Free Nurse in White by Lucy Agnes Hancock Page B

surgeon echoed, astonished.
    “Yes. How do we know what those wretches will attempt when they know she isn’t dead? They must know—realize she will talk—tell what she knows when her memory returns.”
    “I see. You think it was the work of gangsters, perhaps?” His eyes twinkled for a moment. “Then you believe the Doogans’ wild tale of a speeding car full of desperados? Remember, this is. Brentwood.”
    “I know; but I certainly believe she has been terribly abused—perhaps tortured—by someone. And who but gangsters would be capable of doing such atrocious things? Her poor body was a mass of bruises and her eyes haven’t yet lost their look of terror.”
    The surgeon thoughtfully and painstakingly made a pile of the charts on the table beside him, matching the corners carefully, then suddenly spreading them fanwise.
    “The London police are working on the case, also the police in New York, It seems almost hopeless unless she remembers her name. If and when she does, we can go after them.” His rather bleak gray eyes searched her face, but the girl was too preoccupied to notice, and even his next remark failed to make her self-conscious. “Dr. Dent is interesting himself in her affairs.”
    “Yes, I know,” Ellen smiled up at the ugly, clever face above her. “I’m glad, for it must grow rather monotonous here to young men like Dr. Dent and Dr. Fielding.”
    “I suppose so, though I doubt if Dent finds life in Anthony Ware exactly tiresome. At least, he shouldn’t,” he muttered the last.
    Ellen hastened to correct her statement. “I meant that Anthony Ware is small and Brentwood is just a big country town—”
    “I know, Gaylord,” the surgeon interrupted, “but life is much the same all over. The panorama of birth and death, disease and accident unrolls here just as it does in larger cities, though, of course on a smaller scale. Our interns and other staff members receive excellent training—fine experience. Some of the world’s greatest scientists, doctors and surgeons hold clinics and give lectures here. Anthony Ware provided for that when he endowed the place. I know that I have spent profitable years in this hospital. I shall take with me to Edinburgh much that will be helpful to my colleagues there when I begin my sabbatical in August.” Then, abruptly, “Are you happy here, child?”
    It was a long speech, a friendly, intimate recital, and Ellen listened in a daze. Could this be the forbidding MacGowan of whom they all stood in awe? Why, he was fascinating! His ugly face was actually attractive! How had she ever thought his eyes cold and repellent or his mouth more than a little cynical?
    “Perfectly happy, Dr. MacGowan. I love nursing. I am doing just what I planned to do when I was a tiny girl, only—well, in my dreams, I went further—”
    “Further? You mean you dreamed of becoming a doctor?”
    “Yes, Dr. MacGowan, but I’m afraid that is out, at least for a time.”
    “Good! I have long regretted, comparatively, there are so few good women doctors. Nurses, yes, and a fine band of women they are; but I wish some of them would go on.”
    Ellen stared. Imagine a dominant male willing to welcome a woman within the sacred precincts of his profession! Before she could express her surprise and gratification, he said, with what Ellen thought was, for him, amazing camaraderie, “I hear good reports of you, Gaylord. You are a credit to your profession and to Anthony Ware. I hope you will completely realize your ambition, but perhaps becoming a doctor’s wife wouldn’t be amiss. A man could go far had he a lass like you at home keeping warm his hearthstone.”
    Ellen’s eyes widened in startled surprise. She must be dreaming. This couldn’t be the man before whose black frown, cold gray eyes and icy, caustic speech she and the rest of the staff grew awkward and stiff with dread!
    “Why—why, Dr. MacGowan, you’re young—” she began, then blushed scarlet at her