Cherry Ames Boxed Set 13-16

by Helen Wells

  She and Ruth reached the lockers and put their handbags, and the light sweaters they had worn around their shoulders, in their lockers. As they adjusted their caps, Ruth said, “You know, Cherry, I miss you. I guess we all do.”

  “Why, Ruth, what a sweet thing to say!” exclaimed Cherry. “But why be so sad?” She grinned at her friend. “I may not be on the same ward but I’m right in the same hospital, so we just might arrange to lunch together sometime.”

  “What a creature!” cried Ruth. “Taking my kind words and turning them into a feeble joke.” She peered over her shoulder to see if her petticoat showed below her uniform. “But, Cherry, honestly I envy you sometimes. No, I don’t think envy is the right word. Admire is better. You are always, it seems, on interesting cases. That last case you had … Tom … Dick … oh, that young man with amnesia.”

  “Oh, you mean Richard Albee,” Cherry said. “Yes, I’d never been on a psychiatric case before, and working with Dr. Hope was a wonderful education for me in a new field. Before that, the mind always seemed to me to be rather a separate thing. But now I realize just how interrelated mind and body are—how the mind can actually affect physical well-being.” Cherry hung her head in mock chagrin. “Sorry, Ruth,” she apologized, “my mind must be back in nurses’ training at Spencer School. I really didn’t intend to give an early-morning lecture.”

  “Now, I know what your next job is going to be,” Ruth announced solemnly. “You’re going to be a lecturer on psychosomatic diseases, or in simple plain English, those diseases that can be traced to emotional disturbances.” She smoothed down her uniform. “Well, I’m off to the bones-and-joints department. See you later.” Ruth went bouncing off.

  Cherry turned down the corridor leading to Emergency. Here interns were on duty round-the-clock. In addition, there were a head nurse and assistant nurses and doctors quickly available on call. Medical help had to be on hand day and night to take care of any casualty that came in.

  An ambulance with a driver was always ready to answer an emergency call.

  In Emergency, the staff was on the move all the time. Seldom more than an hour or two passed without a call. It sometimes seemed to Cherry that for as small a city as Hilton, Illinois, there were an unusual number of people who were just plain accident prone.

  Walking along the corridor, all the familiar sounds of the hospital greeted Cherry’s ears: the whisper-like tread of feet, glass gently clinking, nurses speaking low or crisp, a child crying or laughing, the anguished voice of a patient. Over the intercom came repeated calls for one of the doctors to call the chief resident physician’s office.

  Before Cherry reached the door of the ER, she heard the motor of the ambulance start up outside and saw one of the young doctors come hurrying down the hall, clutching his bag in one hand and buttoning his white jacket with the other.

  “You’d think people would give a man time to get dressed,” he complained, “before they started getting sick or burned or smashed up or something.”

  “Where are you off to?” Cherry asked.

  “That new private airfield,” replied the doctor and dashed out to the ambulance, which took off at once.

  Trouble at an airfield usually meant only one thing—a crash of some sort, with people broken or burned or both. Cherry recalled the plane she had seen in the air only minutes ago. How sad if something had happened to it or anyone in it.

  The Emergency Ward at Hilton Hospital consisted of a large room and three cubicles for patients. It was near the wide doors for receiving stretcher cases. A head nurse and assistant nurses were on duty there at all times. Cherry was one of the nurses on duty from eight A.M. to four P.M.

  Cherry was just entering the area when she heard her name called. Dr. Phipps, one of the assistant resident physicians, came striding through the Emergency entrance, carrying a sturdy-legged boy across his outstretched arms. The boy’s face was streaked with blood and he was unconscious. Two boys in T shirts and blue jeans, their faces almost as white as the patient’s where it was not coated with blood, trod upon the doctor’s heels.

  “Is Chuck hurt bad, Doc? Chuck isn’t going to die, is he, Doc?” the boys kept repeating like a refrain.

  “Of course not. Of course not,” Dr. Phipps told them. With a nod, he directed Cherry to one of the cubicles and she helped him lay the youngster carefully on the narrow bed.

  Chuck’s two jean-clad friends would have barged on in, but Cherry captured them and got them seated, assuring them in a clear, confident voice that their friend was going to be all right. “Dr. Phipps will take good care of Chuck,” she said. “The doctor let you come in with him because he knew you wouldn’t make a fuss. Now, you just wait right here quietly.”

  They obeyed her, sitting straight in their chairs and staring out of big, round eyes, rather like two owls.

  Cherry returned to the cubicle. While she cleaned the blood from the boy’s face, the doctor continued to examine him. Then she fixed cold packs and Dr. Phipps applied to the bruised and swollen, nose.

  Upon regaining consciousness, Chuck was frightened. Cherry soothed him and in a few minutes he began to touch the pack on his nose softly with his finger, his freckled face crinkling up as he sort of grinned around the pack.

  “Guess I broke it,” he said tentatively.

  “No. Lucky you,” said Dr. Phipps. “But a fine way to start spring training for the baseball season is all I can say.”

  “My brother Charlie had the same thing happen to him when he was a kid,” Cherry said. “Stood right in the way of a bat and got clipped.”

  “That’s right, how did you know?” asked Chuck. “But it wasn’t Mickey’s fault. You see, Johnny was pitching, Mickey was batting, and I was catching …”

  “And you stood closer to the batter than a catcher ought to,” interrupted the doctor. “Result: you were knocked unconscious and got a bloody nose. You don’t have to tell me—I was passing in my car and I saw the whole thing. How did you think you got here so quickly?” he asked with mock gruffness.

  “Does my mother know?” Chuck asked.

  Dr. Phipps nodded. “One of the ballplayers raced off to tell her.”

  Within a few minutes, Chuck’s mother arrived.

  “His nose is swollen. Don’t be alarmed if it bleeds a bit more,” Dr. Phipps told her. “Take him home and keep an ice bag on it.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “And on my way home with Chuck, I will drop these two members of Hilton’s all-star ball team at school,” she added, nodding at the two boys, who, relieved to find their friend’s injury was not serious, went whooping out to the car.

  Cherry saw Chuck and his mother out into the hall. “Don’t be surprised,” she warned, “if Chuck has a real beaut of a black eye.” She went back inside.

  “We don’t have enough business,” the head nurse commented dryly to Cherry, as Dr. Phipps was preparing to leave, “so some of our doctors have to find patients and bring them in on their way to the hospital.”

  “Hospital, rats!” exclaimed Dr. Phipps inelegantly. “I did it solely in the interest of Little League baseball.”

  The telephone rang and the head nurse picked up the receiver. She listened a moment, then handed the phone to Cherry. “It’s for you. Dr. Joseph Fortune calling. Very important.”

  Dr. Fortune—Dr. Joe to all in Hilton Hospital and the city of Hilton as well—what in the world could he want? Cherry wondered as she took the receiver.

  “That you, Cherry? Well, thank heaven!” Dr. Fortune exclaimed as soon as Cherry spoke. “Now, I want you to get over to the Private Wing and get everything ready in Suite 6 for an emergency patient.”

  “But, Dr. Joe,” she protested, “I’m on duty here in Emergency.”

  “I know. I’ll arrange it with the head nurse,” said Dr. Fortune. “I’m calling from the airfield, the private one outside town. Man had an ulcer attack, a bad one. I’ve done what I could and we’re bringing him to Hilton immediately. Now, here’s what I
want you to do,” and Dr. Joe gave her a list of instructions. Then he asked to speak with the head nurse.

  “Of course. Of course, it’s all right, Dr. Joe,” she was saying as she waved Cherry out the door.

  Cherry walked briskly through the hospital to the Private Wing. It was a special wing of the hospital where patients, who could well afford to pay for comfort, service, and beautiful surroundings, might spend the time during their illnesses.

  Dr. Fortune’s patient must be wealthy, Cherry thought. It made her happy to think that Dr. Joe, whom she had known all her life, would for once be well paid. So often he was not very well paid and more often than that he gave his service freely to those who were sick and unable to pay him at all. Dear Dr. Joe with his seamed, sensitive face and boyish spring to his step.

  Inside Suite 6, Cherry paused a moment to look around. She was not familiar with the rooms. They were tastefully decorated and furnished. There was nothing to remind the patient that he was in a hospital. In fact, he might well imagine himself in a fine hotel. Cherry caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror in the sitting room of the suite. Her practical, antiseptic uniform certainly struck an odd note.

  CHAPTER II

  The Three from the Plane

  WITHIN A VERY SHORT TIME, CHERRY HAD THE BEDROOM of the suite ready for the patient and everything prepared according to Dr. Joe’s instructions. But just to be sure, she stood for a moment in the middle of the room to check again.

  Near the head of the bed were the two intravenous stands—“IV” stands the nurses called them—which a hospital attendant had brought from the supply room where such equipment was kept for use as required. From one stand hung the pint container of normal saline, a lifesaving salt solution that would likely be infused into a patient’s vein. The other stand would hold a pint of blood for transfusion after the patient’s blood had been typed for compatibility.

  “The man had a sudden hemorrhage and lost a lot of blood,” Dr. Fortune had told Cherry over the phone. “He’ll need a transfusion.”

  She also had ready an oxygen tank and mask, thermometer, cotton swabs, adhesive tape, bottles of antiseptic and anesthetic, sterile gauze pads, needles and tubing used in giving intravenous treatment, hypodermic needles, and other medical supplies.

  Everything had been done that could be done beforehand. The bedroom had become a little hospital within a hospital. Cherry gave a nod of satisfaction and looked at her watch. The ambulance should be back from the airfield at any minute.

  She had already alerted the laboratory to have someone ready to test the patient’s blood. Now, she heard a knock at the door and a voice call “Miss Ames,” and Millie Reynolds, one of the laboratory technicians, came bustling in.

  “They have all arrived. I saw them bring in the patient, so I didn’t have to wait for your call,” she announced. Millie was a blond, blue-eyed girl who looked as if she could not possibly have a brain in her head, but she was one of the best laboratory technicians at Hilton.

  Cherry had noticed the accent on “all” and she smiled. “How many exactly, Millie, are there with the patient?” she asked. “You make it sound as if he were royalty accompanied by his entourage.”

  “Well, it’s practically that,” Millie said. “I heard this big, handsome hunk of man say something about his uncle, Sir Something-or-other, that’s the patient. … Imagine a patient with a title! Isn’t it exciting?”

  Millie did not have time to tell about “the others” with the sick man, for there were sounds of movement in the hall and a hospital attendant rolled in a still form. He was followed by Dr. Fortune and two young men, one of them in pilot’s uniform, his visored hat in his hand.

  Dr. Joe gave Cherry one of his warm smiles, then glanced at Millie.

  “Doctor, Miss Reynolds is ready to check the blood at once,” Cherry explained.

  “Very good.” Turning to the two young men, Dr. Joe told them, “You may wait here in the sitting room.”

  The patient was taken into the bedroom and the door closed. Things must be done quickly. There was no time to waste; a man’s life was threatened. In the next instant, the three of them—Dr. Joe, Millie, and Cherry—became an efficient team.

  The man was unconscious. His flesh was gray and clammy from loss of blood and shock. His pulse was rapid.

  The mask was placed over his face and the flow of oxygen regulated.

  The rubber bands and tubing for the IV administration were adjusted. Cherry wiped a spot over the veins of one arm with a swab of cotton soaked in antiseptic. The doctor injected a small amount of a local anesthetic to numb the arm slightly, then deftly pushed the hollow needle into a vein in the bend of the patient’s elbow, and the slow drip of liquid into the vein began.

  Meanwhile, Millie had quickly pricked a finger and drawn a little of the man’s blood into a tiny vial. Off she went with it to the laboratory, where she would test it immediately for blood type. The transfusion could not be given until this was known.

  Aided by Cherry, Dr. Joe proceeded with the examination of his patient.

  At the airfield and during the ride in the ambulance, the nephew and the pilot had told the doctor what had happened. And between listening through his stethoscope, checking of pulse and breathing, gently feeling the patient’s stomach and abdomen, Dr. Joe gave Cherry bits and pieces of information.

  “Fellow collapsed in a plane not far from here. … Name’s Barclay—Sir Ian Barclay. … Haven’t seen him in ten years. … Owns iron mines up in Canada. … Peptic-ulcer case. … Nephew said doctor up there had been treating him for some time. … Lloyd Barclay, that’s the nephew’s name, said his uncle was getting along pretty well … then this sudden hemorrhage. … Uncle went to make telephone call to check on how things were going in his mines. … Found there was trouble. … Sudden anxiety probably set off this attack.”

  The door opened. Dr. Joe’s and Cherry’s heads turned as one to Millie, with a bottle from the hospital’s blood bank in her hands.

  “Group O, Rhesus positive,” she told them, “and the patient’s is the same—perfect match.” She walked briskly over with it, then as briskly out again.

  Group O was a common blood type and could be safely given to anyone belonging to the other main groups—A, B, or Ab—just as long as the Rhesus—or RH—factor was the same. That Sir Ian Barclay’s belonged to this common type was certainly a bit of good luck right at the start, Cherry thought, as she swabbed his arm with a bit of antiseptic-soaked cotton in preparation for the transfusion.

  Cherry and Dr. Joe could only wait now while the science of medicine, which had taken man many centuries to develop, took over. Sir Ian’s body must be supplied with oxygen, so he breathed it into his lungs through the snoutlike device invented for the purpose. The salt and liquid his body had lost were being replaced by the saline. And lifegiving blood flowed into his veins from the bottle hanging from the stand.

  Sir Ian Barclay was breathing easily now. Some of the grayness had given way to the faint violet of returning blood. His flesh was warmer and drier.

  Familiar as she was with the care and healing of the sick, Cherry never ceased to wonder at the miracle of medicine. And one was taking place before her eyes right now.

  It was true that there were failures, and there was so very much yet unknown about health and sickness—yet what science and good care could do was no less a miracle. Perhaps that was why it was the most important thing in the world to her to be a nurse, Cherry thought. She was a part of the wonder of healing.

  That was the way Dr. Joe had always felt too. He had given his whole life to medicine. A small, friendly man who spoke slowly and haltingly—who would think of him as a hero? He was a modern-day hero, nevertheless.

  She saw Dr. Joe put his hand on Sir Ian’s forehead. Then he listened again to the patient’s heartbeat.

  “Looks as if we’ll bring him through,” Dr. Joe said, straightening up.

  He pulled up a chair beside the bed and nodded to one near C
herry. “Might as well sit as stand at this point,” he said.

  They sat in silence. Cherry knew that Dr. Joe would add nothing to what he had told her before. That much information he had given her because she needed to be oriented to the case. Sir Ian Barclay at the moment was not a personality to the doctor, but a sick human being who must be made well again.

  As Cherry sat beside Sir Ian, the lean, powerful figure, with its strong, bony face and gray-streaked black hair, began to pique her curiosity. “Here is a man,” she thought, “who looks as if he had great strength of character. He is a wealthy mine owner. A Canadian with a title. He is on a tour of mines in the United States. He calls home, hears bad news, collapses shortly afterward.”

  “Sudden hemorrhage of a peptic ulcer,” Dr. Joe had said. People with ulcers had sudden flare-ups—that Cherry knew. Bad news could cause an attack. What had been the nature of the bad news that had caused this wealthy man, with the sturdy look of an eagle, to collapse, she wondered.

  A mumbling came suddenly from the bed.

  Both Cherry and Dr. Joe jumped.

  Sir Ian Barclay had opened his gray eyes and was staring at them.

  Dr. Joe removed the oxygen mask. When the man tried to raise his head, the doctor bent over and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Sir Ian, you’re coming along all right,” he said. “Just take it easy now.”

  Sir Ian lay back quietly. His eyes searched the doctor’s face for a moment, then he spoke slowly, but Cherry caught the odd lilt to his voice and a Scottish twist to his words.

  “I’d recognize you anywhere,” Sir Ian said. “You’ve not changed in ten years, Dr. Joseph Fortune.” He made an attempt at a smile.

  The way he spoke immediately enchanted Cherry. Later—but that was after she had come to know the sounds so well—she always thought of the lilt of a Scottish tongue as a kind of spoken music.

  “Now, Doctor, you can’t keep me here,” Sir Ian was saying worriedly. “It’s most important. I must go home.”