by Helen Wells
During the time that I was publishing a nursing journal, I became acquainted with Robert Wells, brother of Helen Wells. In the course of conversation I learned that Ms. Wells had passed on and left the Cherry Ames copyright to Mr. Wells. Because there is a shortage of nurses here in the US today, I thought, “Why not bring Cherry back to motivate a whole new generation of young people? Why not ask Mr. Wells for the copyright to Cherry Ames?” Mr. Wells agreed, and the republished series is dedicated both to Helen Wells, the original author, and to her brother Robert Wells who transferred the rights to me. I am proud to ensure the continuation of Cherry Ames into the twenty-first century.
The final dedication is to you, both new and old readers of Cherry Ames: It is my dream that you enjoy Cherry’s nursing skills as well as her escapades. I hope that young readers will feel motivated to choose nursing as your life’s work. Remember, as Helen Wells herself said: there’s no other skill that’s “always needed by everybody, everywhere.”
Harriet Schulman Forman, RN, Ed.D.
Series Editor
CHAPTER I
On Her Way
“CHERRY! CHER-RY! COME QUICK! IT’S HERE!”
A sparkling, dark-haired girl suddenly popped out on the upstairs landing and hung over the staircase. Her cheeks were as red as her sweater and her black eyes shone with excitement. She took one look at her mother, gingerly holding up an envelope; another at her young friend Midge, hopping up and down with a strange lack of dignity for a fifteen-year-old.
“That’s—it!” Midge cried. “Hurry up!”
Cherry swooped down the stairs and seized the official-looking envelope.
“What does it say?” Midge begged. Mrs. Ames, too, was trying to glimpse the letter over Cherry’s shoulder.
“Here,” Cherry said, absorbed, and allowed Midge to hold the empty envelope.
Midge read aloud the address in the left-hand corner with awe in her voice, “War Department, Official Business. Jiminy!”
“What does it say?” Mrs. Ames echoed Midge. She was a small, youthful, brown-eyed woman.
Cherry looked up and grinned. “This is what I’ve been waiting for every day of this two weeks’ vacation! Harumph! You will please stand at attention while I read it to you.” Cherry herself stood erect and read earnestly:
“By direction of the President, Cherry Ames is with her consent ordered to active duty with the Army of the United States, and assigned to the hospital unit as indicated.…” On graduating, Cherry had signed up with her whole nursing class to serve in the Army Nurse Corps. She already had indicated that she was available immediately and willing to serve overseas, and had sent in her photo, application, school record and State Board Examination record. Cherry took a deep breath and hurried on, “. . . and will proceed on 21 September this year to station specified for temporary duty pending activation Spencer Gen. unit.”
There was another notice, too. “You are ordered to report to the Service Command at Wabash City… for Army physical examination!”… “Oh, gosh!” exclaimed Cherry.
“You have to weigh at least a hundred pounds and a lot of other things,” Midge warned her.
“She’ll pass,” Mrs. Ames said, smiling at Cherry, “even the Army’s rigid examination.” Cherry’s red cheeks and lips, her shining dark eyes, her eager, lively, pretty face, even her dancing black curls, fairly radiated vitality. She sparkled with youth and high spirits.
“Anyway,” Cherry said with a great sigh, “I’ve already passed my two-day State Board Nurse examination. Now I can write R.N. after my name!”
Those proud letters, R.N., and the right to practice nursing, were privileges Cherry wanted with her whole heart. Just two weeks ago, she had completed her three years’ nursing training at Spencer Hospital. Now she could hardly wait to put it into professional practice. Nursing was to be her personal gateway to adventure. With those two orders in her hand, Cherry knew she was going places—far and exciting places.
“No time to daydream,” she said aloud, “I have to face an examination!”
“What,” Midge asked practically, “is the date for that exam?”
“Oh, yes, dates. Time,” Cherry said gloomily. Calendars and clocks were not her friends; she was always late. Her dark eyes fell on the dates in the letter and she jumped. “This letter must have been delayed! Or they don’t believe in a fair warning! The Army physical is this afternoon! Oh!”
She tore out of the living room and up the stairs, calling back frantically, “Mrs. Ames, if you love your daughter, phone the station and find out when there’s one of those jerky interurban cars! Midge, shine my best black shoes right away, and I’ll treat you to as many banana splits as you can hold!” Her red sweater and flying black curls disappeared upstairs.
Mrs. Ames went to the phone and Midge raced off in pursuit of shoe blacking. Five minutes later, Cherry came tearing downstairs in her favorite red suit and beanie. She was panting and minus shoes, but every hair and button was in perfect order.
“Late but neat,” she gasped. “When’s my car?”
Her mother told her. Midge ran in with Cherry’s shoes. Cherry wriggled into them, Midge consulted the clock, and Mrs. Ames laid out Cherry’s fare. There was a round of good-bys and good wishes, and Cherry sprinted for the intercity streetcar.
She was halfway down the tree-lined block when her father’s car pulled up to the curb beside her. He flung open the door.
“Hop in, Lieutenant. Where are you bound? I’ll give you a lift.”
“Lieutenant—if!” Cherry corrected her father as she jumped in. “It came, Dad… orders to report… I’m bound for Wabash City, for my Army physical. Gosh, I’m glad you drove by this way! And where’d you get the gasoline in the midst of this shortage?”
“The war ration board heard I’m in the real estate business.” Mr. Ames was a tall, good-humored looking man, with the blue eyes and fair hair which Charlie, brunette Cherry’s twin, had inherited. “I’m driving out to a farm property,” he said. “That’s how you happen to be riding to your Army appointment in style.”
“Ahem!”
Mr. Ames glanced at Cherry with a wry smile, as the car turned a corner. “Both my girl and my boy in the Army! The two Ames soldiers! And this Ames has to be an elderly stay-at-home.”
“There’s plenty to do on the home front to win,” Cherry consoled him.
“Ye-es, but you and Charlie are going to be right in the thick of things!” Another minute, and her father drew up before the car stop to let Cherry out. “Good luck with the examination!” he called after her.
She grinned and clambered aboard the big trolley, not a minute too soon. Her father waved to her from the car, and then he was lost to view as the trolley bumped out of the north end of Hilton.
The Army Post nearest her home, to which Cherry was ordered to report, was the new post at Wabash City. Cherry settled herself in the dusty seat, noticing the numbers of young men in khaki uniform who filled the long car. They looked half-familiar to her, like her friends and schoolmates, like her own brother. Some of them looked lonesome, some tired, some were deep in their own thoughts. “Those are the boys I’m going to take care of,” Cherry thought, and although many of them were older than herself, she felt motherly. It would seem funny to have only these lean, toughened, bronzed young men for patients. As a student nurse at Spencer Hospital, she had nursed everyone from children to old people. But Cherry recalled her nurse’s pledge; to dedicate her life so that others might live… to help those who needed her, who without her help might die. “I guess the soldiers will need me most of all,” she reflected soberly.
The half-hour ride from her own small town of Hilton to the Wabash City Army Post carried her through the wide, flat, Middle West prairie, with its enormous dome of blue sky. Now, in the first warm week of September, the acres of tall corn were still green, the cropped wheat fields still golden, and the farms with their fine red barns and great spreading trees enjoyed the last ripeness of summer.
Watching from her car window, Cherry took a deep breath and calmed down. It was too late now to worry about this all-important examination, anyhow. But she had to pass it—she had to be an Army nurse!
Nursing always had been Cherry’s dream. She knew it was the finest way a girl could serve people, and Cherry loved people and wanted to help them. Nursing was the way to put her idealism into practice.
Her inspiration had come from Midge’s father, Dr. Joseph Fortune. The Ames’s and the two lone Fortunes—for Midge’s mother was dead—had been friends and neighbors in Hilton for years. Dr. Joe and Midge always had been an important part of Cherry’s life. But recently, what a lot of changes the two families were experiencing! Dr. Fortune, and Cherry’s twin brother Charles, and Cherry herself, were in Hilton very seldom these days. Dr. Fortune, to Cherry’s great happiness, was doing research at her own Spencer Hospital. Charlie was a gunner in the Army Air Forces. And Cherry was going to be an Army nurse.
With both Charlie and Cherry away, Mr. and Mrs. Ames said their house seemed empty. Besides, Midge could not be left all alone. So Cherry’s parents had closed up Dr. Fortune’s cottage and taken Midge to live with them. Cherry looked down at Midge’s shoe shine and grinned. The Ames family and the two Fortunes were, as Midge had said, “practically relatives by now, only nicer.”
Cherry smiled again, thinking that she would be back at Spencer very soon. What happy times she had had there—and what exciting times! Even as a student nurse at Spencer, nursing had broadened her life and brought her new adventures, new understanding, new friends. “It won’t be long now,” she thought happily, “before I’ll be seeing my pals, Ann and Gwen, and Lex, the darling, and ‘my’ Dr. Joe.” They all were returning to the hospital to await the Army’s call. Well, if she wanted to be a part of her country’s vast Army, she had to pass this physical examination today. Cherry anxiously peered out of the trolley window. They were almost at Wabash City.
At Wabash City, Cherry found an open olive drab truck was going out to the post. Cherry climbed in. A dozen young soldiers smiled at her and made room for her on the uncomfortable wooden bench. The truck started down a rutted country road, and they all bounced together.
“You got a brother or a sweetheart out here?” asked a young man with a strong Western roll to his r’s.
“No,” said Cherry.
“Shucks, a young lady as pretty as that,” said a boy with a Southern drawl. “Why, she’s probably married to some lucky fellow on post.”
“No,” said Cherry, holding on tight to the side of the lurching truck and trying to look dignified.
“Going to work on the post?” a tall boy inquired.
“Going to tell the Old Man not to drill us so hard?” chuckled another one.
“Going to take pictures?” a redheaded boy asked eagerly.
“No,” said Cherry. By this time she had to smile at their friendliness and at the assortment of accents from all over the country. “I’m going to be an Army nurse—I hope.”
“Oh!” the young men all said, and Cherry was amazed to see a look of profound respect and warmth come into their faces. She was touched, too, and thoughtful, as the truck ground to a stop before a gate and some low, hastily constructed, wooden buildings.
“Well, I’d be happy to have you nurse me any old time,” the Southern boy said, as he gallantly helped Cherry off the truck. “Now you want to go over to that little old building with the Red Cross flag, over yonder.”
“She has to show her pass first,” the tall boy interrupted.
Cherry pulled out the letter and showed it to the M.P.—the military policeman—at the gate. That young man—he could not have been much older than Midge, Cherry decided—looked at the letter. “You’ll have to get a pass, Nurse, in that house over there.”
Cherry looked about in bewilderment.
“We’ll take her over!” volunteered three of the boys from the truck. Cherry found herself marched over with a military escort.
The whole afternoon was exciting. Cherry felt a glow of gratitude and an enormous liking for these swarms of friendly, hard-working young men in khaki, or in green fatigues, who crowded the dusty, sunny camp. Tanks and jeeps roared by. Half a mile away, the sky was gray with planes buzzing over the new airfield. Cherry decided she was going to like Army life. Even the physical examination, in which Cherry was tested from head to toe by several specialists and all but turned inside out, went off smoothly.
At the end of it, Cherry turned to the young nurse who had been present throughout. “Do you think I passed?” Cherry implored her.
“With those red cheeks?” The Army nurse laughed. “Certainly you passed!”
Cherry’s black eyes shone. “I’ve asked for overseas duty—my whole class has!” she confided. She caught herself wondering whether her young doctor friend Lex had volunteered, too, for overseas duty.
“Well, good luck to you! And now,” the post nurse told her, “you’ll follow Corporal Hart to the Administration Building.”
A very short corporal came in. He led Cherry briskly across the post and into another wooden building. They waited before one of the offices. Cherry saw long lines of young men in civilian clothes, awaiting induction into the Army. Everywhere there were young men, and more young men.
Cherry looked at the columns of men for whose health and lives she would be responsible. She stood up a little straighter.
Then Cherry was in an office, being fingerprinted and saying yes, she was a citizen, yes, she could start at the drop of a hat, no, she had never been a policeman nor a fireman nor in jail. She was whisked off to see more and still more people. Then she was whirled away in another Army truck, and with her head now thoroughly spinning, she found herself back on a trolley.
She looked down at her nurse’s wrist watch. Nearly six o’clock! But she was too preoccupied to pay any attention to the time. A new idea had popped into Cherry’s head, and it troubled her. Did she really have the many stern qualifications required of an Army nurse?
Half an hour later, still thoughtful, she was home, answering her mother’s and Midge’s eager questions. She barely had taken her hat and coat off, when there was an uproar out on the porch.
“It’s the Perkinses’ dog after Mrs. Lane’s cat again,” Midge stated with satisfaction, as she tried on Cherry’s red beanie. “Or vice versa.”
Mrs. Ames cocked her head. “It sounds more like stamping and whistling to me,” she said worriedly. “I do hope nobody is tearing up my flower beds.”
Cherry listened too. The clamor was now increased by the steady ringing of the doorbell. Suddenly the truth struck her. There was only one person who could make all that noise—Charlie!
She raced to the door and there stood her twin brother—sunburned, silver wings on his chest, wide smile, and all. He and Cherry looked strikingly alike, even though he was taller and his keen eyes were sky-blue and his hair blond, while Cherry’s eyes and hair were midnight dark.
“Anybody home?” he inquired calmly. “I was trying to give you folks a hint.”
The Ames twins hugged each other, as Mrs. Ames and Midge came running. There was a profusion of hello’s and how-are-you’s and how-long-can-you-stay?
“Just a thirty-six-hour leave,” Charlie told them. “I didn’t want to waste a minute of it trying to phone you long distance that I was coming. I figured you’d let me in when I got here. How are you, Nurse? I beg your pardon—Lieutenant!”
“Whoa—I’m not safely in yet!” Cherry laughed.
“He—he just sort of dropped out of the sky!” Midge babbled. “Well, he always was crazy about planes!”
Mrs. Ames was talking excitedly into the phone. “Will? Will, Charlie’s here!… Yes, just this moment… Not five minutes! Come on home right now!”
“When will you know if you’re accepted?” Charlie asked Cherry.
“For heaven’s sake, Cherry,” Mrs. Ames protested, rushing up, “give the boy a chance to catch his breath!” Cherry shrugge
d helplessly, while Mrs. Ames asked him, “Are you hungry, dear? We’ll have dinner right away! Do you want some clean laundry? Have you been all right?”
“Parents!” Charlie grinned sympathetically to Cherry.
That evening was given over to a joyous reunion. Cherry was too busy and too happy to worry over her new-found discovery—that being an Army nurse might involve more than a smart uniform and handsome soldiers and sailing away to exotic lands. Only when she went upstairs to pack, for she was leaving for Spencer Hospital the following morning, did she do some hard, realistic thinking.
Physical stamina, that was the first thing she or any nurse would need, and lots of it. Cherry decided she had that. Skilled nursing—thanks to her carefully chosen, really first-rate nursing school—was thoroughly trained into her. “I could nurse in my sleep,” Cherry thought honestly. Courage. Character. We-ell, who could know that in advance? Cherry was inclined to plunge headlong into adventure and let courage take care of itself. It usually did. Maybe what she needed was less impulsiveness. What else? She would have to learn to strike just the right note with her soldier patients, not too familiar, and still with the warmth and understanding that was a big part of nursing. Military discipline? Cherry’s heart hit bottom. Still, she was a nurse, and she was accustomed to hospital discipline. So far, so good.
But there was something else that worried her, some nameless self-doubt. Cherry sought to put it into words, as her hands folded garments and laid them in her new suitcase. But she could not name the worry that troubled her. All she knew was that she was thrilled and eager and scared.
Next morning, all those thoughts were pushed aside in the bittersweet hours before leaving home. Cherry was fairly tingling to be on her way, but good-bys were never easy. She wandered about the house, memorizing the pleasant comfortable rooms—the living room with its big fireplace and blue sofa and her grandmother’s fragrant flower-petal jar, the dining room where a sunny bay window looked out on her mother’s cherished flower garden. What parties they had had in these two big rooms! Every year, all the way through grammar school and high school, the Ames twins had invited all the neighborhood young people in to celebrate their joint birthday on the day before Christmas. Forty or fifty of them playing games and stuffing on birthday cake!