by Helen Wells
“I’m going soon too, I guess,” Sal said. “Funny how it hurts. Never mind, I bet you’ll be chief nurse some place else, I bet. And, anyhow, aren’t you sort of eager to get out and try something new?”
“I don’t know how I feel—it’s all happening so fast. Maybe I want to stay in—My discharge, already! All I know is, I have my men to take care of—lots of them are ready to transfer to Rehabilitation Centers. Oh, Sal!” she wailed. “I’m all topsy-turvy!”
Cherry sped off to Orthopedic Ward. She told everyone her news. Patients, nurses, ward helpers crowded around her. “Aw, when?” “Shucks, no!” “Miss Cherry, we’ll miss you!” “Don’t go! Re-enlist—we need you!”
Cherry smiled shakily at them all, too choked up to talk. All their faces looked very dear to her. Even the brand-new wounded men—why, even the familiar white iron beds—it would be a wrench to leave them all.
Cherry glanced around at the men, counting. The Orphan, Ralph, a new patient, like herself, were soon to leave. Jim was gone. Hy Leader would have to stay on for a while. Poor Matty might be here six months or a year, though his motto was “I’ll get there yet!” And here were brand-new wounded, new arrivals, lying in the beds.
“Oh, what am I to do?” Cherry thought desperately.
She went through her duties as if in a dream. Yet all she did for these men had a special urgency now—this might be the last nursing she did for these American soldiers.
How could she go off and leave them—Matty who terrified Cherry’s two assistant nurses—the new patient who had come down from Operating only yesterday—the amputees, the broken, the mending ones? How could she desert them? She knew so thoroughly, now, how to run this ward, getting a top yield of efficiency out of everyone’s work. Now, after months of slowly learned experience, she finally knew the best ways to talk to a wounded man, the surest methods of helping him get well. This was no time to leave, when she was more valuable to this Army hospital than ever before!
And if she left, could she be at peace with herself? Would she not be wondering how soon Hy Leader would walk again, and if Matty still had to wear his cast, and if George Blumenthal was going to teach again or not?
“These people are dear to me,” Cherry thought. “They’re mine—my charges. I ought to stay with them. I want to stay and care for them!”
And yet, as she worked daily on her ward, one incontrovertible fact stood out for Cherry. The Army Nurse Corps had said to her in effect, “You have done your full duty. You may go now, because your work here is done.”
Searchingly Cherry thought back over all her Army nursing days—in many lands, in many and thrilling types of nursing. She had worked hard and faithfully, earned a decoration, kept a consistently high record.
“Yes, I suppose I have been a good soldier. But,” Cherry wrestled with her conscience, “is my duty a matter of dates when my enlistment expires—or a matter of these pitiful men here still needing me?”
Doubts filled her and fought in her. Other days she saw the other side of the picture. There was other nursing to be done, outside of the Army—other people needed her, too. She tried to imagine them: men and women and children, and places, and undreamedof situations, which the future inevitably held in store for her. Her future was moving closer and closer to her right now. The very fact that the Army Nurse Corps told her she was free to go proved that an era was over, that times were changing, from war times back into the ways of peace. Perhaps she should recognize and accept the changed tempo, move along with the times. Perhaps it was a mistake to cling to a part of her work that was done now.
“But the war is not over for these ex-soldiers lying here in these beds!” her heart cried out.
Her mind answered, “Some of these poor fellows will be chained to their beds and wheel chairs for one, two, three years more. Twenty and thirty years from now, some few of them will still be in this hospital. What are you to do, Cherry Ames? Are you to spend the rest of your life here?”
No, no, that was not the solution, either.
In desperation she fled to Sal. Evening after evening, in Cherry’s room, the two girls debated all angles of the question. But when Cherry asked Sal to help her decide, Sal always said the same thing:
“No one can decide for you, Cherry. No one can ever rightly decide for another. No, you’ll have to battle it through by yourself.”
One day a letter from Jim arrived. It bore an Oregon postmark. Cherry was thrilled. She saved it to read on her lunch hour, and slipped back to her room to read it quietly.
It was a long letter, and a happy letter. Jim wrote movingly of his reunion with his mother, and of his profound relief to be in his own town and his own house once more. “Everything is the same,” he wrote, “only now, after what I have seen and lived through in war, I value it as I never did before. Nothing has changed—only I have changed. I think I have matured.”
Cherry smiled gravely at that. She too had seen war. She too had learned the full value of home and of this free, beautiful, friendly country. Perhaps—her thoughts swerved away from the letter in her hand—perhaps now that war was over, she should turn her attention and her energies to working here at home in civilian life. Even one single nurse could do a great deal toward keeping the nation healthy. If war had taught her anything, she reflected, it was to value and preserve and strengthen the ways of peace. To keep the peace! Surely building sound, healthy citizens was one of the foundations on which to build a sound, peace-preserving nation, wasn’t it? But why was Jim’s letter sending her off in this direction? She turned back to the closely written pages.
“—and the course in the Rehabilitation Center was wonderful. As a result of the course and the vocational placement service, I have a much better job now than I ever had before—leg or no leg! I know you’ll understand my pride when I tell you I am pumping a treadle machine. The one thing I doubted I could do—and I can do it!”
Cherry did understand, and was elated about it. She thought of Jim in his tall Oregon forests, lovingly handling the raw, fragrant wood, the sound of northern rivers forever in his ears. From a burning tank to those forests, from a moaning boy on a litter to a useful, happy man, from war to peace, was a long journey, in time, space, energy, and spirit. But Jim had accomplished it—and it struck Cherry that she had better accomplish it too. She had no right to be lingering on here in the Army, against the pull of changing times. Jim’s letter was making these things clear to her, very nearly making her decision for her.
“And now enough about myself,” Jim wrote. “My mother wants to add something.”
The handwriting changed to a round, clear, flourishing penmanship, such as Cherry had often beheld on the blackboard in her school days.
“Dear Miss Ames,” Jim’s mother wrote, “Jim has told me all about you. I have no way to thank you for what you did for my son. God bless you, and I hope you too will soon be back with your family. Mary A. Travers.”
Cherry pressed the letter to her cheek. Those few, simple words were so honestly felt that she could almost imagine Jim’s mother standing here beside her, saying, “Thank you, Cherry, for what you did for my son.”
She rose now and instead of going directly to her ward, Cherry went to the hospital’s main office. She told the nurse-captain there:
“Please notify Colonel Brown that Lieutenant Ames accepts her discharge from the Army Nurse Corps.”
There! It was done! A load lifted from her heart, and her eyes turned to the future.
But there were still her patients to take care of, and so much to be settled for them before she went away! Ralph and the Orphan and possibly George to be got ready for transfer to the Rehabilitation Center—Matty to have the old cast taken off and a new one put on; that would take an entire afternoon’s work—she would like to see a new cast on Hy Leader’s leg, too, before she left—changed diets to be arranged for the new fellows, final instructions for the nurses and all the helpers on her ward—there was so much to do!
In spite of he
r hurry, Cherry went one last time to the Demarests’. As she entered the beautiful house, all the earlier anxiety and heartbreak and relief she had felt here for Toby came sweeping over her again. But, thank heavens, she was saying good-bye today to a child who would live!
Toby was sitting up in a chair, to Cherry’s great delight. He refused to believe she was leaving.
“No more stories?” he asked, round-eyed. “No more Cherry?”
“Of course there’ll be more Cherry,” his young mother laughed. “After all, Cherry, you live only thirty miles away.”
“If you don’t come of your own accord,” Mr. Demarest said, “we’ll send our car over to get you. We want you to visit here, often—all of us.”
“Yes!” said Toby with great emphasis. “An’ I’ll tell you a story.”
“About a little boy who is getting well?” Cherry said. She kissed him, and reminisced awhile with his parents. Downstairs the rooms were full of convalescing soldiers, as usual. It was not hard to leave when she knew this was again a happy house.
The good-byes to her patients were more difficult.
Matty said, “You pestered me an awful lot but I forgive you.” He blurted out, “Thanks for everything.”
Cherry tugged his red hair. “Glad to get rid of you, you old toughie. Get well soon, do you hear?”
George Blumenthal shook hands with her, right-handed and proudly. “If there’s ever any way my wife or I can repay you, please, please, let us know. Here, I’ll write down our address for you.”
He wrote it with his artificial hand, and gave it to her smiling.
Hy Leader had a quip and the Orphan a hearty handshake for her. Ralph gave her three slender silver bracelets he had made and said, “You come up to Chicago, the Pernatellis will treat you like a queen. I mean that.”
Cherry laughed and joked with all of them, and suddenly fled when she felt her eyes brimming over. What good people they all were!
Sal refused to let her say good-bye. “I’ll be seeing you. Say, you need a haircut.” She blinked hard. “About half an inch off.”
“All right, Sal,” Cherry laughed. “A haircut and no good-byes.”
Back and forth across the velvety green lawns, Cherry went that last afternoon. She was winding up her work but mostly she was saying good-bye to the sunny livable buildings, to the covered walks, to the squirrels, to all the GIs walking slowly in maroon bathrobes and medals.
“Good-bye, good-bye!” her heart cried out. “I still feel guilty at leaving you behind. Get well and strong and follow me soon, back to civilian life!”
“Here we rebuild men,” Colonel Brown had told her when she had first arrived. Yes, Cherry had seen with her own eyes men salvaged and renewed, physically, socially, spiritually—perhaps grown stronger and more mature than ever before in their lives. What grit they had! What solid, sturdy, healthy stuff American boys were made of! To have had her own small part in helping Jim and Ralph and George and the others—this was deep satisfaction to Cherry. Well, it was done now. It was time for her to leave this place of determination, brave work, and warranted hope. The goals had been won.
Cherry took the same bus in which Jim had left. Like him, she saw one hospital building after another disappear behind trees, lost to her view.
She arrived home in Hilton at twilight, arms laden with Jim’s gifts and a red-and-white cake from all the boys, flowers from Sal and a copy of The Goldbrick with a farewell article about Lieutenant Cherry. This was the happy-sad ending of her Army days! Her parents were waiting for her on the porch, and Midge, and Dr. Joe.
“Welcome home!” they called to her, and ran down the walk to meet her. “So you’ve come to an ending, Cherry.”
“An end is also a beginning,” she said gravely. “I’m going on from here. To what, I don’t know yet—but I’m going on.”