Cherry Ames Boxed Set 9-12

by Helen Wells

  When she finally took his temperature she found it had risen to 103°. She must consult Dr. Monroe at once. He would probably want to start Timmy on sulfa at eight instead of the aspirin. It was almost eight now, and she was due in sick bay for Bill’s regular check. When would Mrs. Crane come back?

  In desperation she rang the steward’s bell. “I hope it doesn’t bring Waidler,” she mumbled. But it did.

  “Well?” he scowled from the doorway. “What does your highness want now?”

  Cherry blinked back tears of exhaustion and anxiety. “Please, Waidler,” she begged, “will you go and get Mrs. Crane? I imagine she’s still at dinner. I have to go down to sick bay for a few minutes.”

  “What’s stopping you?” he demanded sourly. “Don’t tell me this little bit of motion has thrown you off your feet. Wait until tonight. If you can’t walk now you’ll be a big help when the passengers start sending for you.”

  Cherry sucked in a deep breath. “It’s not the rough seas,” she said quietly. “I can’t leave this little boy alone. He’s running quite a bit of temperature. Please, get his mother.”

  Waidler merely glared at her. And then, miraculously, Timmy came to the rescue. “Tell me a story, please, Mr. Waidler,” he said. “Tell me a story about pirates.”

  Cherry felt sorry for innocent little Timmy who took it for granted that everyone was his friend. “That old sea dog, Waidler, probably does know some swell yarns,” she thought. “But he wouldn’t waste a minute of his precious time amusing a sick little boy.”

  “Oh, all right, all right,” Waidler was mumbling gruffly. “Go long, Nurse. But don’t get it into your head that sitting with your patients is one of my duties. If the Captain ever heard about this—” He shook his head darkly. “No good will come of it. Mark my words!”

  But Timmy merely wriggled ecstatically, and patted a spot beside him on the bed. “Sit down here, Mr. Waidler. I have to know all about pirates.”

  Cherry fled, thinking, “If anyone can get under Waidler’s barnacled shell it will be Timmy. No one could resist that lovable little imp!”

  CHAPTER VII

  A Stormy Night

  WHEN CHERRY BREATHLESSLY ARRIVED IN SICK BAY, Dr. Monroe was ahead of her, taking Bill’s T.P.R.

  “Oh, dear,” she sighed inwardly. “Now I’m in for it. And the very first night at sea!”

  But Dr. Kirk Monroe only looked up and smiled. “You needn’t have come down, Miss Ames. I saw Mrs. Crane dancing in the club and guessed you were tied up with Timmy.” His stethoscope was dangling from his neck, and his fingers, which had been on Bill’s pulse, looked cool and capable. He said reassuringly, “This patient is doing fine. But I’m going to have Rick sleep in the upper bunk tonight. How’s our other patient?”

  Cherry, still a little flustered from hurrying, said, “His temperature is up two degrees, Doctor. And Tim aches all over. Looks like incipient influenza to me.”

  Rick came into sick bay then, and Dr. Monroe left with Cherry shortly afterward. On the way up to B deck Cherry thought he might mention the mystery of the purser’s safe, but he didn’t.

  As they entered the Crane suite Waidler was obviously in the middle of an exciting tale of adventure on the high seas.

  “Go ’way, you two,” Timmy yelled petulantly. “Waidy’s telling me about Henry Morgan who was the most froshus pirate of ’em all.”

  So it was “Waidy” now! Cherry could hardly suppress a chuckle. The steward’s face turned crimson as he stumbled to his feet.

  Dr. Monroe said easily, “Thank you, Waidler. It was very co-operative of you to help us out.” To Timmy, he said: “I have a book in my cabin. It’s full of pirate stories and I think you’ll like the pictures. Perhaps Miss Ames will read to you while you’re being steamed.”

  “Who’s Miss Sames?” Timmy demanded.

  The young ship’s doctor looked puzzled. Then he laughed. “Oh, I meant to say Cherry would read it.”

  Timmy sank back against the pillows in relief. “That’s dif-frunt. She’s okay, but her stories aren’t very ’citing. Not like his.” He pointed a fat finger at Waidler who was trying to creep unobtrusively away. “When he was a little boy he was captured by pirates. But he got away ’cause he chopped off their heads one by one with a great big ’normous knife.”

  The steward disappeared so quickly it seemed as though he must have melted through the door. Cherry let the laughter bubble up to her lips.

  Dr. Kirk Monroe laughed too. “That Waidler!” he said in an aside to Cherry. “He’s a character. He’s got a terrific bark but no bite at all. At the beginning of every cruise we’re swamped with complaints from the passengers about his attitude. And in the end they all fraternize with him outrageously.”

  “Why does he pose as such a disagreeable person?” Cherry asked curiously.

  “I couldn’t tell you. That’s a problem for psychiatry.” Dr. Monroe smiled. He listened to Timmy’s chest, thumped his back, and then sat back and stared at him for a long minute. More to himself than to Cherry he said: “For the present, we’ll keep him on the same routine. After his inhalation we’ll give him five grains of aspirin and a teaspoon of elixir of Luminal. That should keep him quiet throughout the night.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Cherry said. “About his diet. Apparently he’s had nothing since breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Timmy howled. “I won’t eat!”

  Dr. Monroe said gently, “And you don’t have to, Tim. Not if you drink a big chocolate milk shake.” To Cherry, he added quietly: “Put a raw egg in it.”

  And then he was gone. Everything went smoothly, and Timmy was tucked in bed, drowsy-eyed, when his mother came back. Mrs. Crane’s eyes were sparkling. She had, obviously, had a good time.

  Cherry said that Tim very probably would sleep until morning, but that Mrs. Crane should not hesitate to call the doctor if he seemed worse.

  “I do hope I won’t get seasick,” Mrs. Crane said worriedly. “One of the women at our table in the club left rather hurriedly a few minutes ago. I imagine you’ve got another patient.”

  Mrs. Crane was right. Out in the corridor the loudspeaker was calling:

  “Nurse Ames. Nurse Ames. Report to Dr. Monroe in Stateroom 17. Stateroom 17. Nurse Ames.”

  Stateroom 17. That must be on A deck. Cherry hurried up the stairs.

  From then on it was a nightmare. Cherry was called to one suite after another all night long. Fretful, frightened people. Pampered women who refused to listen to reason. Some of them, convinced that the ship was going to roll and pitch for the entire twelve days, insisted upon being taken off at once. Others, giving way to the nausea, had to be coaxed for long minutes into chewing the little candy-coated pieces of gum.

  Cherry was so busy she hardly noticed the heaving decks and the thudding splash of rain against the windowpanes. But at last it was morning, a heaven-sent, sunny dawn. Cherry thought she had never appreciated balmy weather so much before in all her life.

  Then the “convalescents” had to be wheedled into sipping hot tea and munching thin pieces of hard toast or crackers. Cherry explained over and over again: “You’re very dehydrated. You must take a little fluid every fifteen or twenty minutes. This nice dry toast will help settle your stomach. Really, it will. Please try.”

  At seven, Dr. Monroe ordered her to breakfast. “It’s all over now,” he said. Cherry noticed the deep circles under his eyes and wondered if she looked as drawn and tired. Apparently she did, for he said sternly:

  “Have a big, hot, leisurely breakfast. The stewards and stewardesses will take over from here on in. After you have charted our two real patients’ T.P.R., you are to take a nap. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Cherry smiled wanly. Dazed with exhaustion and lack of sleep, she somehow managed to get down creamy oatmeal, drenched in brown sugar and thick cream. Then the waitress brought fluffy scrambled eggs and a cup of cocoa. Cherry propped her eyes open and finished everything. She knew nourishmen
t meant renewed strength. You could never tell what the day might bring forth.

  Bill, fortunately, as he said himself, was as good as new except for the use of his right arm. But Timmy’s condition was unchanged. Cherry had expected—hoped that his early morning temperature would be near normal. She was sleepily scribbling notes which she would later enter in the sick bay log, when Dr. Monroe came in.

  “That settles it,” he said, when Cherry handed him her pad. “We have a new sulfa compound which I’ll have sent in to you at once. First dose, four tablets; subsequent doses, two every four hours. Day and night.”

  Mrs. Crane, still surprised that she had managed to sleep through the stormy night, hovered closer. “Oh, doctor, what is it? Not pneu-pneumonia?”

  Dr. Monroe immediately assured her, “Nothing of the kind. It’s a simple case of laryngitis with some inflammation of the trachea.” He hurried away.

  Tim’s mother looked more horrified than ever. Cherry explained quietly, “In other words, Mrs. Crane, just plain croup. Doctor is putting Timmy on sulfa merely as a precaution against a further rise in temperature. He may respond to the first dose and run no more fever.”

  Mrs. Crane said, relieved, “Oh, croup. Timmy has had croup on and off since he was born. Nanny says the pediatrician told her he was just one of those children who are extremely susceptible to croup.” She blew an airy little kiss to Timmy and went off to breakfast.

  Cherry couldn’t help thinking: “So the pediatrician told Nanny that! Where was Timmy’s mother at the time?” She shook her head. “Probably out dancing somewhere. Poor little Tim! If ever a boy needed a real mother, this one does. Lots of his crankiness is due to the fact that he feels insecure. He demands attention as a compensation. He’s not really spoiled—he’s just starving for mother love.”

  And yet, Mrs. Crane was a nice woman. And she was fond of Timmy. Why couldn’t she see that he had outgrown a nanny and needed her?

  Ziggy himself brought the sulfa tablets from the dispensary. He said with a grin, “Waidler has got the refrigerator in my office bulging with provisions. I signed a requisition a mile long. You should see your own desk. There are neat little stacks of bouillon cubes, tea bags, and heaven knows what all, reaching right up to the overhead.”

  So Waidler was over his grouch. Maybe he was like those people who were always grouchy in the morning. Maybe Waidler felt about the first day at sea as they did about the first few minutes before breakfast.

  Ziggy pointed to Cherry’s rumpled uniform. “I’d say you’d slept in your clothes except that I know better. You look as though you were going to fall asleep on your feet any minute. Want me to send a stewardess in here to relieve you while you catch a little shut-eye?”

  Timmy arched his back in rage. “Don’t want anybody ’cept Cherry.”

  Cherry smiled her thanks at the purser. “I won’t be through with this little patient for another half hour anyway. By that time his mother should be back from breakfast. But thanks for thinking about me.”

  Ziggy produced a toothpick and chewed on it while Cherry, using the dispensary mortar and pestle he had thoughtfully brought in, pounded four of the sulfa tablets into a powder. She mixed this powder with the strained prunes on Timmy’s ignored breakfast tray.

  “Have a compliment for you, Miss Cherry,” Ziggy said gruffly. “When I was telling Doc that you were among those present when I discovered the, er—shall we say accident, in my office yesterday, he seemed right pleased that you had neglected to report same to him. Says he to me, ‘Miss Cherry is one of those rare combinations of beauty and the beast.’ Or was it beauty and brains?” Ziggy fled, embarrassed at the slip of his tongue.

  Cherry laughed, thankful that she had resisted the temptation to gossip. Timmy promptly sat up. “Tell me the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ Cherry. I have a bear, too. Only he’s not a ’chanted prince. He’s a fuzzy-wuzzy bear. But I losted him, so p’raps he’s not fuzzy-wuzzy any more.”

  Cherry could not suppress a weary yawn. “That’s too bad, Timmy,” she got out in the middle of the yawn. “Now if you eat up every speck of your prunes I’ll tell you the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ ”

  Patiently she spooned the fruit and sulfa mixture into him and started the vaporizer going. From inside his tent, Timmy said excitedly:

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Waidy says we’re going to have a big tree in the liberry. I’m going to get all well quick so I can see it. ’N’ I’m going to hang up my stocking by the fireplace in the great big living room. It’s a fake fireplace,” he confided with ill-disguised disgust, “but Waidy says Santa Claus knows about ships so he’s going to come down the smokestack.”

  Cherry jerked herself out of a half doze. Tomorrow was not only Christmas Eve. It was her birthday, and Charlie’s too! A lump swelled in her throat as she thought of her family. Thank goodness they couldn’t know what a hectic day and night she had just lived through! How Dr. Joe would scold if he knew she had been on duty almost constantly for the past twenty hours!

  Cherry unplugged the vaporizer and removed the tent. Now that Timmy was on sulfa his fluid intake per hour must not be less than eight ounces. They must not risk the effect of the powerful drug on the little boy’s system if he refused to absorb a sufficient amount of liquid. How could she depend upon his mother to force even four ounces of fluid while Cherry had her long-anticipated nap?

  She couldn’t. She herself must somehow spoon a full eight ounces into him before she went off duty. By now Cherry was indeed almost “asleep on her feet.” She hated to leave the little boy alone while she raced up to the purser’s office on A deck for a can of ice-cold juice. But neither did she feel right about again calling on Waidler for help. She wasn’t quite sure how Dr. Monroe felt about that. He hadn’t seemed annoyed, but he had dismissed the steward rather quickly. Perhaps she had unknowingly violated some shipboard regulation.

  And there was no telling when Mrs. Crane would come back. The sunbathed decks, swept by warm, salty breezes, would be a great temptation. So would the happy crowd that must have gathered by now around the green tiled pool.

  Cherry made up her mind; she would have to risk it. To Timmy she said, coaxingly, “You’re a big boy, going on seven. So I’m sure I can leave you alone for a few minutes, can’t I?”

  Timmy nodded soberly.

  “You won’t get out of bed, no matter what happens? Promise?”

  Timmy hesitated. “No. Won’t promise. Not ’less you leave the door open. ’Pose my mummy comes back and can’t get in? She never ’members to bring her key.”

  Leaving the door to the corridor open, Cherry decided quickly, might be the wisest thing to do. If she were delayed for some reason and Timmy wanted something, he could call out to a passing steward.

  She propped the door open and then remembered what had happened to the purser’s safe yesterday. Mrs. Crane was just the type to leave money and jewelry carelessly lying around. Cherry’s dark eyes swiftly swept the bedroom and the adjoining living room. Nothing of value was in sight.

  With a parting admonition to Timmy that he must not get out of bed, she sped down the corridor. Halfway to the staircase she passed the same spot where she had first bumped into slim, blonde Jan. The door she had popped out of yesterday was slightly ajar, Cherry noticed incuriously. The number on the door was 125, the bedroom of Suite 125-127.

  Then she suddenly became curious. As she hurried by, someone standing just inside the bedroom swiftly closed the door. Someone in a colorful dirndl skirt.

  A dirndl skirt, Cherry felt sure, was exactly what tiny waisted young Jan Paulding would be wearing on this bright, almost tropical day!

  But Cherry was too tired to wonder much about that then. Up on A deck she saw some of her patients of the night before. Only a few of them smiled in recognition, and none of them looked really robust. One passenger, however, in the crowd that was milling toward the swimming pool, looked extremely healthy. She could only see his broad back in a tannis
h gabardine suit, but she would have known that almost swaggering gait anywhere.

  He turned as though feeling her eyes upon him, and she caught a glimpse of his tanned face as she whisked into the purser’s office. Mr. Rough Diamond was not feeling any ill effects of the stormy night; Mr. Rough Diamond felt fine and very sure of himself.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Timmy’s Mysterious Visitor

  FATE, IT SEEMED, ALWAYS CONSPIRED TO DELAY CHERRY whenever she was in a hurry. This time, Fate took the simple form of a common garden-variety can opener. The refrigerator was, as Ziggy had reported, crammed with all kinds of canned juices. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to open them with.

  “If this were only an old-fashioned icebox,” Cherry wailed. “An old-fashioned ice pick is all I ask for at this moment.”

  At last she discovered, far back in the refrigerator, a small bottle of apple juice. She had seen a wall attachment for opening bottles in Timmy’s bathroom. Prayerfully she hoped that he liked apple juice. One consolation was that, while poking around on the shelves, she had discovered a box of bright colored straws. Perhaps Timmy would enjoy sucking the juice straight from the bottle. Cherry remembered that she had spurned glasses when she was his age. Midge still did.

  Cherry carefully locked the door to the purser’s office behind her and raced back to her patient. She skidded to a stop as she crossed the threshold to Timmy’s room. She gasped in chagrin. Toys of all sizes and descriptions were heaped helter-skelter on his bed. The closet door stood open and the bottom drawers had been yanked out. Toys and shoes spilled out of them: stuffed animals, rubber animals, plastic animals, books, trains, boats—Nanny or somebody must have packed a trunkful of everything in Timmy’s nursery at home.

  And there could be only one answer to the topsyturvy room. Timmy had disobeyed orders. Cherry should never have left him alone. She should have known that she couldn’t rely on a six-year-old’s promise.