by Helen Wells
It was only at seven that morning, when Cherry walked slowly across the lawn under a clear blue sky and listened to the birds singing, that she realized something. One big thing emerged strongly and wonderfully out of the night’s tangled experience. Until now, Dr. Joe’s drug had been used only on the three test cases. Now it had been used in actual practice—, and by an authoritative surgeon—and it had worked! It was that much nearer official acceptance now! His worries were almost over! The load on Cherry’s heart lifted and she relaxed.
“Why, it’s a miracle,” she whispered to herself. “Without meaning to, I’ve almost solved Dr. Joe’s problem! Surely Dr. Wylie will endorse the drug now! Think of the people that drug’s going to save!” She looked up at the coral streaks in the early morning sky as if she had never seen the sun before. “Why, that’s what matters! Even if I never can be a nurse, Dr. Joe’s drug is closer to being accepted! Even if I fail, I’ve accomplished that!”
She walked on alone across the lawn with a new courage coming to life within her.
CHAPTER XII
Farewell and Hail!
THERE WAS A NOTE UNDER CHERRY’S DOOR WHEN SHE woke up. It read:
Report to Training School Office at 3 P.M.
M. R. Reamer
It was strange to have to hide the note, and to be unable to tell Ann and Gwen about the interview she faced. At three o’clock, Cherry reluctantly went into Miss Reamer’s office, all alone.
Dr. Wylie and the Superintendent of Nurses were seated across from her on the other side of Miss Reamer’s desk.
“Sit down, Miss Ames,” Miss Reamer said, pleasantly enough.
Cherry gratefully dropped into a chair, smoothing her blue and white striped uniform. She did not know how much longer, after this talk, she would be allowed to wear that beloved uniform and cap.
Dr. Wylie cleared his throat. He looked at her uncompromisingly as ever. “My colleague and I have been discussing what happened last night. Miss Reamer, as you may or may not have guessed, and as not even Miss Hall knows, has been aware of the—er—unusual situation from the beginning.” Cherry had not known that. That helped matters. Or did it? “What Miss Reamer did not know was that you were involved in—er—it.”
Miss Reamer looked at Cherry with an amused smile. “You certainly were involved last night, weren’t you, Miss Ames?” Cherry breathed easier.
“I only did what I thought was right,” she said.
“Hmm. You told me as much last night,” Dr. Wylie said dryly, “in no uncertain terms.” He glared at Cherry. “You’re a spunky young woman, even if you are impertinent. And I must ask you again to take off that rouge!” Cherry sighed and glanced at Miss Reamer, who bit her twitching lips and hastily looked at the floor. “To get back to the point, I feel that you are to be congratulated on your courage and initiative. You are really a nurse.”
Cherry gripped the arms of her chair, not sure she was hearing correctly. Really a nurse, he said!
Both Dr. Wylie and Miss Reamer were smiling at her now. “Then I’m not to be—But I left my ward and the relief nurse reported me!”
Miss Reamer leaned forward. “Don’t worry, my dear. This will not be a demerit on your record—quite the contrary.”
Cherry looked at them both and blinked. “Then—then it’s all right?” she managed to get out.
“It’s more than all right. I said I congratulated you, didn’t I?” Dr. Wylie said as gruffly as ever. He stood up. “I understand you know Dr. Joseph Fortune, the discoverer of the anaesthetic we used last night?”
Cherry smiled. “I’ve known him since my first breath, sir.”
“Do you suppose he would be interested in coming to the hospital to discuss doing further research in our laboratories? His drug needs a little more testing on volunteer patients, and it needs a minor improvement or two, to make it entirely perfect and acceptable.”
“Would he!” Cherry sprang to her feet. “Oh, Dr. Wylie, it’s what he’s always dreamed of! And what I’ve always hoped for him!”
“Hmm. Fine. Very good.” Cherry saw how embarrassed Dr. Wylie was at her happiness. She caught Miss Reamer’s twinkle of amusement. “Give me his address and I’ll invite him to come to talk with me at once.” He stalked out.
Cherry and Miss Reamer sat there looking at each other, all but laughing. “He’s an old darling and an old bluff,” Cherry thought. Well, her feud with Dr. Wylie was finally over. She saw that Miss Reamer was studying her.
“You’re very tired, aren’t you, Miss Ames? I think you’ve happened to draw the heaviest assignments of any first-year student, this year, and then last night … I recommend that you take your month’s vacation earlier than usual. I’ll arrange it so that you do not miss any of your work when you return.”
“But I was looking forward to Children’s Ward,” Cherry cried, “and all the other girls will be going on——”
“The hospital and your classmates all will be here when you get back,” Miss Reamer assured her. “I think a month of breakfasts in bed and forgetting all about nursing is what you need just now.”
“I’ll never forget about nursing,” Cherry said as Miss Reamer took her to the door.
“I know you won’t. You are a fine student, Miss Ames, and you are going to make a fine nurse.”
Cherry went out into the lobby rather dazed. All those doubts about whether she would make a nurse gone, now! Gone and on the best authority! Cherry almost danced through the corridors.
She was so happy and she longed to share her happiness and excitement with Ann and Gwen. But she dare not say a word to anyone, for that might lead to questions on the secret of the forbidden room. And just because she dare not talk and was bursting to, she had to meet all the people she would have loved to have told! Ruth Schwartz and Miss Mac stopped her in the hall, and at the door to the yard Dr. Freeman and Dr. “Ding” Jackson called after her. Mai Lee and Bertha and Josie and Ann and Gwen called to her from the lounge. If she got to talking to them, she would burst! Cherry fled. She sought out Dr. Jim Clayton in the small, deserted reference library.
“Hello!” he said. He looked very sleepy. “I certainly am glad to see you. I’m going to explode if I don’t talk to someone. Can’t even tell Marjory. Do you feel the same way?”
Cherry nodded and perched on his desk. He put down the pamphlet he was studying and tilted his feet up. They beamed at each other. It was nice to know that, Marjory Baker or no Marjory Baker, they were still the best of friends. “Just like it always was,” Cherry thought with satisfaction. “I guess that proves I wasn’t in love with him. And I’m so fond of Marjory that it couldn’t be nicer.”
“What a night!” Jim Clayton said. “Are you all straightened out with the powers that be?”
Cherry nodded and told him, too, of Dr. Wylie’s forthcoming invitation to Dr. Joe. Jim Clayton was glad, she could see it.
Marjory Baker came in just then. She, too, looked very sleepy, her clear hazel eyes heavy and her soft blonde hair flying about a wan little face. “What a night!” she greeted them. “Jim says I mustn’t ask about last night’s mysterious comings and goings, but it looks as if you two were conspirators! And what are you two up to now?” She sat down beside Cherry, her feet dangling. “Doctor, what do you think of my little probie being entrusted with night duty already?” She looked at Cherry proudly.
“I think your little ex-probie looks tired,” Jim said.
And Cherry really was very tired. Now that the tension was over, and she began to relax, she realized Miss Reamer was right.
She was transferred to Men’s Medical and did her routine work there rather automatically. What really kept her interested was the prospect of Dr. Joe’s visit to the hospital. It would be wonderful to see him successful, after that lonely struggle. And it would be interesting to see Dr. Joe and Dr. Wylie together. Cherry was a bit doubtful as to how the two men would get along. A mere student nurse would not be invited to the interview, anyway. Dr. Joe would tell her al
l about it afterwards. And Dr. Joe would tell her too, she hoped, all the news of Hilton and her family and Midge.
Cherry was walking past the private pavilion one afternoon with Ann and Gwen when they passed the door marked “Broom Closet.” They had just come off duty and stood there waiting for the elevator.
“Funny place for a broom closet,” Ann remarked observantly.
“Yes, isn’t it,” Gwen said. Her lively freckled face was all curiosity.
Cherry held her breath. “I don’t think so,” she said loudly.
Just then one of the maids, whom Cherry had known on Men’s Orthopedic, came by with a bucket and a mop.
“Hello, Miss Ames,” the maid said, importantly jangling the bunch of keys at her belt. “It’s kind of tame around here without you. Plenty of excitement when you were around.”
“Uh—is that so?” Cherry said. Did the maid know anything? She could not take her eyes off the little figure in the black dress and white apron, for the maid was fitting a key into the “Broom Closet” door. The door swung open. The room was full of pails, brooms, ironing boards. The bed, the maps, the mystery general were gone. Cherry blinked. Maybe she had dreamed the whole thing.
“There, you see,” Gwen was saying, “it is a closet, Ann.” And the three of them stepped into the elevator. “What are you muttering, Cherry? It sounds to me like ‘broom closet, broom closet, broom closet.’”
“It is,” Cherry said. “Never mind, children. Ames is a sad case but not violent. Would you hate me if I had a secret I didn’t tell you?” she said suddenly.
“No!” they chorused.
Ann added, “We guarantee to love you under any and all circumstances. Not that we wouldn’t adore knowing a secret, but we are too polite to inquire.”
And Gwen said with a grin, “A secret is something you don’t tell. I’m a good deal more interested in getting a chocolate soda.”
So they went off and had a chocolate soda apiece, happily ruining their appetites for dinner. “They’re good, understanding, unselfish friends,” Cherry thought gratefully. It was going to be fun going through junior and senior years with them.
Cherry was busy on Men’s Medical Ward one hot afternoon when the ward phone rang and she was told to report to T.S.O. That did not alarm her as it once might have. She pinned her cap more firmly in place, wished for a clean apron, and ran down to Miss Reamer’s office. But Miss Reamer was not there. Instead, she found Dr. Wylie and Dr. Joe.
“Cherry!” He stood up and held out both hands to her. “How are you, child?” She ran to him, smiling at his untidy suit and his boyish shock of gray hair.
“Oh, Dr. Joe, has Dr. Wylie told you the wonderful news?”
Dr. Wylie looked a little startled at this warm reunion but he smiled. It was rather like an iceberg cracking, but Cherry was no longer afraid of the surgeon.
“Dr. Wylie has told me,” Dr. Joe said in his deep slow voice, “what you did. Good girl! Midge is beside herself, about the way you’ve brought my drug to Dr. Wylie’s attention. And so am I,” he admitted with candor. The two men talked about the drug while Cherry watched them.
Cherry noticed that when Dr. Wylie looked at Dr. Joe, his grim face softened and he chuckled indulgently at some of Dr. Joe’s artless, whole-hearted mannerisms. Dr. Joe, in his turn, treated the great surgeon with the same simple unimpressed friendliness he treated everyone, from Hilton’s mayor to the ten-year-old delivery boy. But of the two, plain little Dr. Joe had the greater dignity and it was Dr. Wylie whose manner was respectful. Cherry was touched. If Dr. Wylie so frankly took his hat off to Dr. Joe, he was pretty nice at that.
“So you will come to the hospital and work in our laboratories?” Dr. Wylie said with undisguised eagerness. He made it sound as if it were Dr. Joe conferring the favor.
Dr. Joe’s eyes shone. “I—Thank you, sir. Nothing would make me happier. I am exceedingly grateful to you for the opportunity.”
“I believe deeply in your discovery. It saved a great man. Your drug, and Miss Ames alertness,” Dr. Wylie said. Cherry had never heard Dr. Wylie talk like this before, never seen his old hawk face so relaxed. He was different in Dr. Joe’s presence. “Will you come this fall?” he pressed Dr. Joe.
Dr. Joe smiled. “I would like to start in this very minute! You can be sure I’ll come! But Hilton has a new clinic and they have asked me to contribute my services. And even more pressing, I am working on a derivative of this same drug and I ought to finish that part of the research first. I should like to think over a bit how I am going to arrange the research and divide my time between research and the clinic. Perhaps I shall have to divide the research between next year and the following year.”
Cherry thought delightedly, “Then Dr. Joe will be here in either my junior or my senior years, or maybe both!”
The two men were shaking hands. “And to think I brought them together!” Cherry told herself in amazement.
“I hope you will be at the hospital when I am able to be here too,” Dr. Wylie said. “I have been accepted for medical service with the Army, and where my work will take me, or when, is hard to know.” Cherry remembered the rumor Bertha Larsen had hoped would come true for her. “Your drug should be extremely useful in work with soldiers.” He held Dr. Joe’s hand a moment longer. “Dr. Fortune, you remind me of my first teacher. A man who showed me the idealism of medicine.”
So that explained Dr. Wylie’s altered manner! Dr. Wylie revered Dr. Joe for the same reasons that Cherry loved him. She felt closer now to the terrible surgeon than she would have dreamed possible that first night he told her to “take off that rouge!”
On their way out, they met Miss Reamer. Apparently she had been introduced to Dr. Joe, for she greeted him, and said to Cherry, “You remember I told you you were to have your vacation soon, Miss Ames. How would you like to go back to Hilton with Dr. Fortune? It’s all arranged.”
“It will be a triumphal entry into the city for both of us,” Dr. Joe smiled at Cherry as Miss Reamer disappeared into her office. They wandered across the lobby and out onto the lawn. “Cherry, do you remember the day you started off for nursing school?” Cherry nodded. It seemed long, long ago. “Do you remember you came to say good-by to me and you said you’d like to help me get my drug accepted and used? Well, Cherry, you’ve helped me beyond my wildest hopes! I want you to know how grateful I am.” His gentle tired face in the May sunshine was radiant.
“Why—why, Dr. Joe,” Cherry stammered. “Don’t you ever dare to say thank you to me. You knew me way back when. Besides, it’s you who steered me into nursing school in the first place. I ought to say thank you to you!”
“You like it?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“Those two people in the office told me you’re going to be a fine nurse, Cherry. Tell me something. Do you feel like a nurse—that is, are you sure?”
“Yes, Dr. Joe,” Cherry said softly. “For a while I didn’t—I was unsure—afraid. But now I know.”
It seemed to Cherry that the whole class came down to the train. “Perhaps because it’s Sunday afternoon and a beautiful summer’s day and they’re free anyway,” she thought modestly. She hung out the train window trying to talk to everybody at once. Dr. Joe smiled from the opposite seat.
“Don’t you dare work in the Children’s Ward till I get back!” she half-enviously warned Ann and Gwen.
“Not even when Winky comes back?” Ann teased. “Oh, look, girls, she’s wearing the gloves I gave her for her birthday!”
“How about my rubbers?” Gwen demanded. “And my garters!” Josie called. “Never mind them,” Bertha Larsen said, slightly shocked, along with demure Mai Lee, at the mention of garters in public. “When you come back, I’ll bake you another cake!”
Cherry glowed at them. “I can’t wait to get back. In fact, I don’t want to go at all!” It would be wonderful to see Mother and Dad and Charlie and Midge and Hilton itself and her gay little room. But the great white hospital was very d
ear to her now.
Vivian Warren did not say much. She just held on tightly to Cherry’s hand and said, “Come back.”
Dr. Jim Clayton and Marjory Baker, too, had come down to see Cherry off. They looked so handsome and so happy together, the tall, gay, dark young doctor and the very feminine blonde little nurse, that Cherry wished she had a picture of them to keep for always. Jim Clayton said:
“I have regards for you from—” he cleared his throat, took a deep breath and reeled off, “Peg McIntyre, Ruthie Schwartz, “Ding” Jackson, Hal Freeman, Mrs. “Cooky” Gaynor, the little Puerto Rican lady who’s still lying on Orthopedic, the maid on Men’s Orthopedic, believe it or not Miss Craig, Mr. O’Sullivan from the clinic and—Whew! Have I forgotten anybody?”
They all laughed and Cherry gripped her hands tight together. What a lot of friends she had made in this wonderful year!
The train was starting to move now and Dr. Joe put a warning hand on her arm. But Cherry still hung out the window, as they all called out to her, “Have fun!” “Think of us slaving while you’re loafing!” “You’re wanted on Hilton Ward, Miss Ames!” “Come back, Cherry!” “Come back!” “Come back!”
Yes, she would always go back—to the vast busy fortress of a hospital, to her friends, to her patients who needed her, to the nursing work that was the most exciting and important thing in her life. Cherry thought back fleetingly over the last year. Any last lingering doubts had been erased now, she had proven herself worthy, and she felt joyous and confident. Cherry knew, finally, that she was truly a nurse.
The laughter of her classmates echoed in her ears. The train roared toward Hilton, toward home. But her heart was in her other home, in the antiseptic-smelling corridors, in the peaceful wards with their white beds, in the cool gray stone-and-steel laboratory, in the bustling clinic and the gay crowded nurses’ dining room and in the hot sweet air of the operating rooms. She could not wait to see what her next years of nurse’s training would bring.