by Helen Wells
“A fine thing to do to me!” he stormed at her.
“Why, you ungrateful wretch, I saved your life!”
“A fine ending you tacked onto our romantic day!”
Cherry started to laugh. She laughed until she was staggering and gasping. The more she laughed the more infuriated Wade became.
He stalked around the car, a wretched, soggy figure of would-be dignity. “I certainly don’t feel romantic about you now, Cherry Ames!” he shouted.
“—you unreasonable—Oh, you look so funny!”
“I wouldn’t marry you now for anything!” he roared at her.
“Nobody asked you, sir, she said,” Cherry retorted.
They drove back to town making puddles on the leather seat. Wade would not even speak to her. He looked straight ahead at the road all the way, as rivulets of water dripped from his flattened hair and ran off his nose.
At her house he let her out. His bag was already in the car.
“I’ve said good-bye to your parents,” he said frigidly. “Good-bye to you, too.” He let out the clutch with a savage jerk.
“Ah, Wade, don’t be angry—come in and get dry—”
“Good-bye, you—you lifesaver! I’m going to marry a soft, helpless feminine little girl who’d let me drown!”
“There’s your proof!” Cherry called after him. She dripped her way into the house still laughing. Apparently it wasn’t love, after all. But it was fun!
It took a week for Wade to cool off. Then Cherry received this letter from him:
“You cured me of my romantic notions, all right. I guess you were right all along. But even though we aren’t slated to be Papa and Mama, I can still foresee friendship for us. Can’t you? Please forgive my stomping off, Cherry, and I’ll be around to picnic with you sometime again. Wade.
“P.S. But not before I learn to swim.”
CHAPTER XII
Strange Story
TOO MUCH TIME HAD ELAPSED SINCE CHERRY’S LAST visit to Toby. Try as she might, she had difficulty in finding free hours. Besides her eight hours of ward duty, she had errands to do for the men, extra hours at the canteen, lectures to attend, not to mention mending and shampoos.
“If only I didn’t have to waste time eating and sleeping!” Cherry thought.
Finally Sal came to her rescue again. Sal was always willing to work extra hours, so Cherry might go to her small audience of one.
It was raining this afternoon as Cherry walked through the Demarest grounds. The rain was warm and sweet-smelling, and burst open the buds on bush and hedge. Perhaps Toby would be well enough to come outdoors into this garden some fine day very soon.
But Grace Demarest’s face gave Cherry a shock. Toby’s young mother looked today as she had when Cherry first met her: strained, hiding anxiety behind a false calm. Mr. Demarest was not around. The house was empty of visitors and unusually quiet.
“How is Toby?” Cherry asked without preliminaries.
Mrs. Demarest shook her head. “He’s not well, my dear. Not well at all.”
“But he was so improved just a short time ago—”
“Dr. Orchard told us it would not last. Toby is slipping back again—going back, and back, and back, to where he was.”
“But it’s so sudden.” Cherry thought if Toby had really been built up, the child could hold his ground a little longer than this. He had not really been built up, then. He had been depending on some medicine or drug, and apparently that drug had reached its saturation point in his system and could no longer help.
She ached all over for this sad woman beside her. But there was no use in offering theories or asking questions. That would only upset Mrs. Demarest more.
“Is Toby well enough for me to see him?” Cherry asked. “If he isn’t, I’ll come back another day.”
“Another day he will only be that much weaker, I’m afraid. Let’s go upstairs. He has been asking for you.”
Cherry was shocked when she saw the little boy. He still showed traces of having been stronger and livelier than before this strange treatment. But he was a paler, more listless little boy than Cherry had expected to see. It was not his condition today, so much as the warning it showed, that terrified Cherry. Toby’s health was coasting downhill again. As a nurse she recognized the danger signs. And she knew that, at this rate, Toby would rapidly be approaching the very bottom of his endurance.
“Cherry, where was you?” Toby smiled up at her, teasing. “I bet you forgot any more stories.”
“Oh, I still know dozens of stories, you rascal! But I guess you don’t want to hear any more stories.”
“Do too.” He leaned forward eagerly but the effort exhausted him. He seemed surprised and dizzy, and his mother had to lay him back against the pillows. He repeated in a whisper, “You forgot the stories! Ha ha!”
“Now don’t try to talk, dear, and Cherry will tell you a story.”
Cherry chose a gentle and fanciful one: the legend of the three Moorish princesses who lived in Spain, in the southern hill town of Granada, in the castle called the Alhambra. “They were three young sisters, and their names were Zaida, Zorayda, and Zorahayda.”
“Pretty names,” the child breathed. His little hand in hers was cold, despite the warm day and his blankets.
“They were very lonely and unhappy locked up in the castle, and they had three Spanish lovers who asked them to run away.” Cherry recounted Washington Irving’s resplendent tale—the escape of the eldest by night, the galloping horses, the crossing at the river. “Then the second sister decided she too would climb down from the high balcony, down the steep, dangerous hillside, to where her lover waited with swift horses.” And finally the tale was told, with the dutiful youngest sister left behind, to mourn her loneliness.
“She still sings and plays her dulcimer in the fountains at the Alhambra, and if you go there at night, and are very quiet, she will appear in the fountain in all her gorgeous raiment, and tell you her sad story.”
“And the mean old lady guardian got drownded in the river,” Toby repeated with relish. “Served her right. Served the mean old father right, too. Huh!”
His mother laughed softly. “Such indignation, Toby!”
He seemed satisfied, but so tired, his blue eyes were so heavy, that Cherry decided to go.
“I’ll come back tomorrow and tell you the most wonderful story yet,” she promised, looking down at him tenderly.
“Don’t go ’way,” he pleaded. “Please don’t go ’way. Tomorrow is far off. Maybe it’ll never get to be tomorrow.”
Cherry swallowed hard. Did the little fellow guess how unlikely his own tomorrows were? She avoided looking at his mother.
“Aw, Cherry, please stay. Please!”
She sat down again. All the old feeling of helplessness surged through her, to see his life trickling away. She remembered once going into a hospital kitchen and seeing a bottle of milk lying on its side where it had fallen over on the table. Most of the milk had already run out of the bottle. Cherry had stood there fascinated, watching the rest of the milk gurgle out in a small, slow, deliberate stream, slower and slower as the last remaining drops slid away, one by one, and the bottle was empty. That was the way life was slipping out of Toby’s small, starving body.
Stifling a sob, Cherry hastily excused herself and went quickly out of the room. On the landing, she almost collided with Toby’s nurse. Her eyes brimming with tears, Cherry searched the nurse’s face for signs of hope and encouragement regarding her little patient’s condition. The nurse shook her head slowly, “Poor little tyke!” she said. “If only Dr. Orchard could get some more of that wonderful medicine. It did the trick. But he can’t, it seems.”
“What medicine?” Cherry wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” the nurse was brusque in her reply. “Please, Lieutenant,” she begged, “don’t mention what I said to anyone.” A worried look crossed her face.
“But why?” Cherry demanded to know. “Why do you ask me not
to mention it to anyone?”
The nurse by now was almost frantic. “Please, Lieutenant, don’t ask me any more questions. Dr. Orchard asked me not to discuss this case with anyone—and he’s my superior. I must go back to my duties, now.” She almost ran in her haste to get away.
Cherry puzzled over the conversation she just had had, as she walked slowly back to the little boy’s bedroom and sat down. While Mrs. Demarest was quietly talking to Toby, Cherry’s mind was in a whirl. Why should Dr. Orchard be so secretive about his technique? Why had he evaded answering her when she had asked him what medicines or drugs he used, to have so remarkably improved Toby’s condition—and with such an obviously weak answer, too? What was this special medicine which the nurse was not to mention? And why couldn’t he get any more of it? Special medicine. Suddenly a thought struck her. Thinking back quickly, she remembered Toby had shown signs of improvement immediately after the robbery at the hospital. Could it have been those stolen amino acid medicines that had improved Toby so miraculously?
“It all seems to tie up!” Cherry exclaimed aloud.
“What did you say, my dear?” Mrs. Demarest asked.
“I said, I’d like to stay and see Dr. Orchard today. If you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, stay.”
“An’ tell me a story,” Toby said.
Cherry started another story, telling it absent-mindedly. She was occupied with a flood of questions about this clue she had just discovered. Chiefly: should she, had she any right, to follow a clue if it might mean closing off the source of Toby’s cure? How was she to balance the theft of the medicine needed for her soldiers versus the pathos of this little boy, the heartbreak of his parents?
“That’s not a very good story,” Toby said, with justice.
“I’m sorry, dear. I—”
“Tell me about the mean old lady getting drownded again.”
Cherry started once more on the story of the Moorish princesses, and was getting a fine, vengeful response from her small listener when Dr. Orchard arrived.
He seemed tired this afternoon, a little discouraged too.
“Hello, Mrs. Demarest. Oh, hello, Miss Ames. Well, Toby, are you in a better humor now than you were this morning?”
Toby sulked up at him in silence.
“Dr. Orchard is coming twice a day now,” Mrs. Demarest said to Cherry. She added half jokingly, “We’d be glad to have him move right in, if that would facilitate his work.”
“Thank you, but it’s not so simple as that.”
“If there is anything we can do—purchase for you—medicines, instruments—”
“The one thing I’d like to have, Mrs. Demarest, is not to be had for love or money,” he said.
“What is that?” Mrs. Demarest asked, and Cherry too was listening intently.
“Oh—” The plump young doctor laughed a bit. “Luck, I suppose. A little luck and more strength for this young man.”
Cherry thought, the stolen amino acid medicines cannot be purchased. Not anywhere, not for any sum, because they are still Army property, and still secret, not yet perfected. Other medicines, even other amino types, yes, but not these particular ones! She knew the Army Medical Corps did not want that medicine to get out. The hospital authorities had regarded the theft as a very serious blow. Luck, Dr. Orchard said he needed. Luck, indeed! Those special amino acid medicines were what he needed—unless Cherry’s reasoning was very wrong.
Cherry asked Dr. Orchard a question, phrasing it with care, to get the kind of answer she sought.
“Dr. Orchard, it’s correct, isn’t it, to assume that part of your treatment for Toby was a beneficial medicine?”
“Why, yes, naturally.”
Suddenly, giving him no warning, no time to get on guard, Cherry stated:
“And now you’ve run out of that medicine and need more.”
“Yes, I—” He started, checked himself. Fear came into his pale eyes.
Mrs. Demarest said innocently, “I do hope you’ll let us order more of it immediately.”
“I was going to give you a prescription for it this afternoon,” Dr. Orchard said. He took out his prescription pad and wrote. Cherry recognized the abbreviated Latin formula: it was a simple, common medicine, obtainable at any drugstore. Dr. Orchard looked at Cherry triumphantly, as he handed the slip of paper to Mrs. Demarest.
Cherry was not fooled. She knew this was not the medicine that had revived Toby’s assimilative powers. But she kept a bland face and let Dr. Orchard believe he had allayed her suspicions. Dr. Orchard had unwittingly confirmed those suspicions! Now she was ready to leave.
For the rest of that day, Cherry could think of nothing else. Again and again, she reviewed all the different little incidents that had led up to her belief that Dr. Orchard might have used the stolen amino drug on Toby. Step by step, over and over again—first, the robbery, then Toby’s miraculous improvement so soon after the robbery, Dr. Orchard’s evasion of her questions about his technique, and Toby’s relapse, the strange behavior of the nurse on the case, and finally Dr. Orchard’s writing of the prescription for a simple, common medicine obtainable at any drugstore. All these incidents seemed to connect in Cherry’s mind to form the one word—GUILTY!
Again and again she asked herself how, if he had used the stolen drug, had he accomplished the robbery? How could he have managed it? He had no access even to the hospital grounds, much less to an inner sanctum like the medical storeroom.
Or did he have an accomplice within the hospital? Not likely, Cherry thought. She had seen him with hospital people here at the Demarests’, but in every case, Dr. Orchard had only the slightest acquaintance with any of the hospital people. His practice, his personal life, so far as she knew, touched their lives almost not at all. Cherry was stumped.
But of one thing she was certain. If Dr. Orchard had used the stolen amino drug, he would probably try to go on using it—and there would be a second robbery from the medical storeroom!
Cherry resolved to keep her eyes and ears wide open, to watch for the warning moment.
She was in the ice-cream parlor with Sal Steen two evenings later. Somehow the gossipy atmosphere of the place set Sal to talking.
“The Demarest boy is worse. I was over there this afternoon. Wish you could get over tomorrow. He’s so thin it’s pathetic. His parents look like ghosts. Cherry, I’ve been wondering if those new amino acid medicines we know so little about might help save him. Of course we really don’t know about that special type the Army has. And I suppose they’ve tried everything.”
Cherry held her tongue. If she were wrong, it would be bad enough to get herself in trouble, without involving Sal too. “It’s a shame. It seems terrible enough when anyone dies, but when a little four-year-old drifts away like this—” She thought of young Mr. and Mrs. Demarest, who were so friendly and generous, and how they felt. “Just Dr. Orchard, the local doctor, is on the case now,” she reminded Sal.
“Speak of the devil—there’s your Dr. Orchard. Coming in.” Sal said incredulously, “Is that Margaret Heller coming in with him?”
Both girls stared. But the plump young doctor sat down alone at one table and Margaret Heller joined some women in a booth.
“I don’t like him,” Cherry admitted to Sal.
“You don’t like him for the same reason nobody likes him, much, that is. He’s so blamed ambitious and conceited and sort of cold. He’s just out to make himself a big medical reputation.”
“Well, I hope he can save the Demarest child,” Cherry replied.
“It would certainly boost him to fame if he could.”
Margaret Heller smiled stiffly as Cherry and Sal passed her booth on their way out. She certainly is a prim-looking person, Cherry thought. She looks about as efficient and appealing as a set of typewriter keys.
In Nurses’ Quarters, Cherry said good night to Sal and went into her own room. Instead of going to bed, she restlessly wandered around the room. Far in the back of her mind sh
e was thinking. But she could not dredge up these half-formed feelings, these obscure bits of ideas, into clear, definite thoughts. All she knew was that she distrusted Dr. Orchard. Her mind ticked away, singing a song she could not decipher.
“There must be an answer,” Cherry thought impatiently. “There must be.”
CHAPTER XIII
Midnight Discovery
GOOD NEWS CAME TO CHERRY ONE BRIGHT MORNING. The redoubtable Principal Chief Nurse had rated her performance “worth while” and elevated Cherry to be in charge of Orthopedic Ward.
Cherry was gratified but not excited about being chief nurse of the ward. Her work continued very much what it had been. Only now she had the responsibility of the ward, the paper work to do, visits to make to the X-ray and fluoroscope rooms. She had to watch that the other three nurse-lieutenants gave penicillin to the proper patients at exactly three-hour intervals, and she made the rounds of the patients morning and afternoon with the doctor. But Cherry still had time for play.
As Jim said, “It’s not only good care but having someone around when we need to talk, or could use a laugh.”
This warm afternoon Cherry had brought several of the advanced patients out on the hospital lawn. Established on blankets thrown over the grass, or in wheel chairs, Cherry then gave them milk and cookies.
“Quite an outing,” George approved. He held his milk in his left hand and managed the cookie with a metal hooklike contraption that served as his right hand. The hook did the job. George wore it openly, not ashamed, trusting other people to understand.
Redheaded Matty in his shortened cast and wheel chair grumbled good-humoredly as usual. “Look at them guys! Where’re they going with the fishing rods! Not to drink milk, I bet!” He pointed.
“All right, one of the corpsmen will take you fishing tomorrow,” Cherry promised. “Since that’s what your little heart desires.”
The ex-cowboy looked placated. “But you won’t make me eat the fish, you understand. I can’t stomach fish.”