Never Closer by Margot Shepherd

Author:Margot Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: WW2 fiction books for women;
Uplifting books for women;
Dual-time line historical novels;
Nursing fiction, world war 2;
Mothers and Daughters;
Family dramas;
Medical fiction world war 2
Publisher: Umbel
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thursday, 26 June 1941

How things have changed in the space of a few days. I arrived at work this morning to discover that Dr Heatley and Professor Florey have left for the USA, to find a drug company to scale up the manufacture of penicillin. Seeing Dr Heatley is the highlight of my day. It was like a black cloud had descended on me when I heard.

Professor Florey is prepared to give up all the information about how to produce our antibiotic in return for a kilo of it. He’s desperate to continue clinical trials, to demonstrate the drug’s effectiveness. You would have thought that now he has shown it works, companies in this country would be eager to get involved. But they’re not interested. George said their trip had been kept very secret, even about how they are getting there. No-one knew until they arrived this morning and opened the letters that had been left for them by Professor Florey. Even Dr Chain didn’t know. He was hopping mad to have been left behind. He thinks he should have gone instead of Dr Heatley, but as George said, ‘It’s Dr Heatley who knows how to make penicillin, not Dr Chain, so what use would he be?’

I shall worry until we have news that they have arrived safely. It is so dangerous trying to cross the Atlantic with the Germans waiting to pick off any planes and ships.

I was in low spirits all day – we all were. And to make things worse the professor left instructions for Dr Chain to take over the making of penicillin. He followed us around all day wanting to know exactly what we were doing, and kept muttering about efficiency and how he thought we could change a few things so we could produce more – no doubt to prove he was better than Dr Heatley. Everything works like clockwork, so why fix what isn’t broken? We know our jobs. The hardest bit is the extraction which George is going to take over. There’s a great sense of working as a team with Dr Heatley. He’s always telling us how important we all are and what a good job we are doing. There wasn’t a single word of praise from Dr Chain today.

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