Cherry Ames Boxed Set 1-4

by Helen Wells

  Cherry abruptly turned off the water. In the sudden stillness, there was no sound from the room, no flash of light, no sound of pebbles nor a whistle from the lookout down in the yard, nothing. It looked as if the man was still in there. He surely must have heard them and their warning by now.

  She and Mildred set up a great clatter with mops and pails and talk. Cherry carefully poured water beside Dr. Fortune’s door and a stream eddied through into the laboratory. Every minute or so, she and Mildred suddenly would cease their racket and listen. Still there was not a sound. On a humid July night like this, they could have heard the faintest footstep, any creak of floor or window, the slightest rustle of movement, either in that room or down in the yard. She wished desperately that the police would come.

  “Yes, ma’am!” Cherry declared loudly, banging her mop against her pail, “the janitor and those other two ought to be here any minute to inspect this grand clean hall! It’s a shame we can’t get in to clean the rooms, ain’t it?”

  They clattered and shrilled on, and Cherry wondered how much longer it was safe to keep this up. Why didn’t someone come? The minutes seemed like hours. Mildred looked at Cherry beseechingly, her eyes terrified in her pale smudged face.

  “Cheerio!” Cherry bawled with a grin. “How d’you like night life?” But her own hands were shaking, she was ice cold, and she was inwardly trembling with terror.

  She thought she heard footsteps either downstairs or on the stairs. But she could not be sure she heard anything. Then there was a cry from the yard. Then Cherry heard men’s loud angry voices, scuffling footsteps, a heavy door banging on the north side—they must have caught the lookout! At the same moment, five policemen burst into their corridor. They looked sharply at the two bogus cleaning women and Cherry silently pointed to Dr. Fortune’s door. She and Mildred leaned against the wall and clung to each other as the police smashed and heaved and splintered the locked door. Just as the door fell, one of the policemen turned around.

  “Get out of here fast!” he ordered them. “You might get shot up!”

  Leaving their equipment where it lay, the two girls fled.

  Cherry thought one wild thing as she ran. “If it’s Lex in there, I don’t want to see it!”

  They ran to the open north side door. There was a knot of plainclothesmen and within the tight circle Cherry glimpsed a cowering man. A detective held out a powerful arm and blocked their path.

  “Names?” he demanded. He turned a flashlight onto their faces.

  “Cherry Ames, Mildred Burnham,” Cherry gasped out.

  “All right. Get going!”

  It was a blessed relief to be out in the yard, outdoors, free again. They ran automatically for a few minutes, then they suddenly became weak and limp and could hardly walk. Somehow they dragged themselves to Crowley, and up to Cherry’s floor. Sleepy nurses’ heads stuck out of doors all along the hall.

  “Ames, what happened? Look at you!”

  “Are you all right, Cherry? Where were you in that dress?”

  “You wakened the whole hospital! Why?”

  “Mildred! Good grief, you two girls look like you’ve been through——”

  “Please go back to your rooms, everybody!” Gwen took charge. “They’re exhausted, let them alone! You’ll hear about it in the morning.” The nurses and students who had surged out into the hall all went quietly back into their rooms. Mildred was hanging on to Cherry, shaking violently. Cherry herself was in a trancelike state.

  Gwen led them into her own room. “You’re neither of you going back to your rooms tonight. Ann and I will stay with you for the rest of the night. You can sleep in here—if you can sleep.”

  Cherry and Mildred sank down onto chairs, too weak to care what Gwen was saying. Mildred burst into tears. Gwen led her to the bed, took off her shoes, and made her lie down. Cherry just sat with her head in her hands. She was too tired to figure out what was happening over there in Lincoln. Maybe it was all over by now. She hoped so. What a nasty business!

  “You know, Mildred and I were lucky,” she said absently.

  “Lucky!” Gwen drew in her breath. “More than that! I was so scared for you when you left me that I—But I could see there was no stopping you!”

  There was a kick at the door. Gwen opened it andAnn came in carrying a tray with a steaming pot of coffee and four cups. She took a quick, nurse’s look at the two girls, and visibly relaxed. “Thank goodness for the kitchenette down the hall,” she said. “Here, Cherry, drink this. I just told Mom that you—and everything—are all right. I wouldn’t let her get up. Mildred—” Mildred accepted a cup. “Gwen, I think you and I have earned a cup of coffee, too.”

  “You certainly have,” Cherry said gratefully. “Well, they got him. And that’s all that matters.”

  Next morning Cherry was very tired. She felt as if she had lived ten years overnight. But she put on a clean crisp uniform and cap and went to take charge of her ward. She did not go to the nurses’ dining room—she did not want to face all the questions. It was a bright beautiful summer morning, and here she was with her familiar patients, and the world seemed normal again—except for one thing. Would Lex appear on the ward today?

  Gwen reported on duty. Mom, busy at work, had sent Cherry a pitifully relieved and grateful note. Cherry was glad that Mom’s heartache was over.

  “What did you hear?” Cherry asked Gwen anxiously.

  They talked very low so that the patients would not overhear and be disturbed.

  “I heard a lot,” Gwen said. “In the first place, everyone asked for you. You’re a heroine—you and your adoptee both. Mildred is quite a girl, isn’t she?”

  “She is indeed!” Cherry said warmly. “I’m just beginning to appreciate her. And Mom!—we could never have done it without Mom’s help!” She added, “You and Ann deserve some credit too.”

  “We all won our share of fame,” Gwen smiled, “and I must say it’s a great nuisance. But the first thing you want to know is—it wasn’t Lex! It wasn’t anyone Lex ever could have been even remotely connected with! Lex is cleared, absolutely cleared.”

  Cherry ran her fingers through her curly black hair. “Lex is cleared,” she repeated. “Lex is cleared.” It took a minute or two for the words to sink in. She looked at Gwen gravely. “Practically this whole hospital owes him an apology. What a wretched time he’s been through! No wonder he has been sullen and wouldn’t talk. Poor Lex!”

  “It’s not ‘poor’ Lex any longer,” Gwen reminded her cheerfully. “And now I’ll tell you the rest. I’m not sure all the lurid details I heard are accurate, but here are the main facts. The police took the man at the door and the man in the lab. You already know that. The F.B.I. man had been knocked unconscious. The man in Dr. Fortune’s office had a gun; there was quite a fight.” Cherry felt the blood drain from her face. “There now,” Gwen chided her, “do you see what a chance you took? He had the first page of the formula with him. They found a third man in a car, just outside the hospital grounds, with the motor running for a quick getaway. And after questioning and tracing some clues, about six o’clock this morning, the police broke into a hotel suite and found five other men. There was a whole ring of them. They all have police records—embezzlement, forgery, theft, assault. They wanted the drug for the tremendous amount of money it would bring.”

  “But—but did the police find the drug itself?” Cherry asked anxiously.

  “That’s a story all by itself. The men were too canny to leave it lying around a public hotel. They stored it in a safe deposit vault in a bank downtown. The police probably are taking it out right this minute.”

  “So the drug is safe,” Cherry breathed, “and the formula too. Thank heaven for that!” She frowned, puzzling. “But who were these men—how did they ever stumble on Dr. Joe’s drug in the first place?”

  “Simple. It’s so simple, it’s startling. The man who was up in Dr. Joe’s lab last night—gosh, I don’t know where to begin.” The redhead grinne
d. “That man was in State prison. He was in for murder, Cherry. Do you remember the jail break last winter? He was one of those who got away. He cut his hands and face pretty badly. So he came to our Out-Patient clinic for treatment, in spite of the fact that the police were searching for him. He told the police last night he figured he’d never be noticed in our big crowds of patients, and he was right. And while he was in and out of the clinic, our old friend gossip, plus all that publicity in the newspapers about penicillin, did the rest.”

  “I see,” Cherry said, and her black eyes were very wide. She had read about murderers, and last night only a flimsy door and a mop had stood between her and a killer! She shuddered. But it was worth it in soldiers’ lives—recovering that drug was worth anything! “The patient always comes first.” “Save the patient at any cost to yourself.” That was the nurse’s creed!

  Suddenly Cherry felt gay. “Won’t Dr. Joe be happy?” she said to Gwen.

  “I’ll tell you who else is happy,” Gwen said. She inclined her head toward the flagstone path. There was Lex hurrying toward the ward in the sunshine. He looked like a different young man. He was smiling for the first time in months, and that old lordly walk was his again.

  “Cherry!” he called loudly. All the patients looked up. Lex hurried over to the head nurse’s desk.

  “Good morning, Dr. Upham,” Cherry said demurely.

  And then, to the patients’ amazement, Dr. Upham put his arms around Head Nurse Ames and exuberantly whirled her around.

  “You’re cleared, Lex, you’re cleared!” Cherry murmured over and over again.

  “Thanks to you,” he murmured back. Then he squared his big shoulders and pretended to roar, “Why aren’t you all at work?” Gwen and everyone else scurried off in mock fear.

  Then turning to Cherry, he said sternly, “As for you, Miss Ames, here are your orders. You are to go out on the lake with me tonight, young lady. Don’t make that speech about how nurses are forbidden to have dates with staff doctors,” he stopped her. “You’ve been telling me that all year. And don’t argue with me!” Then relaxing his pose, he pleaded with her, “Surely a heroine like you would count as an exception! Please come, please?”

  And rules or no rules, Cherry said, “Yes.”

  It was that magic part of evening when twilight softly steals its way across the earth. Out on the lake, Cherry sat back luxuriously as Lex spun their boat in great circles farther and farther out, until the ebbing sounds from shore were like dim music. He made a deft movement with an oar. The rowboat floated in one spot, water lapping gently at its sides.

  “Nice here,” Lex said unromantically, but Cherry knew what he meant. They sat quietly thinking for a while in the bobbing boat.

  “Cherry,” Lex finally spoke. “And now that the drug mystery is cleared up, we might as well make a clean sweep of everything. Here, read this!” He thrust Midge’s trouble-making lollipop letter at her.

  “I’m sorry—so sorry,” she said as she read it for the first time. “You know I didn’t talk to Midge about you.”

  “I should have known that,” he agreed contritely. Lex smiled across at her. “So now all is forgiven?”

  “Yes, Lex, all is forgotten,” she smiled warmly back at him. She hesitated. “Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lex, do you remember that afternoon in Dr. Joe’s lab? That fateful day when Dr. Joe told us about the discovery?” He nodded his head. “Do you remember you said you couldn’t take me to the Lincoln dance, that you had to work because you needed a lot of money?” He nodded again. “Why?” she asked softly.

  Lex turned his face slightly. “So I could ask you a certain question.”

  “Oh!” Cherry exclaimed. They looked at each other gravely in the fading twilight. Then they both smiled. “Lex,” Cherry said with difficulty, “please don’t ask me that question. At least, don’t ask it yet.”

  He said very low, “I’m in love with you, you know.”

  Cherry could only look at him with tender eyes. At last she found words. “That’s wonderful, Lex. It makes me awfully happy—and sort of grateful.” He was waiting for her to say more, to explain where he stood. She did not want to hurt him, but she had to tell him the truth. She chose her words with great feeling and care. “I don’t know whether I’m in love with you or not, Lex. Honestly, I—I don’t know.” She stared out across the water. “But there’s one thing I do know.”

  “Go on,” Lex said steadily.

  “It’s this. I’m not ready to get married yet. I’ve barely finished my training and when I think about my future—my near future, that is—all I can see is me nursing somewhere. Gosh, I’ve trained and trained! I want to have a try at it!”

  “To tell you the truth,” Lex admitted, and there was the hint of a chuckle in his voice, “I feel somewhat the same way. I haven’t been a full-fledged doctor very long, and I’m in a hurry to get plenty of practice under my belt.”

  Cherry gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks for saying that. I don’t feel quite so badly now. You see how it is—for instance, though an Army nurse can marry, she might not be stationed near her husband, so that——”

  “I didn’t know you were planning to be an Army nurse,” he interrupted.

  That pulled Cherry up short. “I didn’t know it myself—I don’t know it, I mean, I haven’t decided.” But from what she had just said, she must have been thinking of Army nursing more seriously than she realized. “Are you going into the service, Lex? Into the Medical Corps?”

  “I think so.”

  They were silent for a while. Night began to fall and shadows deepened. “We’d better get back to shore,” Lex said.

  “Wait. There’s one more thing I want to say.”

  He leaned forward on the oars to listen. Cherry said very gently and deliberately:

  “Lex, you didn’t propose to me. So I couldn’t say either yes or no, could I? Nothing has been said, really. We’re just where we always were. Agreed?”

  “Agreed!” He added, “You’re a wise girl, Cherry.”

  The boat started to float forward. The oars dipped and rose, dipped and rose, leaving a murmurous white trail of foam. They disappeared softly into the spacious night.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Day of Glory

  SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY HAD COME OVER THE SENIORS. Here it was August with examinations and, hopefully, graduation nearly upon them. They were studying like mad, they worked like Trojans on their wards, they had no idea where they would be next month. “But we’re so hilarious,” Cherry remarked to Ann and Gwen, “I’d say we were drunk—drunk on the prospect of wearing white almost any day now!”

  And after they had taken their final examinations, there was no holding them, even though State examinations would come soon after graduation. They were the glorious seniors standing on the brink of their careers and the wide world! The hospital was theirs!

  One of the traditions at Spencer had to be carried out the night before the triumphant seniors first appeared with the black bands of the graduate nurse. And that night it had to rain. Sheets of warm rain beat down fiercely, almost like a tropical storm. The seniors pressed their faces against the dining room windows after supper, and hesitated.

  “We’re going anyway,” Cherry announced. “Here’s where black stockings and Ames part company!”

  Her classmates debated between the hated black stockings and the weather. In the end they buttoned themselves into their raincoats. The wind and the rain lashed the trees in the yard, and the lake was dark and wild. The crowd of girls pushed their way to the water’s edge.

  “First!” Cherry cried, and sat down in the dripping grass. She untied her oxfords, pulled off her stockings, then ran barefoot to the water. “Good-by forever!” she cried and hurled her stockings into the lake.

  Beside her, half crouched in the rain, Gwen brandished her black stockings around her head like a lasso. “Here you go!” she yelled, and in went Gwen’s stocki
ngs.

  Cherry stood around shivering and laughing as the whole big class filled the lake with black cotton stockings. They returned to Spencer barelegged but happy.

  The next day the sun shone down brightly on the happy seniors. They made their first appearance with the broad black velvet band on the cuff of their caps—badge of the graduate nurse. Cherry felt as if she were clothed in glory, for this was the public symbol of her success. All day long Cherry was overwhelmed with congratulations from everybody. The whole hospital seemed to be rejoicing with the seniors. As if all that happiness were not enough, Cherry found in her room at Crowley a great bouquet of roses from Lex and Dr. Joe together, and a telegram from her parents and Midge. “Hurray for Nurse Ames,” it read, “we are coming graduation day.”

  In the midst of all this excitement, three newspaper reporters arrived to interview Cherry Ames, R.N.—well, R.N. any moment now. The interview took place in Dr. Joe’s now-famous laboratory. Cherry answered a landslide of questions, with Lex and Dr. Joe and Mom and Mildred proudly exclaiming how wonderful she was. Cherry was annoyed at this personal angle. What really mattered was that the drug was safe! It all came out in the newspapers, alongside a picture of Cherry which made her face look as though it had been through a mangle. “Quick-Witted Young Nurse Saves Priceless Military Drug,” said the headlines, and “Faces Murderer So Soldiers May Live.” Cherry went through a lot of good-natured teasing to live that one down.

  Another Spencer tradition was that the graduating seniors “bequeathed” their personal belongings to the younger students who were staying on at the hospital. Cherry had not realized how popular she was until at least twenty younger girls started begging her to “leave” them her things. Cherry shared the cushions which dressed up her daybed between the two first-year students on her ward. To Lucy, the maid on Children’s Ward, Cherry gave her alarm clock. For the many others, she found little knick-knacks around her room—book ends, a gay pincushion, a vase. To Mom, she gave her silk comforter and her little radio. But it was to Mildred that Cherry gave her most personal things—her soft goose feather bed pillow from home, the little lamp on her bedside table, her books. There were tears in Mildred’s eyes when Cherry piled all these things into her arms.