by Helen Wells
Cherry said impulsively, “It’s nice of you to visit the men when they’re sick.”
Captain Endicott said dryly, “As a matter of fact, I’m here to check on just how sick Trent really is.” He looked down at the boy they had just helped back to bed. Trent, who had been through a drastic treatment, was pale and exhausted. “Hmm,” said Endicott.
Lex said sharply, “This boy is not shamming. You will receive a report on his condition.” He stuffed his stethoscope back in his pocket. “And now, Captain Endicott, if your business here is finished——”
Cherry wished Lex would not always be so brusque. But as a matter of fact, Captain Endicott was holding up the many treatments and prescriptions Lex still had to give. And she herself was in a hurry to get this patient a cup of strong, hot tea to brace him up.
Paul Endicott, offended, turned to go, and collided with Bunce. Bunce was sprinting along with a cup of tea—for Trent, Cherry realized gratefully. A drop or two of the tea splashed on Captain Endicott’s immaculate pinks.
“Sorry, sir,” said Bunce and intently went on to the patient. Cherry saw Lex’s approving nod. She wondered exactly what it was that Lex approved.
Captain Endicott wiped his trouser knee, frowning. Cherry apologized for her corpsman.
“Quite all right, though I think Private Smith might apologize for himself.” He glanced critically at the boy.
Bunce looked up from the bedside. “I did say I’m sorry, sir.”
“Perhaps we have some spot remover,” Cherry said hastily. Endicott was still fussing with his handkerchief over the tiny spots of tea.
“Good-by, Captain Endicott,” Lex said deliberately, and stood there waiting for him to leave the ward.
Paul Endicott glared at all three of them and departed.
Cherry relaxed and returned to work. For the rest of that day, growing more tired but less bewildered, Cherry filled out reports, saw to the X-ray and laboratory tests which Dr. Upham had ordered, supervised the corpsmen who gave simple treatments and morning care, checked the medicine cabinet, accompanied the terrifying Chief Nurse on her inspection visit, kept an eye on the diet kitchen at lunchtime, bolted her own lunch, visited a new patient, gave more treatments, attended another doctor on the two-thirty sick call, and at long last, at three-thirty, turned over the day report book to the afternoon nurse. Cherry felt by three-thirty that it was at least next week. And Thursday, her free day, seemed two years off.
Thursday finally arrived. Cherry spent the morning blissfully sleeping. In the afternoon, she loafed at Nurses’ Quarters with some of her friends who also had the day off. The girls were upstairs, congregated in Cherry’s room, trying on their new uniforms, and laughing their heads off at the way some of them fit—or failed to fit.
Gwen waddled around the room, duck fashion, to show how the back of her jacket bounced up like a tail, instead of lying flat. “Meet Gwen Quack Jones!” she said, waggling her coattail and clumping about in Bertha Larsen’s shoes, two sizes too big for her.
“That’s nothing, look at me!” Bertha panted from the doorway. “I’m a—a sausage!” Plump Bertha’s uniform was so tight she could scarcely breathe.
“Come in and sit down!” they invited her.
Bertha looked scared. “I wouldn’t dare sit down in this—this——”
Cherry, Vivian and Ann sat on the bed, rocking against one another with laughter.
“How’s this, girls?” Cherry said. She took a deep breath, held it, buttoned the top button of her high-necked shirt and looked cross-eyed.
“You ought to have your picture taken that way!” Vivian cried and unbuttoned Cherry’s tight collar.
Ann took out her sewing box, but no one wanted to be sensible. Gwen was still quacking and waggling her way around the room, gibbering furious nonsense à la Donald Duck. When the phone rang, they were too weak with laughter to answer it. Finally Cherry pulled herself together and said, “Hello!”
The clerk’s voice, choked from a cold and further strangled by a buzzing wire, said what sounded like “Laptin Edicod to zee Bis Warren.”
“Miss Rabbit Warren?” Cherry inquired into the phone, and the girls exploded.
There was an offended silence at the other end of the crackling wire, then the indignant clerk said, “Bis Litian Warren.” And the clerk hung up.
Cherry held her nose and repeated the announcement. The other girls sang out, “Oh-h-h, Vivian, your heart throb’s waiting downstairs!” “Warren’s got a bad case of it!”
Vivian’s pale face flushed shell pink, but she accepted the teasing with good grace. Cherry was relieved to note that.
“You come too!” Vivian seized Cherry’s hand. With the other hand, Vivian was nervously smoothing her light brown hair and patting her uniform into place.
“You don’t want a third person along!” Cherry protested.
“You mustn’t stay long!” Vivian warned her. She was tugging Cherry along the hall to the stairs. “I just want you to come down and say how-do-you-do and show Paul that you really do like him.” Cherry heard that with mixed feelings.
“You don’t like Paul very much, do you?”
Cherry replied uneasily, “Oh, I’m not much for handsome men.”
“It’s only because you don’t know Paul!” Vivian pleaded, “Stay for a while.”
When they entered the sitting room of Nurses’ Quarters and Cherry saw how Vivian’s soft hazel eyes shone, and how eager she was to have Cherry like her beau, Cherry softened. Perhaps she had been unfair or too hasty in judging Endicott. She was concerned, too, to learn how Endicott treated her friend Vivian. So she said a friendly hello to the sleek, handsome young man who rose to greet them, and tried to look at him without prejudice.
“How lucky I am, with two girls to talk to!” Captain Endicott smiled, as the three of them sat down on a big couch.
Vivian said shyly, “It’s high time my two favorite people became acquainted.”
Paul Endicott’s gray eyes expressed his appreciation of the compliment, and he said, “How would you suggest going about it? Shall I tell you my life story?” he said lightly.
Cherry thought he was joking. But Captain Endicott was not at all loath to make an audience of two pretty and attentive girls. He told them about himself, at some length. He was the only son of wealthy parents and he admitted, with an engaging smile, that he was badly spoiled. He talked so much that Cherry began to wonder how she could break away. She knew she was tactlessly staying too long: Vivian’s big soft eyes, past Paul’s blond head, implored her to go. But Paul Endicott talked on.
“As a matter of fact,” he continued persuasively, “the only job my father would hear of my holding for long was a position with my uncle. Believe me, I’d much rather have been working, like other men, instead of traveling around.” Cherry was not persuaded. He had lived in London, Paris, Rome, Cairo, Rio—he had seen, enjoyed, done everything. No wonder, Cherry thought, Vivian is impressed. As Paul stopped for breath, Cherry rose to her feet.
“I’m enjoying this so much. I do hate to leave, but I’m afraid I’ve things to do. So if you will excuse me, I’ll run along.”
She saw Vivian’s eager face, silently asking if Cherry did not like Paul better, now that she knew more about him. But Paul’s talk had confirmed Cherry in her opinion that he was a vain and shallow and selfish man. She could find just one big point in his favor: it was generally acknowledged that he was a conscientious and competent officer… a rather self-important, over-bearing officer… but he did do his job well. She tried to hide these doubtful thoughts from Vivian’s trusting gaze and turned to leave. Some day, preferably soon, she would talk to Vivian about Endicott. But it would be difficult, Vivian was falling in love with him, and Cherry knew she was going to put off the talk as long as possible.
Cherry went back upstairs to the nurses’ dubious fashion show.
The girls were in the process of trying out new hairdo’s on one another, with some wild and startling res
ults, when Vivian returned almost two hours later. She strolled into the crowded room, dreamy-eyed.
“It’s a wonder you don’t go bumping into things, with all those stars in your eyes!” Gwen declared.
“How was the dream prince?” they all demanded.
Vivian sighed. Then she grinned back at them. “All right, all right! I might as well tell you kids at once, before you worm it out of me. We took a walk around Post and then we stopped at the Officers’ Club and then Paul,” she said tenderly, “bought me a soda!”
The girls pretended to swoon. Cherry, more sympathetic than the others, gently ribbed Vivian, “It sounds very romantic.”
“It was,” Vivian replied solemnly.
“A soda!” Marie Swift echoed in ecstatic tones. “Honey flavor, wasn’t it?”
“Roses and—and perfume,” Vivian gulped. But she could laugh now and take the teasing well, instead of fearing and mistrusting the other girls for it, as she once had. What a change in Vivian’s character! What a happy change! Cherry thought, “Here’s hoping nothing—and no one—hurts Vivian again.”
Vivian turned confidingly to Cherry. “And you know what else? There’s a dance at the Officers’ Country Club this Saturday evening and Paul asked me to go with him!” She was glowing with happiness. “Cherry, you’re going with Lex, I suppose. Why don’t we make it a foursome?”
Cherry promised in some embarrassment to ask Lex about it when she saw him that evening. But when he asked her to go to the dance with him, she could not bring herself to mention Vivian’s suggestion.
They had a fine, comfortable, openhearted time. They took the bus into town, found a good movie, and after that, food. Lex understood about Cherry’s being hungry at all hours of the day and night. They squeezed into a booth in a Chinese restaurant and stuffed happily on chow mein. As they ate, they talked. Cherry thought Lex was the most satisfying person to talk to.
“Oh, by the way,” Cherry said at last, “Vivian suggested that you and I, and Endicott and herself, make a foursome of it at the dance.”
Lex groaned. “I don’t want to go with that phony. Do you?”
“No, but I don’t want to let Vivian down.”
“We-ell,” said Lex, “I don’t want to see him make a fool of Vivian, either. But let’s let the foursome business take care of itself.”
Cherry took Lex’s cue and changed the subject.
“How’s Dr. Joe?” she asked. She did not see much of her old friend, now that he was assistant to Unit Director Wylie. “What’s all the mystery?”
Lex scowled. “I—don’t—know. Something awfully strange there. I can’t figure it out. Dr. Fortune and Dr. Wylie are both acting like a couple of G-men.”
Cherry laughed. “If there’s a mystery, I’ll dig it out sooner or later!”
Lex said seriously, “Watch your step! We’ll be leaving here in about two weeks—sailing to ports unknown—all this hush stuff may come out sooner than you think. Promise me you’ll be careful, Cherry. I know your talent for getting yourself into trouble!”
Cherry hastily changed the subject again. She asked Lex what he thought of the way she was running her Army ward.
“Not bad, Nurse, not bad at all,” he grinned at her. “But I think a lot of the credit goes to that youngster—what’s his name?—Bunce. He’s a fine and serious corpsman, for all his wild ways. The Army is going to be hearing from him, I lay you a nickel.”
“Your nickel is safe. But better not risk a nickel on me. You know, Lex,” Cherry confided, leaning her chin on her hand, “I’ve got an awful lot of doubts about myself. About whether I’ll make a good Army nurse, or whether I’ll fail in some emergency. I wouldn’t tell anyone else but you, but Lex—I’m still scared.”
“Well, honey, who isn’t? We’re going to go through a trial by fire. At least we’ll all go through it together.”
“Lex, you’re nice!” she said affectionately.
“I like you too!” Cherry and Lex sat there in the booth and beamed at each other.
Army nursing was not all romancing. Cherry worked hard in the following days. On the ward, Bunce did not make things any easier. Six soldiers had dared call him a bedpan warrior, and Bunce had gotten even, and thereby found himself put to scrubbing floors again. Cherry sympathized, but she had a difficult time without her most competent corpsman.
One morning on the way to their wards, Gwen reminded Cherry, “There’s tennis, golf, swimming, dancing, cards, libraries—a grand garrison life here for us!”
Cherry noted with a grin that they were walking past Expectancy Ward, where soldiers’ wives could have their babies at the cost of seventy cents. She replied, “Yes, but when? When do we play tennis, golf, et cetera?” Her world consisted only of these wards, X-ray, Pharmacy, Operating, Dispensary, Dental. “I never have time for fun,” she mourned to Gwen, as she sprinted into her own Medical Ward.
Cherry walked miles and miles on duty. “I’ve figured out,” she announced to Ann and Gwen at the end of the week, “that with all our hospital buildings stretched out flat as they are, and all connecting, they measure three whole miles! And Sergeant Deake is still putting us through some fancy paces! I won’t have any feet left for the dance.”
But Saturday evening found Cherry very fit for the dance. Donning her new dress uniform, gleaming with gold, put her in a gay mood. Vivian, in the next room, called out nonsense through their connecting door as she dressed. The fact that Paul Endicott was taking her to the dance, that this was her first Army dance and her first real beau, brought lights to Vivian’s large hazel eyes and a lilt to her voice.
Cherry patted a last smidge of powder on her nose. Lex and Paul both were calling for the girls at nine. It was almost nine now! Then the downstairs desk phoned up to say “Dr. Upham is waiting.” A moment later, the phone shrilled again, and Vivian dashed for the call.
Cherry flew down the stairs, black curls flying under her smart officer’s cap, thinking, “Why did they have to arrive together!”
Both Paul and Lex were in their best uniforms. Lex looked imposing but Paul, his fair hair gleaming above a meticulous uniform, looked positively glamorous. As they stood side by side in the hall, their dislike of each other was unmistakable. A fine foursome they would make!
Cherry was just saying good evening to them when Vivian arrived. She looked pretty, but she betrayed her excitement and nervousness. When Endicott put a bunch of golden chrysanthemums into her hands, Vivian was speechless.
“You should always have lovely things,” Endicott said. “Like flowers in your room.”
Lex was laughing behind his eyes. While Vivian was asking Lieutenant Glenn to take care of her flowers, Lex looked at Cherry with a wicked twinkle, picked up an ash tray, and presented it to her with a gallant flourish. “Mademoiselle, allow me! This will lend your room glamour.”
Paul Endicott looked offended. “Shall we start, Vivian?” Cherry and Lex were trying to hide their mirth. “Sorry I can’t offer you two a lift,” Endicott said, stalking away from Lex and Cherry. “Too bad you’ll have to walk. I managed to get a jeep—and a driver.”
“Walk, nothing!” Lex retorted in high good spirits. “Wait till you see our romantic chariot!”
It was a brand-new ambulance! Cherry and Lex clambered up to the seat, Lex slammed the door, and they were off to the dance with a wild clanging.
Jeep and ambulance bounced along the five miles down the road. When both couples drew up before the Country Club, Vivian was gasping from her jeep ride. The wind had played havoc with her neat hair-do, and Paul’s pride in his taxi was visibly dampened when he saw the state of his lady. Cherry felt a real satisfaction in their nice, comfortable ambulance as she smoothed Vivian’s hair for her. Then the two couples walked up the gravel drive to the clubhouse.
Within was a gay scene. Uniforms, greens and pinks, mingled on the dance floor, before roaring fires in twin fireplaces, over tiny tables on the glassed-in terrace. A dance orchestra played at one end of
the big room, and when they stopped, a rumba band at the other end of the big room, started up. The music was swollen by talk and laughter, tinkling glasses, the beat and shuffle of dancing feet. It was Cherry’s first Army party and she found it dashingly formal and very gay.
Cherry danced the first dance with Lex, of course, and Vivian with Endicott. Then, with frigid politeness, Captain Endicott danced exactly one dance with Cherry, while Lex and Vivian whirled around the floor. Endicott returned Cherry to Lex as if she were an undesirable puppy he was handing over to its undesirable owner. For the rest of the evening, he carefully ignored them.
“It’s too bad,” Cherry whispered regretfully to Lex, “that the first personable man to pay Vivian any attention had to be Paul’s type.”
Lex nodded in silent agreement.
“It’s so important for Vivian to find someone who’d be understanding and sympathetic, and Paul’s so self-centered.”
“Right you are,” Lex agreed.
“He certainly doesn’t care for us,” she said, “or Bunce either.”
“Never mind Endicott or Bunce,” Lex said gruffly. “Let’s enjoy ourselves.”
It was a good party. They danced a long time, then strolled out to the terrace. They challenged “Ding” and Gwen to a fast game of backgammon. Later they joined a laughing, chatting group before a roaring fire.
Cherry thoroughly enjoyed herself. She almost succeeded, as Lex had suggested, in forgetting Endicott.
But Cherry wondered, as she sipped her punch and laughed with the others, if Endicott was really somebody who could be dismissed so easily.
CHAPTER V
On Bivouac
“STEP ON IT!” SERGEANT DEAKE SHOUTED OVER THE heavy tramp of feet and rumble of gun caissons. “Only one little mile more! Then we bivouac! Ladies, you can’t fail me now!”
Cherry sighed, shifted her heavy musette bag and her heavy helmet to more comfortable positions, and kept on plodding. They had been marching all morning and it was now early afternoon. All around her marched her fellow nurses, and ahead of them and behind them, endless columns of infantrymen and artillerymen. This was the long-awaited bivouac, grand wind-up of Cherry’s training. Everyone wore a tan arm band. These warriors were the Tans; the eight hundred enemy Blues were advancing on another road. They were going to fight a simulated battle.