Free Nurse Kelsey Abroad by Marjorie Norrell

there I think is where Karl will, sooner or later, draw a line and take action if Kevin doesn’t mind his p’s and q’s!”
    Jane made a mental note with regard to the remarks about Karl Brotnovitch. Unbidden there crept into her mind a mental picture of the man as he had surveyed her from the barrier on the station. He was handsome, that much she had to concede, but he would never have entered into the category, however remotely, of the men Jane would have found personally attractive. There was something too cold and analytical about his eyes, the set of his mouth, which chilled her to the marrow.
    She dismissed him from her thoughts and obediently followed Ann downstairs and across the covered walk which led from the flats to the hospital buildings themselves.
    She looked about her with interest. Surprisingly the place, even the grass verge, was scrupulously clean and free from litter. The flowers which bordered the drive grew in orderly prim rows like so many soldiers standing guard. The paths had obviously been scrubbed that morning, and Jane felt an unaccountable lightening of her spirits as she accepted this as an omen that at least hygiene was something the Dalasalavians had discovered, and acted upon.
    She was not so cheered by the hospital itself. The wards were distances apart. She discovered the men’s and women’s surgical blocks, for example, necessitated a long walk between each, and the staff nurse’s office was somewhere in between.
    The medical wards were also long distances apart, and all of them a fairish walk from Dr. Lowth’s sanctum. She commented upon this as she accompanied Ann from ward to ward, and Ann laughed.
    “The Dalasalavians,” she said briefly, “have strict ideas as to proper moral codes. That’s why the male and female wards are so far apart. There is talk of children’s wards being placed between, so as to cut out some of the walking—or running, if there’s an emergency—as it is they’re way over there.” She gesticulated to another separate set of low buildings which Jane had at first sight taken to be the outpatients’ clinics.
    “They’re cut to a minimum,” Ann said, frowning. “That’s one of the tragedies out here. There isn’t enough money—or enough knowledge—to convince the authorities it would be money well spent—an investment, in fact to continue after-care when people have had either a severe illness or an operation. Dr. Jim does what he can, of course, but St. George’s hasn’t much money from home, the bulk of the running cost is borne by the Dalasalavian government. They only pay out when the results are assured. Now they’re half-way to accepting the suggestions for a physiotherapic unit to be added, but I suppose, judging on past performances, it will be at least another two years before it’s here.”
    “St. George’s?” Jane questioned. “Why the name?”
    “It was founded by one of the British Ambassadors, donkey’s years ago,” Ann told her. “He was appalled by the way in which people were, as it says in one of his diaries, cast on one side as soon as unfit to work sufficiently well to benefit the community as a whole, and he started the first hospital, from his own pocket, the story goes. The place has grown—and changed—considerably since those days, of course, but all the same it leaves much to be desired. The main thing to keep on going here is to remember that but for the existence of St. George’s and for the work Dr. Jim and his predecessors have done over the years, a large number of people now actively employed or leading useful lives in some way, would have been left to die or to fend for themselves as well as they could. That always made the whole effort seem well worth while so far as I was concerned.”
    “I feel the same way,” Jane said sincerely. “I wanted to come,” she went on pensively, thinking of Dudley and admitting in her mind he had been one of the reasons why she had accepted this position,