Cherry Ames 02 Senior Nurse (20 page)

Another Spencer tradition was that the graduating seniors “bequeathed” their personal belongings to the younger students who were staying on at the hospital.

DAY O F G L O R Y

Cherry had not realized how popular she was until at least twenty younger girls started begging her to “leave” them
her
things. Cherry shared the cushions which dressed up her daybed between the two first-year students on her ward. To Lucy, the maid on Children’s Ward, Cherry gave her alarm clock. For the many others, she found little knick-knacks around her room—book ends, a gay pincushion, a vase. To Mom, she gave her silk comforter and her little radio. But it was to Mildred that Cherry gave her most personal things—her soft goose feather bed pillow from home, the little lamp on her bedside table, her books. There were tears in Mildred’s eyes when Cherry piled all these things into her arms.

“I don’t want you to go away, Cherry,” she said.

“I’ll write,” Cherry promised. “I’ll want to know how you’re getting along and you’ll have to write me all the Spencer news.”

“Where will you be?”

“I don’t know,” Cherry had to reply. In a matter of hours, she would be out of here and she still did not know where she was going. Neither did most of her classmates. Vivian Warren had had an offer from a small city hospital, but Vivian wanted a better-paying position to make up for her years of hardship and unremitting work. Bertha had been invited to be visiting nurse in her own rural community. Cherry herself could easily have
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secured a post through Dr. Joe or Miss Reamer or on her own application. But like all the rest of her classmates, she was putting off the decision. She was still thinking earnestly about Army nursing.

Two nights before graduation day the seniors had to attend the final lecture. It was late when they came out and headed back toward Crowley. Suddenly a huge crowd of student nurses surged around them from all sides. They had been lying in wait! Laughing, they fell upon the outnumbered seniors and proceeded to tear off the seniors’ blue and white student dresses, their student aprons and bibs! They left them in their caps and very little else. Cherry fled into Crowley just in time to escape with her slip.

The next day Cherry and her class appeared proudly in all-white. She thought she would burst with pride.

She had earned it, and it was hers to wear for the rest of her life! In another way, Cherry felt very sober. Here she was at the ending. No, this was not an ending, for she stood again at the beginning of something new—

whatever it might be.

Early that afternoon the seniors left in giggling groups for the photographer’s. They came back to attend Miss Reamer’s tea for the seniors. When they walked in, they exclaimed—the familiar lounge looked so festive, with great bowls of colorful flowers everywhere and a sumptuous tea table. A number of the doctors and
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supervisors and head nurses and surgeons with whom they had worked had come to do them honor. Even some of the Administrators of Spencer Hospital were present, and Cherry actually regretted Dr. Wylie’s absence. The visiting and the tea that followed were very pleasant. After an hour, the others left and only the guests of honor, the seniors, and Miss Reamer remained.

The Superintendent of Nurses sat down beside the flower-banked fireplace and looked from one radiant young face to another. “When you all first came to Spencer,” she said with a smile, “I told you you had the makings of an exceptional class. I was not mistaken.

I expect big things of this class. And now I must tell you something about the careers which are open to you, although I have already talked to each of you individually.

If you ever want to consult me again, come back to Spencer, no matter how many years after graduation.” Cherry smiled at her gratefully and Miss Reamer smiled back.

Cherry was astonished at the length of Miss Reamer’s list. Nurses were needed now, and would be needed in even greater numbers after the war, Miss Reamer said—

as general duty nurses in great city hospitals—as private duty nurses, pleasant work which could take them all over the world—as those invaluable community guardians, public health nurses, Red Cross nurses—as
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rural nurses driving a clinic on wheels, bringing health care to farmers and people in isolated communities—

as children’s nurses—the list went on and on.

“There is something for every taste, you see,” Miss Reamer smiled. “City or small town or country, at home or abroad, big crowds or a handful of people, young or old.”

Miss Reamer stopped for breath and so did the seniors.

Gwen sprang up and presented her with an enormous pitcher of iced tea. Everybody laughed.

“A glass would be nice,” Miss Reamer hinted to Gwen. Gwen produced one. The class waited, then the Superintendent of Nurses went on again:

“Then there are, as I hardly need tell you, Army and Navy nurses. Just now, that is the most needed and gallant work of all. That most likely would take you to far parts of the world, and you’d certainly be helping in making history. And it won’t be a temporary wartime job. After the war, there will be plenty of veterans’ nursing to be done.

There also will be relief and rehabilitation programs in the war-torn countries, and nurses will be needed to help those starved people back to health again.” She smiled at them. “I think I’ve finally finished, believe it or not!” After some questions, and some informal talking-it-over, the seniors drifted down to the lake. Their adoptees, just turned juniors, were fêting them with a picnic.

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Down at the water’s edge it was still bright afternoon at six-thirty. The adoptees had set up a picnic table, spread with huge bowls of potato salad and baked beans and tomatoes and dill pickles. The frankfurters already sizzling over an open bonfire smelled tantalizing. The seniors were not allowed to help, so some of them, at Cherry’s light-hearted suggestion, went wading. The hot dogs, on toasted buns, tasted every bit as good as they smelled. And with the steaming coffee, their adoptees proudly brought forth a vast tiered cake. It was decorated with the senior’s class flower, gardenias, made of sparkling white spun icing.

“Are you enjoying it?” Mildred asked Cherry eagerly.

“It’s divine!” Cherry replied. “It’s something I’ll look back on and wish could happen again!” After supper, they sat on the grass or leaned against tree trunks and watched the sun drop lower and lower toward the rim of the lake. Someone started to sing.

Then everyone was singing familiar songs—rollicking ones, dreamy ones. They sang until the first star flickered in the pale sky, and shadows crossed their faces. A huge orange harvest moon rose slowly out of the treetops.

Suddenly, as though at a given signal, the group began to sing the school song—slow, grave, and yet ringing: All o’er the earth

Angels in white,

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In sickness, age, and birth,

Bring light.

Healing we bring,

Hope and help we bring,

We of Spencer too shall bring, These brave and shining deeds we sing–

Our sister, our Nurse!

It was a pledge and an ideal. The last note of the sweet clear girls’ voices died away among the trees. They started to gather up their picnic things. Cherry realized sadly that her student days were over.

c h a p t e r x v

Cherry Decides

graduation day started at six o clock in the morning

’

for Cherry, when the phone shrilled in Crowley corridor.

“Good morning, dear. Congratulations!” said a familiar cheerful voice.

“Mother!” Cherry said. She was suddenly very happy.

“Mother, where are you?”

“Hi, Cherry!” came Midge’s voice. “Aren’t you excited?

Isn’t it wonderful! I’m dying to see you in your white get-up!”

“Will someone kindly tell me where you all are?” Cherry demanded, laughing.

Her father’s voice came over the receiver. “How is the graduate? We’re here at the railroad station and we’re going to have some breakfast. What time do you want us up there?”

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“Graduation is at noon, Dad, but please come as soon as you can!”

Shortly after she had hung up, the phone rang again.

Cherry raced down the corridor for the second time.

It was Charlie. “Sorry, I can’t tell you where I am. But it’s a long way from where you are. . . . I’m fine. . . .

Look here, I didn’t call up long distance to talk about me. . . . Well, I’m not permitted to tell anything over the phone, anyway. . . . Yes, I
am
fine, and congratulations! I’m pretty proud of my twin sister. . . . Good for you! . . . That’s right, we’re both doing the things we always had our hearts set on. . . . I’ll bet. . . . I sure would like to see you. . . . Not a chance. . . . We might meet up by accident on the other side of the world. . . .

Yes, I got your letter. Let me know what you decide, will you? . . . Say, my three minutes are up! Write me.

. . . Congratulations again and I mean it! . . . So long—

Nurse!”

Cherry hung up with a hand that trembled a little. It would be strange, having a graduation without Charlie around. They had always had their graduations together.

What a darling he was to phone!

She missed him acutely when her parents arrived and they were all together except for Charlie. But she remembered
he
was all alone and probably twice as lonesome. And her mother looked so charming, her father was so obviously proud of her, and Midge was so
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thrilled, that Cherry was as happy as seniors are meant to be on graduation day.

Presently Cherry, in her dazzling white uniform and cap, had quite a group gathered around her in the lounge. Her parents, Midge, Dr. Joe, Lex, Mildred, and even Mom was there. She beamed when Cherry said,

“Mom helped us catch the penicillin thief!” By the time Cherry had introduced some of her classmates, and had been introduced to their families, and taken her mother to see her room at Crowley, and then returned to the lounge, it was time for the seniors to assemble. Cherry’s guests went into the auditorium and Cherry, with Ann and Gwen, hurried to the smaller room beside the auditorium.

The seniors took their places in a long line four abreast. These were the last few minutes they all would be together as a class. In an hour from now, Cherry would no longer be a student. Her class would be breaking up, and the girls she had worked and played and lived with for three years would scatter to the four corners of the globe. Cherry wondered if she would ever see any of them again. The girls were trying to joke, but their eyes were sad and their voices unsteady.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do yet, Cherry?” Ann asked her very low.

Cherry shook her head. “No, not yet,” she whispered back.

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Ann straightened her shoulders and stared ahead.

Cherry knew what Ann’s plans were, and Mai Lee’s, and a number of others’. It would be only a few moments more now . . .

There was a rustle of starched white uniforms.

Cherry looked around and saw the Superintendent of Nurses coming past the rows of graduates, accompanied by two women. One was an Army Nurse, the other a Red Cross Nurse.

When they reached the front of the room, Miss Reamer raised her hand and called the class to attention.

“Graduates,” she addressed them. “I take pleasure in introducing to you Miss Culver from the Red Cross. She has a message for you.”

Miss Culver smiled and stepped forward. She spoke briefly but with deep feeling. “I am here to help appeal to you to answer our country’s urgent need for war nurses. But we have with us someone who can tell you even better than I just how crying that need is. May I present to you Lieutenant Sanders, one of the Army Nurses who escaped from Corregidor.” The Army Nurse, trim and neat in her uniform, greeted the graduates, who were watching her intently with eager, expectant faces. “I hardly know how or where to begin . . . there’s so much to tell!” In her face was reflected all the horror and suffering she had seen—landing barges full of sick and wounded; boys
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lying fever-ridden and helpless in jungle hospitals; doctors working tirelessly day and night, often without a nurse to help. A note of urgency crept into her voice as she pleaded with them to answer their country’s call.

“You are needed, desperately needed! If we are to save our men out there fighting for us—if we are even to win this war—you nurses must help. Are you ready to serve?”

Cherry and her classmates had heard other appeals.

But this appeal was different. It was being put directly up to each one of them. For the first time, Cherry felt personally responsible for the lives of Charlie and all the other American boys.

Beside her there was a crackle of a sleeve. Ann had raised her hand. She could hear Ann’s quickened breathing. Mai Lee’s hand was raised next. The room was filled with tension and a breathless silence. Cherry watched with her heart pounding. Then Bertha Larsen’s hand went up; Marie Swift’s; Gwen’s; Vivian’s. Then five more hands shot up, one after another. No one had said a word, and still no one spoke.

“What shall I do?” Cherry thought frantically. “How can I let them go and not go too? Those boys I saved Dr. Joe’s drug for—” Out of the hush, hands were slowly raised, until it seemed a white forest blurred Cherry’s vision. “Those soldiers who needed the drug—” suddenly she realized that she had faced a murderer
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