabetic takes her injection and then forgets to eat her next meal. As it is, we've no real evidence that she's even on the hormone. The doctor didn't mention seeing any of it in the house." She felt the patient's skin again. "I'd like a catheter specimen of urine. Do you think you could manage that on your own?"

"Yes, Doctor. I've done one before."

"If it's a diabetic coma, the urine will be loaded with sugar. If it's due to insulin, the specimen will be negative." Patiently she explained the reason for the test so that the youngster on whose help she must rely would be left in no doubt as to its importance.

She went back to the duty room and closed the door behind her. Wrapped up in the plight of her patient, all trace of the quarrel with Dayborough had vanished. AH she could think of was the need to get in touch with him.

"Let me have the medical staff hut, please." She had spoken to the switchboard almost before she'd had time to consider it.

"Is that you, Doctor Leigh?" It was Mrs. Frazer's voice.

"I wanted to speak to Dr. Dayborough."

"I'm afraid he's not available at the moment." The housekeeper was being careful. The night porter, almost certainly, was listening in. "Would one of the others not do instead? Dr. Queristri's on the list. I saw him in the dining-room a few minutes ago."