Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse (2 page)
Read Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse Online
Authors: Helen Wells
A Caribbean cruise! The round trip would take twelve days. Almost two weeks of warm weather and sea air.
A stopover at the exciting-sounding island of Curaçao in the Netherlands West Indies; then on to Venezuela and Colombia in South America.
But there was a long waiting list. That, Cherry decided, was the catch. There must be hundreds of other overtired young nurses ahead of her on the list.
They must have signed up ages ago for ship’s-nurse jobs on luxury ocean liners cruising to glamorous Caribbean ports. What chance did Ames have?
Ames, Cherry admitted ruefully, had waited too long.
She had known a month ago that she was suffering from fatigue and needed a vacation, if not a change.
“I was silly,” Cherry scolded herself now. “As Miss Davis said, I’m not the only visiting nurse in the world.”
6
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
Well, she had learned her lesson. She had been relaxing now for almost two weeks and felt fi ne. But it still seemed like a dream to be home.
Breakfast in bed. Window-shopping with Midge, home too, for the holidays. Long, satisfying talks with Midge’s father, Dr. Joe. And best of all, wonderful, quiet evenings around the fi re with her mother and father.
They talked very little as they munched buttered popcorn and lazily cracked nuts, watching the smoldering logs crumple into dying embers. But the very peace and quiet of those happy evenings had gradually stopped the dull ache in her tired body. And now that Charlie was home on vacation too, life was perfect.
“In bed from nine to noon,” Dr. Joseph Fortune had ordered, affectionately stern. He had ushered Cherry and her twin brother, Charlie, into the world. It was Dr. Joe who had inspired her to become a nurse.
Dear Dr. Joe with his beautiful, sensitive face and luminous eyes! “He was really worried about me when I tottered off the train and practically collapsed into Dad’s arms.”
Charlie had been worried too, Cherry knew; almost as upset as her parents had been, although she had gained back a few pounds before his arrival. But he hid his anxiety under a steady stream of teasing:
“If you don’t get those red cheeks back soon, Nurse Ames, we’ll have to change your name to Lily.” Charlie was the only one to whom Cherry had confi ded her dream of a Caribbean cruise. Cherry felt certain that her parents and Dr. Joe would have strenuous
WAITING FOR A LETTER
7
objections if she so much as mentioned it. It would be hard to convince them that she was well and strong now; that the trip actually would be good for her.
But Charlie understood. Charlie was as fair as his twin was dark, but they both had the same pert features. And Charlie was as much in love with prepar-ing for his engineering career as Cherry had been with hers.
“Of course, nothing may come of it,” Cherry had told him one night as they crunched through the snow on their way home from an early movie. “But I can dream, can’t I
?
A ship’s nurse on a luxury liner complete with swimming pool! You and Dad shoveling snow while I’m taking sun baths on the promenade deck.”
“Wait a minute!” Charlie had stopped and swung her around so fast that her overshoes skidded on an icy patch in the sidewalk. “Let me get this straight. Are you working your way to South America or going as a passenger?”
Cherry giggled. “Both. I understand the work’s not too hard except when there’s an epidemic of seasickness or an emergency of some sort. Besides, I like to work. I’d be bored to death lying in the sun and dunk-ing myself in the pool all day long.”
Charlie chuckled. “You’ll run into seasickness, honey, the fi rst night out. But good. Rough seas when you hit the Gulf Stream around Cape Hatteras. Wouldn’t be surprised if you landed in sick bay yourself.” Cherry pretended to pout. “You’re just jealous, you landlubber you!”
8
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
“Seriously, honey, it’s a wonderful idea. I hope you get the job. You deserve it, and the change will fi x you right up. You’ll be as good as new when you come back; fat and brown with those fabulous red cheeks of yours.”
“Keep your fi ngers crossed, Charlie, please.” Cherry had tucked her arm affectionately through his. “There’s a long waiting list.”
There it was again. That disheartening little phrase: just three simple words, “Long waiting list!” Now Cherry jumped out of bed, closed the window, and popped into the warmth of the bathroom to brush her teeth and dash icy cold water into her face, “I won’t think about it any more,” she resolutely mumbled into the towel. “I’m almost halfway through my month’s vacation now. If word doesn’t come soon I wouldn’t be able to take the job anyway.”
She snatched up a warm bed jacket of quilted blue silk and hopped hack into bed, obeying Dr. Joe’s orders to the letter. Then counting on her fi ngers she said out loud:
“I’ve already had twelve days. The round-trip cruise is another twelve days. Twelve and twelve make twenty-four. One month is four weeks. There are twenty-eight days in four weeks . . .”
There was a knock on her door. It opened a crack.
Midge’s face appeared. “Talking to herself. That means money in the bank. Or that she’s losing her mind.” After Midge’s face came the rest of her; or at least what you could see behind the enormous breakfast tray she was carrying.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
9
“Good morning, Miss Fortune,” Cherry greeted her teen-age neighbor, Dr. Joe’s mischievous daughter.
“Since when did you start specialing me?” She crossed her legs under her and reached out hungrily for the tray.
Midge sniffed. “Specialing indeed. I’m not your private duty nurse. I’m your mother’s helper, that’s all.” She curled up at the foot of the bed adding,
“And
my father’s private detective. I’m to sit right here and see that you eat every morsel on the tray. Even that burnt crust on the toast I made.”
Cherry gratefully gulped down a large glass of fresh orange juice. “There’s my vitamin C for the day. And I
like
burnt toast. Especially when you can coat it with sweet butter and homemade strawberry jam.” She sighed in ecstasy. “Did you scramble these delicious, fl uffy eggs, Midge Fortune?”
It was, of course, a rhetorical question. Midge didn’t bother to answer. It was an accepted fact in Hilton that harum-scarum Midge was about as domestically inclined as a longshoreman.
After Dr. Fortune’s wife died, Midge had tried in her own way to keep house for him between school and mischievous pranks. But her own way was so topsy-turvy that Dr. Joe might have become anemic if he hadn’t been frequently invited to supper by Mrs.
Ames. Cherry herself had often swept and dusted the Fortune house; made beds, seen to it that the kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator were stocked with easy-to-prepare but vitamin- and mineral-packed meals.
10
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
“It’s wonderful to be home,” Cherry said, completely dismissing her dream of a Caribbean cruise. “I’m just beginning to realize how much I missed you all. As Gwen kept saying, ‘Life in Greenwich Village is glamorous and exciting,’ but—but . . .” She nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of bacon. “I guess I’m pretty much of a homebody in spite of all my wanderings.’’
Midge stared at her in disgust. “You make me tired, Cherry Ames. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than a Bohemian apartment in Greenwich Village.
Complete with garden.”
“Garden?” Cherry shook back her thick, dark curls, laughing. “Bertha Larsen said it was so small the chickens on her farm would have ignored it. But last summer we did fi nally make a little bower out of that tiny, fenced-in back yard. Nasturtiums—”
“Nasty urchins, you mean,” Midge corrected her with a giggle. “That’s what I called ‘em until I grew up.”
Cherry ignored this golden opportunity to point out to Midge that she was still far from grown up. “Heavenly blue morning-glories all over the fence,” she went on reminiscently. “And in the fall we even coaxed a few marigolds into blooming. Mai Lee has a green thumb with fl owers.”
Suddenly Cherry was homesick for the Spencer Club and its headquarters in downtown New York. It was only a passing, although poignant, longing, but for a moment she stared unseeingly down at her empty plate.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
11
They
were all busy with their districts while she sat here in bed, doing nobody any good and probably caus-ing the whole household unnecessary trouble.
“Completely silly, this business of breakfast in bed,” she told Midge grimly. “Because I’m all better now.
Really and truly I am. I don’t need a whole month of this petting and spoiling. Ten days just being
home
has done the trick. I must get back to work.” But Midge wasn’t listening. “All the celebrities you met in Greenwich Village,” she was saying enviously.
“Tell me again, Cherry, about the Indian woman who wanders around swathed in veils. And the barefoot, bearded man in the fl owing, white toga.”
“It’s not those people I miss,” Cherry said under her breath. “It’s the people who need me; my district families. But Dorothy Davis said I couldn’t come back until my month was up. Oh, how I wish I dared hope I’d get a letter from the steamship line today!” She clapped her hand over her mouth too late. She didn’t want Midge or anybody else, except Charlie, to know anything about her dream of a ship’s-nurse job; at least not until everything was settled.
If
there was such a thing as a dream coming true.
She glanced sharply at Midge. Had she heard what Cherry had muttered about a steamship line?
Midge either hadn’t heard or was pretending she hadn’t heard. She was staring unconcernedly up at the ceiling.
“Have you thought about what you want for Christmas, Cherry?” Midge asked. “There’s no sense in asking you 12
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
what you want for your birthday. People who have birthdays the day before Christmas are out of luck so far as I’m concerned. It must be awful having them come so close together.”
“It isn’t awful at all.” Cherry laughed. “It’s fun celebrating two days in a row. And, no, I haven’t thought about what I want for either Christmas or my birthday.
Any suggestions?”
Midge, still staring up at the ceiling, said, “Next Monday, a week from today, is Chrismas. You’d better write a letter to Santa Claus. But quick.” Cherry lowered the tray to the fl oor. She relaxed against the pillows thinking:
“I know what I want for my birthday.
And
Christmas.
A letter from that nice Dr. Davis who interviewed me before I left New York. A letter on the exciting-looking, glamorous, steamship line’s stationery. A letter saying that one Cherry Ames has been hired as ship’s nurse for the duration of a twelve-day cruise.” She closed her eyes and let her imagination carry her away. The Caribbean! Buccaneers. Pirates. The Spanish Main, Christmas on the high seas. That meant Christmas without Mother and Dad and Charlie.
A lump swelled in Cherry’s throat. Then she sat up, laughing at herself:
“Here I am getting homesick while I’m still at home!
There’s not a chance in the world that long waiting list has dwindled down to my size.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” It was Midge’s voice, elaborately disinterested.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
13
Cherry’s black eyes popped wide open. “Midge! You know something I don’t know.”
Midge pursed her lips and whistled a bar or two of
“Anchors Aweigh.” Then she said, “The only thing I
know
is what I just happened to hear you say to Charlie last evening.”
Cherry gasped. “What did I say?”
“You said, ‘Oh, Charlie, do you think I have a chance?’
And Charlie said: ‘I feel it in my bones, honey. You’d better go shopping for whatever feminine gear a cruise nurse needs in the Caribbean.’ ”
“Midge Fortune!” Cherry’s mother appeared in the doorway, mildly scolding. “What do you mean by sitting on Cherry’s mail? I told you to let her read it in peace over breakfast!”
Mail! Cherry sucked in a deep breath.
Mail!
Midge slid to the fl oor, dragging half the comforter with her. “Nothing but a silly old ad from a steamship company. I was going to throw it away.”
But Cherry had already pounced on the long, fl ag-bedecked envelope. It was addressed to Miss Cherry Ames, R.N. Neatly typed above the row of tiny United States and South American fl ags in the upper left-hand corner was the name:
“Dr. Fowler Davis, Medical Department.”
cherry read the letter from dr. davis for the second time—out loud. She felt like laughing and crying at once and her voice was so shaky she had to read it for the third time before Mrs. Ames fi nally understood.
The nurse who had been engaged to sail aboard the
Julita
on December twenty-second had suddenly been taken ill. The applicants ahead of Cherry on the list had withdrawn their names for the duration of the holidays. Dr. Davis was taking Cherry’s acceptance for granted—unless she wired him to the contrary.
Cherry looked up from the letter and waited for the verdict. Would her mother he overwhelmingly disappointed because Cherry was not going to be home for Christmas after all? Would she call in Dr. Joe? Would they all insist she was not yet strong enough to go back on duty?
14
“BON
VOYAGE!”
15
Cherry held her breath. The ship would sail at noon, Friday, December twenty-second! Four days and a few hours from this very minute. That left her hardly time enough to get her clothes and uniforms together and catch the fi rst train to New York! The letter had said she was to report for instructions to the secretary of the medical department on Wednesday afternoon if possible. The
Julita
was due in from its twelve-day cruise that morning. She would probably have an opportunity to meet the ship’s doctor Wednesday afternoon at the steamship line’s offi ces on the pier. She must wire her acceptance at once.
