“Dr. Ethridge!”
She always called him that. When he was “a darling little boy,” she had come from Massachusetts General to “help make the Elijah Wilson.”
Cub folded his frame into a chair and adjusted it into angles of dignity.
“Miss Kerr, at the General Staff Meeting this afternoon I reported the two unexplained deaths on B Ward.”
“Why, Dr. Ethridge! You ... you ... wasn’t it a little odd ... to ... er....”
“I don’t believe so. Dr. MacArthur and I....”
“But you,” she interrupted him and Cub felt instinctively that the fire had reached the ridgepole, “you put the nursing service in a very compromising position. A matter which reflects so unfavorably upon the whole medical unit should, I most emphatically feel, have been discussed with the head of every department before being presented to the General.” A sanctimonious note entered her heaves of indignation.
“It was.”
He scratched his nose with such care that unless Miss Kerr had been painfully aware he was contemplating her large flat feet she would have noticed it. He knew that the nurses since time immemorial had called her “Foots,” and she knew he knew it.
“Discussed. Yes. Grilled, perhaps better suits what the nursing staff has been subjected to. But before we were disgraced I do think....”