Ship's Surgeon Read Online Free Page A

answered, “Yes, but I’m over it now, and getting hungry.” Purposefully, she lifted the attractively painted menu which lay in front of her. “What would you recommend, Doctor?”
    “For one of your figure, the whole works and a bottle of wine. Know anything about wines?”
    “I prefer something light and sparkling.”
    “You need it, too.” He ordered from the steward who hovered, jabbed out his cigarette and had the ashtray emptied. The thick brown brows came forward as he looked down at her hands. “You must be stronger in the limbs than you look. How old are you?”
    “Just twenty-three.”
    “That’s what I guessed. Where did you train?”
    “At Pethington. We lived close by at that time.”
    “And when you were through?”
    “I finished my training at St. Cedric’s, and then went on staff. Mr. Breiner, the open-heart surgeon, asked me to specialize, so I joined his department. I loved it, because our patients were mostly children. Deva Wadia is the oldest open-heart patient I’ve treated, though I’ve had a few elderly cardiacs. Deva’s a charming girl, isn’t she?”
    “Quite grown-up in her thoughts, I imagine, but she has the very young look of the heart case. She’ll probably mature quickly within the next couple of years.”
    He was silent while Pat helped herself from the trolley of hors d’oeuvres, and he took a selection for himself. “I suppose you’re hoping to get her walking normally before we arrive at Ceylon? Are you staying there?”
    “I’m not sure. Deva’s father cabled that he was engaging a physiotherapist from India, but Mr. Breiner thought he’d have difficulty. I’m booked right through to Melbourne, but I may have to break my journey and go on later.”
    “Got friends in Melbourne?”
    “An uncle,” she said with reserve.
    “Cagey, aren’t you?” he commented, but seemed not to care very much. “That girl said you were sad at leaving someone. Can’t remember whether it was a brother or a lover.”
    A warmth crept into Pat’s pale cheeks. “I think you do remember, Doctor.” She forked up a sardine and ate it, changed the topic. “Do you enjoy being a ship’s surgeon?”
    “It’s refreshing, in a way. Between the crew, the tourist deck and the various layers here in the first-class you get a good cross-section and plenty of interest. It’s restricting, though—can’t do any fancy surgery in a tilting theatre. This is my third and last trip, and it’s been just enough.”
    “You sign off in Australia?”
    “That’s right. I’ll do a bit of sightseeing for a month and then make my way to Suva, in the Fijis. I’m going to put in a spell as a plantation doctor.”
    “Tropical medicine? Is that your speciality?”
    “Bugs,” he nodded. “In three years I’ll either be back in England or settled down into one of those canny, drink-sodden pill-dispensers you sometimes read about. You know the sort of thing—decaying hut, grease candles and a sweat-rag tucked in my cummerbund.”
    She sat back and looked at him; the line of scarlet among the gold braid at his cuff, the smart squareness of his shoulders in navy blue, his proud, almost leonine head, his angular rugged face, the look of strength and tolerance about his well-defined mouth—and suddenly she laughed.
    “That’s better,” he said. “Laughter suits the shape of your face. Eat up, and tell me about your family.”
    Carelessly, she mentioned that she had two brothers but no parents. Yes, both brothers were younger than herself, she said in response to a question, but they weren’t a burden because their boarding school ran a summer camp for the holidays.
    “Last year I took my two weeks in August and went down there to help. It was great fun.”
    “A physiotherapist,” he stated firmly, “should spend her holiday in complete idleness.”
    He ceased speaking rather abruptly, and Pat looked up to find him staring past her, over her head, at someone who had just entered the