CHERRY AMES NURSE STORIES CHERRY AMES SENIOR NURSE By HELEN WELLS New York Copyright © 1944 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Copyright © renewed 2006 by Harriet Schulman Forman Springer Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, Inc. Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10036-8002 Production Editor: Print Matters, Inc. Cover design by Takeout Graphics, Inc. Composition: Compset, Inc. 06 07 08 09 10/5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wells, Helen, 1910– Cherry Ames, senior nurse / by Helen Wells. p. cm. — (Cherry Ames nurse stories) Summary: During their final year of training, Cherry Ames and her friends at Spencer Hospital face difficult decisions about their futures as nurses during wartime. ISBN 0-97715-971-X (pbk.) [1. Nurses—Fiction. 2. Hospitals—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.W4644Cq 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2005051738 Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing Contents FOREWORD vii I Senior Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II Dreams and Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 III Two Strange People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 IV Very Small Fry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 V Midge Makes Mischief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 VI An Orchid or Gardenias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 VII Double Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 VIII Black Lace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 IX Operating Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 X Mom Talks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 XI Three Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 XII Madame Zaza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 XIII Lex Is Proven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 XIV Day of Glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 XV Cherry Decides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 iii Foreword Helen Wells, the author of the Cherry Ames stories, said, “I’ve always thought of nursing, and perhaps you have, too, as just about the most exciting, important, and rewarding, profession there is. Can you think of any other skill that is always needed by everybody, everywhere?” I was and still am a fan of Cherry Ames. Her coura- geous dedication to her patients; her exciting escapades; her thirst for knowledge; her intelligent application of her nursing skills; and the respect she achieved as a reg- istered nurse (RN) all made it clear to me that I was going to follow in her footsteps and become a nurse— nothing else would do. Thousands of other young peo- ple were motivated by Cherry Ames to become RNs iv v FOREWORD as well. Cherry Ames motivated young people on into the 1970s, when the series ended. Readers who re- member reading these books in the past will enjoy rereading them now—whether or not they chose nurs- ing as a career—and perhaps sharing them with others. My career has been a rich and satisfying one, during which I have delivered babies, saved lives, and cared for people in hospitals and in their homes. I have worked at the bedside and served as an administrator. I have published journals, written articles, taught students, consulted, and given expert testimony. Never once did I regret my decision to enter nursing. 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 FOREWORD vi 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 nurs- ing as your life’s work. Remember, as Helen Wells herself said: there’s no other skill that’s “alwaysneeded by everybody, everywhere.” Harriet Schulman Forman, RN, Ed.D. Series Editor chapter i Senior Year the rising bell clanged. cherry carefully wrapped the covers around her ears, turned over and went back to sleep. When she awoke again, her eyes fell on the clock and she leaped wildly out of bed. She had overslept a whole half-hour! It was really late! Half-asleep, she dashed automatically for the maple chest of drawers and collided with a chair instead. Then Cherry remem- bered. Of course—this wasn’t her old room—this was her new room in Crowley, the residence for seniors and graduate nurses! Starting this morning she was a senior—and she was late! Cherry scrambled into her clothes as the clock ticked loudly and warningly. She ran to the closet and pulled out a crisp blue and white striped uniform, with black chevrons on the shoulder. 1 2 CHERRY AMES, SENIOR NURSE Late or not, Cherry stopped for breath and a moment’s gloating over those senior chevrons. Then she dashed over to the mirror and slammed her nurse’s cap on her head. A breathless girl of twenty looked back at her—a slim, lovely girl with black eyes and black curls, and cheeks and lips so red they had earned her her name. She struggled to get her apron tied, but the bow balked. Outside in the corridor, instead of the usual bedlam of nurses, there was a profound silence—they all had left for breakfast long ago! “It’s still me,” Cherry marveled at her reflection. “Cherry Ames, from Hilton, Illinois, a senior and not changed a bit! Still tardy!” She swept up her bandage scissors from where they lay on her radio. That radio was a proud sign of her brand-new estate, for Spencer Nursing School allowed only seniors and graduate nurses to have radios. The clock ticked louder than ever. Cherry raced out of her room, dashed down the stairs and burst out of Crowley’s front door. Far away, Cherry made out white figures leaving the dining room, not entering it. “Late, late, always late!” she mourned. “And I’m starving!” But the nurses’dining room in Spencer Hall, at the far end of the yard, was a good ten minutes’walk away, she figured hungrily. And Cherry’s new assignment— her first ward duty as a senior!—was way down at the other end of the yard. Her friend Ann Evans, who was SENIOR YEAR 3 assigned there too, probably already was on the ward. “Q.E.D. no breakfast,” Cherry thought, and started off at a sprint. It was a sunny, bright blue morning, already hot at seven o’clock. Cherry hurried down the flagstone path past the many white hospital buildings, calling good morning to brisk passing nurses and internes. This was her world, she had earned a place in it, and she loved it. That is, it was her world provided she could survive her senior year. Cherry knew that this morning she was embarking on the hardest of all her three years nurses training, and was facing the severest tests so far. She tried to think some serious thoughts about it. But all she could think of was the gnawing in her stomach. She told herself sternly, as she rounded the corner to the Pediatrics Clinic, that the gnawing came from hunger and not from nervousness. She was not scared about a new and very difficult type of ward duty—Children’s Ward—certainly not! Cherry ran up the steps of the Children’s Clinic with her full blue and white skirt swirling around her, her crisp white apron crackling, and one hand anchoring her pert white cap. Puffing, she got into the ground floor just in time to see the elevator disappear upwards. The dispensary with its rows of benches, its desks and filing cabinets, its cubicles of examination rooms, was deserted. Within two hours, it would be overflowing and