A Case for Nurse Marian

By Adelaide Humphries, ©1957

When Marian Courtney took the job of head nurse at a secret research center hidden in the wild New Mexican hills, she realized that her responsibility was enormous. But in guarding the health of devoted atomic scientists, she was both doing her professional duty and protecting her country’s future. Then a handsome stranger joined the staff. Craig Garrett was an easy-going young devil, who charmed his way into Marian Courtney’s heart, even though she knew she shouldn’t trust him. Would Marian Courtney’s dedication to her profession stand firm? Or would she be swayed by her woman’s need for love?

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“He was a scientist from the top of this thinning gray head to his rubber-soled shoes.”

“He apparently thought he had to go into the wolf act every time he met a member of the opposite sex who was not too ancient or too hard on the eyes.”

“You are much smarter than I can ever hope to be.”

“Having a baby is wonderful, Marian. Every woman should do it.”

“If Craig could see how lovely Marian looked, her face flushed and serious, a frilly apron tied around her slender waist, it would really ‘throw’ him.”

“I was reading an article the other day about the Communist Party. Did you know that they demand such complete obedience that if a member fails in any job to which he has been assigned, he knows it means death? He is pledged to execute himself, rather than weaken the Party, or betray it in any way.”

“Women shouldn’t worry about things they cannot understand or do anything about.”

“She could not give her lips to someone when her heart was so troubled.”

“The English, it seemed, would make tea if the house was on fire.”

“How could you love a man who had betrayed his country?”

REVIEW:

I don’t find anything inherently wrong with a daffy book that defies reason and logic. These books can often be a brilliantly hilarious flight: see Nurse at the Fair. What I can’t stand is hypocrisy and sexism, and unfortunately A Case for Nurse Marian has a lot of both of these. Lunacy in a story line is more tolerable when it’s clear that the author is aware of what she is doing and is letting the reader in on the joke; Adelaide Humphries, though she has given us excellent entertainment in the past with The Nurse Knows Best and Nurse Landon’s Challenge, seems here to be oblivious of her complete lack of acquaintance with reality.

Marian Courtney has accepted an assignment working at a plant in New Mexico near the wall border. Everyone refers to working in this remote location as being “buried alive,” a phrase that gives the otherwise sturdy Marian borderline hysteria. What goes on at the plant is conveniently hush-hush: “All that it is necessary for you to know, is that it has to do with atomic research for the protection of our country,” she is told by the creepy Dr. Edgar Blount, head of personnel, who comes by his title by way of a PhD and not an MD, though it’s not clear why an HR executive needs a PhD, or why a nurse at a plant conducting “atomic research” shouldn’t know any particulars about hazardous materials on site.

Shortly after her arrival, Professor Addison, a man we have never met, goes missing, and everyone is convinced it’s a suicide even though the body is never found, because he left a note! Marian, though, has spent enough time with him—including the day before he disappears—that she is convinced that he was murdered! Maybe even buried alive (insert “Scream” emoji here)! Because “Professor Addison may have held the secret to our country’s future—even its existence,” though then it seems like it would be better to kidnap him and get the secret out of him. Craig Garrett is the young man who shows up to take the professor’s job, and he is a handsome, muscular, tanned, wolfish ass, not at all like a scientist! “It’s a delight just to sit here and look at you,” he tells her at their first meeting. “I expected you—anyone who would bury herself alive—” AAAAH! “B-buried a-alive—” she manages to stutter in her horror! But she pulls herself together enough to decide that he’s “a typical wolf. And a girl had to slap wolves down at the beginning,” so when he begs her to have dinner with him to keep him from “feeling as though I’d been buried ali—Forgive me, I forgot!” she naturally is “persuaded against her will.” I’m not sure how that works, but that’s how things roll in the New Mexico desert.

Off they go to the only diner in the area, which is run by an obese man named Jud who stares so salaciously that Marian is uncomfortable. One date leads to another, and though Craig continues to be unpleasantly condescending—“I didn’t suppose anyone as lovely as your wife could also be such an excellent cook,” he tells the husband of a couple who have invited him and Marian over for dinner—soon they’re kissing. And more sinister events unfold: A Mexican janitor is injured when someone throws acid in his face, but Craig asks Marian to keep it secret, and she does—until the wound won’t heal and Marian tells Dr. Blount that the man needs to see a doctor, so Romez is gunned down in front of his house, the same night Marian sees Jud and Craig driving madly down a back road. Then a friend tells Marian she saw Craig walk into Jud’s establishment, give him a slip of paper, and receive in return a large wad of cash. What else is a gal to believe except that her new boyfriend is passing “a code message revealing secrets connected with the research being done at the plant,” in broad daylight in the middle of a populated restaurant, that “he must be a spy in the employ of another government—working against his own country,” who “had had some part in the mystery surrounding Professor Addison. A part, too, in what had happened to the little Mexican janitor.” Curious that she so firmly believes that the professor and Romez, men she barely knew, are innocent victims but that the man she claims to be in love with is an evil spy and murderer, a fact that Craig points out to her and she cannot answer.

In short order she is lured to Jud’s establishment only to find out that Jud and his bartender were really the bad guys!!! They’re fleeing to Mexico—well, only Jud is, after he shoots the bartender dead. Jud is going to take Marian with him, since he can’t bring himself to pop her, too—and as they exit the building, Craig and several law enforcement officers stop them, assisted by brave Marian, who karate chops the gun out of Jud’s hand. You will be shocked to learn that Dr. Blount is the top man in the scheme, though we never learn the nature of the sinister scheme, and Marian climbs into Craig’s Chevy and the pair rides off into the sunset.

There are so many holes and unexplained dead ends in this book that it’s not even worth trying to list them all. I will say, however, that it’s not clear why Marian is attracted Craig, who is initially presented as arrogant and annoying, and he never manages to overcome this initial impression. It’s not just Craig, though—every male character is overtly sexist, which Marian just takes in stride, and even goes along with. While observing that the husband of a couple they are friends with “was the type of man who thought he had to be the lord and master over the little woman,” she then firmly insists that Craig should not help with the dishes, as he has sincerely offered, because “the kitchen is no place for a big oaf like you.” On the other hand, this is the first VNRN I’ve read that implicitly discusses the freedom that a career offers a young woman: “her years of training to become a nurse had given her an independence which she treasured. This job was the beginning of the independent life she valued and needed.” Of course, months into it she’s getting engaged, so there goes her new-found independence. There’s not enough amusing or hyperbolic writing to overcome the strange flaws in the story—too bad, because the research espionage plot begs on its knees for lampooning (see Nurse to Remember)—and the hiccups in the plot are not so over the top that it’s clear the story is meant to be a farce. In the end this book succeeds neither as a straightforward VNRN or as a joke. 

Nurse in Panic

By Jane Converse, ©1971

Cover illustration by Robert Abbett

Diane Whitley was reluctant to leave her nursing job at Greenhaven Memorial for a position at a strange clinic in the New Mexico desert. But the promise of an exciting new medical discovery and the possibility of a new romance made the trip seem very appealing. Yet the moment she arrived at Hollingsworth Clinic she felt a vague sense of uneasiness. At first she thought she was just being foolish. Dr. Darryl Hollingsworth was a dedicated man and his handsome assistant was an earnest medical student. It wasn’t until she found herself falling in love that she realized how foolish she really was—and how easily a mirage of happiness could become a well of heartbreak … and terror …

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“He remembered that he hadn’t told Diane that he loved her. ‘I don’t have to say it, though, do I?’ ”

REVIEW:

When we first meet Diane Whitley, RN, she is serving her best friend, Polly Cravelle Richards, a dish of cherry Jell-O unadorned by even a dollop of Cool-Whip. Diane has taken a pause in her jet-set life to attempt to persuade Diane to leave her dull, dull life in Newark—“there isn’t one single, eligible male on the staff at the hospital. Not one!” Diane complains—to come work at a clinic where a revolutionary doctor has found a cure for cancer. Dr. Darryl Hollingsworth has discovered a medication, Tychorodryn, but despite his miraculous results, he has been dismissed by the medical community at large. Her advocacy on behalf of the Hollingsworth Clinic has a personal note: Her dear wealthy father has come down with a “terminal” case of cancer, but has personally benefitted from the magic touch of Dr. Hollingsworth and is “pepped up like a teen-ager.” In gratitude, Dad is about to bestow a huge chunk of his fortune on the good doctor, and Polly is crisscrossing the country to drum up further support amongst the family’s close (also rich) friends.

You won’t be shocked to learn that Diane agrees to visit the doctor’s hospital in remote New Mexico, no doubt encouraged by Polly’s description of Steve Bates, a medical student on leave for financial reasons: “He’s unmarried, and all of the aides are over forty. You have clear sailing.” And you also won’t be shocked to learn that Diane and Steve quickly tumble for each other, and Diane agrees to stay on full-time. She quickly falls under the thrall of Dr. Hollingsworth, as she sees all his patients growing pink and energetic under his care, and begins to quarrel more with Steve, who is rightly suspicious of the whole situation and is investigating Dr. Hollingsworth on the side.

Before long, Diane finds herself alone on the night shift when Dr. Hollingsworth stumbles in, smelling of bourbon, and grabs her for “a smothering kiss.” This is especially awkward because Polly has told her that she herself is in love with Dr. Hollingsworth. Though Diane is quite clear about her disinterest in the doctor, Steve suddenly turns quite frosty. And despite her repeated rebuffs, Dr. Hollingsworth continues to grab her behind closed doors before she can shove him off—sexual harassment, anyone?—and it isn’t long before Polly catches him putting the moves on Diane. Though Diane becomes increasingly concerned about the fact that the patients seem to be sleeping an awful lot, she still argues with Steve every time they cross paths, making for page after page of detailed discussion about the many, many problems with Dr. Hollingsworth’s story and treatment, and Diane’s increasingly thin defense of same. Her professed inner doubts make her continued justification of the doctor even more aggravating.

Eventually, though, Steve has one too many arguments with Dr. Hollingsworth and leaves the medical facility. Diane soon decides that she should leave as well—but it takes her quite a while to get around to it, given all the sick patients who need her care and her paranoid feeling that she can’t tell anyone that she’s going, lest they try to keep her prisoner. As she’s sneaking out of the hospital at 11 pm, she unfortunately encounters Dr. Hollingsworth, and starts babbling that she’s going on a date and taking some clothes to a friend who’s helping out a poor Indian family—but the doctor cuts her off and starts doing some babbling of his own, about how he’s converted all his money into Mexican bonds or stashed it in a Swiss bank, and is planning on moving his practice across the border, and darling, won’t you come with me? “Don’t disappoint me, darling,” he says, grabbing her again—you’d think she’d know what’s coming by now and just run when she sees him coming.  car pulls into the nearby parking lot, but rather than scream, she tells him to let her go or she will scream. Naturally he slaps a firm hand across her mouth and drags her into the hospital, but she’s eventually able to jerk free and scream and run into Steve’s arms.

Dr. Hollingsworth naturally gets what he has coming—he’s shot to death by his long-suffering secretary—and Diane gets her man, too, who curiously proposed by suggesting that instead of accepting a loan from Polly, “I’d rather be supported by an R.N. who’s silly enough to go back to work … put me through school.” How could she say no?

It’s a hackneyed story made all the more irritating by our heroine’s stupid inability to see the obvious, though she herself has doubts all along. The endless pages of back and forth about whether Dr. Hollingsworth’s treatment is for real quickly become monotonous; it’s a short story, and not a very good one, stretched into a novel. The writing is perfunctory and the entire situation is baffling, and I am baffled as to why anyone should read this book. 

Desert Doctor

By Nell Marr Dean, ©1959

“We figure women should stay home.” That’s what they told Dr. Ann Logan, beautiful and only twenty-five, when she dared set up practice in the wild desert country of the Southwest. But the need for medical care in this desolate area was a challenge Ann could not ignore. When she discovered that more than prejudice against her sex was behind the threats she received, she still performed her duties as she saw them. Then a criminal struck, leaving Ann unconscious on a lonely mountain road. Through her long recovery, Ann battled with the question: “Was her dedication to her profession worth the risk of her life?”

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“I would much rather have you operate on my appendix than on my office ledger.”

“Being aware of a man’s emotional apparatus, she was careful to keep her physical weariness to herself. Men always enjoyed the company of a lively, happy woman; not a droopy, harassed one.”

“You mean, Doctor, you’re going to keep him in your nice house all night? A foreigner—and all lousy with fleas!”

“Don’t think a woman doctor isn’t human like all other people. Don’t think she’s exempt from the need of falling in love and having a husband and being protected like every other woman in the world.”

“Never, she went on thinking as they drove along in silence, must she let her career become too all-consuming. She must learn to divide her energies between her work and Tim, never letting her work steal too much of her vitality and gaiety so that there was none left for Tim. And her skill at being a wife would be tested to its ultimate when they had children and her time must be divided to include them.”

“Doctor—if I do have the hysterectomy, will I still be nervous and want to snap at John for no reason at all?”

REVIEW:
Dr. Ann Logan has bought the practice of the retiring doctor in Pueblo Mesa, New Mexico, a town of 5,000 in which half the population is Indians and Spanish-speaking people and the other half white. There’s no other doctor in town, and the nearest hospital is 70 miles away, but that doesn’t stop the townspeople, who “haven’t become used to women doctors,” from giving Ann the cold shoulder. Well, all except the drug addict who attempts to carjack her for the morphine she carries in her bag. And Tim Butler, who “saves” her after she flashes an SOS with her headlights, by simply opening the car door—gosh, if only she’d thought of that! He takes to going around with her, because “a woman’s really not safe in this town—with crazy Mexicans running loose.”

Ann is, of course, a woman doctor, and this fact is thrown in the reader’s face on every other page, with reminders of what a terrible obstacle this is for her, as if she had warts on her nose or something. Curiously, the prejudice that Ann is so conscious of does not help her see the hypocrisy of her attitudes toward the minority residents. “Would these Indians never learn to follow her advice?” she grumps when one of her patients with strep throat goes swimming. She’s “thoroughly exasperated with her thoughtless, self-willed patients,” who “often indulged in the wild extravagance of owning several pieces of high-price electrical equipment” like washing machines and automobiles, items she herself could not imagine living without. Her boyfriend’s not much better; he tells her that although “a lot of these Indians get checks for two or three thousand dollars every few months,” they are “nothing but moochers” who pay Ann in beans and corn.

Ann has an idea to start a free clinic for well babies so she can get to know the townspeople and, she hopes, gain them as patients, but the cranky chair of the city council turns down her request to use space in the city hall. The owners of the local mine dismiss her suggestion that they open a separate clinic because they don’t want to pay for “socialized medicine” for their employees, even though it’s a dangerous job with lots of injuries. She nags the townspeople that they ought to use the funds they have allocated to create a museum to build a hospital instead, and is shot down. But she’s got enough patients to keep her head above water—until a doctor with a penis comes to town and is promptly granted use of the town hall to give immunizations to the town’s children, and the gas company opens up a clinic and puts him in charge of it. Ann is furious that he has “stolen” her idea of a clinic, and scorns him because he drinks too many martinis. The book winds itself up after this with another (more successful) appearance from the drug addict, everyone finally rallies around Ann, and ground is broken on the hospital that the reader can easily see has been in the works from early in the story—three guesses as to what it’s named.

Numerous little plot threads come and go, a good deal of them nowhere, like a woman who has to have her foot amputated when it’s caught in a trap on a night when Ann has gone out on a date instead of waiting by the phone lest someone need her. Or Dr. Jones’ drinking, or Ann’s strictly platonic relationship with the flirtatious Dr. Lacy at the hospital, or the traveling couple who have rented her their house in their abscence telling some people they are coming home but not Ann. In another book, these things would portend something, or amount to more they do. In this one, it just feels like we are hearing about every element of Ann’s life, no matter how inconsequential, and it’s just confusing to wonder which details are important. The only thing you never wonder about is her relationship with Tim, and we’re subjected to a little too much spooning and swooning from the pair to make you at all enthusiastic about their eventual and totally inevitable engagement. The ending suddenly drops off a cliff, like you’re expecting floor when there’s really one more step to go. It’s not a painful read, but the book has a fair number of little flaws that make it not worth the effort.