by Helen Wells
Not much help to be had from him, Cherry decided. Perhaps she could reach Sal or Lieutenant Lewis on Ward 2D2 and confirm her facts. She asked the pharmacist’s permission to use his phone.
“Lieutenant Steen is off the ward for lunch,” said Sal’s ward.
Operator said, “There’s no such ward as 2D2.”
With growing suspicion, Cherry asked for Lieutenant Lewis.
“We have no Lewis listed,” said Operator.
Cherry hung up with a bang. It echoed through the big deserted room.
“Mr. Pharmacist, I was asked to come to a place which doesn’t exist—to get a medicine which doesn’t exist—to bring to a person who doesn’t exist—on a ward that isn’t there!”
The pharmacist merely persisted in looking glum.
“Today is April Fool,” Cherry reminded him gently. “Hmm. This appears to be the stock joke, to be played on all the new people. And gosh, the whole hospital staff is in on the game!” She started to laugh. “How they all cooperated in fooling me! Nurses—even that dignified surgeon—with such straight faces—!” She appealed to the pharmacist, “Don’t you think it’s funny?”
He said soberly, “I can usually see a joke. But not in here. We have a lot of valuables here under lock and key. I don’t want any intruders who might help themselves to these medicines.” He waved to the many locked doors. “That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to be wandering in and out of here.”
Cherry agreed politely but she was thinking that April Fools’ Day was only half over. She would have to think up a little something for Sal.
It was April Fools’ Day on Orthopedic Ward too. Cherry saw the debris of it as she reported on that afternoon: some crumpled telegrams which looked almost authentic, a package of dog biscuit (in a corner with tissue paper and ribbon, where someone had disgustedly hurled the gift), and a crutch with a string of garlic tied on it. Not much like a hospital, this cheerful, noisy place with bathrobed patients wandering around, kidding and entertaining themselves. Cherry passed a knot of them in the bright corridor outside the ward. There were man-sized couches out here, under a window wall, and a radio, a piano, a table littered with magazines and books, a ping-pong table too. All the young men looked—and actually were—so strong, young, solid, healthy, despite bandaged arms and legs. One embarrassed lad was being visited by parents who anxiously offered him brown paper bags of food.
Cherry grinned and went into the ward itself. She signed in—it was about one-thirty—and said good afternoon to the youthful nurse-lieutenant who was in charge of Orthopedic Ward.
“The patients have had their noon dinner, Lieutenant Ames. Will you just see who wants to nap and who would like something to do? I’ll go off for my own lunch now, and then to a lecture. If the Ward Officer comes before I get back, there are some dressings to change. Edith Randall is working in the lab next door if you want help.”
Cherry was pleased to be left in charge here. She would have a visit with Jim Travers and her original little group. Afternoons on the wards were always leisurely and pleasant. Orthopedic was an “active” ward with many of the patients up, only nine or ten in bed. A dozen of the almost-well patients were strolling in now after having spent busy mornings in the crafts shops of the hospital.
Cherry went over to say hello to Jim. He was in bed. Like all new arrivals, he had been X-rayed, thoroughly checked up, and given his beginning treatments. Four or five days ago, Jim had had a further operation. Now the stump of his leg was draining.
“Hello, how d’you feel?” Cherry greeted him. “You look pretty good today.”
“I feel pretty good, thanks. How are you?”
Cherry called over a medical Wac to refill the crushed ice bag for Jim’s leg. She straightened his rubber draw sheet and raised the head of his bed slightly. Then she told him:
“I’m coming back to you after I tend to the rest of the fellows.”
Jim smiled wanly. “Going to work on my morale?”
“No pep talks,” Cherry promised. “No phony rays of sunshine. I have a niftier plan.”
“What?”
“Won’t tell you.”
“Isn’t she a pest?”
That came from the next bed, from Bailey Matthews lying flat in his body length cast.
Cherry gave his red hair a tug. “Ah, good day to you, Brother Turtle. If you’d just pull your head down inside that shell, I wouldn’t have to listen to your insults.”
The Texan looked disgusted. “I wish everybody’d stop being so doggone nice to me. I can’t stand it. Those Red Cross females—I have to lie here flat on my back while they do good to me!”
Cherry ignored this ungracious gripe. “How’d you like to read?”
“Me? With a book? Do I look high-brow to you?”
“A book about horses. Mostly pictures. Different breeds and all. You can have comic strips too.”
“Well, that’s different. But you know I can’t read in this position!”
“Read on the ceiling,” Cherry said airily.
“Now I know you’re crazy!” Matty exploded.
But Cherry fixed him up. She brought a little machine resembling the home-style still pictures projector, set it on the floor, and put a cord with a push button in his hand. Then she inserted a 35-mm. microfilm into the projector. Hy Leader in his wheel chair and Ralph Pernatelli came up to watch. Jim looked on, too.
“Press the button, Matty,” she said. She drew down a window shade behind him.
The machine’s light turned on and page one, saying “Ride ’Em, Cowboy!” with a picture of a galloping horse, appeared two feet long on the ceiling, over Matty’s astonished eyes.
“Well, I’ll be doggoned!” Hy Leader said. He nearly fell out of his wheel chair trying to tilt it back so he too could lie flat and read. Cherry started to adjust the chair back for him. “I’ll do it myself,” he protested, and did.
Ralph lay down flat on the floor.
Matty finally reacted. “It’s not bad at all,” he begrudged. He looked perfectly delighted.
“Press the button to turn the page,” Cherry said. But they had forgotten she existed. Cherry chuckled to herself. Matty stopped his griping, Hy and Ralph forgot their throbbing pain, even Jim showed some interest, the moment they had something to keep them busy. “I guess that’s the whole secret,” she thought. She went along down the row of beds.
The teacher, George Blumenthal, was sitting up in bed. He was laboriously trying to write with his left hand.
“Stout fella,” Cherry said.
George looked up and smiled rather shyly. “It was my wife’s idea. She said on the phone to try it.”
Cherry hoped other patients’ families would take such constructive attitudes. She had a look at his dressing, then wheeled over the dressing carriage, took off the stained dressing with phenol forceps, and put on new sterile gauze with sterile forceps.
“Sorry to interrupt your writing, teacher, but we don’t allow infections around here.”
“Wait. I want to show you something.” He fumbled under his pillow. “These are pictures of my wife and baby. I’ve never seen the baby. She was born while I was overseas fighting.”
“They’re darlings, both of them,” Cherry said warmly, looking at the pictures.
“The baby’s name is Barbara Ann.” George Blumenthal proudly put the pictures away. “I hope the doctors won’t keep me here long.”
The patient in the next bed, Cherry knew, had no such impetus to get well quickly. This fretful, sulky boy felt sorry for himself. In fact, Cherry suspected that he enjoyed self-pity. And his low spirits were retarding his recovery.
“Hi, Orphan,” she greeted him. “When are you going to get up and take a stroll down the hall? How about right now?”
“What have I got to get up for?” he mumbled.
Two young men playing cards on the next bed jeered, “Poor Joe, nobody loves him.”
“Who could love a growler? Ah, pipe down, Jo
e. You should see my relatives. You’d be glad you’re an orphan.”
Cherry concealed her amusement at the way the lads themselves took care of a griper. “Come on, Joe, get up. You’re well enough. This is an order.”
He pointed to the letters on the pocket of his bathrobe, MDUSA, which stood for Medical Department, United States Army.
“See that?” he said gloomily. “Many die, you shall also.”
“I’ve seen you eat,” Cherry said. “You won’t die, not with that appetite. Get up, now, Orphan.”
She hurried him along a bit, for she really did have a plan about Jim Travers for this afternoon. With all the speed of a lazy cow, Joe climbed out of the high white iron bed, found his shoes, and clumped off wearing an injured air. Two minutes later, Cherry glimpsed him in the corridor. He was carefully setting the classic April Fools’ trap, tying a long string to a purse, then leaving the purse to be “found.”
Cherry saw to others of the patients: one with his leg held aloft in traction, listening to his radio, who matter-of-factly displayed the shell splinter on his bedside table—two Army fliers, making model planes, to exercise their wounded arms and shoulders—a lad who said he tried to take a nap “but it’s too noisy and party-like in here.” By midafternoon Red Cross Gray Ladies came in and passed out supplies of wool and leather to work with. Then corpsmen brought trays of ice cream and cake, with the compliments of the hospital chaplains. Finally the chief nurse of the ward returned and Cherry made her report.
Now she went back to Jim. Cherry felt he needed extra help, for in many ways—his severe wound, his elderly mother, his gentle nature—Jim was worse off than these other men.
“Think you could manage a ride in a chair, Jim?”
He said he had already been out of bed yesterday.
“All right, then. There’s something you ought to see.”
“It’s no use, ma’am,” the young man said. “I’ll get well and all but—” His lips tightened. He had no real hope. Though he must once have been a spunky sort, his confidence in himself now was gone. He had not yet, Cherry knew, faced the ordeal of telling his mother.
He cooperated well enough, though, as Cherry had two corpsmen lift him into a wheel chair. She settled him with ice bag and blankets, thinking, “Jim’s so sweet and decent, he’ll cooperate even when he doesn’t want to.” Her respect for him increased still more when she saw how erect and soldierly he sat in the wheel chair.
She wheeled him down the corridor to an elevator, then downstairs, then out the lobby into the wooden covered walk. It was pleasant being half indoors, half out, with the branches of trees trailing on the wooden roof.
“Anyone play any tricks on you today?” she teased as she rolled him along.
“No one but you, ma’am. What are we going to see?”
A strange gymnasium was what they had come to see. Here physical therapists, men in Army uniform, worked one by one with the patients. Here was a patient in pajamas laboriously turning a wheel with his braced arm. Another, with a leather-and-steel leg, slowly practiced standing, then taking a step, inside what looked like an adult-sized playpen. Still another with a leather leg held on to a handrail on the wall and walked. The determination on their faces was heartbreaking and magnificent to see.
Cherry moved slightly so that she could see Jim’s face. He was staring.
“Anyone with a leg that doesn’t fit?” one of the physical therapists called out to the room in general.
“I have a leg that doesn’t work!” the patient in the pen shouted back.
There was general laughter. Cherry saw Jim’s mouth tremble, as if he would almost smile with them.
“All sorts of interesting equipment here,” said Cherry casually. She pointed out a strapping soldier lying under a heat lamp. Another worked a foot press. One big fellow near them patiently groped to pick up pebbles with his toes.
“I caught a bullet in the Huertgen Forest,” he called over to Jim. “This leg was pretty useless at first.”
Jim echoed faintly, “At first.”
They stayed awhile longer. Then Cherry saw that her patient was growing tired. She wheeled him toward the door, but before they left, the patient who had been slowly walking along the wall hurried toward them on crutches.
“Hello,” he said to Jim. “I see you’re where I was, a few weeks ago. They had to amputate my left leg and I thought I would never walk or make a living for my family again.”
“Yeah,” said Jim but he was listening hard.
“Well, I was wrong. Everything is changed now.”
“I see. Thanks a lot.”
“Sure, fellow. They’ve got a car here, fixed with special pedals and brakes so we can drive. Those cars are going to be on the market right along.”
Jim did not say a word on their way back to the ward. Neither did Cherry.
When she was helping him back into bed, Jim said:
“I think I’d like to phone my mother.”
Cherry went off duty feeling very happy indeed.
Next, she hunted up Sal Steen and found her, head dripping, in the beauty parlor in Nurses’ Quarters. Cherry told Sal that she had duly secured the six grams of tetrathyazide from Nephalogy and that Lieutenant Lewis on 2D2 had been most grateful to receive it. Sal could only mutter a mystified “Thanks so much.”
Finally, Cherry went up to Sal’s room, made a piebed, systematically turned all Sal’s clothes wrong side out, and knotted her shoe laces.
All in all, Cherry considered as she went down to dinner, she had had an eminently satisfactory April Fools’ Day.
CHAPTER V
A Little Boy
CHERRY HAD HEARD VAGUELY ABOUT MR. AND MRS. DEmarest. They were well-to-do people who lived near Graham Hospital, in a big house with a rambling estate. Part of their home, and their gardens, were always hospitably open to convalescing soldiers from Graham, to drop in whenever they pleased. Cherry gathered that the Demarests were very pleasant and well liked. She heard too something less happy: that they had an only child, a son of four or five, who was very sick.
It remained for Sal to say to Cherry late one afternoon, after they had both gone off duty:
“Would you risk having your heart broken?”
“Why, Sal, that doesn’t sound like you!”
“This is nothing to laugh about. But I would like you to meet some awfully nice people—the Demarests.”
“The Demarests! I would like to know them. When?”
“Right now. We’ll get our coats.”
“But shouldn’t we change into fresh uniforms? They’re probably older people—sort of formal—they’d expect us to look just so—”
“Nothing of the sort. Come along.”
Sal and Cherry took the bus at the hospital gate, after showing the MP their credentials, and rode to the village. From there, they walked two blocks to the Demarest grounds. They entered a series of gardens and lawns, and walked almost another two blocks, until a stately house loomed up before them. It was a large, formal house and a butler opened the door. The two girls stepped into a circular hallway.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Steen,” the butler said. “Mrs. Demarest is expecting you.” He took their coats and asked Cherry’s name, then led them to an open door.
“Lieutenant Steen, Lieutenant Ames,” he said, and withdrew.
A pretty, youngish woman rose from a group of hospital people having tea. She came over to them smiling, hand outstretched.
“Hello, Sal, I saved you some muffins. And you, Lieutenant—”
“Cherry Ames, Mrs. Demarest,” Sal introduced them.
“Cherry—that’s an appropriate name for you. I’m glad Sal brought you. Mr. Demarest and I would like to know all the Graham people. Come in and have tea.”
Mrs. Demarest settled the girls on a sofa, introduced them to the dozen convalescing soldiers and their three nurses, and served them tea and sandwiches from a well-laden little table. While the soldiers engaged their hostess in co
nversation, Cherry took a moment to study her.
Young Mrs. Demarest was one of the most appealing women Cherry had ever seen. Not precisely pretty, she had an expression of responsiveness that made her glow like a lighted lamp. That warmth was in her face, her voice, her eyes, her eager movements. She was slender, brown-haired, and dressed very simply in a dark-green knitted suit.
The room caught Cherry’s eye next. It was a vast, beautiful sitting room, yellow and white, with fine polished furniture, mirrors, endless lamps and bibelots, Oriental rugs glowing like stained-glass windows on the floor. The room was formal, but the people living here were not.
Mrs. Demarest came to sit with Sal and Cherry.
“How did the boy with the bad back come through his operation?” she asked Sal. She listened with real concern to Sal’s reply, then said, “Is there anything he’d like that we could send him?”
“Yes,” said Sal frankly. “He’s longing for books about Asia. He was stationed in India and in Burma, and wants to know more about that whole part of the world. There isn’t much on that subject in our hospital library.”
Mrs. Demarest took a tiny notebook from her pocket and made an entry. Cherry saw there were many entries in that little book.
“Thank you, Mrs. Demarest,” Sal said. “He’ll enjoy them.”
“It’s little enough, my dear. What about your patients, Lieutenant Ames? Won’t you tell me about them?—Oh, wait a moment. Here comes my husband. I know he’ll want to hear too.”
A stocky, smiling young man walked in. He had very blue eyes and, like his wife, real cordiality. He spoke to all the visitors, seemed to know everyone already. His wife called him over and introduced him to Cherry.
“Hello, Miss Cherry. I hope you’ll come often, and bring your soldier patients.”
His handshake was firm and warm. Cherry thanked him and promised to bring her charges when they were better.
Then there was a moment’s silence while Mrs. Demarest looked anxiously at her husband.
“What did the New York specialist say?”