Nurse in White (2 page)

They had filed from the room, each to his own appointed task, and she had gone down the hall to the elevator that was to take her to Male Medical, rested and eager for the day’s work. All the misery and sorrow that had weighed so heavily on her heart such a short time ago, had fled.

Her mother would be interested to know that Miss Forsyth had smiled at her and asked her how things were going, when they met in the corridor one morning. That Dr. Angus MacGowan was tall and lank and ugly, a woman hater and a worker of miracles. That the two interns were smart-alecky, just as she had known they would be. That Ann Murdock was always amusing but inclined to be fresh and more than a little meddlesome, although Ellen liked her a lot. That the nurses were all grand but that Marcella Harris, a graduate nurse who had been at Anthony Ware for years, had been particularly sweet to her.

Oh, there were heaps of interesting and pleasant things to write home about.

CHAPTER TWO

Ann Murdock
had been right in her prediction, for fully one-third of the September class of probationers failed to meet the hospital’s strict requirements and departed forthwith. Ellen and Ann Murdock stayed on—both high in their class.

The gingham uniforms and black shoes and stockings,
bête
noire of all probationers, were thankfully discarded in favor of white. On that first day, Ann did a gay little fandango before Ellen’s mirror and cocked a roguish, mocking eye at Ellen whose glowing face proclaimed to all the world; “Now I am truly a nurse—a student to be sure, but still a nurse!”

As a queen wears her crown, sign of royalty, so Ellen donned the bit of snowy organdy—symbol of, to her, a far nobler calling, and though Ann jeered at Ellen’s pride in her pert little cap, Ellen saw that she held her red head a little higher because of it.

The two no longer roomed together but across the hall from each other and Ann continued on her arrogant, self-willed way, making few friends among her associates because of her highhanded, hard-boiled manner, yet standing well in her classes and with the faculty in general.

Each new intern became her immediate prey, for a brief space, to be promptly dropped after a stolen date or two. The girls in the house soon ceased to remonstrate and to warn. Ann apparently possessed a charmed life. She was never found out and, oddly enough, the men whom she disparagingly dubbed “pansies” were far more loyal to her than she was to them.

No one could understand Ellen’s friendship for her. The two were so dissimilar. And yet as the months passed there was formed a strong and very real bond of deep affection between them. Sometimes to be sure, Ann’s attitude of guardian—of self-appointed mentor, irked; but for the most part Ellen submitted to the older girl’s rather dictatorial manner with amused tolerance. Ann meant well. Ann was city born and bred and had all the urbanite’s mistaken ideas of a country girl’s inability to take care of herself. And it was Ann who stood close to Ellen during that first day in the operating room when, as the gleaming knife in the hands of the senior surgeon’s magic fingers cut cleanly through the pink flesh of a small boy, Ellen saw Dr. MacGowan rise and fall in the most fantastic manner and felt wave after wave of deathly nausea assail her. It was Ann who pinched her arm and kept her upright throughout the ordeal.

It was Ann who broke rules to come to her on that first Christmas Eve when small Eloise Baker slipped out of her scarred and tortured body and Thompson, the nurse in charge, became hysterical and fled. Thompson had grown to love that tiny, pain-racked baby and couldn’t watch her die. It was Ellen’s first experience with death and somehow, Ann, up in Male Surgical had heard of the Thompson debacle and thought of Ellen—alone. She found her quietly bathing the little body while tears streamed down her face.

“You poor kid!” Ann whispered huskily.

“I—I’m not crying because I was left here alone, Ann,” Ellen told her, “or because I’m afraid. I’m crying because I’m glad—glad that now Eloise won’t have to suffer anymore. Think of it, Ann—it’s Christmas Eve and she’s—she’s got a brand-new body!”

“You poor kid!” Ann repeated and stayed to help until Thompson, a white, shaken and vastly ashamed Thompson, returned.

Ellen couldn’t forget that side of Ann’s nature and chose to ignore the other side.

So the months passed. Months of hard work and rigid discipline. Months when nothing but Ellen’s loyalty to her pledge kept her from open rebellion. For, being willing and more than ordinarily docile, some of the nurses took advantage and sometimes shifted their responsibility to her slender and already burdened shoulders. Ann called her an easy mark, but Ellen refused to complain. So Ann deepened the enmity of several of her associates because she told them quite frankly what she thought of them and threatened to take it up with Forsyth or even MacGowan.

And as Ann lost favor with the girls in Anthony Ware, Ellen gained it. She was so willing—so smilingly happy in her work, that it was impossible to be with her and not feel one’s spirits lift and one’s outlook on life brighten. She was perhaps the most popular girl in training, and the prettiest.

Ellen’s first year was suddenly completed; her second and part of her senior year. She had changed—grown up. She was still somewhat emotional—still felt keenly the dignity of her calling, but she had developed a firmness, only hinted at before, and a rather quick temper that surprised herself and delighted Ann.

Another September and a new crop of probationers—-a new crop of interns. MacGowan’s reputation took a sudden spurt after that famous operation on Senator McGill who had fallen from his horse and was thought to be fatally injured. Miracle Man he was called, much to his displeasure. Mac claimed no miraculous power. If he was vouchsafed more than average success in his operations, it was due to his steady nerves, clear brain and perfect coordination—together with the help of God. As a Scot and a strict Presbyterian, he was sure of divine aid in his work simply because he never began an operation without beseeching that aid. Ann called him a simple soul with a one-track mind—surgery; but while the chief-of-staff was a successful surgeon, the knife was always to him the last resort—to be used only when other means failed. If he considered an operation necessary, an operation was performed; but if in his opinion surgery was either useless or unnecessary, no power on earth could make him operate. There were doctors who called him pigheaded; specialists who sneered at what they dubbed his “know-it-all” attitude, urging the advancement of science as paramount to the loss of a few years from a life, of even that life itself; patients who begged him to take a chance, willing to trust to his magic fingers; but he would not be swerved from his course.

Anthony Ware was proud of him. Other and larger hospitals made him flattering offers, all of which were declined with little or no thanks. When his seven years were up he was going back to Edinburgh to remain two, five, perhaps ten years. He had learned much in America and would take that knowledge back to Scotland.

October—a crisp, frosty October morning with the sun turning the shabby
little chapel
into
a glowing
, colorful jewel. Ellen, who was on night duty, felt the quietness and beauty flow over her like a soothing bath. All too soon it was over and she walked along the lower hall to the side entrance on her way to the nurses’ home. Ann Murdock fell into step.

“What did you think of the pair of them, Ellen?” she asked. “Not bad, eh what? Tall, blond and mischievous looks—somehow familiar. I’ve been puzzling where I’ve seen him. He looks interesting anyway—not the usual pansy type Anthony Ware has been drawing. The redhead isn’t so impossible, either. I quite enjoyed chapel this morning—usually it’s just one long-drawn-out yam. Guess I’ll have to give them the once-over, angel. Want to date ’em with me? Next week we go on days for a change. Seems to me we get more than our share of night work. You may like it, but it cramps my style. What fun can one have in an afternoon? ‘When twilight draws her mystic curtain, revelry begins for certain.’ Tip used to say it and it’s true, I’ve found. My dear stepmama changed one word in it. She insisted it was deviltry that began with nightfall. Well, sometimes the two words are synonymous, but what of it? Will you come, Angel?”

Ellen felt suddenly deflated. Was that all Ann got out of chapel service? She felt Ann’s eyes on her and refrained from showing her feelings. Anyway, she ought to know Ann—know her proneness to exaggerate and to depict herself in the character of
blasé
woman of the world.

“Absolutely not, my child,” she answered loftily. “I’ve all the troubles I can handle right now without adding to them. Go play with your little friends yourself, darling, but count me out.”

Ann laughed. “I know,” she jeered. “You’re afraid of being found out. Oh, come on, Stiff-in-the-morals, I’ll see you through.”

“Some other time, Ann,” Ellen put her off. “I think it would have to be something more thrilling than a new intern to make me risk losing my cap. Were they in chapel? I didn’t notice.”

“You wouldn’t!” Ann exclaimed in disgust. “Why do you still stick to that ‘holy orders’ attitude, Ellen? Our job has to deal with bodies—very human, very earthly bodies, not with people’s souls, if any. I can’t for the life of me get any deep religious fervor from rubbing Old Phlebitis up in Male Medic or in listening to the temperamental outpourings of Old Vitriol down in Hades.”

Ellen smiled good-naturedly. “You’re funny, Ann. You’re gentle as a mother when you massage that same Old Phlebitis and dutifully attentive to Mrs. Vitriol, as you call her, down in the Women’s Surgical. You can’t fool me anymore, Ann Murdock. It’s only your shell that’s hard. Inside you’re as soft as—as putty. And I’m not sanctimonious, Ann. I may have been once but not anymore, and in spite of anything you may say to the contrary, I still think nursing is the noblest profession in the world, except, perhaps, medicine or surgery, and I’m proud I belong.”

Ann gave her a quick hug. “You’re a grand kid, Ellen, and I’m just a black ewe, but I love you just the same. S’long, precious—see you at dinner—perhaps.”

Overnight, it seemed, the personnel of Anthony Ware had changed. Cyrus Dent, fresh from a year in Bellevue, tall, athletic, blond as a young god, swaggered—the term was Ellen’s, who suddenly and for no reason she could explain heartily disliked him—through the corridors, turning the heads of the susceptible younger nurses and raising the temperatures of many a female patient. Just as if Fielding, funny, redheaded Bob Fielding, wasn’t menace enough for one season!

Ann quickly let it be known that the policy of “hands off’ still prevailed. Bob immediately fell under her spell and ever after remained fraternally loyal to his fellow redhead. Cy wasn’t interested for a time and Ann, who refused to acknowledge defeat where any man was concerned, persisted in her subtle wooing. Wasn’t he an old acquaintance? She remembered him now—back when they were both still half-baked. Bets were laid with the odds on Ann. It wasn’t long until the house knew that she was meeting Cy two blocks around the corner, where his car was parked.

Dr. Dent’s attitude toward Ellen was one of amused condescension and that young lady found herself trembling with rage at the gleam of mirth in his eyes as he paused to watch her gently bathing the face of some crusty old codger or attempting to soothe an irritable harridan. She tried ignoring his presence but he would somehow manage to get in her way. She became coolly polite and formal only to have him laugh mockingly. She even took a leaf from his own and Ann’s book—tried being flippant and answered his jibes in kind.

“You’re out of character, Nightingale,” he would chide. “You are much better in the title role.”

And Ellen, fighting tears of rage and humiliation that she had let him know that he could upset her, would flee before his amused chuckles. Then it was that Ellen wished she were more like other girls—less devoted to a cause, less old-fashioned, naive and sincere. She would beat her hands together in impotent rage. If only she could hurt him in some way! If only she had some weapon that would wipe that hateful smirk from his classic mouth and bow that blond head low! She felt powerless to combat him and despised herself for her lack of self-control, she who had been so aloof—so impervious to everything male.

Suddenly, he began appearing around midnight when she was on night duty, with uncanny skill choosing a time when she was alone or managing to find an errand for the girl on duty with her so that the meeting had all the appearance of a rendezvous. She could not make a complaint—it was all so trivial and childish. Perhaps he would grow tired of heckling her and turn to someone else. She had only to keep a stiff upper lip and refuse to let him know he annoyed her. The old formula she had used as a child failed her here. Then, she would say over and over again,

“They can’t hurt me—no one can hurt me—I refuse to be hurt.” Now it had no potency. Cyrus Dent did hurt her—hurt her pride and her dignity.

She fancied the other girls eyed her with amusement and no little envy and she felt once or twice that even the house physician looked disapprovingly at her. But what could she do? Ann apparently saw nothing amiss, and went on her way as if young Dent were already her abject slave. Perhaps she only imagined it all, Ellen would tell herself miserably. Perhaps she was exaggerating his attention. In that case, the cure should be certain. She had only to refuse to notice him at all.

She would feel better after that decision and for a time it would seem to work. She would grin to herself as she saw the young man bite his lip and frown in perplexity when she failed to hear him when he spoke to her. She’d show him! Handsome men had always irked her and she yearned to put Dr. Cyrus Dent in his place—definitely and finally. Let him keep on haunting her locality if he wished and much good would it do him!