Cover illustration by Henry Fox
Throughout the world, large hospitals
are much the same; exuding an aura of medicinal efficiency, men and women who
supervise the lives of their patients, overseeing a hubbub of intense activity
that goes on around the clock. At the old and elegant St. Stephen Hospital on
the outskirts of London, it had been a fortnight of the usual minor incidents,
common in such a complex of wards and isolated departments. To Veronica Devlin,
just beginning her hospital work as a nurse, everything seemed much larger than
life. The doctors, surgeons and ward sisters were either gods or ogres and her
small mistakes were great tragedies. Then the resident surgeon, Ralph Conway,
found himself facing a crisis which threatened not only his career but the
whole future of the hospital, a crisis which meant he had to challenge the
authority of Sir William Carruthers, the senior surgical consultant, and
attempt to uproot policies and ideas which were as old and as established as
the hospital itself and somehow, Veronica found herself drawn, against her
will, into this personal conflict of ideologies.
GRADE: C+
BEST QUOTES:
“Someone ought to pass a law against night duty.”
“You have the makings of a fine nurse, provided you learn to keep your own
emotions under tight rein and do only as you are told.”
“It seems that fate has decreed that all of the emergency cases happen
between midnight and 6:00 in the morning.”
“That is the main trouble with some of the younger men who come along,
wanting to become surgeons. They see themselves in white coats, walking through
the wards, adored by the female patients and idolized by the young interns. But
it isn’t all like that. After a while, you find that each operation takes a
great deal out of you. Not until it’s over do you realize just how much.”
REVIEW:
First off, I have to tell you that this is not a nurse novel. Our nurse,
Veronica Devlin, is a peripheral figure, and the story centers on Dr. Ralph
Conway, hero young surgeon battling the dinosaur senior doctor who is gradually
choking the life out of the prestigious hospital he runs with an iron grip. Frankly,
Veronica is robbed of the credit she deserves in curing the patient central to
the story, so I wondered if author D.K. Jennings was a man. Guess what—I was
right!
In the first chapter a man is struck by a car and brought to the hospital,
but he is suffering from amnesia—which came on before the car accident. Naturally, he is not carrying any
identification. On duty in the ED are Veronica and Ralph Conway, who further clinches
this book’s status as not-a-nurse-novel because he is married! Since Mr. X’s
leg is broken in two places, he is likely to be stuck in the hospital for
months. “In a way, it is a good thing. It may enable us to do a little
detective work and try to find out who he is,” Ralph tells Veronica.
Another patient, Sylvia Monaghan, has been admitted as a suicide attempt
after taking too many sleeping tablets in the middle of the night. Ralph is
convinced that she is “not the suicidal type.” But Dr. William Carruthers, the
aging medico who runs St. Stephen Hospital, is convinced Sylvia is a danger to
herself—not only that, but if she is not transferred to a psychiatric ward and
is left on the general ward, “she could prove not only an embarrassment, but
possibly a menace to the other patients,” he declares dramatically. But Ralph convinces
Dr. Carruthers to leave Sylvia where she is, at least temporarily.
Meanwhile Veronica is put on night duty watching Mr. X. He is mumbling in
his sleep, of course, and “she thought she caught the name Clarke repeated
several times.” Ralph, going above and beyond the call of duty of a surgeon, checks
with the police and finds that a jeweler named Vincent Clarke was beaten during
a robbery the same night that Mr. X came in, and though the assailants were
masked and Mr. Clarke has no way of identifying them, “one of them could have
been our mystery patient here,” says Ralph to Veronica. So she hits the streets
and starts knocking on doors, and finds an old woman who saw Mr. X walk out of
an alley—and at the other end of the alley is Vincent Clarke’s jewelry shop! Back
at the hospital she reluctantly reports her findings to Ralph, though she nonetheless argues that Mr. X could be innocent. Ralph
wonders, “Had she fallen in love with that man?” But he does encourage her to “stick
with your convictions, Veronica. I for one would not want to change them.” So
he is due a little credit.
Then Veronica obtains permission from Ralph to take Mr. X out of the
hospital in a wheelchair, though she does not mention her plans to bring Mr. X
to the first place he remembers. Though nothing comes back to him, Mr. X
directs Veronica to push him down the infamous alley, so they end up in front
of Mr. Clarke’s now-boarded-up shop. He suddenly remembers being in the trashed
jeweler’s shop and seeing Mr. Clarke lying inert over the counter—and the shock
is too much for him and he passes out. Now Ralph is in hot water: “All of this
publicity is having a bad effect on the reputation of the hospital. Some of the
things he does are little too radical from my way of thinking,” says the
hospital matron, though these “radical methods” are not really explained. Ralph
is called on the carpet by Dr. Carruthers, and when Ralph defends Veronica, Dr.
Carruthers bizarrely threatens not to give Ralph the top hospital job when
he retires next year.
Undeterred, Ralph stops by Mr. X’s room, and Mr. X tells Ralph that he has remembered the names John Forrester and Redbourne. Ralph recognizes Redbourne as
the name of a small village 30 miles from London, so the next day he and
Veronica head there for another illicit detective trip. This book occurs so
long ago that their only option is to stop in at a pub and ask if anyone knows
John Forrester, and as it happens his parents live across the street! In no
time flat Mr. X’s identity and backstory are laid out. “Another shock might
prove sufficient to send the mind toppling over the brink of the abyss that led
to insanity,” Ralph thinks, so he invites Mr. X’s mum to come back to London
with them, goes straight to Mr. X and in five sentences explains all. Fortunately the shock does not prove sufficient to send Mr. X's mind toppling over the brink of the abyss; instead he remembers
everything and is reunited with his mum and Veronica, so next Ralph goes to
visit Sylvia Monaghan and puts to right all her psychiatric problems. Then he pops
by Dr. Carruthers’ office for another enlightening chat and finally goes home to his
wife, whom he is seeing for about the third time this whole book. Has anyone
ever mentioned that it is really rough being a doctor’s wife? Though Ralph does
try to give Veronica a little credit for Mr. X’s recovery, his wife is
insistent that it is all due to him, so he smiles and leans back in his
chair. I hope he doesn’t hurt himself patting his own back.
Throughout the book we do spend occasional pages with Veronica, following her concerns about Mr. X and watching the pair fall in love, though the uncertainty of his identity and past activities makes their relationship somewhat tenuous—even if we have a pretty good idea how it will turn out. But we don’t see enough of her to make this book worth reading, if it’s a true nurse novel you are looking for. It’s not a bad book in general, but without a strong, independent, female heroine to spend your time with, I’m not sure what the benefit is in reading it. But I am a little biased in that respect. Try it for yourself, if you don’t mind a rather hackneyed plot and a slightly arrogant, self-centered main (male) character, and see what you think.
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