Cherry Ames 02 Senior Nurse (14 page)

It could mean hemorrhage, too. Cherry learned to reassure a patient just coming out of anaesthetic, in a calm, low voice. Even the routine tasks on this ward were special. The operative bed required rubber sheets, three covered hot water bags, to fight shock or bleeding, but no pillow.

Mom still managed to be a lovable nuisance, although she was seriously ill. Once Cherry entered the ward and was horrified to find Mom had shakily struggled out of bed and was giving a drink of water, instead of cracked ice, to a patient just emerged from anaesthesia—a
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procedure that could have made the woman choke or swallow her tongue. “But she licked her lips, she was thirsty,” Mom said. “I guess I’m forgetting what little nursing I used to know.”

There were new lectures now, too, senior courses in medical and surgical emergencies. Most important of all, there was Operating Room.

Cherry first went in on minor operations. Mostly she watched the surgeon and the nurse, and handed the nurse a few things at her low-voiced requests. The balance of the time, Cherry learned to keep the Operating Rooms ready for instant use—no small job, and Cherry became well acquainted with the autoclave, which sterilized dry things like bandages under steam pressure, with sterile solutions and with setting up tables of nurses’ supplies correctly. A week of this training left Cherry with the fairly correct impression that being an operating nurse was quick, painstaking, tense work, but simple work. In the following weeks, when Cherry acted as first assistant on more complex operations, she felt almost nonchalant.

Cherry enjoyed most the drama and the personalities up here. Men and women said strange things to Cherry in the two or three minutes when they lay on the operating table, waiting for the surgeon to come in.

Each surgeon and interne, too, entered the Operating Room with varied attitudes. Elderly Dr. Witherspoon,
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who was usually a gentle person, invariably stormed into the O.R. in a fury and raged until the operation was safely completed. Dr. Mary Vinson, on the other hand, was the coolest surgeon Cherry had yet seen.

This woman was one of the very few to break into surgery, traditionally a man’s field. She was wonderfully, undeviatingly good, moving with calm sure hands and steady eyes, without a trace of temperament or tension.

But the first time Cherry laid eyes on Dr. Jenks, she whispered to the regular operating nurse:

“Look! It’s a pixie!”

“I think he looks more like a gnome,” the nurse whispered back.

He was a tiny little man with a funny cheerful face.

His operating coat hung on him comically and his eyeglasses, almost bigger than he was, wobbled as he darted around the table.

“Good morning,” he greeted the operating nurse. “And who’s this? A new student nurse? Well, well, that’s fine.

We have a fine diseased kidney this morning, Miss—

what’s your name?—Ames. I hope you like kidney cases.” Cherry assured him respectfully that she did. They prepared the sleeping patient and began the precise mechanics of the operation. Little Dr. Jenks took an instrument in one hand and started to sing.

“Oh,
connais-tu un pays
,” he sang, off key, while he bobbed about the horizontal patient on tiptoe. “Oh,
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connais
—
con
—
con
—,” he sang under his breath as the work grew harder. Cherry had to struggle with herself to keep from laughing. Suddenly the pixie’s voice rose triumphantly. “Yes,
je connais un pays!
” The stubborn organ had yielded under his instrument. “Do you like music, Miss Ames?” he inquired happily.

“Yes, doctor,” Cherry murmured. She moved quickly forward to put the small spade-shaped instrument in his hand. He did not hear her reply. He was scowling over the patient and grunting,
“Connais-tu. Connais-tu.

Con—nais
—
tu——
!
”
His hands were moving rapidly. Cherry and the nurse alertly watched, and helped. Once Dr. Jenks looked up and said, “You’re a good operating nurse, Miss Ames.

Very good. Very nice work.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Cherry murmured. Then he was singing again, at the top of his lungs, excruciatingly flat.

“He never sings anything else,” the operating nurse laughed to Cherry after the surgeon had gone, “and he never gets to the end of that song. He’s one of the best men in this part of the country. You ought to be proud he complimented you.”

Cherry was proud. She still had occasional doubts about her nursing ability. Praise from a man like Dr.

Jenks reassured her. Later that afternoon, leaving Spencer Hall for the special reference library in another building, Cherry did a little day-dreaming about
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the graduate’s broad black velvet ribbon she would wear on her cap. Her half-decision, made that day in the Nursery, to nurse right here on the home front, came back to her. Nothing had happened to make her change her mind. She was wondering about her future when Lex’s voice called her.

He was carrying a package. They went out of Spencer Hall together into the frozen yard. In spite of the still bitter cold of late winter, they walked slowly, looking into each other’s faces.

“What’s that?” Cherry asked, nodding toward the package.

“That’s
it!
” Lex looked glum. “Dr. Joe is so lax, he puts off moving this stuff to a safer place. I took it over to Spencer lab just now, on my own, but they wouldn’t touch it. They refused to take any responsibility for the safekeeping of this dynamite.” Lex shook his head. “So I have to take it back to Lincoln again. I’m worried, Cherry.”

Cherry brushed strands of her blowing black hair out of her eyes. “Did you tell Dr. Joe you were taking it?”

“No, I didn’t want to bother Dr. Joe with such practical matters. I simply was going to tell him that it was safe now.”

“Lex,” Cherry said in some embarrassment, “you oughtn’t to go wandering around with that, without permission, or even without Dr. Joe’s knowledge. It—it looks funny. You might be seriously misunderstood.”
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His face tightened and he looked at her suspiciously. “What’s the matter, Cherry, don’t you trust me? Did you believe Dr. Wylie’s implications the other day?”

“Lex! Don’t say such things!” Cherry turned troubled dark eyes on him. “Certainly I trust you. But you have to watch appearances.”

“Maybe you don’t trust me.” He added slowly, “It’s surprising how much that hurts.” It hurt Cherry, too. They walked along in a painful tense silence. Cherry suddenly thought of something.

“Lex, do you remember when Dr. Wylie hinted that it was funny you studied up on Dr. Joe’s research in order to get the job? Wasn’t it the quinine substitute you were working on? And you didn’t know about the penicillin, did you?”

Cherry was astounded by Lex’s violent reaction to these innocent questions. “So now you, too, are beginning to ask me questions!” he said bitterly.

“Lex!” Cherry cried in amazement. She had meant to tell him that the cleaning woman had gossiped about Dr. Joe’s discovery and that the whole hospital was excitedly talking about it. But now she was so distressed she was tongue-tied. Lex’s eyes narrowed in anger. They both stood stock-still in the wind, staring at each other.

Then with a look of bitterness, he turned on his heel and strode rapidly away.

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Lex did not go to the Lincoln Birthday dance. Cherry went. She found she had more attentive doctors and internes for partners than she could dance with. She found, too, from snatches of conversation that evening, that Lex was not so popular in the hospital, after all.

“So the uppity Dr. Upham is snubbing us!” they said.

“Our dance isn’t high-and-mighty enough for him!” Cherry was troubled by such talk.

Meanwhile, Mom was getting rapidly worse. What Cherry had dreaded, happened. Mom had to have another operation, and quickly. And what Cherry had mentioned in joke, also happened. Dr. Wylie was to perform the operation. Mom was old and worn-out and her condition was complicated by still another disorder and a slight cardiac condition. Cherry knew it was serious.

“She has a fifty-fifty chance,” Dr. Wylie told the head nurse and Cherry.

The day of the operation she dreaded it as if a member of her own family were to face this ordeal.

Only after much pleading, by both Cherry and Mom, had the Superintendent of Nurses consented to let Cherry be present, on her off-duty time, at Mom’s operation. She was not to assist, only to watch and hold Mom’s hand for encouragement. Cherry thought it was pretty human of the hospital to understand about this, and let her in.

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“I’m glad you’re with me,” Mom whispered to Cherry.

They were waiting together in a little anteroom. The O.R.

was receiving its last readying touches. “I don’t feel alone when I know you’re going to be there all the time, Cherry.”

“Haven’t you any people?” Cherry asked. Mom shook her head.

“I guess I’d better tell you what you call my secret, in case I—go bad on the table,” Mom said. She fingered her white operating jacket. “It’s this. If anything happens, I don’t want my old carcass to go to Potter’s Field.

Cherry, you fix it up so that won’t happen.” Cherry’s vision blurred. “I’ll fix it, Mom. But nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re going to come out of this better than you’ve felt in years.” Mom sighed and groped for Cherry’s warm hand.

“Maybe it would be just as well if I don’t come through it. Because I’ve been sick a long time and I used up all my savings on hospital bills and I’m most too old to work much any more and I haven’t got any place to go and what becomes of old people, anyway?”

“Mom, Mom,” Cherry swallowed hard. “You’re forgetting we’ve got a Social Service here in the hospital.

They’ll send you to some convalescent home in the country and then they’ll probably help you apply for your Old Age allowance.”

But Mom wasn’t convinced. The old lady murmured again, “ ’Twould be better if I don’t come through.

I’m not sure I want to come out of here, not sure at all.”
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Cherry was terrified. She pleaded with Mom. But Mom only smiled her old gay smile and said, “There, child, don’t let yourself get all upset. What’ll the surgeon say? No, ma’am, I’ll have you laughing in a minute and I’ll have that sour old Dr. Wylie laughing, too, if he doesn’t watch out.”

Cherry smiled shakily. Mom was comforting
her!

“You know what truly worries me, Cherry?” Mom chuckled. “Why, I haven’t got a respectable dress to my name. And that old hat of mine!—I wouldn’t wear it to a dog-fight!”

“Get well,” Cherry bribed, “and I’ll manage to get you some good-looking new clothes.”

“I won’t be taking anything out of your pocket, honey.

Besides,” Mom scoffed, “you can’t make a fashion plate out of me!”

Cherry squeezed the old lady’s hand and followed her as she was wheeled into the Operating Room. Dr. Wylie, accompanied by an assisting interne and the instrument nurse, immediately entered the room. Cherry, who had been holding Mom’s hand, dropped it and stepped back out of the way, but not before Dr. Wylie, surprised and apparently annoyed at her presence, glowered at her.

There was an immediate tension felt throughout the room, which communicated itself to Mom. Irrepressible, even now, Mom made an instinctive effort to ease the tension with a wink at the room in general and a hearty

“Good night, folks.”

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“Hypodermic,” Dr. Wylie barked at the operating nurse. She administered the morphine. Then Dr. Wylie gave Mom novocain in the affected part. Mom’s eyes closed and she grew quiet and relaxed. The nurse gently drew a pad of gauze over Mom’s eyes, and Cherry prayed that Mom would drift off to sleep quickly, under the heat of the powerful operating lamp. In any event, Mom would see and hear nothing. The nurse painted the area with iodine. The interne made the incision and quickly clamped and tied off veins and arteries. There was no bleeding. Then, as Dr. Wylie stepped forward and took the scalpel from the nurse, Cherry, who up to this time had been trying to control her emotions—for it was Mom whom she loved who was lying so still on the table—made an audible sound of sympathy. Dr. Wylie, distracted for the moment, turned and gave Cherry a black look.

“Well, Miss Ames!” he observed sarcastically.

Cherry saw the interne and the nurses exchange glances and then look sympathizingly at her over their masks. Embarrassed to the point of tears, Cherry shrank back.

Just then Mom opened her mouth. “Did you know,” she said drowsily, “that I’m a sort of nurse myself? Yes, sir, and I—and I nursed in the Spanish-American war, indeed I did. Yes, sir! There was lots of yellow fever and malaria, just like in the Pacific in this war, and I can tell you——”
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Dr. Wylie tried to quiet Mom.

But Mom, under the influence of the morphine, chattered on incessantly. “And the bugs! They were something fierce! But we had plenty of quinine,” she rambled on, “bugs or no bugs.” Dr. Wylie snapped impatiently, “Miss Ames, you’re a friend of this patient’s. Perhaps you can justify your presence here by doing something practical. See if you can quiet the patient.”

Cherry spoke to Mom but she went right on talking, the words irresponsibly tumbling out. “I read in the newspaper a man right here in this hospital made a quinine substitute. Now, what’s that man’s name? He’s always discovering things . . .”

“Mom!” Cherry said sharply, ‘‘keep quiet!” Oh, why had that cleaning woman talked! And to whom else had she talked?

“Fortune, that’s his name. Cherry knows him. But Cherry said I mustn’t talk about it. It’s a secret.”