by Helen Wells
Cherry’s vision blurred. “I’ll fix it, Mom. But nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re going to come out of this better than you’ve felt in years.”
Mom sighed and groped for Cherry’s warm hand. “Maybe it would be just as well if I don’t come through it. Because I’ve been sick a long time and I used up all my savings on hospital bills and I’m most too old to work much any more and I haven’t got any place to go and what becomes of old people, anyway?”
“Mom, Mom,” Cherry swallowed hard. “You’re forgetting we’ve got a Social Service here in the hospital. They’ll send you to some convalescent home in the country and then they’ll probably help you apply for your Old Age allowance.”
But Mom wasn’t convinced. The old lady murmured again, “’Twould be better if I don’t come through. I’m not sure I want to come out of here, not sure at all.”
Cherry was terrified. She pleaded with Mom. But Mom only smiled her old gay smile and said, “There, child, don’t let yourself get all upset. What’ll the surgeon say? No, ma’am, I’ll have you laughing in a minute and I’ll have that sour old Dr. Wylie laughing, too, if he doesn’t watch out.”
Cherry smiled shakily. Mom was comforting her!
“You know what truly worries me, Cherry?” Mom chuckled. “Why, I haven’t got a respectable dress to my name. And that old hat of mine!—I wouldn’t wear it to a dog-fight!”
“Get well,” Cherry bribed, “and I’ll manage to get you some good-looking new clothes.”
“I won’t be taking anything out of your pocket, honey. Besides,” Mom scoffed, “you can’t make a fashion plate out of me!”
Cherry squeezed the old lady’s hand and followed her as she was wheeled into the Operating Room. Dr. Wylie, accompanied by an assisting interne and the instrument nurse, immediately entered the room. Cherry, who had been holding Mom’s hand, dropped it and stepped back out of the way, but not before Dr. Wylie, surprised and apparently annoyed at her presence, glowered at her.
There was an immediate tension felt throughout the room, which communicated itself to Mom. Irrepressible, even now, Mom made an instinctive effort to ease the tension with a wink at the room in general and a hearty “Good night, folks.”
“Hypodermic,” Dr. Wylie barked at the operating nurse. She administered the morphine. Then Dr. Wylie gave Mom novocain in the affected part. Mom’s eyes closed and she grew quiet and relaxed. The nurse gently drew a pad of gauze over Mom’s eyes, and Cherry prayed that Mom would drift off to sleep quickly, under the heat of the powerful operating lamp. In any event, Mom would see and hear nothing. The nurse painted the area with iodine. The interne made the incision and quickly clamped and tied off veins and arteries. There was no bleeding. Then, as Dr. Wylie stepped forward and took the scalpel from the nurse, Cherry, who up to this time had been trying to control her emotions—for it was Mom whom she loved who was lying so still on the table—made an audible sound of sympathy. Dr. Wylie, distracted for the moment, turned and gave Cherry a black look.
“Well, Miss Ames!” he observed sarcastically.
Cherry saw the interne and the nurses exchange glances and then look sympathizingly at her over their masks. Embarrassed to the point of tears, Cherry shrank back.
Just then Mom opened her mouth. “Did you know,” she said drowsily, “that I’m a sort of nurse myself? Yes, sir, and I—and I nursed in the Spanish-American war, indeed I did. Yes, sir! There was lots of yellow fever and malaria, just like in the Pacific in this war, and I can tell you——”
Dr. Wylie tried to quiet Mom.
But Mom, under the influence of the morphine, chattered on incessantly. “And the bugs! They were something fierce! But we had plenty of quinine,” she rambled on, “bugs or no bugs.”
Dr. Wylie snapped impatiently, “Miss Ames, you’re a friend of this patient’s. Perhaps you can justify your presence here by doing something practical. See if you can quiet the patient.”
Cherry spoke to Mom but she went right on talking, the words irresponsibly tumbling out. “I read in the newspaper a man right here in this hospital made a quinine substitute. Now, what’s that man’s name? He’s always discovering things …”
“Mom!” Cherry said sharply, “keep quiet!” Oh, why had that cleaning woman talked! And to whom else had she talked?
“Fortune, that’s his name. Cherry knows him. But Cherry said I mustn’t talk about it. It’s a secret.”
“Mom!” Cherry pleaded, and desperately tried to reach Mom’s consciousness. “Mom, you must stop talking, you’re disturbing the surgeon.”
“A secret, eh?” Dr. Wylie muttered to himself. Cherry wished she could see his face behind that gauze. Oh, this was terrible! What was Dr. Wylie thinking?
“And besides,” Mom was talking uncontrollably, “it’s a government secret, so it must be pretty important, that new kind of penicillin that this Dr. Fortune’s making. The papers say that”—and her voice trailed off, leaving Cherry frozen stiff with terror.
An ominous silence filled the room. Dr. Wylie proceeded with the operation. “Nurse! Suture!” he curtly demanded. The nurse handed him a suture, a tie, a sponge.
Once Mom turned her head and said vaguely, “Cherry? Are you still there?”
“I’m right here, Mom,” Cherry reassured her in a stifled voice.
Dr. Wylie finished. “She’ll be all right,” he said. There was a note of pity in his voice. Then abruptly he turned to Cherry, “I would like to see you alone, Miss Ames.”
Frightened and quaking, Cherry started to follow, when suddenly the young interne unexpectedly came to her defense. “May I say one thing, sir? What the old lady just said is common gossip around the hospital.” Dr. Wylie glared at him, then stormed out. There was nothing for Cherry to do but follow his stiff, unyielding back out of the Operating Room. “Now!” thought Cherry …
Alone, he faced Cherry and exclaimed, “So you can’t keep a secret! You had to talk!”
“No, sir!” She explained rapidly how the cleaning woman in all innocence had divulged the secret.
Dr. Wylie brushed her explanation aside. “I don’t care for that young Upham! If Fortune doesn’t choose his assistants more carefully than that, perhaps the hospital had better take away his research grant!”
Cherry was nearly in tears. Dr. Wylie could turn them all out of the hospital—Dr. Joe, Lex, Cherry—with a blackened professional reputation besides! He might even, for the sake of safety, send Mom away at once … poor Mom, who needed help so urgently.
“It’s not this old lady’s fault, sir,” Cherry pleaded. “Please don’t penalize her. She’s alone and penniless and she has to have help. And I hardly think it’s Dr. Upham’s fault, either. I know him well and I think he is …”
“You think! You think! Can’t you understand the military importance of this new drug? Good heavens, we’re fighting a war!” With a gesture of resignation, he turned abruptly on his heel and strode away.
Cherry, still trembling with fear, went back to see how Mom was coming along. Mom had been calling for her.
“You’ll be all right,” Cherry told Mom softly. “Now just go to sleep and I’ll be here taking care of you. And for heaven’s sake don’t talk any more!”
“Why, did I say anything?” Mom asked with incredulous round eyes. “I was asleep! I didn’t say a word!”
“You talked about Dr. Joe’s penicillin!”
“Good heavens! Cherry! What’ve I done? If anything happens to it, it’d be my fault!”
Back at work, Cherry was too busy to worry about the safety of the drug, or what Dr. Wylie thought. That would have to take care of itself, while she encouraged Mom to get well.
But Mom would not cooperate. She never again said she did not want to live. But Cherry saw her lying staring into space with empty eyes. She knew Mom was brooding about facing a bleak future the moment she was discharged from the hospital. She knew, too, that Mom felt deeply guilty for betraying the secret of the drug. Outside, sharp Marc
h winds were blowing the snow away, but even the coming of spring did not cheer up Mom—jokes, flowers, a surprise on her tray—nothing helped. Then Cherry remembered her promise to get Mom some presentable clothes. She sensed, too, Mom’s unwillingness to be dependent.
Cherry got back to Crowley late one night, and she had barely stamped the ice and wet off her overshoes when she got her savings bank book out of the desk. It was not enough She could not afford to outfit Mom alone. Cherry got a piece of paper and a pencil. She started to write down a list of Mom’s friends here in the hospital.
During the next two weeks, Cherry tramped from one building to another, knocked on doors, left notes in letter boxes, spoke to staff people on the floor of her ward, talked on the phone. “It’s for Mom?” they all asked. “Certainly!” By the end of that time, sixty people had contributed various sums.
It was Friday evening. Mom was to be discharged on Saturday morning, tomorrow morning. She was being sent to a convalescent farm for elderly people, a few miles out of the city. Mom did not want to go. She was pathetically silent on the subject of her future and would talk only of things which were safely in the past. Just now she was across the hall in the neighboring ward, saying good-by to the nurses and patients in there.
“Now!” Cherry said, and the four nurses on the floor, who had appointed themselves as her committee, brought out the boxes which Cherry had smuggled in that afternoon. They opened them, and everyone marveled at how Cherry had stretched the money. The patients in their beds looked on in curiosity, and nurses and internes stuck their heads in the door to watch. There was a good deal of eager, whispered advice and giggling, and then a hushed excitement as Mom’s voice approached in the corridor.
Mom stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane. Her eyes grew big as she saw what was on her bed. At first she could only stand and stare, and look questioningly from one smiling face to another.
“It’s for—for me?” she asked carefully. She clutched her checkered kimono about her and hurried as best she could to the bed. There lay a blue dress, a black dress, a warm black coat, a pretty hat, shoes and stockings, underthings, gloves, everything Mom could need.
Mom gasped. She pressed her hands to her heart. “Well, I never!” she said in awestruck tones. She tentatively put out a shaking hand, as if to see if the clothes were real. She turned to Cherry, trying to smile. “I’m going to walk out of here in style! Why, I can’t wait to put ’em on and show ’em off!” Suddenly she bent her head and wept.
“I’m an old fool to be crying,” she declared, wiping her eyes. “But you’re—all so—good to me!”
“Look inside the purse, Mom,” someone suggested. The old lady was so excited they had to tell her two or three times. At last she opened the purse with trembling hands. There were two crisp bills and shining new coins.
“Oh me, oh my!” Mom dissolved into tears again. She tugged desperately at her braids. “Cherry, I bet you did this!”
“We all wanted to give you a going-away present,” Cherry said gently. “Here’s a list of all your friends who hope you like these.”
Just then there was a well-known gruff and impatient voice in the hall. It was Dr. Wylie coming to give Mom a final check-up before giving his permission that she be discharged. Cherry had completely forgotten he was coming. What would he think when he saw her extra-curricular activities? Cherry wanted to sweep the clothes out of sight but there was no time. On top of all her other serious difficulties with him, now this!
He marched directly to Mom, ignoring the nurses and internes who were rejoicing with Mom. They scattered in fright, as if he had swept them out of the way. “Step over here,” he ordered Mom. “Pull the curtains, nurse.”
Cherry drew the white duck curtains around Mom’s bed, making it a little private unit in the ward. Dr. Wylie did not so much as speak to Cherry. He examined Mom painstakingly and his cold eyes swept over the new garments. “Satisfactory,” he pronounced. “Miss Ames, I want to speak to you in the corridor. Alone.”
“Yes, doctor,” she said.
“Here it comes!” Cherry thought. She followed him with reluctant feet out into the corridor. Two nurses who were chatting there saw Dr. Wylie coming and parted hastily.
“Miss Ames!”
“Yes, Dr. Wylie.”
He fixed his steely gaze on her vivid face. Cherry was sure he was making mental note of “that rouge” he stubbornly insisted she wore.
“Harrumph! About that clothing, Miss Ames.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Word that you were taking up a collection reached my ears.” Cherry quaked at his stern tone. Had she done something unauthorized? Had she broken some strict hospital rule? Maybe this infraction was serious enough for suspension, or even expulsion! “I presume you did it with good intentions and that the patient needs assistance.”
“Yes, sir,” Cherry said faintly.
“Don’t interrupt me! You always were a cheeky young woman.” He cleared his throat and glared at her. “I was about to say that I should like to contribute also.” Dr. Wylie whipped out a checkbook and a fountain pen. Cherry stood there gaping. He wrote out a check for a very substantial sum.
“Thank you, Dr. Wylie, thank you! This will do wonders for her!”
“I didn’t ask you what it will do, did I?” Dr. Wylie was embarrassed, and so, gruffer than ever. “See that you go with her to a bank tomorrow so she can cash it. And something else, Miss Ames.”
Cherry hardly dared breathe.
“I’ve arranged for employment for her, here at the hospital, when she returns. She is to supervise the cleaning staff in—er—Lincoln Hall. She will—er—have a key.”
Lincoln Hall! That meant Dr. Wylie forgave Mom for blabbing about the secret drug! He was saying publicly that he trusted her. So Dr. Wylie saw Mom’s worth. How generous of him this was!
Cherry said gratefully, “Mom has been feeling dreadfully guilty about mentioning the penicillin when she was under anaesthetic.”
“This gossip is not her fault,” Dr. Wylie said tersely. “Good night, Miss Ames.”
“Good night, sir,” Cherry smiled.
She stood there a moment looking at the slip of paper—to Louella Barker from Lewis Wylie. To an obscure, helpless old lady from one of the most famous surgeons in the country—via a student nurse who loved and believed in nursing.
CHAPTER XI
Three Letters
GETTING UP AT SIX WASN’T SO BAD, CHERRY THOUGHT, as the rising bell clanged and she staggered from bed onto her feet. It was waking up that was the hard part. She groped blindly out into the hall of Crowley, avoided bumping into the other sleepy chattering nurses, and somehow found her way to the shower. Then she staggered back to her room and pulled on her uniform and apron. She sleep-walked across the yard, sniffing at the hint of spring in the cold rainy air, and blinked her way into the nurses’ dining room.
“Good morning,” said Gwen, from the table near the door. The redheaded girl was offensively wide-awake and cheerful over her bowl of cereal. “Did you ever see such a dripping morning?”
“It’s a morning for sleeping,” moaned Ann, looming up in the doorway. “Come on, Cherry.” The two girls took their trays and went up to the food counter. They brought their breakfasts back to Gwen’s table. Bertha and Mai Lee showed up, too, crisp and fresh in their blue and white.
“What a day!” Bertha said. “Well, this April rain will soften up the ground for spring planting.”
Cherry yawned and tried to take an interest in her omelet.
Gwen cleared her throat. “I have a letter from Miss Mac,” she announced innocently.
Cherry suddenly woke up. “Miss McIntyre? Our old nursing arts instructor?” All the girls had adored that lively, dashing young woman, who had volunteered a year ago as an Army nurse.
“Welcome to our midst, Cherry,” Gwen grinned. “Nice to have you conscious again.”
“Stop stalling!” all the others insisted. “Read it!”
/> Gwen pulled the letter out of her apron pocket. It was addressed to the entire class and postmarked Africa. It was packed with excitement and Miss Mac’s contagious gaiety. “… two thousand men and us thirty nurses on that ship, and was it exciting. … There we were in North Africa. … That was the first time I heard guns … cold here in Africa sometimes. We wear dungarees and boots, and we do each other’s hair. The soldiers call us ‘angels in long underwear’ … the bravest, nicest bunch of boys I ever knew. And there they lie. They’re so grateful for the least little thing we nurses do for them … how we nurses drill. You ought to see us run for cover and throw ourselves flat in foxholes. The soldiers say we’re good … can’t wait to get well so they can get right back and fight … exotic towns here, curious food, veiled women, necklaces of beaten silver. We washed our stockings in a river they say stems from the Nile … such a romantic officer and we’re Army lieutenants ourselves, you know. …”
Far places, adventure, danger, action—Cherry’s breath came faster.
“Some of the things I see are pretty sad … nurses are badly needed. There aren’t nearly enough … here is where you can put to good use all the training you have had … and here is where you feel that at last you are really useful. Our boys do need you, so won’t you please come?”
Gwen passed the letter on to the next table. The girls sat there in silence. Then Ann lifted her head.
“I know you kids don’t want to ask me, so I’ll tell you. Bill and Gerry—my kid brothers—are in Army training camps out West. But Jack—” Ann unpinned a silk change purse from her apron pocket and took out a small, brilliant diamond ring. It was the first time she showed it to anyone. Ann said in an expressionless voice, “Jack’s been shipped out. All I know is that he’s somewhere in the Pacific. And it’s going to be a long war.”
“Annie,” Mai Lee said, trying to sound casual, “we’ll enlist in the Nurse Corps together.”
“It’s a date,” Ann tried to smile. She stood up suddenly. “I have to run.” She disappeared, looking very sober.