but I didn’t believe them. I thought you wouldn’t let me down—’
There was a jingling sound at her feet. Dora looked down. The hamsa lay glinting in a dirty puddle of water.
‘I do know what it meant to you,’ Nick said gruffly. ‘Why else do you think I kept hold of it?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, you don’t, do you? Looks like I was wrong about you, too.’ As his eyes met hers, Dora caught the flash of hurt.
‘Nick . . .’ she began to say, but he was already walking back towards the porters’ lodge, hands thrust in his pockets, head down.
The first ward allocations went up that night. Dora and the rest of her set gathered eagerly around the noticeboard outside the dining room to find out where they would be spending their first three months as probationers.
‘Not that it really matters,’ Katie O’Hara said, as they all crowded around the list of names. ‘Wherever we are, all we’ll be doing is cleaning. Junior pros get all the dirty jobs no one else wants to do.’
‘I don’t care so long as I don’t get Female Chronics,’ Millie whispered, her hands clasped together in fervent prayer. Female Chronics was presided over by Sister Hyde, the sister Millie had soaked with enema solution.
‘I don’t care where I am, so long as I’m not teamed up with Lane,’ Dora said.
‘It’s all right, she’s on Gynae with you, Benedict.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Millie sighed. ‘I wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off with Sister Hyde?’
‘Where am I?’ Dora craned her neck to look.
‘Let’s have a look . . . stop shoving, you lot!’ Katie ran her finger down the list. ‘Ah, here we are. Doyle, Dora . . . Blake. That’s Male Orthopaedics. That’s Bridget’s ward!’ She laughed. ‘Good luck, Doyle. You’ll need it, being ordered about by my big sister for the next three months.’
‘I won’t be the only one,’ Dora said. ‘Look who’s down for Blake with me.’
She could hardly stop herself from smiling as she watched Katie peer at the list, her expression changing from puzzlement to complete horror.
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘There must be a mistake. I can’t be going to Blake . . . I can’t be. Lord, Bridget’s going to love that,’ she sighed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
BLAKE, THE MALE Orthopaedic ward, was as cavernous as a cathedral, with high, echoing ceilings and tall windows on either side. A strong smell of disinfectant hung in the air.
Beds lined the walls, about thirty in total, stretching the length of the ward. Nurses darted to and fro, some in the striped uniforms of students, one or two in the royal blue of staff nurses. Dora wondered if she would ever be that efficient or confident. She certainly didn’t feel like it at that moment.
Down the centre of the ward were various cupboards, trolleys and pieces of equipment, with Sister’s desk at the far end.
‘What do we do?’ she whispered to Katie.
‘Go and say hello, I suppose. Oh, God, there’s Bridget. Don’t catch her eye, whatever you do.’
Dora’s legs felt like jelly as she walked down the length of the ward, her stout shoes squeaking on the highly polished linoleum. Katie followed behind, nose stuck in the air, staring straight ahead of her.
Dora could feel the men’s eyes following them speculatively.
‘Aye-aye, a couple of new ones. This should be fun,’ she heard one of them say to another. ‘What do you think?’
‘The dark one’s pretty. I like ’em with a bit of meat on their bones.’
‘Not sure about the ginger one, though. She looks as if she’d put up too much of a fight!’
Sister Blake sat behind her desk in the centre of the ward, surveying her domain. She was the first ward sister Dora had ever met apart from the sisters who had marked her PTS practical. She had heard so many stories about how fierce they could be and how they regularly made nurses’ lives a misery, but Sister Blake looked nice enough.
‘Don’t look so terrified, Nurses. I’m not going to beat you with a stick. Unless you don’t come up to my standards, that is, in which case I might.’ Sister Blake was small and slim with lively brown eyes that sparkled with fun. Dark hair curled out from under her cap, which was fastened with a bow under her pointed chin. ‘That was a joke, by the way,’ she said to Katie, who looked pale enough to faint.
‘Yes, Sister.’ Katie bobbed a small curtsey, which seemed to amuse Sister Blake.
‘Since