Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park don't belong to me

Mary At St. Agnes

It was a bright sunny late afternoon in May and the reception area in St. Agnes hospital was bustling with activity, people were walking in and out of its huge doors; doctors, nurses, patients and visitors. Everyone seemed to have a destination in mind, all except one young woman, dark-haired and slender, who would have been pretty except that her mouth was too wide; she was standing uncertainly near the lifts, waiting for someone.

"Sorry, I'm so sorry," Bertha run towards her, "I know I said I would be through ten minutes ago but my computer just hang and then I had to ask George from IT to come down and you know how he is."

"Yes I do," Mary replied. George never liked leaving his office on the seventh floor.

"Thank you, Mary," Bertha said, "have a nice weekend."

Mary took the papers that Bertha had handed her wondering for the tenth time why she let herself be talked into helping Bertha or any of the other girls. Of course she knew the reason, she had just come to Leeds barely two months ago for work and so far she couldn't afford to go home on the weekends, or even go out for that matter, so working late helped with the boredom and the loneliness.

The new hospital administrator expected a report from every department at the end of every week, although why he asked for hard copies instead of soft ones like every else did was beyond comprehension and at first when they'd learned that this was what he required they'd assumed that he was an old man but according to reports from the nurses and doctors and Bertha who'd met him; Mary who worked with environmental services read cleaners had yet to meet him, apparently Tom Bertram hadn't yet found the time with meet with them; he was young barely thirty-five.

She punched the upward button near on the lift and patiently waited for it to come down.

000

Tom Bertram with spectacles perched on his nose went through the report from the emergency department occasionally making notes on the pages. The hospital board had handpicked him for the administrator's job when the old administrator, Mr. Jones, had died. They wanted someone to help turn the hospital around, to make it more profitable and more importantly to ensure that they didn't lose government funding which was likely to happen if things didn't turn around in the near future.

His reading was interrupted by a knock and he shouted, "Come," without caring to look up to see who had entered his office.

Mary had hovered behind the half-open door before deciding to knock and she stood uncertainly in the doorway now giving him a good view of her face which was framed with glorious dark hair. When he noticed her standing there he took the opportunity to study her at leisure, something his mother had told him was very rude to do, she wasn't pretty but her eyes were quite beautiful he decided and she had a pleasant smile.

Mary noticed him studying her but she decided not to say a word and instead walked towards him and handed over the papers, "Bertha, Miss Townsend asked me to give these to you, she would have brought them herself but she had a date."

"And you don't? Miss er...?"

"Bennet. Mary Bennet," she told him, "and no, I don't."

"You work here?" Tom knew he was being rude but he couldn't help himself.

"Yes, with Bertha, in Environmental services," she told him.

"I see."

"You haven't been down to see us yet," Mary continued, "but I daresay you'll find time before the month is out."

"What?"

"You've visited all the other departments," Mary told him, "well, apart from radiology, pathology and environmental services."

"I don't know that my work was of such interest to you," he observed.

"I won't say interest exactly," Mary told him, "but we're all anxious to see the new administer especially as it's been made clear to us that our continued stay here depends on you."

"I think it would be a good idea if you left my office, Miss Bennet," Tom said, "I have a lot of work and interruptions like yours are very annoying. Please be kind enough to tell Miss Townsend that in future she should endeavor to hand in her reports by herself, date or no date, or at the very least not to send you."

He bent over to read his papers and didn't watch her leave the room.

As Mary hurried to the lift and soon found herself outside the hospital. It had begun to rain when she was indoors but luckily for her she was always prepared and she pulled out her umbrella and walked over to join the queue at the nearest bus stop.

The grapevine had been right, Tom Bertram was a handsome man, with dark hair, a splendid nose, heavy-lidded eyes and quite the most beautiful mouth she'd ever seen, even his voice, although he'd been quite angry, had been nice.

He hadn't liked her; Mary thought, not many people did, she tended to speak her mind without a care and liked to laugh, most people found that annoying. She hadn't seen a wedding ring on his finger but that didn't mean that he wasn't engaged, not that mattered to her, their paths were unlikely to cross again.

000

Tom looked up after he was sure that Mary Bennet had left; he had been rude to her and there was no excuse for his behaviour, he had no right to take out his displeasure about being at St. Agnes hospital on her. His father had forced him to work here, of course being on the hospital board had made it very easy for him to do so, also that fact that Tom had degrees in economics, accounting and customer service made Tom more than qualified to do the job.

Tom had decided to use his knowledge to run a casino and an online betting business and all had been going well, although his parents and his brother Edmund disapproved, until his business partner Yates had run off with all his money and he'd had to turn to his father for help. Sir Thomas had been more than willing to help Tom, all Tom had to do was use all his business savvy to turn St. Agnes around.

He knew that the staff found him an oddity, he never socialised with them although to be fair, he'd been there less than a month, and the fact that he preferred hard copies to soft copies was also strange in this day and age, nobody knew but Tom was unable to work on a computer for long, a result of his misspent youth, so he had to work with paper; he really didn't care what people thought about him, all he wanted was to improve the situation at St. Agnes and go back to what he was really good at.

000

"I met the new administrator," Mary said.

"Is he as bad as people say he is?" Kitty asked.

"He was quite rude," Mary told her sister.

"He's from that rich family, isn't he?" kitty asked, "Rich people are always rude, Mare, think nothing of it. I'll see you tomorrow."

Kitty Mary's younger sister was visiting her for the weekend; she'd been accepted to Leeds University and was looking for cheap housing, she wasn't going to live with Mary unless she absolutely had to.

"See you tomorrow."

000