by Helen Wells
Edith Randall sighed. “Every time we get these wounded soldiers fresh from overseas,” she confessed, “I wish I had become something else than a nurse. Anything else!”
“An animal trainer,” Sal suggested.
“A cook. A tightrope dancer,” Cherry quipped, to ignore her own nervousness.
They heard the fleet of ambulances bringing the men from the hospital train. The main door was flung wide open. Corpsmen sprang to lift litters off the ambulances, and help down the walking wounded. Nurses and doctors surged forward.
In the crowd of arrivals were men on stretchers, raising their heads from their pillows, some with Purple Hearts pinned on their pajama coats. There were some ambulatory patients: a tall parachutist on crutches with a leg gone and a quick, where-am-I? glance; a man with an arm held rigid and high in a plaster cast who insisted on walking by himself. Here were youths who had stepped on a land mine at Anzio, felt the German 88 in Normandy, or caught a Japanese bullet in the Pacific. Cherry’s heart contracted.
“Even though they’re finished with war on the battlefields,” she realized, “the war is still a very personal thing to them—their fight to recover.”
Sal Steen came over to Cherry with lists in her hand. “You are assigned to take care of Travers, Leader, Pernatelli, Blumenthal, and Matthews.” She handed Cherry her list of five names. “Room 10.”
In a small receiving ward off the big sitting room, Cherry met five pairs of somber eyes. Three of her soldiers lay on cots, one sat in a wheel chair, and one short lad with his arm in a cast stood.
“Hello,” Cherry gulped. She forced herself to sound calm. “I’m glad to see you at Graham. We’re going to really fix you up here. Let’s—let’s see how you all stood the train trip. Then you can have Cokes and phone calls and a bath, and then dinner—”
“I could use a Coke,” said the lad with the arm cast. He had lively black eyes and his agreeable smile made Cherry feel easier. “Haven’t had a Coke in two years.”
“What about me?” grumbled a red-haired boy on a cot.
“Here’s nickels,” Cherry said eagerly, digging into her pocket. “There’s a Coke machine in the sitting room. You could get a basket and bring back five, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Ralph Pernatelli. What’s your name?—Okay, five Cokes coming up.” He sped out the door.
The baldish man in the wheel chair asked, “Do you need any acrobats around here?”
“Huh?” said Cherry. She looked at the enormous plaster cast holding his leg at a rakish angle. Scribbled on it were signatures, dates, a surgeon’s drawing of his fractured kneecap, and the name of this soldier’s company. “Did you say acrobat?”
“That’s me, ma’am.” The man’s funny, monkeylike face creased into a smile. “Hy Leader from near St. Joe. From a little place where the road gets wider, and that’s the one place in all the world where I want to be. Used to belong to a traveling circus. Watch.”
Three heads raised off the litters. The thin wiry man in the wheel chair released the brake, spun the wheels, and the chair whirled around on one wheel until his sparse hair blew. He skidded to a stop not an inch from Cherry’s toes.
She laughed, but saw two of the men on the litters tremble at these noisy monkeyshines. “Too strenuous for these fellows,” she said aside to the acrobat. She started over to the first cot to check temperature, pulse, and respiration. “Better take it easy.” The acrobat nodded.
The quiet man looked up at Cherry as she leaned above him to hold his wrist and count his breathing. When she took the thermometer out of his mouth, he said very low:
“I’ve lost my right hand. Can the hospital really do something for me?”
It was the voice of an educated man, the drawn face of a man in despair.
“We can do a great deal for you,” Cherry told him honestly. “You will learn to do practically everything you did before.”
“But I’m a teacher—the children might not like an artificial hand—” His whisper trailed off. “How will my own little girl feel about it? And I—I’ve got to support my wife and child.”
“The children will understand, I think. Did they like you before?” Cherry asked him.
“Yes. Very much.” He smiled, remembering.
“Then aren’t you probably worrying for nothing?” He considered, seemed to half accept this. Cherry patted him on the shoulder and straightened up. “Anyhow, it’s too soon to decide this now. Get well first. And you haven’t told me your name.”
“George Blumenthal.” He hesitated. “It could be worse. I saw eighteen men in my company killed around me. I’m pretty lucky.” He looked up at Cherry from his pillow with the ghost of a smile. “May I—may I phone my wife in Indianapolis? She’ll help me pull through this.”
“You certainly may. I’ll have a phone brought and plugged in here for you.”
Cherry stepped to the door, hailed a ward aide, and nearly collided with Ralph Pernatelli and his basket of Cokes. Ralph cheerfully distributed Cokes with his free arm while Cherry turned back to the two men on the cots.
The redheaded fellow was tall, thin, and freckled, only about nineteen, and in a full body cast from his armpits to his feet. He drawled at Cherry:
“I suppose you’re a Do-Gooder.”
“Heaven forbid. I’m a nurse,” Cherry answered and popped the thermometer into his mouth. He glared at her out of brilliantly blue eyes.
“What’s the matter with you, tough guy?” she asked as she removed the thermometer.
“Broken back.”
Cherry was careful not to offer sympathy. “We’ll get you fixed up. What’s your name, Red?”
“Bailey Matthews. Ranch hand from Texas. And don’t give me any pep talks!”
“I wouldn’t dare. I’m scared to death of you,” Cherry mocked. “Have a Coke? Want to phone?”
“Naw. Go away and let me alone.”
“The same to you, tough guy, only double,” and Cherry made a horrible face at him and walked away.
He grinned. “All right. All right. Hey!”
Cherry turned back to him.
“Those phone calls free?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
Ralph Pernatelli said comfortably, “Pay no attention to sourpuss. He’s got a suspicious nature. I only met him on the train but I know.”
Hy Leader in the wheel chair spoke up, almost fatherly. “Why don’t you call up your sister in Chicago, Red? It’s tough but you have to tell your folks sooner or later about that back.”
Cherry had more phones brought. The men’s faces, their voices, as they struggled to tell their families of their arrival and injuries, were very moving. Cherry turned away, to the young man on the last cot. He lay very still, thinking.
“Wouldn’t you like to phone too, soldier?”
“Thank you, ma’am, but no. Jim Travers is the name.”
Cherry bent over him. He was the most exhausted physically of any of her little group. His right leg was gone. But that alone was not enough to explain his pinched gray look and weak pulse. He would not look at her, as she checked him over.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to phone?” Cherry gently asked again.
“Who wants me now, with my leg gone?” He turned his face away.
Cherry understood then that Jim Travers’s deepest wound was of the spirit. That would be harder to heal than a leg.
“Your people don’t know, then,” she murmured.
“Only have my mother. In Oregon. She’s teaching in a country school. I was going back to take care of her.”
Cherry looked at his dressing and started to change it. “How old are you, Jim Travers?”
“Twenty-two.”
Cherry was shocked. At this moment, he looked forty.
“Jim. Listen to me. You think everything is over for you. But that’s not true. Give the hospital a chance to help you. Don’t give up before you at least give us a fair chanc
e.”
“You’re very kind, ma’am. But it’s no use.”
Cherry smiled at him. “Which would you prefer—fried chicken or steak? Or both?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t believe you. I’m going to hold a sizzling platter under your nose until you work up an appetite.”
But it did not work. The other four men were helped by corpsmen through baths, and into fresh pajamas and robes. Cherry in the meantime made her report to the doctor. Then the paymaster came in to give each man five dollars. It made them feel considerably more independent to have some pocket money, for their pay had not caught up with them. Then dinner was wheeled in, and the soldiers ate with good appetites. Cherry cut the meat for Ralph and the teacher, and fed Bailey Matthews each mouthful with an enormous GI soup spoon. Only Jim Travers did not eat, did not respond. Dinner over, an air of contented well-being spread through Cherry’s little receiving ward. Still Jim lay brooding, his face turned to the wall.
“I saw a piano in there,” Hy Leader announced, “and I’m going to play it. All right, nurse?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Pernatelli decided genially. “I’ll go along and get me a Coke.”
Out they trundled, awkward with wheel chair and arm cast but smiling.
“I could drink three or four more Cokes,” Red called. “Hey, Ralph, bring ’em back to me!”
“And a newspaper, please?” said George.
Cherry sat with her three bedridden patients. The afternoon light was fading and she turned on a lamp. It was quiet, with only snatches of talk and music drifting in from the sitting room. Matthews and Blumenthal were telling her how they got hit. They were eager to tell her, in detail. And these men, though badly hurt, were neither afraid nor sorry.
Jim Travers opened his eyes listlessly. Cherry went quickly to his cot.
“Are you in pain?”
“No, ma’am.”
Cherry looked down at him. It was apparent that he was facing his loss and that he was going through a crucible. Jim was battling within himself—not only how he was going to tell his mother but how he was going to go on living, a one-legged man.
Those laughing boys she had seen this morning—some of them had arrived here in just such black despondency, such terrible anxiety, as Jim. Yet they had struggled through to a healthier frame of mind. It could be done. Cherry thought hard.
“Jim,” she said. “Stop thinking of yourself on a street corner with a little tin cup. Other handicapped people—Edison, Steinmetz, Alec Templeton, Seversky—weren’t licked. You’ve got a future. It starts right here and now, when we move you in a few minutes to your permanent ward—Orthopedic Ward. Now come out of that tailspin!”
His heavy eyes sought hers.
“Look at George Blumenthal. Look at Red,” she appealed. “They’re up against it too. But they haven’t lost their grip. You’re going to depress them if you don’t snap out of this.”
“Yes, that’s so.” He said slowly, “Do you really believe I’ll ever be good for anything?”
“If you want to, you will. Determination helps.”
Jim closed his eyes again. There was no telling what he was thinking.
Cherry thought of the long, hard road ahead for Jim, and for all these young men, until they could be once more useful and independent. Much of their progress would depend on her.
“This won’t be nursing of the starched uniform and white cap kind,” Cherry warned herself. “This is going to be a fight for these boys’ whole future lives!”
CHAPTER IV
April Fool
BEING A FLOATER WAS FUN. CHERRY REALLY BEGAN TO know the hospital, by being assigned daily to different wards. Now, on this cool wet morning of April first, she was going to see still another new wing. For with the six a.m. rising bell in Nurses’ Quarters had come a knock at Cherry’s door. Sal Steen lolled there in pajamas, her pale-taffy hair dangling in her eyes.
“Cherry, will you be a good guy and do an errand for me? It’ll have to be on your lunch hour since it’s not your official business. I wouldn’t ask you except that I’m going to be very busy today.”
Cherry had pried open her black eyes with her fingers. “Who could refuse you, my sweet?”
“Well, will you go over to the Nephalogy Supply Room and get me six grams of tetrathyazide and bring it to Lieutenant Lewis on Ward 2D2?”
“Nephalogy?” Cherry repeated disbelievingly. “Tetrathyazide? What are those? Never heard of ’em. You’re making them up.”
“Oh, we have a lot of new stuff around here. New things all the time. Around lunch hour, hmm? And—and—don’t miss your lunch on my account, though.”
“Don’t worry. I consider food an all-star attraction. You couldn’t begin to compete.”
“Well, thanks,” Sal had said weakly and trailed back to her own room.
Cherry suspected Sal of being up to her usual tricks. So, as she did official errands all morning, Cherry inquired about this unofficial business.
It was early when she stopped by the physiotherapy rooms, where she delivered a patient for water spray massage to revive deadened nerves in his leg. She asked one of the husky physiotherapists about Sal’s instructions.
“Nephalogy?” This sturdy girl started running the complicated sprays. “Yes, I believe there is such a place. But I wouldn’t know as much about it as a regular nurse, or doctor.”
So when Cherry went way across the grounds to the huge general operating facilities, to watch a patient being brought back to his ward still under anesthetic, she asked a surgical nurse.
“Nephalogy Supply Room? Sure you don’t mean Neurology?” Then the nurse said, “Oh, yes, of course. Nephalogy. But I’m not sure where it’s located.”
“And tetrathyazide?” Cherry inquired suspiciously. “Is there such a medicine?”
One of the surgeons, overhearing, said, “Certainly. If they haven’t it at the Nephalogy Supply Room, ask for it at the general medical supply room or the pharmacy.”
“Thank you, sir.” She felt rather embarrassed that the surgeon had to correct her ignorance. But now, at least, she was getting some place. It was just a matter of locating the Nephalogy Supply Room.
Back she went across the yard, this time heading for the star-shaped building and some reports. It was good to be walking out of doors this fresh, damp morning. The first, sharp yellow-green shoots embroidered gaunt tree branches. Sparrows hopped, twittering, on the wet brown earth. It was a long hike, and Cherry arrived at the offices out of breath.
She had never been in this particular office before. Here was a corps of typists, and other young women working at the filing cabinets. Apparently all the confidential records of patients, medicines, and inner hospital workings were kept here under lock and key.
Over the clatter of typewriters, Cherry said to the first typist in the row, “Can you tell me where to get Captain Braden’s reports?”
The typist was a mousy person, neat and colorless. “I’ll get them for you, Lieutenant. Come with me.”
She led Cherry into an inner office and took keys from her pocket. She explained:
“I’m the head typist, sort of the office supervisor, really, even though I sit there and type with the rest of the girls.”
Cherry was not interested in this woman’s self-importance. She accepted the reports. “And you want Captain Braden to return them to—?”
“To me. Margaret Heller.”
“Yes, Miss Heller. Oh, by the way. Since you’re at the nerve center of the hospital— since you are a sort of guardian of information”— Cherry said ironically and Miss Heller gave a modest laugh —“can you tell me where Nephalogy Supply Room is? For medical supplies?”
“It must be Building 23. That’s where all the medical supply rooms are.”
Here was definite information at last. Cherry followed the head typist or supervisor or whatever she was out of the inner office and back into the crowded typing room. She was about to leave
when a soldier with an empty sleeve blocked the doorway. He was carrying a box for correspondence.
“Oh, did our post office send you over?” Miss Heller said. “Well, thank you, but I’m afraid—you—I see you’ve lost an arm.”
The soldier’s face turned bitter. “That so? It was there the last time I looked.”
There was a ghastly silence as some of the girls who had heard stopped typing.
Cherry went on to Neurosurgery shaking her curly head. How could that Heller say such a hurtful thing? Small wonder the boy gave her a withering answer.
Back at operating facilities, in the Neurosurgery, or nerve surgery, wing, Cherry briefly saw Captain Braden through a glass dome. He was doing an operation for fingers that would not bend, mending both nerves and bone. Cherry was fascinated but trotted off obediently. She had to clear up a question with one of the hospital dietitians, before she would be free, on lunch hour, to get Sal her medicine.
“And my feet are already protesting,” she told a squirrel that stopped her on the path. She dug into her pockets where, in self-defense, she had learned to stow peanuts. The squirrel ate, and scampered away.
On the stroke of noon, with the sun shining out in full glory, Cherry hiked another half mile in a hurry to Building 23. Two other nurses, looking as new here as Cherry felt, burst in the door with her. She heard them inquiring of an attendant for things she had never dreamed existed.
“And I’d like to know where Nephalogy is,” Cherry said.
The attendant said they had all better go up to the general supply room.
A flustered Army pharmacist was in charge behind a counter. He turned away the other two nurses because they lacked written orders for their requests. They forlornly left. Cherry refused to be turned away.
“Six grams of tetrathyazide,” she said stubbornly.
“Of what? There’s no such thing!” the man said.
“Isn’t this Nephalogy?”
“Young lady, are you kidding me? Or is somebody kidding you? All morning I’ve had idiotic requests.” He ran his hands through his hair.