by Helen Wells
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
Home-Coming
ALMOST–ALMOST THERE! A VERY FEW MINUTES MORE, with the train hurtling and whistling past the wintry prairie farms—in minutes she would be there!
Cherry stood up unsteadily in the train aisle and pulled her luggage down from the overhead rack. She straightened her khaki hat on her black curls, straightened her Army Nurse’s jacket, drew on her leather gloves. Then she sat on the very edge of her plush chair. The train was slowing down now. Johnson’s big barn and the outskirts of Hilton skidded past. Cherry’s cheeks were very red, her dark eyes brilliant.
“New York—London—Panama—the Pacific—I’ve seen them all—I’ve flown over Europe—” Cherry thought “—but—well, Hilton, Illinois, I’m coming home!” For this was the destination and the day she had been dreaming of.
She stood up and paced to the noisy vestibule, too excited to sit still. The little old conductor out there smiled and shouted at her:
“I guess you been away a long time, hey, Lieutenant?”
She shouted back over the iron clanking, “Too long!”
“I bet your maw and paw’ll be at the station with a band!”
A wave of homesickness caught her. Cherry visualized her family waiting for her on the platform. “They’ll be there!” she shouted to the conductor. “They know I always come in on the Wabash line!”
Now the train was cutting through Hilton’s side streets. Cherry looked out achingly at well-remembered picket fences, sooty frame houses, cars waiting at the railroad crossings. She hungrily breathed in the acrid soft-coal smoke, curling along the flat prairie land.
Finally the train heaved a great puff and the wheels creaked to a stop along the station shed. Cherry eagerly looked out at the people scattered along the platform, seeking familiar faces.
“Hi-i-il-ton!” the conductor called. “Hilton! Have a good reunion, Lieutenant,” and he lifted Cherry’s bags off the train, and gave her a hand down.
Cherry stood there in the wind. She looked up and down the platform but no one came toward her. Behind her, the train was already slowly pulling away. She watched, rather wistfully, other travelers being met, kissed, hurried off to cars. Well, my goodness, where was her family? Here came a slim woman in furs—at last! Why, her mother must have a new coat. No, it was not her mother, after all. The woman passed her by.
“Now, isn’t this a fine thing!” Cherry thought in humorous disgust. “Heroine returns from the wars and not even a little old yellow dog comes to greet her. Of all occasions for us to get our arrangements jumbled!”
She resolutely picked up her bags and walked against the February wind to the taxi stand, where one lone black sedan waited. But the driver was not there. Just as well, Cherry decided; she would wait around a few minutes, in case her family had been delayed.
No one appeared, however, except a lanky youth.
“Taxi, ma’am?”
“Yes.” Cherry gave the address of her gray house, and climbed in the back seat. She did feel a little disgruntled. Probably her family was down at the Illinois Central depot, or at the Big Four. But they knew she always came on this route, on the Wabash line. Why, she had clearly wired them: “Arriving Wabash four Thursday afternoon. Love.”
Well, she would forget about it. But as the car pulled out onto the snowy street, Cherry sat up sharply. Maybe her family could not come! Maybe someone was terribly ill. Or they had moved away and forgotten to write her.
She checked herself and chuckled. “Nice worrying, Ames. Hold on for ten minutes more and then it will all be cleared up. I’ll just say hello to Hilton, meantime.”
The town, as she rode through the downtown section, seemed smaller and shabbier than she remembered it. Most of the two and three-story stores needed paint, the cars parked at the curb were old and had patched tires. But people walked along at an easier pace, their faces relieved and relaxed—now that the war was over and won.
Now in peacetime there were fewer men in Army uniform around the square. A young soldier proudly pushed a baby carriage. Headlines on the newsstands still gravely underscored the long, hard work of making this peace a permanent peace. But there was a new happiness here at home.
“It’s an end and a beginning,” Cherry realized. “We’ll have to get our wounded veterans cured—start our lives and work all over on a peacetime basis. This war has left us plenty of responsibilities.”
Cherry saw a knot of people standing at the corner of East Main and Weatherbee, where a Big Four train had stopped right in the middle of the street. Cherry craned her neck. Yes, a dozen or so people, some carrying big bouquets of flowers, bright against the snow, accompanied by children with little flags, and the inevitable dogs, tails wagging. Didn’t she recognize some of those people? But her taxi turned a corner and bounced up her own street so fast she could not be sure.
“Some veteran is being received in style,” Cherry thought. She wondered if Hilton laid claim to any generals or heroes. Certainly an Army nurse like herself would not rate a welcoming committee and bouquets—“though it would be nice if someone at least said hello to me!”
At her house, Cherry paid the taximan and scampered up the frozen porch steps. Dropping her luggage, she put her finger on the doorbell and kept it there.
No one answered. There were no friendly faces or shouts from the neighbors’ houses, either. Nothing, nothing at all.
With hands that shook a little, Cherry fished in her purse for her key—which she had carried around the world with her, a talisman of home—and opened the front door. As she stepped into the front hall (yes, there was the same mahogany furniture—at least the Ameses still lived here) an unknown woman came toward her crying:
“Go away! You can’t come bustin’ into strange houses!”
Cherry gasped, took one look at this big husky woman in an apron, and then did something she had not done in all her stern Army years. Cherry’s face puckered up and her eyes filled with tears.
“I live here!” she wailed, tears splashing off her red cheeks.
“Flapdoodle! I never seed you afore!” The woman folded her arms. “Besides, look at your messy overshoes. I can’t have you trackin’ up my clean floors. Can’t you see the folks ’re going to have a party here?”
Cherry stopped sniffling long enough to look around. Sure enough, the familiar rooms shone, trays of refreshments were laid out, flowers and leaves were everywhere.
“The—the party’s for me!” Cherry sputtered.
“’Tis not. Mis’ Ames says a soldier’s comin’ home.”
Despite those salty
tears, Cherry had to giggle. “I’m Cherry Ames,” she explained. “I’m a soldier—an Army Nurse. And I live here!”
“Far’s I’m concerned,” the be-aproned woman announced, “you could be Mary Ames or you could be Dolores the three-headed wonder. Now git!”
And she held open the door and pointed. “Git!”
Cherry sat herself down on the bottom step of the curving staircase in the hall and clasped her knees. Her giggles exploded into laughter. “I won’t git! Who are you anyway?”
“I’m Velva Marcy from a farm down near Turkey Run, and I help out Mis’ Ames. And b’lieve you me, when she hears about you—”
Cherry knew plenty of farm people but none like this Velva. She leaned against the banister and laughed so hard that her sides hurt and her hat fell down over her eyes.
“Plumb crazy,” muttered the woman.
“Some home-coming! Where is my mother?”
“Down to the railroad.”
“Which railroad?”
“The railroad.”
Cherry asked carefully, “Did she carry flowers? Did about a dozen other people go with her?”
“Why, yes, that’s so.” The buxom Velva studied her cautiously. “’Pears like you might be Carrie Ames at that. Well, you kin sit on a chair if you like.”
The woman backed away from Cherry and, still suspicious, disappeared into the back of the house. She poked her head out once to call:
“Kindly don’t tell on me—if you are Sairy Ames.”
Cherry crumpled up again. She laughed until the crystal chandelier vibrated. Then she lay back on the stairs, weak from laughing so much. It was in this undignified position that her parents and the neighbors discovered her.
They surged in the front door, faces exasperated, shifting the enormous bouquets from one arm to another. When they saw Cherry, a cry went up: “She’s home!”… “—missed her—the other line!”… “Cherry! Oh, poor darling,” her mother was saying, half crying, half laughing.
Cherry had sprung up and reached Mrs. Ames first. She kissed her pretty, dark-haired mother, then was swept into her father’s bear hug. Young Midge Fortune, her motherless friend, whirled her into a loving embrace. The neighbors drew her into their excited midst. More people were arriving, too, and Cherry’s hand was shaken by so many people, so fast, that she was confused.
“Please—please excuse me,” Cherry stammered. “If I could just—”She fled into the dining room, away from the crowd.
Her parents followed, with Midge, and smilingly shut the door.
“They are all so eager to see you, dear,” her mother explained. “So proud.”
Cherry looked into her mother’s tender dark eyes, smiled into her father’s level blue ones. Then she took her mother’s hand and drew a deep breath.
“I’m home. Just think—home.” She asked anxiously, “Are you all all right?”
“We’ve been fine. Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes. Just a little dazed, I guess.” She added, murmuring, “I can’t believe I’m really home.”
Under the commonplace words was a great deal of love. Their smiles were tremulous. Cherry kept looking around, almost wonderingly, at the big family table, the bay window banked with green plants, all the familiar things—no longer quite familiar. “You have new curtains,” she said slowly. “And the clock is gone.” This was home but changed while she was away—grown a little strange.
She looked at her parents, rather fearfully seeking signs of change in them too. Had they grown away from her? But her mother was still youthful looking, and her brown eyes were as warm and understanding as ever. Only a few weary shadows in her face betrayed the nights her mother had not slept when Cherry and her twin brother Charlie were in combat zones. The years of war strain showed more markedly on Cherry’s businesslike father. His fair hair was mostly gray now. Still, the same old humor lighted his face. Cherry blew out a small laugh of relief.
“H’lo, Cherry,” Midge piped up. She waved a freckled hand.
Cherry had to grin. She pulled young Midge over to her and yanked the girl’s light-brown hair. “How are you, tomboy?”
Midge muttered “Fine,” then burst out, “I’m so glad you’re home!”
“Of course I’m not pleased, not a bit,” said Mr. Ames. His smile broadened. “Hey! She’s here! What do you know? She’s home!”
“Hurray!” Midge spun around, her full short skirt standing straight out. “Cherry’s here! Cherry’s back!”
Mrs. Ames stood there, smiling and shaking her head, as if she too still could not believe this happiness. “We’re so lucky, Cherry. So grateful. Plenty of young men and women will never come back.”
“Or”—Cherry frowned—“some are coming back hurt and maimed and sick. That’s what my work is going to be, now. Helping those veterans get well.” She ruefully shook her head and her dark curls danced. “We’ve been lucky about Charlie. Where is that flier brother of mine?”
Her father replied, “Still out in the Pacific. He’s flying supplies to the Army of Occupation in Japan. Even though the war is over, Charlie still may be gone a long time.”
“It’s all right,” Mrs. Ames said fervently. “I don’t care how long Charles has to stay in the Army—he’s survived! Next to that, nothing else is important. Oh, we’ve been lucky!”
Cherry started to speak but decided against saying anything so somber. She was thinking of the wounded men whom she, as an Army Nurse, had helped—literally hundreds of young men who really might never have come back except for her nursing.
Midge tugged at her sleeve. “You look as if you’re far, far away,” she objected. “Please come back.”
Cherry turned and an odd smile formed on her vivid face. “Sorry, Midge. I guess it will take me a little time to change from soldier into civilian. But,” she grinned broadly at all of them, “I have no objections to being home—or to having breakfast in bed—or having parties given for me! No objections at all!”
“Well, come on!” Midge bolted for the door.
“Just a minute,” Mrs. Ames said. Her warning tone froze Midge’s hand on the knob. “I have explanations to make to every neighbor on our block. They—and I—should like to know how we all happened to miss Cherry at the train. I wrote her to take the Big Four! And I gave Midge that letter to mail!”
Mrs. Ames looked meaningfully at Midge. The teenager stared back with round, scared eyes. The clatter of the reception in the next room sounded very loud.
“Oh, please don’t tell on me—not to all those people!”
“Don’t tell on me!” came an echo. Velva’s woeful face popped out at the pantry door, then vanished.
“What in thunder—” Mr. Ames started.
“So this mix-up was your doing, Midge? And Velva too? Velva?” Mrs. Ames was mystified. “But, Midge, how did you manage to ruin Cherry’s celebration?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Midge blurted out. “I simply forgot to mail your special-delivery letter. I just remembered it this minute.”
“But, Velva—?”
“I told her to git!” Velva admitted in chagrin as she emerged from the pantry.
“Well, I got home in spite of all of you!” Cherry teased. “Now I suppose you’ll try to put me out!”
Midge apologized profusely. Velva was nearly in tears.
“Never mind, never mind,” Mrs. Ames hastily soothed everybody. “Will, please get these youngsters in there to the reception. It sounds as if the whole town is here—and we’re not even in there to receive them—Velva isn’t serving the tea—Such hosts!”
Cherry’s father flung open the double doors and Cherry faced a sea of old friends and acquaintances. A wave of voices, smiles, handclasps, engulfed her. Here were her old school friends—here were the neighbors for blocks around—her three favorite teachers from high school days! Even the children and the very old people had come. Warm voices, warm eyes, welcomed Cherry home. Now all the bouquets were heaped into her arms until her flushed f
ace was almost lost behind the flowers.
“I don’t deserve all this fuss,” Cherry insisted. She felt no triumph, only rejoicing at being home again. “Oh, it’s so good to see all of you! Yes, Mother, please take the flowers—This is really a home-coming!”
And still the doorbell rang, and more people pressed into the Ameses’ big, hospitable house. Cherry accepted welcomes, compliments, toasts. “Our globetrotter …” … “Why Cherry, I knew you when you were knee-high to a grasshopper”… “Our son-in-law wrote that you treated him—under fire!”
Then a deep, slow voice at her elbow said, “Well done, my dear.”
Cherry whirled. “Dr. Joe!”
There he stood: small, elderly, tired, his gentle face still glowing with an inner fire—the gray-haired doctor who had shaped Cherry’s beliefs and Cherry’s life.
“Dr. Joe,” Cherry said happily. Against merry protests, she disengaged herself from a group of friends and led Dr. Joseph Fortune to a quiet corner beside the fireplace.
“Ah, Cherry, child, it surely is good to see you,” he said shakily.
Cherry smiled back gratefully, almost humbly, at her old friend and mentor. Dr. Fortune, Midge’s widowed father, was Cherry’s lifelong neighbor. Of all the people in this teeming room, he alone fully understood where Cherry had been, what she had done—and why. For Dr. Joe, through his own devotion to medicine, had inspired Cherry to serve others through nursing.
Cherry held out her khaki sleeve next to Dr. Fortune’s gray flannel one.
“You’re no longer in uniform, Dr. Joe?”
“I might as well tell you at once.”
Dr. Fortune, at the beginning of the war, had given up his research post at Spencer Hospital to discover new medicines for the Army. After working several years in guarded Army laboratories, the elderly doctor recently broke down. Perhaps it was his earlier years of struggle and poverty, when only Cherry recognized the value of his work, that were affecting his health now. At any rate, Dr. Joe was ordered home by Army surgeons to rest for six months. He and Midge were back together in their little cottage.