Recovery Room Nurse

By Rebecca Marsh
(pseud. William Neubauer), ©1965 

Successful businessman Stan Livermore delivered his ultimatum to Nurse Jane Kemp: either she abandon her career to become a full-time wife, or they must forget each other. But as a desperately needed nurse, Jane wanted to be a permanent part of her profession. At the same time, she was deeply in love with Stan. It was a hopeless dilemma. Until Arthur Howard, her famous—and very handsome—new patient offered an unexpected solution …

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“I’m not a kid intent upon storming any woman’s lips. Behave.”

“Some friends you have, Jane! Are they born rude, or do they acquire the knack only after long study?” 

“Jane thought that men were certainly a problem. Yet what a dull world it would be if there were no such problems for women to handle.”

“You’ve come to complain. You disapprove of beginning a subcuticular suture by placing a square knot lateral to the incision. Oh, I know, I know!”

“As a woman ages, she must substitute the charm of thoughtfulness for the charm of beauty.”

“Look, darling, if I didn’t feel good, I’d still put on the act just to keep out of your clutches.”

“The careers of all unmarried women should be smashed. An offense to nature.”

“I’m trained to see facts, recite them, do something about them. Others ought to have the same training.”

REVIEW:
Pop the champagne, because this is my 500th VNRN review! I will admit I have been saving this review for a few weeks for this occasion, because there are few better authors to celebrate an occasion with than Bill Neubauer. 

Reading a book by Bill Neubauer is like walking into your best friend’s house. It’s a welcoming, comfortable place where you feel happy and at home, and you know it’s pretty likely are going to have a good time. Such is Recovery Room Nurse, which is about nurse Jane Kemp and her struggles at work and with her boyfriend, Stan Livermore. Stan is a 32-year-old real estate mogul, worth $800,000—a lot of money in 1966, when top doctors didn’t make $40,000 annually—who met Jane when she nursed him through an episode of appendicitis. The problem is that now he wants her to quit her job and be a full-time wife. Jane also has a roommate, Grace Ohlsen, who is a spunky ecologist. According to Grace, Stan insists that “all you must do to make him happy is quit your profession, renounce your individualism, and drudge for him. I continue to think you’d be an idiot to subordinate your life to his.” I really like Grace Ohlsen.

Jane is more torn, though, and struggles with Stan—even breaks up with him at one point—thinking, “Marriage, darn it, couldn’t be a relationship in which one partner had everything his way and the other partner had no individualism or rights or options to speak of!” But, unfortunately, Jane thinks, “Drat the character, she loved him.”

In the interim, she is sent to special a mega-famous TV writer, Arthur Howard, who has a mortal fear of hospitals and is, in a word, a crybaby. He’s due for a hip surgery, and, anticipating a tough recovery, is seeking “a voluptuous blonde nurse who will distract him from pain,” largely because he has a recurring dream in which a jolly, plump nurse chases away a skeleton that is trying to do him in. Unfortunately the supervisor of nurses, Mrs. Dolezal, has decided that he is going to have Jane Kemp, who claims to be neither voluptuous nor pretty (of course, she’s wrong; “the woman was a stunner” “with twinkling blue eyes,” and “her rippling laughter was music,” to name just a few of her charms), but is in fact the best recovery room nurse at Buttrick Hospital (the same site of Pam Green Rehabilitation Nurse and TV Nurse).

The politics comes in, as it does with Bill Neubauer’s books, when we learn that Howard is planning to create a new TV series profiling a hospital, and the administrators are eager to please the man in the hope that he will choose Buttrick as the subject of his show. Mrs. Dolezal wants Jane to be his nurse in order to impress him with her skill, which she, of course, does. But on the day of Howard’s surgery, just as he is waking, Jane is pulled out of his room by a student nurse whose patient is choking to death. Jane quickly saves the man’s life, but when she returns to Howard’s room, the man has completely panicked, convinced that Jane “abandoned” him—and only his own brute courage and strength pulled him through the episode. Outraged at his mistreatment, he calls the newspaper to give them a front-page story, and Jane is put on leave. But she is a calm, skilled, intelligent woman, and we watch her play the silly man like a champ. Author Bill Neubauer really liked women, I think, because his female characters are always strong, insightful, supportive human beings who always help out their friends.

One anecdote he describes, though, does break my heart—in the story we are told about a young boy, a diabetic amputee, moved to another hospital ward to die. Though the remaining boys on the ward are not told of the death, they nonetheless scatter Lincoln logs (remember those?) on the floor, so that the boy’s ghost will slip on them and fall, rendering the creature unable to attack them. Neubauer, who was raised in the St. Giles Home for Cripples on Long Island, may well have experienced just such as scene when he was growing up. He led a remarkable life (see his biography), and his back story makes his gifts as a writer all the more extraordinary.

Anyway, in this book, Jane is an awesome heroine, the kind of woman who, stuck in the ear with a fishhook, pushes it the rest of the way through, cuts off the barb with pliers, and while stanching the flow of blood heads to her hospital’s ED, where she quips to the intern, “You’d better be good; I’d hate to perish of tetanus.” But the problem with this book is that Jane is in love with the jerk. We see little of Stan except when he is giving Jane ultimatums about leaving her job, so though she tells us many times how wonderful he is, I can’t believe it. In the end, her “win”—and you know she would have one—feels like less than half a victory because of the terms she unfortunately agrees to. Neubauer’s writing is otherwise witty, entertaining, and deeply satisfying, and the relationships he builds between women characters are more honorable than those created by many female VNRN authors. If he liked his male characters as much as he likes the women, this would be a better book. Recovery Room Nurse falls slightly short of his best work, but even if the “romance” central to the story isn’t much of one, this book is certainly a gem worth reading.

Shop this title, now republished
by Nurse Novels Publishing, here!

Nurse Gina

By Joanne Holden, ©1963

“This is a wonderful piece of writing!” Ripley Crawford hugged Nurse Gina. “Your father would be proud of you, honey, and I am, too!” Gina’s father had been a famous writer and she, too, felt the need to create. But her duties at Butler Pavilion and her devotion to Doctor Alex had kept her from taking her writing too seriously before. Now she had a chance to write professionally. Could she leave her nursing and Alex for the glamour of the TV world?

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“I don’t hire them unless they look good enough to get married right away.”

“The TV world is one of hypertension.”

“Oh, oh, oh! I’ve got an awful pain, Nurse. Will you hold my hand?”

“I hope I don’t have to work in there—they don’t put any clothes on the patients.”

“Mary Lou, I am really delighted with the formation of the protective eschar on your cheek.”

REVIEW:

Some books are just like nails on a chalkboard, and this, I am sorry to report, is just such a one. Nurse Gina is a sanctimonious pain who starts off the book in the most unusual fashion by proving herself to be a bitch: When she meets her patient Ripley Crawford, a movie star with a broken leg, he showers her with the usual compliments, to wit, “You don’t need to take my temperature. It just went up six points.” So she is furious to find that in fact his temperature—his pulse, too!—are completely normal!! Her outrage mounts as she learns that he broke his leg in a charity golf tournament, and she deliberately drops a vase of flowers that he has asked her to remove from the room. Called on the carpet by Dr. Alex Simmons, who has recommended her to the post, she is unrepentantly rude. When the doctor tells her that he was thinking of her secret desire to be a writer, and that Rip is looking for just such a being for his TV show, she humbles herself enough to send a phony letter of apology to Rip, which he accepts.

Rip takes her out and listens to her proposal for a documentary-like series following nurses through all the major wars of the last few centuries, and though it sounds like a complete bore, he inexplicably goes for it. He hires her to write the show, which involves tape recording conversations so as to use them for inspiration in her writing. I expected this pitiful gimmick to lead somewhere, like to an overheard secret, but no, it just means Gina goes to a lot of parties lugging a giant box around and doing a lot of transcribing afterward. This peculiar duty does not take up so much of her time, however, as to prevent her from helping out when one of the party guests contemplates suicide: After he tells her straight out he is going to kill himself, she compassionately replies, “I don’t think you ought to spoil the party. Linda went to a great deal of trouble planning it. She might be annoyed with you.” When he nevertheless gives it a shot, literally, Gina overturns a table onto him so the bullet only grazes a temple. Another meaningless plot twist, we soon find that the victim’s wife is pregnant and now he is blissfully happy.

Now that she’s a writer, Gina spends a lot of time typing. Rip stops by to kiss her now and then, though the most we learn about her feelings toward this potential sexual harassment are that she “accepted his kiss without emotion” and spends a lot of time darting out of his arms. More pointless scenes occur, such as the one in which Gina is photographed tending to Rip at a nightclub after he’s punched out, or when she visits the campus where her deceased father was a famous psychology professor, only to find that his textbook is considered out of date. She’s bawling on the quad when Rip turns up to tell her that his schmoozing of TV executives has paid off and they have a meeting to pitch their series to a major TV network. At the meeting, Gina is heckled by the assembled old men, and she snaps back, “I did not expect to find, in a business office, the childish viciousness that I have met in this room today.” Cowed, the execs sign the show and plan to start casting next week. I’m sure that’s how it happens in Hollywood all the time.

Out of the blue, Gina decides she’s in love with Rip. For his part, he’s about to propose when a ship in the East River blows up and Gina hurries off to the hospital. Two weeks later, she takes an afternoon off from the burn unit and drops by Rip’s office, where she puts off his attempts to propose, telling him that their worlds are too far apart, and besides, she’d rather be a nurse than a writer. He responds that she should keep being a nurse, if that’s what she wants to do, but she turns him down nonetheless. Then at the hospital Christmas party, we are treated to the lyrics of no less than seven carols before Dr. Alex, who has been a virtual ghost through most of the book, pops up to exchange some truly nauseating dialogue with Gina and bring the book to a close.

There is just too much wrong with this book. Gina’s behavior is often sanctimonious and annoying, and the TV series that we spend so much time watching her develop from a number of different angles comes across as just dull. I did not understand her choices, either to try writing in the beginning of the book or to give it up at the end. Gina’s decisions in regard to her men is no less bewildering: Her relationships with her two main men, Rip and Dr. Alex, are either nonexistent or shallow, and her alleged feelings of love toward them are inexplicable. I really did not care what happened to her TV show or her career, to say nothing of which man she decided to marry. Nurse Gina, the book and the character, are not worth your time.

Runaway Nurse

By Florence Stuart
(pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1964

“Your man hasn’t broken away from the past—and never will.” Nurse Gail Winters tried to forget her mother’s words. She and Dr. Craig Hadley were in love and that was all that mattered. But was it? Craig was divorced. He had nothing but hatred for his former celebrity wife, Vera Vaughn. But there was a matter of a million dollars involved and Vera was a very greedy woman. All Gail could offer Craig was her love. But was that enough when his ex-wife was offering him his child? It was a game with high stakes—and the winner would take all.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“How about some lunch before you go? I have some nice indigestible frankfurters.”

“ ‘Now when I was a kid, about your age, there was a character known as Popeye who was something of an authority on spinach. Is he around any more?’
“Bobby’s round blue eyes gazed up at her with utter disgust. ‘Oh, to hell with Popeye,’ said Bobby.”

“As always, Gail longed to take the child in her arms, to give him a big bear hug. But a bear hug could kill Jimmy.”

“This was a good neighborhood, the homes in the thirty or forty-thousand-dollar class, the cars mostly Cadillacs.”

“If I hadn’t tried that judo hold we nurses are taught, she might have killed me.”

“Gail sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, and found herself wishing fiercely, a bit madly, that she had a shotgun.”

REVIEW:
Gail Winters has something no other vintage nurse romance novel heroine I’ve ever met has: a divorced fiancé. Well, at least she’s not the one with the divorce, which would impugn her virginal status. But even more scandalous is the fact that Dr. Craig has a five-year-old daughter. Ginny was born with a heart condition—“some heart veins were on the wrong side,” we are told, these days known as transposition of the great vessels, for all you aspiring cardiologists out there. She had surgery at age 18 months and barely survived the long odds, but now she must be kept from the least stress or pressure lest her defective little heart explode or something.

Naturally, Mommie Dearest isn’t helping much with this. Craig’s ex-wife, Vera, is a fabulous piece of work, in the noblest glamorous-fading -starlet-run-amok tradition. She’s still got it, but not for long: “Despite her forty-three years, Vera was still a lovely-looking woman, even now, in the morning.” Pregnancy, rather than bestowing her with a beatific glow, just “ruined her figure.” When Ginny lands in the hospital with pneumonia, Vera shows up, “a stunning, black-haired woman, wearing a white wool suit collared in flattering white fox fur,” leaning over her delirious child and seething, “You’re the most exasperating child. Screaming tantrums, now this. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind already.” Vera stars in a TV show that is losing sponsors by the minute, but she has the idea that if she can get Ginny on the show—“Ginny is perfect for the part of my obstreperous little stepdaughter, just perfect!”—her ratings will climb back up again. Dr. Craig and Gail, however, are of the opinion that the stress would kill pathetic little Ginny.

Vera had a hardscrabble childhood, living “in a horrid little flat above a cheap, smelly delicatessen where her German father sold greasy sausages and revolting concoctions that were enough to turn your stomach. The odors that came up from that shop were sickening … and out of them were born Vera’s determination to get away to be somebody, to get hold of money.” In what could be a smart bit of writing or just a fortuitous accident, the author ends this description of Vera’s motivations with a subtle study of contrasts: “Now, at forty-three, what did she have to show for all her splendid dreams, for the hard work and sacrifices of a lifetime? She rubbed herself dry with an enormous towel, slipped on a yellow satin robe and went back to the bedroom.” In her California mansion, Vera has clearly come a long way from the delicatessen, but it’s just not enough for her insatiable appetite.

And the main fuel to her ambition is the million bucks that a rich dying patient bequeathed to Dr. Craig, though he really intended it to be for Gail, who had cared for him in his final days. He couldn’t just give it to her, apparently, because his greedy, thieving relatives would contest the will and “make something nasty of it.” To protect Gail’s reputation, the thoughtful old dear, he gives it to her fiancé—but then Vera gets the idea that if she marries Craig, she’ll get the money. And Ginny is the perfect bait to lure him into this trap.

You know exactly where this book is going, but it’s a fun ride. I expected greatness from Ms. Stuart, who also penned The Nurse and the Orderly, another camp fest. The only problem is that it gets an idea and really beats it hard. Of the three main female characters—there’s a head nurse in the mix—two of the three are bona-fide psychotics, complete with stopovers in the loony bin on their resumes, and the third (that would be Gail) is repeatedly accused of being one. And as fabulous as Vera is, she’s a one-note wonder that wears a bit thin with repeated pounding. A little less exposure to her ranting would make her a more worthy character.

One unique aspect of this book is how it lets us into the delivery room. We get to witness two babies being born, both of them to teenagers, curiously. One of the doctors is “palpating Hilly’s abdomen with one hand while his rubber-gloved left hand explored the pelvic region”—a possible shocking reference to a vaginal exam!! (Could this bear any relationship to the persistent VNRN fascination with a doctor’s long, slender fingers?) The patient is in labor, and he’s telling her to “just relax and doze off if she felt like it.” Do you suppose the author has actually experienced childbirth?

More of a quibble is that Runaway Nurse is another one of those titles that has very little to do with the story. There is, in fact, a point near the very end of the book where Nurse Gail Winters takes off with Ginny, but the whole situation seemed so unimportant, resolved in a few pages, and occurred so late in the book that I didn’t really associate it with the title. But with such a great cover illustration, and a magnificent story inside, I forgive all.

This book was republished with 
a better title but a really hideous
cover illustration by the master of
ugly covers, Valentine Books.