Ozark Nurse (14 page)

Who did Paul Anderson think he was, anyway? Suddenly she decided to give him a piece of her mind.

She hunched over, leaning her elbows on the table. "I'm getting pretty sick of you always telling me to get lost when I want to talk to you, Paul."

"I happen to be on a job, Rita."

"Some job!" she said scornfully. "Lifeguard. Keeping track of kids who think they're ducks; watching to see that little old ladies don't drown themselves in a foot or two of water. Quite a deal for a brilliant young doctor!"

"I'm not especially proud of it." His voice was expressionless as his gaze reached out toward the vast expanse of blue lake bordered on either side by a narrow beach, beyond which stretched evergreen trees, thick, fragrant woods.

It was a beautiful sight.

"But I am not ashamed of it, either." He finished his sandwich before he said slowly: "No matter what a job may be, a man can take pride in doing it well. I've tried to do that here. That's the reason—" he hesitated, then amended that remark—"that's one of the reasons I object to your joining me in here. This boathouse," he explained dryly, "is provided to store boats in the winter, to house first aid equipment, for use in an emergency. It is
not
intended for a romantic rendezvous."

"Oh, don't be so stuffy, Paul." The smile flashed on. "Who cares if I sneak in here to keep you company?"

"I care."

"Even if anyone wanted to spy on us, they could never accuse us of acting like two little love birds."

"And I mean to keep it that way. For the little time I have left on this job, I'd appreciate it if you'd lay off, Rita." He drained his coke bottle, then got up to drop it in a trash container. "In plain words, stay out of the boathouse when I happen to be in here."

She got up, perfectly furious. "How dare you insult me like that, Paul Anderson! Why, you dumb Swede! Insinuating that I'm running after you! Talking to me as if I were some cheap little nobody—"

"Oh, skip it, Rita." He strode over to stand directly in front of her. "Listen; I don't want to hurt your feelings. But you force me to be blunt. I'm not egotistical enough to imagine I have some irresistible charm which attracts you. What I do believe is that you're a spoiled kid who must have the one thing—or the one man—who seems out of reach. If I were to fall madly in love with you, no doubt you'd laugh in my face and tell me to get lost. But since I refuse to do that—"

"Why, you insufferable—"

He smiled at her. "As I said, you're just a spoiled kid." He took her hands. "Do yourself a favor, Rita. Find yourself some other guy to go gunning for. It won't work with me, not ever. For one thing, I've been too disturbed recently over my personal problems to get interested in any girl."

"You're still interested in that mealy-mouthed nurse," she retorted, "still mooning over that nobody."

Ignoring that thrust, Paul continued: "For another thing, I've had an offer of an instructor's job in a medical school in California. I may take it. If I do—"

"You wouldn't!" Looking shocked, she caught his shoulders. "I won't let you," she cried. "You can't do this to me!"

He had put it very well. She was a spoiled rich girl who would not be denied the one unattainable thing. The very thought of it filled her with an indescribable frenzy of fury.

Did he want the Hilton girl smeared until she was driven out of the nursing profession?

If he didn't want that, he'd better not be so upstage with her.

Her face was drawn taut. Her eyes glistened with perfectly genuine tears. Rita always cried when she was threatened with the loss of some treasure on which she had set her heart. As a little girl, she had learned that when nothing else worked, tears would do it.

"Please don't take that job, Paul." She tried to put her arms around him, crying throatily that it would break her heart if he went way off to California. "I can't help it if I'm in love with you," she wailed.

It wasn't exactly easy, extracting himself from her life and death clutch. "Stop play-acting," he told her.

"You're a brute." She wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hand, then grabbed a cigarette and lit it. "If you go to California, maybe I'll follow you. I could get a nice little apartment out there, and—well, maybe when you get settled in your new job you'll feel different about everything, including me."

It was an awesome suggestion, because it posed the possibility that Rita might do that very thing. Paul had heard of huntresses who pursued their chosen male victims over hill and dale, over prairies and rivers. That it might ever happen to him had never occurred to him.

"Listen, Rita." He was perfectly serious as he made what he considered a very sound suggestion. "Why don't you go through a session with a psychiatrist?"

She was enraged again. "Are you implying that I belong in a loony bin?"

"Not at all." Gravely he tried to explain. There were women who were obsessed with the urge to get the one man they couldn't have. They called it love, but it was not love. It was more of a compulsion. When a desire reached the compulsive stage, psychiatric help should be sought.

He said, not unkindly: "You can never hope to find contentment and happiness in marriage if you continue to center your affections on the wrong man."

"Oh, skip it!" she shrieked. "I don't want to hear a lot of psychiatric gibberish. I'm no fool. I'm not nuts, either. Will you take me to dinner this evening?"

He gave an inner groan.

"No!" he said flatly.

She looked at him sullenly. Cold rage grew in her eyes. Then something occurred to her, a thought that made her sizzle inside.

"Have you taken up with Nora Hilton again? Answer me, Paul!"

He shut his lips determinedly. She has no right to pressure and question him. Let that be understood. And she should get out of there before some prying old lady noticed and made something of it. She'd been in there for over an hour.

Paul reminded her of that. "I've got to get back on the job, Rita. We'll have dinner together some evening before I go, but not tonight."

"So that's your answer!"

Her eyes were blazing. "You
have
been dating that girl, after pretending to me that you'd broken off with her. You lied to me!"

"Rita, I'm sorry, but I'll have to insist that you get out of this boathouse."

"I shan't go a step until you promise to see me this evening—not one step."

"Am I interrupting something terribly private?" It was Nora speaking. Nora walked in, her shoulders very erect, her smile cool, her manner poised.

"If I am, I apologize. But I do want to talk to you about something rather important, Paul; something private. So if your friend will leave us for a few moments—"

She did not look directly at Rita, or address any remark to her.

"And suppose I don't choose to leave!"

"Rita was just about to leave," Paul said calmly, and took Rita's arm, marched her to the door and pushed her out to the narrow pier which adjoined the boathouse.

"Run along," he said pleasantly. "Have fun on the beach."

"You'll regret this," she said, her lips compressed with rage, with the fury of a woman scorned. It was not a role which Rita was equipped to accept gracefully.

There was nothing she could do about it, however.

Nora was glad that she had found Rita with Paul. It made it easier to say the cutting, accusing things she had come to say; easier to put him in the wrong.

"I'd be the last one to interfere with this beautiful friendship," she began with just the right note of sarcasm, "as long as no innocent person gets hurt. But it so happens that Jerry's wife—"

He was leaning against the table, looking at her with eyes that were a little sick with longing. "Apparently you're here to bawl me out about something or other. Whatever it is, I probably deserve it. But may I say just one thing?"

"What?"

"I've missed you. I wouldn't have believed it possible that I would miss anyone the way—" His mouth worked. "Oh, heck. I'm not good at saying things. I—well, it's good to see you again, if you know what I mean."

"Really?" She smiled coolly.

"Time and again I've picked up the phone, wanting to call you." He shrugged. "Then I'd remind myself that I had no right to bother you, no reason to think you'd want to hear from me, after—"

"After what?" she interrupted sharply. "After that girl and her father vilified me in their slanderous news stories? After you, instead of cutting her dead to show you were on my side, started squiring her around; taking her to shows, to dinners; encouraging her to hang around here at the lake?"

That was embroidering the known facts slightly, but she wasn't under oath.

"A man who could do all that, after once pretending you loved me, would be
ashamed
to call me. That's what you really mean."

"Just a minute, Nora." Now he sounded angry. "Don't you say I pretended to love you, as if I didn't mean every word I ever said. You know better."

"No, I don't know better."

He stood and grabbed her shoulders. "I haven't been encouraging her, not in any way. The truth is, I can't get her out of my hair. The further truth is that she and her old man were all set to drive you out of the hospital, to keep on smearing you with their lousy news stories until you were fired."

"Oh, Paul, they couldn't have. None of the staff doctors took their lies seriously. They all knew better."

"Sure. But doctors don't run a hospital. They only work there. Doctors aren't responsible for raising funds to keep the hospital going. That's up to the board of directors. The directors are businessmen who can't afford to get in bad with a man who owns a TV station and a string of papers all over the county. If Nel Lansing had continued to put on pressure, you'd have been nailed as a nurse with sadistic tendencies who had no business in the profession."

"A monstrous lie! You know that."

"Of course I know it. But you wouldn't be the first person to be ruined by misrepresentation in a paper because someone was determined to ruin you."

The ethics of a paper, he reminded her, were no better than the ethics of the man who owned it and directed the policy. "Rita Lansing told me in so many words that this would happen, because her father had agreed to let her run it her way."

His smile was grim. "She said her dad thought it would be a good way for her to learn about the power of the press."

Nora was silent for a moment, shocked. "So you played up to her," she said finally, "to persuade her to lay off. Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

He nodded. "She's never given up the idea that I'll sign up to be her father's boy." He practically spit out the word. "Just to keep the record straight, I've promised nothing. But she is a very persistent gal, very sure that if she sets her mind on something she'll end up by getting it."

He shrugged. "I'm not very good at pretending. I have neither said nor done anything to lead her to believe that I care anything about her, or that I plan to take any jobs with her father. On the contrary. But—well, I have made a few gestures, such as occasional dates in the evening. I persuaded her to drop the crusade against you."

"She's a despicable person!" Nora said more, a lot more, then abruptly apologized for having misjudged Paul.

"I should have known you had good reason for whatever you did. I came out here today to blast you; now I am ashamed. I'm so upset about Jerry's wife."

He listened, troubled and grave, while she told him about Ethel, who might have died, who was in the hospital, who was so tortured in her mind. "You know about her obsessive jealousy. I knew you must have seen what was going on here at the lake, with Rita pretending to make a play for Jerry. I couldn't understand why you didn't try to stop it."

"Just another of my many mistakes, Nora. Yes, I did see what was going on. It didn't occur to me that Ethel would take it seriously. It should have, but—oh, I guess I was too concerned with my own problems. I just didn't think. But now—well, there won't be any more trouble along that line. I've been offered an instructor's job out in California. I probably would have taken it in any event. What you've told me just hurries things a bit."

She looked at him, uncertain whether to bring up the painful subject. But she had to know. "Paul, you spoke of an instructor's job. Does that mean you've given up all idea of going back to practicing surgery?"

"I guess so." His voice sounded flat. Then, before she could speak, he stopped her. "Please, honey, don't tell me I'm making a mistake. I'm doing the one thing that's left for me to do."

He began pacing the floor. "I've been fighting it out with myself all these weeks. I've kept hoping for a miracle. But there's no use."

He walked back to her. "It's just no use. I'm licked."

Then for a few moments he talked of the mental struggle he had gone through. Physically, he said, he was in pretty good shape. All the hours in the sun had helped. He had gotten in a lot of swimming; several evenings a week he had gone to the YMCA gym. It all helped. He had got rid of the numbness in his hand. Sometimes—quite a few times, in fact—he had almost sold himself on the idea that he could pick up the scalpel again.

"But," he tapped his head, "there's a block up here. It won't let me take the chance."

"You mean—"

"I mean, I start picturing how it would be. I see the patient on the table, the anaesthetist doing his job, myself taking the scalpel, making the incision. Then I know it's all up to me, and I panic! I'm afraid."

Nora's eyes were filled with pity. "Oh, Paul, it's all in your mind."

He nodded. "As I said, it's a block. But it's there. I can't fight it; I can't get rid of it. You cannot will a thing like that to go away."

There were many things she might have said, but what good would any of it have done? The soundest advice in the world could never lick an emotional problem.

She thought, The only possible way to overcome a deep-rooted fear is by another more urgent fear.

"If only you could stop thinking so much about it," she said thoughtfully. "If you
had
to operate, with no time to worry or wonder how it would turn out, that would do it, wouldn't it?"