Read Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse Online
Authors: Helen Wells
Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse (8 page)
She hurried into the bathroom and made a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water. “Keep your fi nger tip in this for a while,” she told Mrs. Crane. “I’ll bandage it with Chloresium ointment later.”
MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
65
“What’s zat?” Timmy demanded curiously. “Sounds awful. Does it hurt?”
As Cherry repaired the damage to the rug and the fl oor and started the vaporizer again, she explained:
“It’s a marvelous new salve which we use for cuts and burns and lots of other things. It works almost like magic because it’s made from chlorophyll.”
“What’s so wonderful about that?” Timmy said doubtfully.
“I
never even heard of it.”
“Chlorophyll,” Cherry said patiently, “is what makes plants green. The ointment looks black when it comes out of the tube, but when I spread it on your mummy’s fi nger you’ll see how green it is.”
“Do it now.
Now!
I wanna see that klor-klor-whatever it is.” Timmy began to bounce up and down. “Is it really magic, Cherry? Honest and truly cross-your-heart magic, Cherry?”
Cherry shook her head. “No, not quite, but after I put it on, your mummy’s fi nger won’t hurt any more.
And she may not even have a blister.”
“Get that green stuff,” Timmy ordered. “I don’t want my mummy’s fi nger to hurt!”
Cherry realized that Timmy was not going to relax until he had seen his mother’s fi nger bandaged. “Whatever I do, I always seem to make matters worse,” she groaned inwardly. “If Dr. Kirk Monroe comes in now and fi nds that Timmy hasn’t had either his aspirin or inhalation he won’t think I’m effi cient any more.” Thankful that the doctor’s suite adjoined the Cranes’, she hurried next door to the dispensary for a tube of 66
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
Chloresium ointment and a package of Band-Aids.
When she came back, the pineapple juice and dish of applesauce had arrived. Steam was pouring from the vaporizer’s spout by the time she had bandaged Mrs.
Crane’s fi nger. But Cherry decided Timmy must have his medication before the inhalation.
She crushed half an aspirin tablet into a powder and mixed it with a little of the applesauce. She smiled at Timmy. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes.” The little boy promptly reversed the order.
“Timmy!” Mrs. Crane said sharply. “Don’t you want to get well and go swimming in that beautiful pool?” Timmy, teeth clamped together, shook his dark curls.
“But you don’t want to miss fi re drill,” Cherry said.
“That’s fun. You have to strap on that life preserver on the wall over there and hurry out on deck to fi nd your lifeboat.”
Timmy gobbled up the applesauce in two gulps. At last he was tucked under the tent. Cherry decided to remain in the room for the duration of the steaming.
Heaven knows what might happen if she left Mrs. Crane in charge.
When the inhalation was over, Cherry told Timmy:
“I’ll pop in to see you at bedtime. Around eight. Now keep nice and quiet and covered up. Promise?” Timmy adroitly changed the subject. He began to chant, quoting from the book his mother had been reading:
“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
67
So Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,
Was he?”
Cherry tried to look stern. “Don’t answer my question with another one. Are you going to obey orders while I’m gone?” She handed him the glass of pineapple juice.
“Straw,” Timmy said tersely. “I
never
drink
any
thing without a straw.”
For a moment Cherry almost lost her patience. It was getting on toward evening and she hadn’t even unpacked. And where on this big, unfamiliar ship could she fi nd a straw? Then she remembered the angled glass ones in the dispensary for patients who were not yet able to sit up. If she got one for Timmy it might keep him amused—it might even make it easier for his mother to force fl uids. She darted away again to the dispensary.
And for the third time in the very same corridor on B deck she bumped into a passenger. This time it was not Jan Paulding. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a brown, weather-beaten face. But he, too, had been standing just outside of Stateroom 141; he hadn’t known the door was going to be thrown open suddenly; like Jan he hadn’t heard Cherry’s rubber-soled shoes crossing the thick carpet.
But unlike Jan he was not surprised into near-panic when Cherry popped out into the corridor. Startled, yes, but he merely backed away with a suave apology:
“I beg your pardon, Nurse. I seem to have lost my way. This is where my cabin was when I last left it.” 68
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
His sharp, bright-blue eyes twinkled merrily. “But
you
weren’t in it when I went up to the club for tea.” His manner was pleasant enough, a trifl e too molli-fying, Cherry thought, but there was something about his voice she didn’t quite like. It was deep, almost harsh, as though he had overworked it
,
shouting commands, or uttering loud roars of uncontrollable rage.
He was wearing an immaculate tropical worsted suit of tiny brown and tan checks with an expensive-looking tie as bright as his twinkling eyes. But Cherry suspected he would feel more comfortable in something more rugged: a lumberjacket and dungarees, perhaps. He reminded her of a phrase the purser had used earlier that morning describing the patient who had died in Curaçao: “A rough diamond, but a nice character.”
Well, this man, Cherry felt sure, was another rough diamond. She didn’t know whether he had a nice character or not.
She smiled at him primly. “Perhaps you have the right room but the wrong deck. This is B deck.”
“Oh, of course. How stupid of me.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Do forgive me.” He turned away toward the stairs. Cherry noted that his strides were long and that he moved with the muscular grace of an accomplished athlete.
“I don’t believe for one minute he was lost,” she told herself. “That man’s too shrewd. He wouldn’t lose his way in a labyrinth.”
Later she glanced at the glass-framed deck plan on the wall in the dispensary. There were no cabins
MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
69
directly above the Cranes’ and the doctor’s suites. In that area on A deck were the gymnasium, the novelty shop, and the beauty salon.
There were no passenger staterooms except on A and B decks!
“The plot thickens,” Cherry whispered to herself as she picked up a glass straw and locked herself out of the dispensary. “First the safe is broken into, hut nothing is taken. Next I catch Jan Paulding listening outside of Timmy’s door. And now this extrapolite rough diamond, pretending he got his stateroom mixed up.” And then she remembered something else.
They were heading into bad weather and the ship had rolled and pitched as the blue-eyed man strode down the corridor. Cherry had had a hard time keeping her balance just standing still, holding on to the dispensary door. But it hadn’t fazed the mysterious passenger one bit. He had moved serenely along, as though enjoying the
Julita’s
bucking motion. He had the most perfect pair of sea legs she had ever seen.
“My guess,” she muttered, quoting Ziggy’s description of the pulmonary thrombosis patient, “is that Mr.
Rough Diamond has spent a lot of time at sea, during his youth and not too long ago either, because he couldn’t be more than thirty-nine or forty now.” Soberly she let herself into Timmy’s bedroom, wondering what could be the attraction No. 141
seemed to have for both Jan Paulding and Mr. Rough Diamond.
timmy greeted cherry with a garbled version of the ship’s itinerary. Either his mother had foolishly misinformed him of the ports they would visit or he was deliberately making up a route of his own.
“We’re going to Peru,” he announced with an impish grin. “I know all about Peru.” He began to chant:
“
‘There was a young man from Peru,
Who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in the night
With a terrible fright
To fi nd it was perfectly true!’ ”
Cherry laughed and went into the bathroom to wash the glass straw in hot, soapy water. Then she fl ushed it with alcohol and rinsed away the bitter taste. She taught Timmy how to drink his juice lying down. He thought it was great fun but preferred blowing bubbles.
70
SCUTTLEBUTT
71
At last Mrs. Crane took over. “I’ll see that he drinks every drop of it,” she promised Cherry. “We’ve taken up far too much of your time already.”
“I’ve enjoyed it,” Cherry said. “Just keep at the fl uids, will you? He should have at least four ounces every half-hour, if possible.” She sighed. She didn’t envy helpless little Mrs. Crane the job of forcing fl uids into mischievous young Timmy.
As she wearily left the room Timmy was pretending he was a whale and was spouting pineapple juice through the glass straw.
Back in her own little cabin she had hardly started to unpack when there was a tap at the door.
A young woman in a crisp, stewardess’s uniform smiled at her in the dim light of the narrow passageway.
“I’m your neighbor in the next cabin,” she told Cherry. “Helenita Browning is my name, but everybody calls me Brownie.”
“I’m Cherry Ames, Brownie.” They shook hands briefl y. “Come in for a minute, won’t you?” Cherry invited.
Brownie took one step across the threshold and then gave a gasp as she saw Cherry’s Christmas presents spread out on the bed.
“Oh, how lovely,” she cried, snatching up the red-rose taffeta bathing suit. “Yummy-yum, will you ever look lovely in this on the beach at Piscadera Bay.”
“Piscadera Bay?”
Brownie nodded and draped the soft terry-cloth robe Cherry’s mother had given her over her shoulders.
72
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
“That’s at Curaçao. It’s only a few minutes’ bus drive from the port of Willemstad. If we can wangle shore leave at the same time, I’ll show you the ropes.” As Cherry hung things in the closet, Brownie curled up on her bed, rambling on:
“Willemstad is a fascinating Dutch city; as pictur-esque as though a bit of Holland had been lifted out of Europe and set down smack in the Caribbean Sea.
There’s a fabulous pontoon bridge which swings back as ships come into the harbor. You’ll get a big thrill when we sail right down the canal so close to the Hotel Americano you can almost touch the people sitting out on the veranda.”
“Sounds like something out of a movie,” Cherry said.
“Tell me more, please.”
“Well,” Brownie went on willingly, “when people on the bridge see us coming they run like anything to get to shore because sometimes it stays open for more than half an hour. They can, of course, cross in
Verboot
which means ferryboat; it runs while the bridge is open.
The buildings in Willemstad are fascinating; you’ll love the eighteenth-century governor’s palace and all the churches and the little bright-colored, gabled houses, pink and yellow stucco mostly. We’ll visit the market where Venezuelan natives keep shop in boats along the shore.”
Brownie scrambled to her feet. “We’d better get going. It must be time for dinner. You’ll meet the other girls in this section then. They’re all swell. We were wondering why you didn’t show up for lunch.”
SCUTTLEBUTT
73
As they left Cherry’s stateroom, Brownie said in a carefully lowered voice, “Scuttlebutt says the purser’s safe was broken into. Have you heard?”
“What do you mean, scuttlebutt?” Cherry asked.
“Oh, it’s just a seagoing expression. Means the same as saying, ‘Gossip hath.’ The Old Man doesn’t like gossip, so I’m not saying anything more. In fact,” she admitted ruefully, “I don’t
know
anything more. I’ll bet it’s just one of those yarns, anyway.”
She tucked her arm through Cherry’s as they strolled up to the promenade deck. Every now and then they lurched with the roll of the ship and almost tripped each other up.
“We’re going to catch it tonight,” Brownie said. “I pity you. Seasick passengers are a pain in the neck.” In the grill Cherry met three other stewardesses.
They all sat at one big table and, ignoring the Captain’s orders, gossiped throughout the meal. Cherry felt like a prig, but she could not violate her professional ethics and discuss Bill’s accident. Nor did she divulge that she had been in the purser’s offi ce when Ziggy discovered the safe had been broken into.
“I wonder what was stolen,” Miranda, a pretty young stewardess, kept asking. “That safe must be crammed full of jewelry. There are signs in every stateroom advising the passengers to check all valuables with the purser.”
“If this little bit of scuttlebutt ever reaches the passengers’ ears, the Old Man will have a fi t,” Brownie said. “Some of the women on this ship came aboard so 74
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
laden down with platinum and diamonds under their mink coats I don’t see how they managed to stagger up the gangplank.”
Cherry saw Dr. Monroe dining at a near-by table with two ship’s offi cers. He smiled at her swiftly with his eyes and then did not look in her direction again.
Cherry knew that he must have heard the scuttlebutt by now and wondered if he suspected her of gossiping with the other girls.
Then she realized with relief that he couldn’t do that, for she hadn’t even mentioned it to him. And Ziggy must have told the ship’s surgeon that Cherry was with him when he found the safe had been rifl ed.
“I was tempted to discuss the mystery with him,” Cherry remembered. “But I’m glad I didn’t.” Dinner over, the stewardesses hurried away to resume their duties. Cherry went down to the Crane suite, planning to stay with Timmy while his mother had her dinner in the big,
al fresco
dining room.
“It’ll do you good to have a little change from these four walls,” Cherry insisted when Mrs. Crane protested that she could eat on a tray with Timmy. “And don’t hurry back. Timmy’s due for another inhalation and more aspirin at eight anyway. I’ll take his temperature then, too.”
