by Helen Wells
Composition: Techbooks
07 08 09 10/5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wells, Helen, 1910–
Cherry Ames, private duty nurse / by Helen Wells.
p. cm.—(Cherry Ames nurse stories)
Summary: Cherry is finally discharged from the Army and takes a job as a
private duty nurse to a celebrated musician suffering from a heart condition.
ISBN 0-8261-0398-7 (alk. paper)
[1. Nurses—Fiction. 2. Musicians—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W4644Cf 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2006022323
Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing
Contents
FOREWORD
I
STRANGE BEGINNING
II
R.F.D
III
DO, RE, MI AND COMPANY
IV
THE FORTUNETELLERS
V
ON TOUR
VI
REUNION
VII
ROMANCE IN REVERSE
VIII
THE THREAT
IX
NIGHT VIGIL
X
A WIG, A LURE, A LIE
XI
NOCTURNAL VISITOR
XII
MISS AMES IS “DETAINED”
XIII
TRAPPED!
XIV
TROUBLES AND TRIUMPHS
Foreword
Helen Wells, the author of the Cherry Ames stories, said, “I’ve always thought of nursing, and perhaps you have, too, as just about the most exciting, important, and rewarding, profession there is. Can you think of any other skill that is always needed by everybody, everywhere?”
I was and still am a fan of Cherry Ames. Her courageous dedication to her patients; her exciting escapades; her thirst for knowledge; her intelligent application of her nursing skills; and the respect she achieved as a registered nurse (RN) all made it clear to me I was going to follow in her footsteps and become a nurse—nothing else would do. Thousands of other young people were motivated by Cherry Ames to become RNs as well. Cherry Ames motivated young people on into the 1970s, when the series ended. Readers who remember reading these books in the past will enjoy rereading them now—whether or not they chose nursing as a career—and perhaps sharing them with others.
My career has been a rich and satisfying one, during which I have delivered babies, saved lives, and cared for people in hospitals and in their homes. I have worked at the bedside and served as an administrator. I have published journals, written articles, taught students, consulted, and given expert testimony. Never once did I regret my decision to enter nursing.
During the time that I was publishing a nursing journal, I became acquainted with Robert Wells, brother of Helen Wells. In the course of conversation I learned that Ms. Wells had passed on and left the Cherry Ames copyright to Mr. Wells. Because there is a shortage of nurses here in the US today, I thought, “Why not bring Cherry back to motivate a whole new generation of young people? Why not ask Mr. Wells for the copyright to Cherry Ames?” Mr. Wells agreed, and the republished series is dedicated both to Helen Wells, the original author, and to her brother, Robert Wells, who transferred the rights to me. I am proud to ensure the continuation of Cherry Ames into the twenty-first century.
The final dedication is to you, both new and old readers of Cherry Ames: It is my dream that you enjoy Cherry’s nursing skills as well as her escapades. I hope that young readers will feel motivated to choose nursing as their life’s work. Remember, as Helen Wells herself said: there’s no other skill that’s “always needed by everybody, everywhere.”
Harriet Schulman Forman, RN, EdD
Series Editor
CHAPTER I
Strange Beginning
CHERRY GAVE THE PILLOW A POKE AND SLEEPILY SAT UP. She shook her short, black curls off her red cheeks, and wriggled to the edge of the bed to see out the window. She was in the one place where a lively young nurse never expected to be—home! She was right here in her own room, in her own house, in her own small town of Hilton, Illinois. Her merry red-and-white room with its sun-filled windows was a highly satisfactory place to be, this sweet-smelling June morning, especially after traipsing with the Army Nurse Corps from the Pacific across the Atlantic, with flights in between, and then being a veterans’ nurse besides.
“Yes sir, for once I stay put!” Cherry thought. “No more Army nursing. No more flight nursing. No more veterans’ nursing. In fact, gosh darn it, no more nursing! Ames is just going to sit. For at least three months.”
She lay back, luxuriously turning over in her mind all the lazy, spendthrift ways to fill her hard-earned rest period. She could play tennis today. Or go to the movies—even go to two movies, one right after the other, pausing only for a chocolate sundae in between. She could lie in the garden hammock beside her mother’s fragrant flower beds, and read or simply daydream and nap. That was what Dr. Joe had ordered, after her arduous Army years. Or she could go for a swim—or some of her mother’s friends had been laughing about driving over to the next town to attend a séance—or she and her young friend Midge could go to the music shop and listen to all the new swing records, and maybe buy two—
“Yes, I’m free now to do any of those things,” Cherry thought restlessly, winding and unwinding one black curl around her finger. “But I don’t want to very much. Guess I’m still so wound up from Army excitement that I can’t relax yet.” Cherry sat up again and stretched. Then she shook her dark, curly head. “Doggone, why am I bursting with energy and rarin’ to go—just when I’m supposed to rest? Who wants to do nothing, anyhow? Rarin’ to go—but go where?”
The little white clock ticking away on her dressing table said eight o’clock—shamefully early. Cherry deliberately dawdled her way through bathing and dressing. She finally chose her red sports dress to put on. It flamed no less than her cherry-red cheeks and lips, and set off her brilliant dark eyes and hair. Sports sandals. No stockings. One bracelet, for fun. Cherry stood straight and slim and graceful before her mirror, a vivid and strikingly pretty girl. But her thoughts skipped happily past her good looks and on to breakfast. As usual, at any hour of the day or night, Cherry was hungry.
She went out into the upstairs hall and peeked at her parents’ door, to see if they were up. The door was closed. Charlie’s door stood open, onto her brother’s unoccupied room. Her twin brother was still with the Army of Occupation in Japan. Cherry looked in at his airplane models, the neat, empty bed, the masculine pennants and photographs and technical books. Her own snapshot, she saw, still had the place of honor on his dresser.
Cherry sighed, and tiptoed along the hall. As she passed her parents’ big room, she heard her father whistling merrily, if slightly off key, behind the closed door. But from downstairs floated the aroma of coffee and oranges. Her mother must be up. Cherry sniffed hopefully, and started down the long, broad, winding stairs of their Victorian house.
She descended as far as the first landing, with its high window of green and rose and blue and amber panes, when an impulse seized her. Looking cautiously around, she saw no one in sight. Happily, she climbed onto the banister, gripped with hands and knees, and let go. Whee! She flew down the banister at glorious speed, abruptly stopping at the bottom with a thump.
“Shocking behavior for a graduate nurse!”
It was her mother, pausing in the doorway with a tray of breakfast things, laughing at her.
Cherry unscrambled herself from the banister and ran over to kiss her pretty dark-eyed mother.
“I do a high, wide, and handsome slide, you’ll have to admit that,” Cherry boasted.
“You had a better technique when you were seven.”
“But Charlie was the champion.” Cherry filched a piece of toast from the tray, and munched. She followed her mother into the spacious dining room. “He went down no-hands. Ah, youth! Any cho
res today, lady?”
“No chores for you, honey. You rest. Just sit down now and drink this orange juice.” Her mother vanished into the kitchen.
“How you bully me into resting!” Cherry called after her. She picked up her glass of orange juice and, sipping, wandered around the sunny bay window, inspecting the waxy green plants which thrived there.
“How your mother bullies me, too,” said Mr. Ames, coming in with the morning newspaper. His humorous face looked fresh and rested this summer morning. His light hair, even with its gray, his tall solid figure, looked so much like Charlie’s that Cherry swallowed hard with lonesomeness. It was not much fun being free to play, while her twin still served overseas.
“But today,” Mr. Ames said loudly, toward the kitchen, “is my day to bully your mother for a change.” He sat down at the table, and he and Cherry exchanged grins.
Edith Ames came back carrying a hot platter of bacon and eggs. “Who bullies whom, and why?”
Mr. Ames put down his newspaper. “Are you really going to that tomfool séance with the rest of those silly women?”
“Oh, why not? It will be fun. Perfectly harmless.”
“I don’t believe fortunetelling is ever harmless. And to bother driving over to the next town for such nonsense—Well, suit yourself. I see you won’t be bullied.” Mr. Ames added with a chuckle, “But don’t let ’em tell you they see a tall, dark, moneyed stranger coming into your life, understand?”
Mrs. Ames grinned deliciously. “Why, Will, I thought you were the man in my life. Or aren’t you?”
“Better be,” Mr. Ames said gruffly and buried his face in the newspaper. Mrs. Ames poured coffee and smiled to herself. Cherry noticed with quiet pleasure that her parents were still very much in love with each other.
“Cherry, perhaps you’d like to come along to the séance—her mother offered.
“I don’t feel particularly ghostly today,” Cherry said. “But if I can’t think of anything better to do—I’ve got to find something, I can’t just sit on my thumbs—”
Her father said, “Your old friend, Dr. Fortune, has an idea for you.”
“Dr. Joe?”
“Mm-hmm. Met him downtown on his way to the clinic yesterday. He believes you should rest, of course. But he knows you’re too restless to do absolutely nothing. Said he’d thought up a ‘light activity’ for you.”
Cherry was interested at once. “What was it?”
“He didn’t say, sweetie. Maybe”—Mr. Ames glanced slyly at his wife—“maybe the fortuneteller will say.”
“I’ll tell you what my father said!” shrilled a voice from the open bay windows. “Isn’t it strange how I always go calling at mealtime?”
It was Midge Fortune, Dr. Joe’s teen-age, motherless daughter. Her light-brown hair and gray-green hazel eyes showed just above the window boxes.
“Can we invite you to breakfast?” Mrs. Ames called. “And don’t climb in over the plants!”
“Yes, Mrs. Ames! Thank you!” Midge’s head disappeared and in twenty seconds, she had banged through the front door, through the living room, and landed at the dining table with a fork in her hand.
“My dad said he could get you a chance at—”
“Good morning, Midge,” Mr. Ames said, mock-severely.
“Good morning. My father thought Cherry’d—”
“A fine day, Miss Fortune,” Cherry chanted.
“A scrumptious day, Miss Ames. Dad said you ought to have a try at—”
“Bacon and eggs, Midgie?” Mrs. Ames asked. “Or are you trying to diet again?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I mean sir,” the teen-ager said earnestly, “you know perfectly well I would eat nails, and good morning to you all including any stray dogs and cats, and will you please let me tell you Dad’s idea for Cherry, because it is a humdinger?”
Cherry turned her brilliant dark gaze on her and said bewilderingly, “How would you like to go to a séance—
“A what? What do you wear?”
Mr. Ames rose from the table in good-humored disgust. “I’m going downtown now. Down where there are some sane males. This conversation makes no sense to me at all.” He turned to Cherry. “If you ever find out what Dr. Joe’s idea is, let me know. I was just working up an interest in it.”
“What’s a séance?” Midge squeaked, and Mr. Ames bolted.
Séances—Dr. Joe’s unrevealed plan—it was a crazy start to a crazy day.
First off, Cherry went downtown in search of Dr. Joe. Elderly, widowed Dr. Joseph Fortune held a unique place in Cherry’s life. Neighbor, family doctor, friend, devoted researcher who often forgot meals, harrassed father of Midge, he had been “her” Dr. Joe, and her special concern, for many years. It was he who had opened for her the shining doors of humanitarian service through medicine. Ever since Cherry became a student nurse, in response to his inspiration, and in the gallant, hard-working years since, the elderly doctor and the young nurse had been doubly close.
Cherry found him at the new Hilton Clinic where, now that his days as an Army doctor were at an end, he was helping the sick both as physician and as medical researcher. He was, as usual, pottering around a wet, smelly laboratory table—a slight, appealing figure in a white lab coat, with that boyish shock of gray hair falling into one eye.
He looked up absently when a clinic attendant ushered Cherry in. “Just a minute, child, this slide is almost prepared—Ah! There.” He delicately covered the little strip of glass, bearing a drop or two of fluid, with another glass slide, labeled it, and set it in the wooden rack. “A study in pneumonia germ,” he explained, delight in his deep, slow voice. “A farm woman is ill with pneumonia. Well, well, my dear! Let’s sit down and talk.”
Cherry glanced at the two lab stools and the one chair, all piled high with scientific journals, half-smoked pipes, racks of test tubes. “I’ll stand, thanks.”
Dr. Joe looked around too. “Ah, yes. The desk isn’t bad. I could push aside some of those papers. Or the radiator—that is unencumbered.”
So they sat down together on the cold radiator.
“You always catch me at my same old tricks,” Dr. Joe said. He shoved back the stubborn lock and smiled.
Cherry’s dark eyes sparkled. “Midge reports you’re up to a new trick—concerning me.”
“Yes. I want you,” said Dr. Joe, coming right to the point, “to have a try at private duty nursing.”
“Nursing! Dr. Joe! Don’t say nursing to me—I don’t even want to think of it! And why private duty, of all things?”
“Because that farm woman I mentioned needs a nurse. She is at home, and we can’t locate an R.N. to send out to her.”
Cherry bent her curly head. The words of her nurse’s pledge surged back: to serve wherever and whenever another human being needed her.
“Is it urgent?”
“Not terribly urgent. A rather light case, in fact. Her husband and her eight-year-old daughter are taking care of her. But the woman will recover more quickly and more thoroughly under a nurse’s care.”
“But, Dr. Joe, I don’t know the first thing about private duty nursing!”
“There’s nothing special to know, child. It’s bedside nursing, the same as you’ve done in Spencer Hospital and in Army hospitals—only this time you nurse the patient in her own home.”
“This comes with such a rush,” Cherry gasped. “Of course, if you can’t find another nurse—perhaps one who’s done some private duty—”
Dr. Joe patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, my dear. We’ll try today to find another nurse. I think we’ll find someone, all right.”
“Aha!” said Cherry, sitting up very straight on the radiator. “First you offer me a case and then you say you’ll get some other nurse! A fine thing! I mean it.”
Dr. Joe chuckled. “But you don’t know anything about private duty nursing, remember?”
“Then it may be high time I learned!”
“Well, think
it over, Cherry. It’s not urgent. I’m suggesting it mostly because I thought a taste of private duty, on a light case, might interest you.”
Cherry rose, her cheeks flushed redder than ever. “You don’t fool me with that casual tone, sir! Every time you make one mild, innocent little suggestion, I find myself in adventures up to my ears!”
Dr. Joe put his arm across her shoulders and walked her to the door. “As a matter of fact, I have a real adventure in mind for you.”
“You have! I might have known! Oh, what is it?”
“I’d prefer not to tell you just yet. It might not materialize, and then you’d be disappointed.”
“Stop tantalizing me—tell me even part of it!” Cherry begged.
“It’s something big and interesting. Two or three or four private duty cases—short ones, here around Hilton—would be good preparation.”
“Preparation for what? Oh, Dr. Joe—you meanie!”
Dr. Joe gently shoved her out into the hall. “Go away, monkey. I have to work. Good-bye.” Laughing and shaking his gray head, Dr. Fortune shut the door on her.
Cherry opened the door a crack and hissed:
“You don’t tempt me at all. I’m firmly determined to rest!”
And she marched out of the clinic, wishing she could believe that.
Certainly this warm June day invited relaxing. The whole town was in a summer mood. White shoes, straw hats, bright cotton dresses—baskets of nasturtium, fishing poles, sunburns, canvas tops of automobiles folded back—people lingering to chat in the sun and letting their business wait—children just freed from school for the summer, yelling in shrill voices—Cherry enjoyed Hilton in its easy summer mood. From these Middle West plains, stretching for flat, rich miles of farm land around Hilton, there rolled in the ripe fragrance of grain; the intense, hovering, inland heat of prairie; the hot, oily smell of gasoline—and Cherry breathed in the Illinois summer and loved it. She sauntered along, past the two- and three-story stores, past the ice-cream parlor where she sniffed fresh popcorn and crackerjack, poked her head into the ten-cent store on the chance that Midge might be in there grandly shopping.