Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse (9 page)

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was looking down at the wounded man, his face working with emotion.

Cherry, forgetting Captain May’s admonition, again tried to go forward, eager to help the injured flier, anxious to see her brother. But the Intelligence Officer put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Stand back, Lieutenant, you can’t talk to anyone yet,” he said tersely. Cherry did not understand.

Now a woman in an Army nurse’s uniform was being helped down out of the plane. Cherry realized she must be the unit’s new anaesthetist. This woman, too, was prevented from talking to any of the other island people.

An ambulance clanged up on the beach, crunching and rocking along on the sand, and ground to a stop near the plane. Cherry ran over to it. She spoke to the corpsman who was driving and to Captain Willard who had come along.

“I don’t know what the man’s condition is, Captain Willard,” Cherry said, in response to the doctor’s question. “He is weak but conscious, he still has a little muscular control, he did not talk—that’s all I could observe,” she reported.

Captain Willard nodded his gray head and clambered down. “I’ll have a look. See, Jack,” he explained to the young corpsman who followed him, “the Intelligence Officer is going to hold an interrogation. G–2 tries to
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find out exactly what happened, while it’s still fresh in the fliers’ minds. In that way, Intelligence gets a line on what the enemy is doing.” He added to Cherry, “You’d better come along with us, Lieutenant Ames.” They knelt beside the patient. As Cherry knelt, her brother patted her head.

“Hello, Sis,” he said, his smile very broad and warm.

“Hello, sweetie,” Cherry smiled up, pressing his hand. “Be with you in a minute.” Then she turned to the patient. Both Captain Willard and the Flight Surgeon were bent over the flier.

Charlie squatted on his heels beside her. “Cherry, isn’t there something funny here? Look, he’s conscious but he won’t talk. Or can’t he talk?” Cherry watched Captain Willard quickly examine the man, especially his head. She saw no mouth wound, no overt sign of a brain wound. Only his shoulder was bleeding a little where a first-aid bandage covered it.

The man was exhausted but his eyes were alert and responsive.

“I should think,” Cherry answered Charlie slowly,

“that he
can
talk. He—he seems sicker than you would expect from that shoulder.”

Charlie frowned. “It’s strange that he won’t talk to any of us.”

Suddenly Cherry felt the wounded man’s dark blue eyes staring at her. She turned, and from his expression,
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she knew that he had heard and understood perfectly everything they were saying. There was almost a look of reproach in those eyes. Cherry felt a pang. What was wrong with him?

“All right,” said Captain Willard, standing up. “We’ll put him in the ambulance right away. Jack——” The corpsman bent for the stretcher. Charlie sprang to help him, and two other crewmen took the other two handles. Cherry saw that her brother, and the whole crew, was deeply devoted to the wounded man.

“Captain Willard,” Cherry asked anxiously, “what’s wrong?”

The doctor’s honest gray eyes looked back at her. “It’s hard to tell, until we have made a complete examination. For now, I’d say the man is exhausted—at the end of his rope both physically and emotionally. I’m surprised that he isn’t in shock, he may be within a few minutes. I think that for a while he should have plenty of rest and good food, to build him up. Right now he’s in no condition for an operation, if we should find that we have to operate.”

“I see,” said Cherry. “What can I do, sir?” The doctor smiled at her. “We’ll just put him to bed for a while. So if you want to stay here to see your brother, Lieutenant Ames, you needn’t feel you must rush right back with the ambulance.”
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“Thank you, sir,” Cherry said gratefully. “I do want to see my brother. By the way, there’s a private room just off Ward M–2, which I fixed up last month for a patient who’s discharged now. It’s quiet, we could put this flier in there, sir.” Captain Willard nodded and turned to go.

Cherry suddenly remembered the new nurse, who was standing around looking rather lost and extremely hot. “And will you take the new nurse back with you, Captain Willard?”

She hurried over to the nurse, who was fanning herself vigorously. “Please forgive me for not meeting you at once,” Cherry smiled. “You’re the new nurse-anaesthetist for Spencer unit’s evacuation hospital, aren’t you? I’m Lieutenant Cherry Ames.” The new nurse, although her snug uniform stuck to her and her face was bright red in this tropic heat, returned Cherry’s smile with a wide grin. She was a tall, heavily built woman. She had a likable face, fine fair skin, very blue eyes. Her brown hair stuck to her neck in damp ringlets.

“Yes, I’m the anaesthetist,” she replied pleasantly.

“I’m Mrs. Bessie Flanders, from Albany. Great day! we surely had a time getting here! I never flew before.

Guess they thought I’d sink the ship.” A gleam of humor lighted up her face as she made mention of her rather vast size. “Well, we got here! Tell me, Lieutenant, who’s the Chief Nurse out here?”

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“I am,” said Cherry. “And I certainly am glad you came. We need you, Lieutenant Flanders. I’ll try to make you at home in our rather rough Nurses’ Quarters.”

“How do, boss,” Mrs. Flanders laughed. “Well, I’m all ready to take orders and get to work. Only one thing that bothers me. I hope you won’t try to put me on one of those little bitty cots. Those cots just weren’t built for Bessie Flanders!”

“Well—” Cherry saw what Bessie meant. “We’ll all do our best to make you comfortable. Now if you’re ready, the ambulance is starting and it will take you to the hospital grounds. Lieutenant Ann Evans will help you get settled in Nurses’ Quarters.” As she helped Mrs. Bessie Flanders into the ambulance, Cherry had a hilarious picture of her crowding into, and probably crowding everyone else out of, the already jammed quarters. She wished that she could be at the Ritz Stables to see the astonished looks on the girls’ faces when this veritable Amazon moved in on them. “But right now the real fun—the
important
fun—is that brother of mine.” Cherry hoped that now, at last, she could turn to Charlie. But the Intelligence Officer was herding the men from the plane into a tight little knot, and waving everyone else away. Cherry went up the beach with several AAF men, and drifted away from them. She looked back at the group around the plane.

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The Intelligence Officer was talking earnestly, searching their faces, and everyone from the plane was staring at him in the deepest concentration. The airmen were talking too, consulting one another, visibly making efforts to think, to remember. Charlie held up both arms and described an arc, then a plunge. Captain May was taking notes.

Finally the interrogation was over. Charlie promptly made a dash for his sister. Cherry ran too. They met in a joyous bear hug.

Cherry stepped back and took a good, long, satisfying look at her twin brother. Charlie had the same pert, lively face as Cherry’s, in a firmer masculine version.

His eyes were intensely blue, with the keen gaze of focusing on far distances. His short, rumpled hair was fair, and burned even lighter by the sun. He was tall and broad-shouldered, thinner than when Cherry had last seen him, at home, in September. Secretly she thought that his young face looked a little worn. But he had his old, easy, breezy manner, with the seriousness hidden underneath.

“You’re as brown as an Indian!” he laughed at her.

“But too thin.”

“You’re too thin yourself,” she retorted. “Seen the parents since I did?”

“No, but they’re all right. Here’s a letter from Mother that you can read later.”

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“Where’ve you been?” Cherry demanded, stuffing the letter in the pocket of her coveralls.

“You’re as bad as the Intelligence Officer! Well, I’ve been mostly on the banana route, from Panama. Just missed you there, pal. This trip is a five-day supply route, but we go in relays and rest at each stop. We started from outside Miami, went to South America, dropped supplies in India, dropped supplies in China, and finally drop supplies here. So if I look tired after
this
trip,” Charlie grinned shrewdly, “don’t scold me, Nurse. I’ll rest up.”

Cherry linked her arm through his, and the Ames twins hung on to each other, beaming.

“You old lug,” Cherry said affectionately.

“The same to you! Brought you a lovely new portable X-ray for a present. Also some strychnine and quinine, Say, do you know what else we were ferrying when we were shot at today? Gasoline and ammunition. We’d have gone up like confetti if the Japs’ aim had been better.” Cherry looked at the huge supply transport, being unloaded now, and shivered. She looked back thank-fully at her brother, and suddenly noticed the new silver bar on his shoulder.

“Why, congratulations! I certainly am slow! You’re a first lieutenant now—we both are!” Charlie explained. “You see, when I was a gunner, I was staff sergeant, still an enlisted man. Then I was a
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gunnery officer, and a second lieutenant. Now they transferred me to the ATC and I’m not a gunner for now——”

“But isn’t that an awful waste, to train a gunner and then not let him, uh, gun? I mean, shoot?”

“Honey, when the Army needs men for a particular job in a hurry,” Charlie told her, “they have to take the first men they can find. Right now, I’m more needed in supply work than as a gunner. The wounded flier, Lieutenant Grant, is trained both as a gunner and as a pilot, but he’s needed more urgently to supervise the shipping of guns. Even more than he’s needed in combat just now. See? Come on over and meet the crew.”

As they walked over to the young men around the plane, Cherry said happily, “It certainly is a coincidence that you landed on my island.”

“Coincidence, nothing!” Charlie said coolly. “I figured out from your APO address and from what other fliers knew that you must be on Island 14. So when I got a chance at this assignment, I jumped at it. Gentlemen, this is my sister, Lieutenant Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse—” Charlie could hardly keep the pride out of his voice. “Captain Keller, Lieutenant Brown, Lieutenant McCarthy——”

Cherry shook hands with her brother’s crew and smiled into six friendly, intelligent young faces. She
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noticed that they all had the same keen look about the eyes. Fliers’ eyes.

“Tell us, Lieutenant Cherry,” said Captain Keller, the pilot and commander of the plane. “Will Gene—

Lieutenant Grant—be all right? The wounded man?

He’s an awfully valuable man. He’s a specialist in charge of gun cargo and he’s copilot of our transport.” Cherry saw the anxiety in their faces. She replied,

“No one can guarantee that. But I promise I’ll do everything in my power for him.”

They all had to move aside, for the ground crew were hitching the plane to a truck and were slowly dragging the great transport, still half-loaded, off to the woods.

Cherry guessed there must be a concealed hangar, where repairs and overhauling could be done. She was wondering how long Charlie and his crew would be here, feeling reluctant to ask, when Charlie asked the same thing aloud.

“Our cannonball will be in and out of here several times in the next few weeks,” the pilot said. “We’re going to be ferrying a lot of gasoline, ammunition, and machinery in here. But mum’s the word!” Cherry grinned happily at her brother. They’d be seeing each other a few times! The pilot added that they probably would be gone again, immediately, for a few days, and their appearances and reappearances here would be extremely irregular. Cherry did not mind—

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Charlie would be here! She was so happy that she failed to realize, for the moment, what all that extra gasoline and ammunition would be used for and the reasons for the secrecy.

It was only on her way back to the hospital that she began to think—about this, and about what the injured flier’s strangely exhausted condition might mean. If it was mystery she wanted, here it was.

c h a p t e r v i

Bessie

right off, the girls all liked bessie. they could not help liking someone who was always laughing and poking fun at herself, even though Bessie Flanders’

generous size undoubtedly crowded the Ritz Stables.

“You should have provided a skyscraper for me,” Bessie said the evening she had moved in. “I’m nearly six feet tall and proportioned to match. I’ll dust the rafters for you, with ease. No extra charge, either! Yes, sir, there’s plenty of Bessie!”

“Never mind,” Cherry said, helping her unpack her footlocker. “I think we’re going to like every inch of you.”

“And every pound,” Bessie reminded her, laughing.

“Say, girls, I’ll bet I weigh more than any two of you put together.”

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“Bet you don’t,” said plump Bertha Larsen, but she looked hopeful.

“Bet I do,” said Bessie. “Look at this!” Gingerly she eased herself down on the cot assigned to her. The cot squeaked loudly in protest, sagged, swayed, and one wooden leg slipped. “See?” Bessie demanded. Her face twinkled with humor, and she brushed her soft brown hair off her damp neck. Cherry bent to help her fix the cot leg. “Now what are you girls going to do with all this woman? That is, if I don’t melt away in all this heat first.”

The girls looked at her uncertainly, unwilling to join her jokes about herself for fear of hurting her feelings.

“Oh, don’t be so polite,” Bessie teased them, as she struggled out of her too-tight slacks. “I know I am—