Ozark Nurse (4 page)

"Thank you kindly, ma'am. And since you seem to approve, as head nurse perhaps you might order our little friend to accept my gift in the spirit it is intended."

"I will not." She was even more firm. "I only hope she tosses it back to you, Andy Fine! If she does, try me."

"Would you like me to step outside?" Nora asked politely. But she was laughing. "Then you two could get on with what promises to be a very interesting friendship."

"We're already good friends, aren't we, Miss Thorpe?" He winked at her.

"Oh, sure." Margaret made her voice desolate. "But Nora hits the jackpot. The watch, that is." She added reflectively: "Thirty-eight. That could well be the trouble. I'm just too old to rate glamorous baubles."

"Thirty-eight isn't old, young lady. Why, that's a delightful age. Don't you know that?"

"No."

"Don't you know that some of the most fascinating women in history have been in their late thirties or early forties?"

"But, my dear man, I am not a woman of history as yet, although I certainly feel like one after a long, hard day." Then, with a sudden and very attractive smile, Margaret grabbed Nora's arm. "Keep the watch, silly. Why shouldn't you? Now let's go eat."

Margaret was the one who caught sight of them first. At their corner table in the large cafeteria, already fairly crowded with doctors, nurses, and convalescent patients, she and Nora had been discussing Andrew Fine's proposed arrangement for the summer. "If you think you can keep your charming brother from doing a conning job," said Margaret, "I don't see any reason—" And then she said, her glance traveling to the entrance door: "Uh-uh. Look if you must, sweetie, but I don't think you'll like what you're about to see."

Nora's eyes turned toward the entrance. The man arranging silverware on two trays was Paul. Beside him, smiling, talking gaily, was a girl named Rita Lansing, whose father, Nel Lansing, owned a string of newspapers, a small radio and television broadcasting station, and a big showy house on a hill. Rita herself was on the showy side. She was a redhead, and she had a beautiful figure which she had learned to show off to the best advantage during the two or three years she worked as a model in New York.

The spectacular white coat-dress with black buttons, accented by long black gloves, which looked pretty silly for cafeteria wear, must surely have come from New York, if not Paris. So undoubtedly did the black hat which adorned but did not conceal her truly unusual mahogany red hair.

"It's unusual all right," Margaret observed dryly. "A real bottle baby. Nature never produced that shade." And then: "I wonder if she uses mahogany furniture polish on it?"

"Is she the one you saw him with yesterday, Maggie?"

Her friend nodded. "But look, honey, don't build up a big deal out of this. So maybe he happened to meet her, purely by accident, and she asked him to buy her lunch. Lots of doctors bring their friends here to lunch."

"Oh, sure." By now Nora was feeling downright bleak. "And maybe he just happened to meet her, purely by accident, yesterday evening, when I was all dressed and waiting for him. I waited until eleven o'clock before I gave up and went to bed."

Margaret looked disturbed. "I shouldn't have blurted out that I saw him in Rita's car," she said, adding that she never would have said a word, except that, "He made me so darned mad there for a minute, snapping at me the way he did, and then sort of giving you the brush-off."

"This is a very upset guy, Nora. So we have to make allowances."

Nora stared down at her coffee cup. Then she looked up, her eyes following Paul and his glamorous companion as they seated themselves at a table on the far side of the room. She wondered if Paul had seen her, if he was deliberately avoiding speaking or looking her way.

Nora spoke wearily. "All I seem to do lately is make allowances for him, worry about him, wonder what I can do to help him out of his awful mental state he's in as a result of those deaths following operations. But even so, I don't like being treated as if I didn't exist. He didn't forget our date, Maggie. How could he?"

"He might have. Blackouts, temporary lapses of memory, all sorts of queer things can happen to an emotionally disturbed person. And he has lost four patients recently."

"Maybe." But Nora looked skeptical. "To hear him tell it, he's finished as a surgeon. Maybe he's finished with me, too."

"Now, Nora," Margaret scolded her lovingly, "seeing him with Rita has given you the cold jitters. But it probably doesn't mean a thing."

But doubt had taken hold and was gnawing like a suddenly aching tooth. And Nora had her pride. She needed reassurance that Paul needed her, that his feeling for her had not changed. "I'd like to know where I stand, Maggie."

"I don't blame you. So why don't you go ask him?" Margaret took a sip of water, stood up, and said Nora would have to finish her lunch alone. She had to run.

There was an emergency meningitis case over in the children's section, and she was needed badly. It was probably a hopeless case; a three-month-old boy, whose mother had waited until the baby had gone into a coma before bringing him in.

"If anyone can help pull him through, you can," Nora said, and it was true. Margaret Thorpe was the kind of nurse who should have been a doctor. That had been her original ambition, and there were very few things a doctor could do which she could not do.

"But I'm not God," Margaret said, adding with a frown: "and neither is Paul Anderson. Why don't you remind him of that? As far as I can make out, he went to pieces when he discovered he couldn't perform miracles."

Left alone, Nora sat nibbling the sandwich which she did not want, sipping her coffee which had grown cold, and trying to keep her eyes from roaming toward the table at the far side of the room.

"May I join you for a moment, Nora?"

She looked up as Doctor Carl Richmond, the staff internist, took the chair which Margaret had vacated. He was a tall, scholarly-looking man, with a friendly smile and a quiet voice.

The quiet voice said the words which Nora heard everywhere she turned these days. "I'm worried about Paul, Nora. What are we going to do about him?"

"I wish I knew, Doctor Richmond."

"So do I. So does every doctor connected with this hospital." He took off his shell-rimmed glasses, wiped them with a paper napkin, then slipped them back on before he leaned toward Nora with a grave and troubled expression.

"I don't need to tell you how we all feel about Anderson. We have all considered ourselves fortunate to have such a brilliant young pediatrician on the staff. We have all voiced great respect for his ability. We like him as a man. But—" He shook his head.

Nora sighed, accepting the cigarette which he offered and lit for her. "Thanks. And you don't need to say the rest of it. I know it all. This last month he has gone to pieces, because he lost four cases—"

"And all four," said the doctor angrily, "were patients whom no doctor could have saved. In the case of the Sackett child, he was a fool to attempt the operation of an undernourished, mentally retarded boy with a congenital heart malformation. But Paul insisted on taking the one chance in a million—and he lost. What surgeon does not lose an occasional case? It's inevitable. A well adjusted doctor accepts that inevitability as part of his work."

"I think Paul is disturbed because he lost four, one after the other. And he never had lost a patient he operated on before, Doctor Richmond." Nora smoked nervously, not enjoying it at all. But it gave her something to do with her hands. "He can't seem to believe that he wasn't at fault somehow. He feels guilty."

"Yes. I understand." The man nodded, frowning. "Well, if he's developing a guilt complex, that can be bad. He has enough intelligence to do something about that. If he refuses to apply his intelligence, he can be finished as a surgeon. I suppose you know that."

"He knows it, too, Doctor." Nora crushed out her cigarette, her eyes deeply troubled. "He keeps saying that he is finished."

"I see. Well, it's a serious situation, a bad situation. But you know the old saying: 'Physician, heal thyself.' If our friend won't do that, or even try to do it—"

He was silent for a moment before saying abruptly: "Nora, we had a staff meeting this morning, and Anderson's apparent crack-up came up for discussion."

"Oh?" Her heart dropped. This could mean very bad news.

He continued, reminding her that he was telling her what had happened in confidence. They planned to give Anderson a little more time to get hold of himself. If he did not—well, the hospital and its welfare were of primary concern. They could afford only one staff pediatrician. They could not get along indefinitely with a man who was willing to consult, examine, and diagnose, but who refused to operate.

"I suppose that means you will ask for Paul's resignation." That would mean that he would
really
be finished.

"We want to give him every possible chance, Nora." The man shrugged, his kindly face registering grave concern. "We've all tried to talk sense to him. Nothing we say seems to register. You probably have more influence with him than anyone else. Why don't you talk to him?"

"Me?" Nora's quick, nervous laugh was more like a miserable sob. "Doctor Richmond, I've tried talking to him. I've even asked him to talk with a psychiatrist. He won't listen to me either. What more can I do?"

"Try again."

Doctor Richmond got up, and after he was gone, Nora sat for a few more minutes lost in troubled thought. She had a sudden idea! Perhaps if she were to offer to marry Paul immediately, that might be a solution.

Suddenly, for the first time, her obligations at home did not seem of paramount importance.

Paul came first in her heart. Perhaps now was the time to put him first in her life, to give him the love and comfort and reassurance that only a wife could give. They could marry, go away for a week or so, and perhaps the rest and change in themselves would serve to dissipate Paul's awful tension. He had been driving himself mercilessly for months. That was the trouble. A man could not think clearly, could not see his problems in their true perspective, when he was drained mentally and physically.

Of course, Paul might not be so enthusiastic about an immediate marriage as he once would have been…

Again her glance roamed to the table where he had been sitting with Rita Lansing. They were gone.

Nora got up.

Back in Andrew Fine's room, Nora swung the movable shelf out from the night stand and shuffled a deck of cards. Her patient had finished his noon meal, brought in by a nurse's aide. As usual, he was griping in no uncertain terms. It was absolutely crazy, he said, to expect a sick man to swallow a heavy dinner at a time when he was used to eating a light lunch. It was awful food, too: meat tough as a piece of leather and soggy toast.

"And if there's one thing I detest more than another, it's carrot salad."

He glared at Nora, who grinned back at him. "Go on," she said, dealing the cards for rummy. "Fuss and fume about the food, and the time it's served, and—"

"But look," he argued earnestly. "Take a guy like me. I've been a sick man. It stands to reason I'm not up to eating a tray of grub that looks like it was intended for a lumberjack. What I need is something a little special. I'd like it served with a bit of daintiness, too."

"Perhaps a filet mignon," Nora suggested sweetly, "with a rosebud in a crystal vase on the tray?"

"You think I'm trying to be funny?" He glowered at the cards in his hand, then at her. "You think I'm a grumpy, cantankerous guy who should eat what's brought to me and be glad to get it? You think I just like to complain?"

"No." Nora shook her head firmly. She did not think any of those things. Plenty of patients complained about hospital food, and about being waked up at what they considered an ungodly hour to eat breakfast for which they had no appetite.

"A hospital does the best it can, Andy, on the money it has. It cannot afford choice cuts of meat, or other luxury items you get in an expensive restaurant." And as for the hours when meals were served, both the nurses and the help in the diet kitchen had to be considered. If they didn't get breakfast served and out of the way reasonably early, how would they ever get on with the noon meal?

Andy nodded, conceding the logic of this argument. "But I'll be out of here in another week or ten days," he said hopefully. "And am I beginning to count the days! By the way," he grinned, "what time do you serve breakfast at your house, Nora?"

She laughed. "Any old time you choose to wander down to the kitchen. But don't you start counting on
that
" she warned him. "I haven't promised a thing."

She was wishing now that she had never agreed even to consider such an arrangement. Everything now depended on her talk with Paul.

A look of disappointment crossed the man's face. "But I thought you had about made up your mind, assuming your mother offers no objection." He added earnestly: "Frankly, I will be disappointed if this plan doesn't work out. I've sort of set my heart on it." He laid down his cards without waiting to play the hand out.

"Is money a consideration? Because if it is—if a very generous amount would be an inducement—"

Nora flung down her hand and decided to be frank with him. "Money hasn't a thing to do with it. I'm sort of mixed up about a personal problem, Andy. I—well, there's a chance I may be getting married almost immediately."

"Married?" Andy Fine frowned, looking thoughtful. "Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that you might be considering marriage. Who is the lucky fellow, Nora? Someone in the hospital?"

She nodded. "One of the doctors." And already she was regretting her rash statement. Why did people invariably blurt out too much about their personal affairs when they were troubled and confused? Patients sometimes did that with a friendly nurse who was willing to take the time to listen. But it seemed a very strange thing for
her
to have done.

She felt ashamed.

"Don't take what I said too seriously." She tried for a casual laugh, wanting to recall her words. "It's just a crazy idea I dreamed up today. It probably won't come to a thing."