by Helen Wells
“I’m not satisfied, Cherry. I feel all at loose ends. Of course I’m doing a little experiment at home—”
“—when you should be resting. Why doesn’t Midge make you rest and take care of yourself? I’m going to speak to her.”
Cherry could imagine what a slapdash household, what sketchy meals, Midge provided. Yet, it was a heavy assignment for a young girl, who had to go to school too. On the other hand, someone had to help Dr. Joe build up physically. He did look dangerously tired. Cherry made a prompt decision. She had kept an eye on the two lone Fortunes before she went away from Hilton, she could do it again now. Cheerfully she announced to Dr. Joe:
“Guess what? I’m assigned to the Army rehabilitation hospital over at Trumble. That’s only thirty miles away. So I can be in Hilton quite a lot—week ends, overnight, holidays. Just you watch this nurse—”
“You’re going to be that near!” exclaimed Mrs. Ames. She had come up to offer them cups of punch. “Why, Cherry, that’s wonderful.”
She summoned Cherry’s father and several guests, and repeated this good news. There were cordial responses, followed by all sorts of invitations for Cherry to come to lunch, to dinner, to join the dancing class, head the Girl Scout troop, and even be president of the hobby club.
Cherry said under her breath to Dr. Joe, “This is all so wonderful—all this excitement, but it’s awfully wearing.”
Dr. Joe’s eyes twinkled. “Pretty tiresome, being a hero, isn’t it?”
A crash sounded from the hallway. Someone was falling down the long flight of stairs, apparently while carrying a full set of dishes. Cherry put down her cup and ran through the assembled guests.
Midge lay at the bottom of the stairs, drenched with punch and yelping. On top of her sprawled Velva, looking surprised and still chewing a mouthful of cake. Bits of dishes, sandwiches, and battered flowers hung miserably on steps, floor, even on the walls.
Cherry and Dr. Fortune picked up Velva first, then rescued Midge. They poked and punched them, while the guests looked on.
“No broken bones,” Dr. Fortune said.
“I’m bleeding!” Midge howled.
“All right, Cherry will bind up that scratch,” Mrs. Ames said shortly. “What in heaven’s name were you two doing?”
Velva said gingerly, “It’s a real mess, ain’t it?”
“What—” Mrs. Ames’s eyes were severe and Cherry saw her father retreat into the living room. “What were you up to?”
“We were just taking some of these things up to Cherry’s room—I thought I’d have a private little snack with her later—and the vase of water tipped—and we tried to juggle the tray—”
Mrs. Ames pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You’re all more nuisance than you’re worth! If I had known having Cherry come home meant living through an afternoon like this one—!”
Dr. Joe wryly patted Cherry on the shoulder. “You’d better go back to the peace and quiet of the Army.”
She grinned. Then she ripped off her khaki jacket, rolled up her sleeves, and set to wiping Midge’s scratched knee.
“I’ll pick up the dishes next, Mother,” Cherry promised, her black eyes laughing. “Well, this is more natural than all the compliments. Now I know I’m really home!”
CHAPTER II
Surprises
CHERRY TOOK A FIRMER GRIP ON HER SUITCASE, SIGHED, and braced herself for gloom. Then she solemnly pushed open the door into the hospital for wounded veterans.
A burst of jazz out of a loud-speaker startled her. Three boys in khaki jitterbugged past on crutches. One of them casually waved a crutch at her. Cherry stood there in the sunny corridor and blinked.
“One side, please,” yelled a masculine voice. A strapping lad in khaki speeded by her in a wheel chair, all but running Cherry down. He rode the chair so fast that the blanket over his lap flapped at the edges as he whizzed by.
“Hey,” said Cherry faintly, in her astonishment.
“Hey yourself,” said a patient in an Army bathrobe, banging out of a door. His arm was in a huge, awkward cast. In his good hand, he carried a scarlet Cossack costume. A ferocious paper mustache was pasted on his upper lip, and he mouthed his words with care. “Can you tell me where rehearsal is today?”
“Sorry, I can’t,” Cherry answered and stared after him. He was more or less tap dancing his way along the corridor, to the fast gay beat of the jive.
“I don’t believe it!” Cherry said out loud.
She wandered down the corridor, hanging on to her suitcase. The corridor led to an enormous sun-filled sitting room, peaceful with pale-green walls and pictures, a framed jigsaw puzzle on the wall. A few convalescing soldiers sprawled deep in Roman-striped couches and lounge chairs, reading, smoking, playing cards.
“Porter, lady? Carry your bag?” kidded a stalwart young corporal seated on a couch. His leg was missing. He was drinking a glass of milk. Cherry grinned back at him, and swallowed hard. “Porter, lady?”
“Why, yes, porter,” she kidded back. “Could you kindly direct me to Track 3 or the Principal Chief Nurse’s office?”
“There’ll be a slight charge of twenny-fi’ cents,” the young corporal warned.
A serious young man at a desk looked up from the letter he was writing. “Everything around here’ll cost you a slight charge of twenny-fi’ cents, Lieutenant.”
Cherry put her tongue in her cheek. “All right, I’ll open a charge account. Twenny-fi’ cent items only. Okay?”
The two patients beamed at her. “Okay. For a nice girl like you, there’s no charge. How’d you get in the wrong building, anyway?”
“The military police at the hospital gate wouldn’t let my taxi in the grounds. So I got out and walked and—and one brick building looks like another brick building around here. Stop laughing and tell me where is the Principal Chief Nurse’s office?”
“As a special favor—three buildings down. The little star-shaped building.”
“Yes, sir. So long.”
“See you around, Lieutenant.”
Cherry backed out and hurried down the music-filled corridor again. She kept tossing back her black curls and muttering, “Gloom, indeed! It’s practically a circus! A three-ringed circus!”
The Principal Chief Nurse’s office, however, was hushed and stern and efficient. Cherry waited a few minutes in these offices, watching hard-working administrative nurses at their desks. Then, ushered into an inner private office, Cherry faced a pair of X-ray eyes, belonging to the Principal Chief Nurse herself.
This tiny white-haired Army Nurse was a lieutenant colonel. Cherry saluted and wished she might sit down, for under Colonel Winifred Brown’s grim glare, she began to tremble. But Colonel Brown was darting between files and desk; she did not invite Cherry to sit down.
“Two minutes, Lieutenant Ames—then out! I’ve seen your Army records—you needn’t tell me. Now then! We here at Graham Hospital are an Army general hospital. The Army has a responsibility to cure its wounded men and make them fit to earn their own living again. Are you following me, Lieutenant?”
“Y-yes, Colonel Brown.”
“Our job is to rebuild broken men, physically and mentally.”
Talking at top speed, and at the same time sorting hospital papers, she explained the hospital’s work to the new nurse. Colonel Brown did not say, in so many words, that each of these young men was wounded in the defense of his country—nor that to live and work again minus hands, arms, legs, eyes, or hearing was a terrific hurdle—nor that nurses here had to mend spirits as well as bodies, had to find useful and self-sufficient futures for these brave men. But that was what she was really saying, with an extra gruffness in her voice.
Cherry ventured to speak. “I noticed, Colonel,” she said, rather puzzled, “the high spirits of the convalescing men.”
“They didn’t come to us that way!” the Principal Chief Nurse retorted. “What you saw is the result of hard work here. See that you treat these men properly!”
> Cherry wondered anxiously what was the proper way. She certainly did not want to make mistakes injurious to these men! But Colonel Brown raced on.
“Now. Each Army general hospital specializes. Graham specializes in orthopedics [bone injuries] and some general cases. You will be a floater for two months or more, Lieutenant Ames, until I decide what you’re worth as a nurse. Then I will rate you and reassign you—if you merit it. You will work eight hours a day, six days a week. We maintain strict military discipline here. Report to Lieutenant Steen at Nurses’ Quarters. Any questions? Then that’s all. The door out is there.” She pointed and picked up her phone. “The general.—Well, get him! And hurry up.”
Cherry saluted, marched out double-quick time, and paused to breathe again. She was still trembling.
An administrative nurse half smiled at Cherry and softly confided:
“The general himself quakes at the sight of her!”
Cherry smiled back gratefully. “Where do I go now?”
“Nurses’ Quarters is diagonally across the grounds from here. Room 24 is yours. Leave your bag, then see Lieutenant Steen. Good luck!”
Cherry emerged from the star-shaped building feeling very new here, very ignorant and inadequate. She found her way across the far-flung grounds. There were so many of these tall, square brick buildings—so many Red Cross station wagons on the winding hospital roads—so many patients walking along in maroon bathrobes, trench caps, and clumsy GI shoes—above all, so much she had to learn. And learn quickly! Perhaps this Lieutenant Steen would provide some urgently needed advice.
The entrance hall to Nurses’ Quarters was deserted. Cherry looked around this enormous bare new building, figured out how the rooms were numbered, climbed a flight of stairs, and located Room 24.
“Hello,” Cherry murmured. “Welcome to Room 24.”
Her new room was not a particularly welcoming sort of place. It was bare and utilitarian and metallic, with whitewashed walls and shiny new plumbing and a cot. But down at the end of the hall was a nurses’ sitting room, and a small kitchen. Anyway, Cherry planned to spend her free days at home in Hilton.
“Lieutenant Ames?” a laconic voice inquired. “Hi, I’m Sally Steen.”
Draped in the steel doorway was a lanky girl with hair, eyes, and skin all the same pale tan monotone. Even her voice was flat. She was loose-jointed as a puppet, in her beige-and-white striped seersucker dress. There was something irresistibly droll about her.
“Yes, I’m Cherry Ames. Come in, won’t you?”
Lieutenant Steen strolled in. “I’m supposed to show you all around the hospital. I’m the welcoming committee. Welcome. Welcome to Graham Hospital and have a couple of clean towels.” She produced towels and bed linen and blankets from a closet shelf. Her face still had no expression, but her pale eyes met Cherry’s with a gleam of fun. “The kids here call me Sal.”
“Well, Colonel Brown all but called me Hopeless.”
“You know, she really is the battle-ax she looks, but don’t let her upset you.” Sal’s angular face screwed up into an engaging smile.
“But I am upset. Or at least puzzled.” Cherry forth-rightly asked the other nurse about how to treat the wounded men at Graham. “It seems to be an awfully touchy question.”
“There’s nothing to it,” Lieutenant Steen said flatly. “These wounded men are perfectly normal people—only they got hurt, that’s all. So treat them normally, the way you’d treat anyone.” Sal grunted. “How would you like it if people started treating you like a nut, just because you’d had a nervous breakdown or got smashed up in an automobile accident?”
“That’s right. I rested a month in Hilton and some people did say some pretty foolish things to me. Yes,” said Cherry uncertainly, “I guess I see. But—but—”
“You will see,” Sal promised. “And right away. We’ve got a trainload of new patients coming in this afternoon. Come on. Show you the place first.”
Sal got her coat from her room a few doors down. Then she ambled down the stairs, whistling, Cherry with her. Cherry could understand how this nonchalant, levelheaded, droll Sal would be tonic for the patients. They went out into the big yard with its bare trees, and entered the closed wooden corridors which connected all of the hospital buildings. This big outside maze ran all over the grounds. Sal explained about this catwalk: left to chapel, dental clinic, Red Cross, cobbler shop; right to Building 5; straight ahead to Buildings 6 and 8. “After that, follow the signs and your nose.”
Cherry asked, as they walked, “Any of my old friends here? Ann Evans and Gwen Jones are still in England but”—she eagerly reeled off names of girls she had gone to nursing school with—“Bertha Larsen, Mai Lee, Josie Franklin, Marie Swift, Vivian Warren? Are any of them here?”
Sal carefully and thoughtfully repeated the names without a single error. Either, Cherry thought, Lieutenant Steen had a memory like a steel trap or else her friends were really here. Oh, good!
Sal winked. “—and Vivian Warren. Why, sure! Lots of nice kids here. Lots of good times for everybody. It helps the fellows get well—and we nurses don’t mind picnics and games at all.”
They turned down another outside corridor, smelling of wood and rain, their footsteps clattering on the boards.
“How’s the romance department?” Cherry asked.
“Oh, that,” Sal said matter-of-factly. “The men fall in love with us nurses so persistently that we have to transfer from ward to ward every few days. That cures them of a lot of silly ideas.”
Cherry burst out laughing. “You’re not very romantic!”
“Romantic with a funny face like mine?”
“It’s a cute face.” Cherry added, “Of course, there’ll be a slight charge of twenny-fi’ cents for the complimen’t.”
Sal propelled her around another corner. “You catch on quick,” she approved.
By the time their tour was completed, Cherry had learned that Graham had 6,000 beds (about half of them filled), 100 buildings, 400 acres—that the yard was overrun with squirrels which demanded peanuts—that Officers’ Mess hall had flowers and white linen tablecloths and a great many pleasant people in it.
Sal insisted on introducing Cherry around before filling their food trays. She led the newcomer to the first table, where two nurses and a doctor were lunching together. The young Army doctor politely got to his feet.
“This is Lieutenant Cherry Ames,” Sal droned. “Cherry, this is Dr. Vivian Warren. I understand you two are old friends.”
Cherry was astounded. Her Vivian Warren belonged to the feminine gender. Apparently the doctor was astonished too. Certainly he had every right to be. Cherry was no old friend of his: she had never seen him before.
“Isn’t Vivian a strange name for a man?” Sal said. “But it’s English, y’know. Veddy, veddy British.”
Cherry and the young man blinked at each other.
“How do you do, Captain Warren,” Cherry said in some confusion. “What an odd coincidence of names.”
“How are you, Lieutenant Fruit,” said the doctor, equally confused. He looked beseechingly at Sal.
“Not Fruit. Cherry. Ames. Now,” continued Sal, smiling a sugary smile at the two Army nurses, “forgive me for introducing you ladies second. This first one is Mai Lee. Say hello, Mai.”
The blonde girl took off her glasses, blinked her eyelashes, and said in a Southern accent, “Welcome to Graham, honey chile. We-all ah sho’ glad you-all is heah.”
Cherry stared despite herself. This was the most unconvincing Southern accent she had ever heard.
“And this pretty gal,” Sal intoned, nodding toward the second nurse, “is Josie Franklin.”
Cherry’s Josie was a perpetually scared little creature. This lovely girl was serene, almost motherly, with long brown hair coiled about her head.
The girl smiled. “Is your name really Cherry?” she asked with interest.
“Would you doubt my word?” Sal started. “Why, I—”
Su
ddenly Cherry caught on. She certainly did doubt Sal’s word! Sal was tagging these three people with the names of Cherry’s school friends—and they were playing parts, joining Sal in the joke on Cherry. Naturally they thought Cherry’s name too was not what Sal said.
Cherry leaned past Sal and looked intensely into their three faces. She stared at them until their eyes grew almost frightened. In ominous tones Cherry whispered:
“No. My name isn’t Cherry Ames. I’m really Mad Katie the Ax Killer.”
And with that, she marched off to the food counter, leaving three laughing people at the table—and Sal disgustedly bringing up the rear.
CHAPTER III
Jim
AN HOUR LATER, IN AN ADMITTING BUILDING, CHERRY’S mood was sharply changed. The wards in Building 7 were empty, scrubbed, and waiting for patients. It was as quiet and tense in there as the electrically charged stillness before a storm breaks.
Thirty Army nurses stood about on the ground floor: some of them had been rushed off other wards to help. One hundred and five seriously wounded men were expected. Everything was in readiness: small receiving rooms each with six cots freshly made, medications and trays set out on small tables; in the big sitting room there was a supply of milk and coffee and a steam table of hot food. A pile of crutches and wheel chairs stood at the main door. Upstairs, empty wards were ready. Over in Surgery Building, the surgeons were ready for emergencies.
Cherry waited tensely with the others. Sal Steen stood beside her, and Edith Randall, the pretty brown-haired girl. The doctors were coming in now, in the familiar khaki uniforms. Medical Wacs and medical sergeants brought blank records with each awaited man’s name, and stacks of fresh gray pajamas and maroon robes. Very young girls, ward aides, in full-skirted white dresses, filled water pitchers and set food trays. It was uncannily quiet, with rubber heels soundless on linoleum floors, hushed voices, the low tinkle of ward phones.