by Helen Wells
“I’ve given you all the time I can spare. Good day, Lieutenant Ames.” It was a curt and final dismissal.
Cherry’s temper flared up at the coldness, the callousness of this woman. “I’ll be darned,” she thought, “if I’ll let her throw me out. Not with Toby’s life at stake!” Aloud she said, her black eyes flashing, and her cheeks hotly flushed:
“I’m sorry to intrude on you, Colonel Brown, but I must stay until you answer a crucial question.”
“Oh, indeed! Lieutenant Ames.”
“Yes, ma’am, I must!” Cherry countered stubbornly.
Unexpectedly, Colonel Brown looked amused. So she liked people to stand up to her! “All right,” she said more amenably, and actually sat down at her desk to listen. “What is it?”
Cherry’s words came tumbling out. She reminded the Principal Chief Nurse of all that Toby’s parents had done for the soldier patients—of their generosity and unselfishness even in the face of their own tragedy. She pleaded with the colonel to secure the authorization to release the amino medicines for the little boy. “If you only will, Colonel Brown! There is no other way to get it for him—and without it—”
“You plead a beautiful case, Lieutenant Ames.” And to Cherry’s amazement, there was a twinkle in the fierce little nurse’s eyes. “For your information, I have already applied for, and have received the authorization. Toby will have his medicine. All he needs. And now, Lieutenant Ames, the door out is there.”
“Thank you very—”
“Don’t stop to thank me! Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Cherry fled, laughing to herself, and happy. What a relief! Toby would have the essential medicine! That old crosspatch—but she wasn’t such an old crosspatch after all—would get the medicine to Toby without delay too. Now Toby would be cured!
She raced to a phone booth and called the Demarest home. The butler answered. “Tell Mr. and Mrs. Demarest that Lieutenant Ames has wonderful news for them—and will be right over!”
Bill and Grace Demarest were waiting for her on the road at the bus stop. Their drawn faces tensed still more as she ran up to them.
“Cherry, what is it? It’s about Toby, isn’t it?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Cherry sang out. “Toby is to get that medicine—right away—for as long as he needs it! The Army Medical Corps will supply it!”
The two Demarests burst into confused, happy words. Mrs. Demarest clung to Cherry’s arm, hardly knowing what she was saying.
“Toby will live, now! He’ll live! Our little boy—!”
A horn honked as a staff car pulled up. In it sat Colonel Brown, stiff as a ramrod, her face severe, her visored hat on askew in her hurry. In her lap was a parcel. The medicine!
“I’ve come to investigate this case myself and secure verification of the facts, Lieutenant Ames. Where are the Demarests?”
“We’re Toby’s parents, Colonel,” Mr. Demarest said. “If you’ll be good enough to drive up to our house and come in—”
“Get in, get in! Hurry up, I’m a busy woman.”
Cherry came as near to hugging the fierce little nurse, at that moment, as anyone probably had ever done.
At the house, Cherry left the Demarests with the colonel in the living room—not risking the colonel’s curt dismissal. Besides, she could not wait to see Toby, on this day of days!
The little boy’s pallor and weakness did not hurt her today as before. Now Toby would be not traveling downhill, but marching uphill to health. Now his present pitiful condition would be only a yardstick by which to measure his sure, lasting recovery. Of all the days she had visited Toby, this was the happiest day.
“H’lo, Cherry. Your cheeks are awful red. Like a napple.”
“Like red cherries,” his nurse smiled. “I’ll leave you two old cronies together.” She closed the door behind her.
Cherry sat down in her usual place by Toby’s bed. Her black eyes danced at him. “Want to hear the happiest story I ever told you yet?”
“Yes!”
“All right. Once upon a time there was a little boy who was sick—”
“Like me?”
“Just like you. In fact, his name was Toby.”
Toby began to smile. “Was he a nice little boy?”
“An extremely nice little boy. Everybody liked him. He—”
“Was this Toby—was he me?”
“Well, that’s for you to decide—when we get to the end of the story.”
Cherry’s story version of the illness was much merrier than it had been in fact. There were imaginary doctors in the shape of birds and elephants mixed up in it, who tried to cure the small patient with peanuts and flying lessons from the branch of a tree. There were also, on demand, cops and robbers whom the storied Toby dealt with mightily.
“Never mind the elephants and robbers any more,” Toby decided. “Tell me about did the little boy get well?”
“Yes, he did get well. Quickly, too. And he stayed well.”
“An’ did he go to a circus?”
“To a circus, and to school with the other children, and swimming and hiking, and he grew up to be a strong man.”
Toby listened with merriment in his very blue eyes. “I’m not a grown-up man yet.”
“Oho, who said the little boy in the story was you?”
“Yes, it is. You can’t fool me. It’s the same Toby who gets well!”
Cherry nodded, smiling, and he nodded his head in time with hers.
“Now isn’t that the best story I ever told you?”
He asked her soberly, “Am I really going to get well?”
“Yes, darling, you are.”
He sighed and turned over on the pillows, thinking. Presently he reached out and tried to pull Cherry’s rosy face down to his.
“What is it, Toby?”
“I want to kiss you on account of you tell me all those stories.”
He planted a large, noisy, fervent kiss on her cheek.
“Now you kiss me too.”
Cherry obliged, with feeling.
“Now you rest,” she said. “Because getting well is a job, and you have to work at it.”
He closed his eyes tightly. “A’ right, I’m resting.”
Cherry tiptoed away from the bed.
“Will I be all well tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, but soon—if you rest now.”
“Like Toby in the story.” He screwed up his eyes again and snuggled contentedly into the covers.
Cherry had to pause on the upper landing and blink the happy tears out of her eyes. Then she went on downstairs, to join the Demarests in the living room.
Colonel Brown was in the music room, talking to someone. Mrs. Demarest had unashamedly been crying.
“We don’t know how to thank you, Cherry,” Mr. Demarest said.
“There’s nothing to thank me for,” she said honestly. “Thank Colonel Brown. I’m only relieved that the whole affair has turned out so fortunately.”
Then Cherry saw who was in the other room with Colonel Brown. It was Dr. Orchard. Mrs. Demarest murmured to Cherry that the colonel had telephoned him to come over here, for questioning. They came out of the music room together, the young doctor looking haggard and sullen—but confident!
He bowed sarcastically to Cherry. “Well! This is a pleasure, Miss Ames.”
Cherry looked back at him levelly. “Dr. Orchard.” She supposed he hated her now. For it was she who had uncovered his dishonesty, wrecked his ambitious plan, cost him a wealthy client.
“I can guess what you’re thinking,” Dr. Orchard said sullenly to Cherry, before all the others. “In a way, I admire you. You were as clever as I am myself.”
Colonel Brown observed sarcastically, “You can hardly compare Lieutenant Ames with yourself, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry you think I did anything wrong, madam. I cannot see that saving a dying child is wrong.” But his sullen face and voice revealed his fury at being caught.
Colonel Brown stud
ied him with shrewd eyes that had seen generations of medical people. “Saving the child of course is commendable, but weren’t you—ah—also, or primarily, aiming at making a spectacular reputation for yourself? Dying child—prominent family—big specialists give up the case. But youthful local doctor finds the cure.” She snorted and tossed her white head. “I’ve known unscrupulous men before.”
Dr. Orchard smiled a cocky smile. “Madam, I have made a reputation for myself, despite everything you say. And because of the extenuating circumstances, I probably will be allowed to go on practicing. You agree, don’t you? Yes. And I will also,” he boasted, “get credit for developing a little known medicine.”
“I think not!” Colonel Brown said sharply. “In the interests of my military patients, and of decency in the medical profession, I shall take steps to see that you get credit only for thieving. I can handle you, my smart-alecky lad!”
Cherry found herself thinking that there was something to be said in favor of battle-axes, after all!
Mrs. Demarest said, with pity in her voice, “What are you going to do now, Dr. Orchard?”
“I am planning to go to the Coast immediately after my acquittal. I have a fine offer there.”
No one was cruel enough to say what they were all thinking: that he probably had no offer—that this was the traditional “staying away until the trouble blows over,” unless he were sent to jail first.
Cherry wondered how Margaret Heller would feel, when she learned that her admired Dr. Orchard would allow her to face the disgrace alone. Pretty callous of him! Cherry very nearly pitied Heller, then. Cherry wondered, too, what doctor the Demarests would get for Toby now.
Colonel Brown cleared her throat, and they all jumped. “I’m leaving. You may ride back to the hospital with me, Lieutenant Ames, if you like.”
Cherry did not “like” but she obediently bade goodbye to the Demarests, nodded to Dr. Orchard, and climbed into the staff car after the doughty colonel.
A happy day had come for Jim, too. He was about to be medically discharged from the Army hospital. It hardly seemed possible to Cherry that this young man whom she had nursed and encouraged through so many stages now was to disappear out of her life. Of course she was delighted for Jim’s sake that he was well and strong again—that he was about to take the final hurdle back into civilian life. There remained one more phase of rehabilitation, by which the Army could help Jim Travers.
Bright and early one morning, Cherry asked Jim to dress up and come with her.
“I’m taking you to a new start in life.” She said it lightly but it was true.
“I can hardly believe I’m getting out,” Jim confided, as they walked along the hospital paths under branching trees. “I’m plenty anxious, too, about how I’m going to fit in at home.”
“That’s what these Vocational Rehabilitation people are here for.”
Cherry led Jim into the hospital’s Vocation Rehabilitation office and introduced him to a man in khaki, one of many Army men behind desks. This was going to be a crucially important interview for Jim. Cherry thought she had better not intrude.
“No, don’t go away, Miss Cherry,” Jim said.
So Cherry sat down beside the desk and listened.
“In the first place,” said the vocational guidance man, “you don’t have to do anything I suggest, Sergeant Travers. You don’t even have to submit to this interview, unless you want to. But maybe I can be of help to you.”
Jim nodded. The vocational guidance man explained that it was his business to know what jobs were currently open all over the country. It was also his business to test Jim for the jobs he could do, or could learn to do, with the bad leg. If Jim wanted to, he could have, free of charge, a government course of training which would increase his skills and his earnings, for all the rest of his life.
“I’d like more education,” Jim said eagerly.
“All right,” the interviewer said. “The government will send you veterans through college, supplying you with a modest living allowance, if you’d like that, Sergeant.”
Jim thought. “I’d certainly like that. But I can’t afford to put off earning a good living. Guess the kind of education I want is vocational.”
“All right to that too,” the interviewer said. They talked it over for a while. The vocational guidance man cited cases: the musician whose badly burned hands cut him off from his profession but whom the government was training to be a teacher of music; the former truck driver who had always wanted to be a draftsman and was learning this new trade with the Army’s aid; the blinded boy who was learning to become an inspector of machine parts by touch. “But of course you, Sergeant Travers, don’t have to learn a new trade.”
“I’d like to go back to woodworking,” Jim said. “I like wood and I want to go back to my Oregon forests.”
So, with Cherry’s encouragement, he signed up for a brief, advanced course in woodworking. This he would take at the Rehabilitation Center in another state. There, too, further exercise, good food, and outdoor living would build him up to solid health. From the Rehabilitation Center, Jim would go home.
“I’m really leaving Graham,” he whispered to Cherry, as the interviewer wrote out the necessary papers.
“Remember the day you arrived?” she whispered back.
“Gosh, yes! What a contrast!”
The vocational guidance man said, “Now let’s go back to what we were saying at the beginning. What jobs are open—what jobs you, Jim Travers, can and want to do—and now, the third step. Now we fit you in the right job for you. The job where you’ll do best and stay put. No hit or miss if we can help it!”
Jim said his old job was being held open for him, for a start. The interviewer dug up two other woodworking jobs in Oregon, which Jim might apply for. They could not decide. Finally Cherry suggested:
“Why don’t you take time to think it over? Finish your course at the Rehabilitation Center first, and then talk it over again at a vocational office wherever you are.”
“I’ll write you and let you know what I decide.”
“And write me how you make out on your first job.” She smiled.
Jim packed that afternoon. Cherry felt badly to face this good-bye, putting it off as long as possible. She had already made train arrangements for him through the main office. Now she tucked some lunch in his pocket, had a corpsman check his heavy duffel bag through, and waited, smiling, while Jim said all the good-byes to the other men on the ward.
“All ready,” he said reluctantly.
They went downstairs and started walking across the hospital grounds. Jim looked fine, erect and well in freshly pressed khaki, walking without even a cane. Cherry told him so, complimenting him.
“So you’re going to be independent and take care of your mother, after all!” Cherry rejoiced. “You’re valuable manpower, Jim.” Even after Jim was retrained and employed, the vocational man had said, the government would give Jim further advice or training or hospital care, if he ever needed it.
Jim smiled and his face was full of sweetness. “I don’t know how to thank you. Yes, I do, a little bit. Come over to the crafts shop with me, please? We have time.”
There Jim piled into her arms three finely made boxes, cherry wood and rosewood and cedar, for the three members of the Ames family whom he knew. Each box was different, each beautiful.
“I wish I had a gift to give you, Jim.”
“You’ve already given me the best gift there is. You’ve been my nurse.”
That was something she would always remember.
They reached the Evacuation Building and went in. Then they stood in the barnlike room, Cherry with Jim’s gifts in her arms, watching the wall clock tick away the last few minutes.
“You watch that leg, Jim. Keep it clean, and always wear clean stump socks. And if the artificial leg no longer fits, ask the Army for a new one.”
“Yes, ma’am. You—you take care of yourself, too.”
“I wil
l. Would you—give my regards to your mother, even if I don’t know her?”
Jim smiled and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Yes, I will. There’s my bus pulling up now.”
They stood and smiled at each other, then slowly moved to the open door. They shook hands just before Jim boarded the bus.
“We won’t say good-bye, Miss Cherry.
Just so long.” “Just so long. Take care of yourself, Jim!”
“I’ll write you. And—thanks. Thanks with all my heart.”
The bus rolled off. Cherry shifted the boxes to one arm and waved frantically.
“Good luck! So long!” Her voice broke.
Jim waved from a window until the bus swerved and was hidden behind trees.
Cherry stood in the empty road, crying. She had never cried before over any patient. But never before had she experienced so profoundly the relationship of nurse and patient. Besides, these were tears of joy. She had nursed a broken, hopeless young man back to manhood.
“What a reward!” she thought. “What a reward for my work!”
She lifted her wet face proudly, and started back to her ward.
CHAPTER XV
End and Beginning
SUDDENLY IT WAS ALL OVER. CHERRY FOUND IN HER mail box at Nurses’ Quarters a notice that her term of enlistment in the Army Nurse Corps—“for the duration plus six months”—was at an end. She was out of the Army! Cherry had not realized it was coming so soon—had not kept track of the dates. But here it was—and here she was—not knowing whether to be glad or sorry. She was so stunned she did not know what to think.
She ran to find Sal, who was on a ward adjoining her own.
“Sal! I’ve got my discharge! I’m supposed to be leaving!”
“Oh, no, Cherry,” Sal said sadly. “When?”
“Right away. In a day or two, I guess.”
“So soon? Do you want to leave?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know anything! Gosh, Sal, and I just was made chief nurse.”
Sal put her arm around Cherry. “You could always re-enlist.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I ought to.” Cherry shook her dark curls in bewilderment.