Navy Nurse

By Adelaide Humphries, ©1954

Ensign Dorothy Phillips was beautiful; life was beautiful; her work was wonderful; and everything was right with her world—until the day, her arms laden with bundles for the Chief Nurse’s surprise birthday party, she was almost run down by a carload of brash young Air Corps officers. An impudent apology, yelled by a handsome lieutenant, was the crowning insult. Then the lieutenant appeared unannounced at the party—revealing himself as Lieutenant Keith Cameron Townsend, and the dour Chief Nurse’s nephew, no less! The fact that Dorothy was engaged didn’t mean a thing to Keith. The more she snubbed him, the more persistent he became. It takes a battle at sea—and all the suffering connected with it—for the ensign to realize that love and hate are often akin.

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:
“Oh, you know a kiss or so doesn’t mean anything. At least most people don’t think it does in this progressive age.” 

REVIEW:
Author Adelaide Humphries, who has previously given us two A-grade novels (Nurse Landon’s Challenge and The Nurse Knows Best), here has achieved a truly remarkable feat: She has written a novel in which not a single one of the five leading characters is a likable individual. One might wonder why you might want to write a book about spoiled, selfish, inconsiderate people—and a skilled writer might even craft a thought-provoking, Pulitzer Prize–winning epic from such a cast—but alas, here we are just left to grit our teeth and endure through to the end—or just toss the stupid book aside and move on to something better. I advise the latter. 

Let’s start with leading lady Ensign Dorothy Phillips. She is the most gorgeous woman in the entire world, somehow made even more dazzling by her uniform: “Ensign Phillips had features and skin a poster-girl could never have surpassed,” so “when a beautiful girl like Ensign Phillips donned her Navy nurse’s uniform, wolf whistles were the order of the day.” Oh, boy! When the book opens, she is on the sidewalk, carrying purchases for an upcoming party, when a car overflowing with Air Corpsmen whizzes around the corner. She’s pulled back from stepping into the street, knocking her packages askew and somehow keeping her from getting run over though she was never actually in the street, and one of the men in the car leans his whole torso out the window, shouts something unintelligible and waves his arms above his head—it actually seems as if his life was more at risk in this incident than Dorothy’s. These brief seconds leave her “with an impression of laughing black eyes, a flash of white teeth in a tanned, handsome face—and a burning sensation around her heart.” Yes, she’s in love already, and this is why she is overwhelmed with a relentless, obsessive hatred for the young man.

The fellow who had kept her from stepping into the street, Charles Henry Hale, who unfortunately chooses to be called Skid, is the closest we have to a decent human. As a first-class gunner’s mate, he is outranked by Dorothy, a fact that is made much of, and Dorothy’s condescension to even speak to such a lowly creature is treated with great admiration. Don’t worry, though, she is ultimately extraordinarily cruel to the respectful young man, who kindly and humbly helps Dorothy with her packages and carries them back to the launch for her (she is stationed in a hospital ship off the coast of San Diego). He hopefully suggests they have coffee, though noting the invitation is “entirely too brassy,” but Dorothy condescends to accept, after first having berated him for causing her to drop her packages.

During coffee, Dorothy decides that Skid is a “darned nice boy,” and he, of course, falls immediately in love with her and asks to see her again. “Dorothy despised anything that hinted of snobbery,” we are told, so she immediately wades into it, thinking, “An enlisted man couldn’t get seriously involved with a Navy officer. It would lead to all kinds of gossip, and no telling what it might lead to.” The only reason she decides to agree to see him again is that she spots that darned guy who almost fell out of the car that didn’t hit her, and becomes furious that he seems to be laughing at her, so she “deliberately turned her back on him” and gives Skid an overly enthusiastic wave and shouts that she’ll see the poor dope next week!

The party she is helping to plan is a surprise birthday party for Chief Nurse Capt. Nettie Leonard, the quintessential gray-haired spinster martinet, and who should turn up at it but that darned guy again, who is revealed as Capt. Leonard’s nephew, Lt. Keith Cameron Townsend (the two male leads both absurdly have middle names)! Darn the luck, her entire day is ruined! At the party Dorothy’s flirtatious and backstabbing roommate, Micky, flings herself at Keith, scorching her own boyfriend in the process, but Keith manages to grab Dorothy and tell her that he will win her, “no matter what or how long it takes,” because all women find stalkers irresistible! And when Keith crashes her next date with Skid, Dorothy takes her revenge on Keith by telling him that the pair have known each other since childhood and that they are engaged. “She felt good. She was glad she had told that big fib. She would whiten it by explaining later on to Skid, although she didn’t know just what her explanation would be.” This is the same woman who, “besides believing that the best policy was to stick to the truth,  believed that when a person gave his word to someone else he should do his level best to live up to it.” Let’s see how honest Dorothy is going to play this out.

So having gotten herself into one bad situation, she now plans to make it worse: “It looked more and more as though there was nothing she could do except try to make this trumped-up betrothal authentic,” because the honorable thing to do is to marry a man you’ve just met to spite someone else. Dorothy also promises Micky’s boyfriend, Dr. Tommy Simms, that she will keep Keith away from Micky, though this goes completely contrary to her life’s purpose of never speaking to that horrid man again. It doesn’t exactly work, as Keith presses her and Skid into double dating with him and Micky on a regular basis—though, out one evening celebrating their engagement, Dorothy dances with Keith and discovers “one dance had made all the difference in the world,” because Keith kisses her and tells her that he is in love with her—and that “you’ve got a lot to learn, Dorothy. But you will.” So the next scene finds Dorothy admitting to Skid that she does not love him, but that she’ll agree to get married if he wants to. Ugh!!

When word gets out that Dorothy is engaged to Skid, however, the chief nurse becomes unprofessionally hostile and assigns Dorothy to night duty out of spite, and then calls a staff meeting in which “everyone present agreed that it was a mistake for an ensign in the Navy to become engaged to, or even go with, an enlisted man.” Now nothing can possibly save Dorothy from this horrible situation—except a really big sea battle! So off her ship chugs, following the battleships into war—I’m not exactly certain which war we’re supposed to be fighting—and on the eve of the big battle, Skid sends Dorothy a “beautiful” letter in which he tells her that he loves her because “she was so sincere, the kind of girl a fellow would be proud to take home to show off to the home folks.” Clearly this man barely knows her—and her true character is again revealed by her reaction, which is not remorse or shame, but rather “fatality”—and then she hopes that she’ll get a letter from Keith. But when she hears Keith has survived the battle, she’s remembering “his pride, that masculine ego of which he had more than the average share. His pride would demand that he, an officer, must never give up trying to win a girl away from an ordinary enlisted man.” That jerk!

Soon Skid turns up on the medical ship, one of the worst burn cases in a coma for days, his chances of survival a hundred to one, and “it will take plastic surgery to restore that burned face.” Dorothy tells him with tears and kisses to get well, that they’ll be married as soon as he’s better, but “Skid knows Dottie doesn’t love him. He probably knows she feels sorry for him and so is willing to make the best of a bad bargain.” And so he does the decent thing, committing suicide by willpower and dying in his sleep, because “if a fellow wants to die—well, nothing any doctor, or anyone else, can do will help him,” declares Dr. Tommy Simms. “He had the courage to die—because he wanted you to be happy,” adds Micky. Dorothy replies, “It makes me feel almost as though, instead of helping him, I had caused Skid’s death.” Probably her first honest thought—and her last, as without another thought to her likely role in manslaughter, she steps off the ship to “where she belonged—in a certain handsome young lieutenant’s arms.”

There is not one admirable quality in Dorothy, her manic roommate Micky, or the egotistical and domineering Keith, and not much better in the vindictive chief nurse, or even Skid, who is self-sacrificial to the ultimate degree. Dorothy’s stint in the Navy makes it look like a casual weekend gig, and her commitment is definitely wanting; early on she confesses that she’s not sure why she joined the Navy since she has a deep-seated phobia of water, gets seasick easily, can’t remember all the darned rules and regulations, and after six months she still cannot get the hang of military time! But she gets excellent training in the Navy, and she doesn’t have to work very hard—“a navy Nurse’s duties are much lighter nowadays; they’re mostly supervisory.” Interestingly, it is suggested that if she were to marry, she would just resign her post. I’m not sure how that could ever have been a thing, because my impression of the military is that it’s not an optional sort of arrangement. This book, however, is optional for you, and so I recommend that you forego it, and instead try the much more interesting Navy Nurse penned by one of my favorite authors, Rosie M. Banks—it’ll be much smoother sailing.

The Love Gift

By Frances J.S. Eden (pseud. Frances Chimenti), ©1970 

So young to be widowed, pretty Andrea Courbet sought refuge and solace as the nurse to Peter Moffatt’s motherless children. But in that strained home, the shadow of Peter’s lost wife seemed always present, so that after a while even Andrea came to question her own identity. Thus when Dr. Matt Anderson entered the scene as family pediatrician and contested her hand against Peter’s romantic pleas, he offered her a new out. But was his love gift just a trap into exactly the sort of romantic dilemma she had hoped to avoid?

GRADE: B

BEST QUOTES:
“They come home from bossin’ and think they have t’keep on bossin’!” 

“Men should be marinated like meat: to make them tender!”

“The only way I can get you to hold hands is to have you take my pulse.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Andrea Courbet is a “baby nurse,” accompanying new mothers home for a few weeks or months until they settle into the routine. But this time, the mother of the new baby has died in childbirth, and Andrea’s coming home with father Peter Moffett to care for baby Donel as well as the three older children, Lanier, Geordie, and Joyce. She and the children take to each other immediately, they soon calling her “Courbie” and she becoming a major rock in the house, giving helpful advice to Peter about how to be a better father. She is worried about staying too long, though, because she doesn’t want everyone to become too emotionally involved, making her inevitable departure unbearable. 

The Moffett family pediatrician, Dr. Matt Anderson, has always been a frequent guest at the house, and now that Andrea is there he sees no reason to stop, though she is not impressed with his overly informal ways; he patronizes her during the baby’s first appointment with him and telling her, “Didey on, Nursie,” and asking her to come sit next to him. “I’m dideying the baby, Dockie,” she quips in response, and when he admires her hair, she says, “I came to have Donny examined, not me.” But as usual, the initially irritating doctor grows on the nurse, and soon they’re dating. The rub is that two years ago her husband—she was married at age 20—was killed in a car crash and the baby she was carrying was stillborn. So she’s just not ready to love again.

Except the children, whom she does whole-heartedly—and when Peter suggests that they get married because they “are fond of each other and we certainly are equally concerned for the children. It would settle all this anxiety about your having to leave. It would be the best thing for the children if you stayed on as my wife.” The incurable romantic! Andrea, not sure she can ever love again—which is the same way Peter feels after his wife’s death—agrees, and tries to find affection in their mostly platonic relationship.

Matt, of course, is heartbroken, and takes no pains to hide it, “his tone was always light and friendly with Peter and Andrea, but his eyes were bleak with unhappiness.” Then Andrea overhears Peter confirming to his sister that his wife “can never be replaced in my heart,” and she finally realizes that though the attraction of remaining with the children is enormous, she asks herself, “was she willing to settle for less to have all these things?” She tells Peter, “I want more—I need more than you can give me,” and declines his ring. But now Matt is devoting himself to Peter’s sister …

The worst thing about this book is the title, which makes it embarrassing when a man you don’t know well asks what you are reading. Nothing impressive, that’s for damn sure! And though the plot of this book is obvious and without bumps, I have to say that the family in this book is incredibly warm and appealing. I really understood the draw for Andrea to want to remain a part of a world that included these children and their grandmother—I wouldn’t mind it myself. This is the first book I have read by author Frances Eden, but if her other books are as gentle and sweet—even if they are not stellar—honestly, you could do a lot worse.

Hope Wears White

By Florence Stuart
(pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1961
Cover illustration by Martin Koenig

Nurse Barbara Ritter looked up into Dr. Wade Fulton’s eyes. “Say you love me, darling. Say it once, please,” he pleaded. She turned her head away. “Oh, let me alone. Don’t talk any more about it. What does it matter how I feel about you? You’re going to be married to another girl.” She had lost her heart to a man who belonged to somebody else. Would time heal the hurt? Barbara found the answer to her question in this moving novel of love, friendship and dedication to a notable profession. 

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“If I had my teeth in, I’d bite you, honey.” 

“Later they drove down to the village to look at the bright lights, all five or six of them.”

REVIEW:
I’ve been feeling a little burned by Florence Stonebraker in recent years. She has written some amazing books, no question about it—five of her books have earned A-grade reviews—but she has also gotten seven C’s, so you never know if you’ve got a gem in your hands or a dud. The result is that now, as I read her books—and Hope Wears White is my 19th—if it starts out well, I am nervously waiting for the point where the story tanks. Fortunately, this book sparkled from beginning to end—but apprehension marred my enjoyment somewhat; these are the bitter side effects of this job, but I hope my work here can spare you the stinkers and deliver you only the best. 

Barbara Ritter is a nurse from the very tiny town of Springdale, Arkansas, population 2,734, where she was adopted by the local doctor and his wife. Unfortunately, she played the Cinderella to her younger sister Fern, the pair’s biological daughter: “Fern had always gotten the best of everything, while Barbara did the work of two or three servants.” Barbara has turned out all right in the end, though; after her father died, Mrs. Harriet Hope, a wealthy local widow, loaned Barbara tuition money for nursing school. Now, after four years away from home, Barbara is returning to show everyone her success. (It’s a flimsy excuse, but there it is, and we have to live with it.) Fern has not fared so well: “She acts very strange of late. She is moody: up in the clouds one minute; down in the dumps the next,” explains Mom, while others are less kind, stating simply that “Fern has some deep-seated neurosis and is seriously in need of psychiatric help.” Fortunately, there is a new psychiatric hospital in town, endowed by Harriet and run by Dr. Wade Fulton, who is quite the hunk.

Harriet has insisted that Dr. Wade hire Barbara to work at the hospital, and her first interview with Wade starts off very well, despite the fact that “I hadn’t counted on anyone quite so ornamental,” as he says, since everyone tells Barbara that she looks like Elizabeth Taylor. Barbara displays a fair amount of sass: “Do you suppose I’ll be safe, working day in and day out with this irresistible male?” she asks fellow Nurse Kitty Standish. When Wade tells Barbara he is engaged to a woman back in New York, she slyly asks him how often he writes her, saying, “I’ll bet the poor gal is all aquiver with excitement, waiting for those cards to arrive.” But the interview quickly sours, and later Kitty declares that Wade is “afraid that he’ll fall in love.” In short order Wade all but admits this to be true: Apologizing that they got off on the wrong foot, he touches her arm, and the sparks fly.

Meanwhile Fern has developed a huge crush on Wade, and is sending him love letters and turning up in his office to bat her eyes at him. One evening Barbara goes to the family house to discuss Fern’s behavior, telling her that its less than rational. She suggests that Fern seek professional help, and Fern completely wigs out. Screaming that she will kill Barbara or herself, she slams out the door and hops in the car. Barbara, for some equally insane reason, climbs in with her, and before too long Fern has driven them off a cliff. Miraculously they both survive—and Wade confesses his love, while simultaneously declaring that he cannot marry her because he is engaged to this New Yorker.

Unfortunately, there can be no easy happiness for the Barbara and Wade, because Wade is one of those annoying martyr types “whose inner strength was also his great weakness. It was unthinkable for him to let down someone who depended on him.” And so, rashly engaged years ago to a woman who has turned out to be not at all suitable for him, “it was his duty—Wade’s absolute duty” to stick with Helene Robbins, even though she has refused to marry him until he gives up his job in Arkansas and returns to New York to take up a posh practice, which he has refused to do.

Sadly, Barbara accepts the situation with little of the spine she has demonstrated to date, but she does have two feisty friends in Kitty and Harriet, both of whom exhort her to fight for her man. “No man makes up his own mind when it comes to affairs of the heart,” declares Harriet. “The girl has to make it up for him. You have to.” Barbara doesn’t, though, because she has a sister who truly hates her. Realizing where Wade’s affection lies, the scorned Fern writes a letter to Helene in New York, telling her that Wade is being seduced by the tramp he works with and is about to wriggle off the hook. Instantly jetting to Arkansas, Helene declares she will go through with the wretched wedding even though she does not love Wade, because “like every girl with good sense, I want to be married to a man worth marrying,” she frankly tells Barbara. “Wade is a successful doctor, he’ll make a name for himself, he’ll make good money—once I get him back to New York where he belongs.”

It’s not hard to imagine how this scenario is going to wrap up, though the specific details were a surprise and even funny. The writing is smart, crisp, entertaining, and often amusing, if not of the sort of humor that translates well for the Best Quotes section. I’ll acknowledge that the plot is not completely logical, and it was disappointing that Barbara, who started out with so much starch and fire, completely wilted. But the supporting cast is built of admirable characters who are very enjoyable to watch as they chew the furniture and toss off fabulous lines, such as the time Kitty scolds Barbara for working so hard in her new job: “What are you trying to prove? That you’re ten women? Or simply that the rest of us nurses are lazy slobs who should get vitamin shots to jazz up our metabolism?” We do get a good handful of Florence Stonebraker’s go-to tricks: the unloved adopted daughter, the psychotic woman, the murder attempts, the Ozark setting, the names Fern and Kitty. Here, luckily for us, she serves them up with panache and freshness, giving us a book worthy of the hope any reader has when she picks one up.

Surgeon of Distinction

By Mary Burchell

(pseud. Ida Cook), ©1959

Maxwell Perring was a surgeon with a special distinction about him; “star quality” it might have been called in another profession. Nurse Alma Miles admired his work, but had never thought about him as a man. All her thinking of that sort was centred on Jeremy Truscott—and he was presenting quite a problem.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“You can’t address anyone as ‘sir’ when he’s proposing to you.” 

“Few people, she found, can resist the exquisite temptation of talking about themselves, if a sympathetic audience seems available.”

“She wondered if anyone else had ever been so silly as to indulge in romantic nostalgia over an appendectomy.”

“Don’t praise him too affectionately. It puts a frightful strain on my regard for him.”

REVIEW:
Some nurse novels have plots so intricate that it takes many paragraphs to convey the story. This charming story of Mary Burchell’s is not such a one, but she has the talent to execute a simple story that is nonetheless layered and emotionally complex that the lack of story line is no hindrance at all.. 

The plot, such as it is, is that Nurse Alma Miles has been seeing Jeremy Truscott, and has been hoping they would become engaged, when he starts blowing her off—and eventually she sees him going out with Nurse Geraldine Grayce, who had “a withdrawn, almost enigmatic quality which was not entirely friendly.” “She was quite courteous when spoken to, but no actual warmth emanated from her.” To escape from her heartbreak, Alma accepts a job at another hospital working with distinguished Dr. Maxwell Perring. Initially one might be concerned that he is one of those love interests: He has “a quiet assurance which bordered on arrogance, and the faintly sardonic curve to his mouth showed that he was not a man who suffered fools gladly.” He’s a brilliantly gifted surgeon, but he also remembers to tip the waitress: “It’s nice to have someone really knowledgeable at one’s elbow,” he tells Alma after her first day working alongside him. He’s warm, friendly, and respectful gently humorous, and “very good-looking,” of course!

As one of many quite astonishing coincidences in this book, Jeremy is run over right outside Alma’s new hospital, and Dr. Perring and Alma perform the life-saving brain surgery. But when Jeremy wakes up, he does not remember Geraldine, only Alma—and is convinced they are engaged. Sent to his flat, Alma finds a ring with Geraldine’s name on it, and bringing it to Jeremy, he proposes to her. She accepts, in true VNRN trope, because “he must not have his recovery jeopardized by the faintest hint of the situation”—but she is an honorable, honest person with no intention of holding to the lie, and so tells Dr. Perring the whole awkward story, and gives him the ring to hold, because “it isn’t mine. I can’t bear the sight of it. I can’t go on living a lie like this!”

But gossip gets out, as it is wont to do in a hospital, that Alma and Jeremy are engaged. Fortunately, it only takes 15 pages before Jeremy remembers all, and Alma honorably gives him up. Miserable to lose Jeremy a second time, Alma goes out for a walk and wanders into a ballet—and amazingly, Dr. Perring is there alone as well, in the seat next to hers! He takes her to dinner afterward and suggests that she can escape the hit to her reputation by becoming engaged to him, though he is fully aware that she is in love with Jeremy.

She agrees, because she has a deep esteem for Dr. Perring and thinks that marriage to him could be a moderate success—and then we slowly watch the unfolding as an upstanding, honorable woman dumped by a shallow cad but now allied with a like-minded, dependable man evolves in her feelings. There’s a silly misunderstanding in the end in which the hitherto strong and outspoken Alma is inexplicably unable to correct a stupid situation, but this is the only black mark on this otherwise fine, subtle book.

Alma is a worthy heroine: She is an accomplished scrub nurse with a strong sense of humor and (most of the time, anyway) a dignity and backbone that allow her to insist on and command respect. Max could have been one of those older, colder men who are forced on us as a love interest but who are in fact frightening and creepy, but he is finely drawn as a dignified surgeon with a real personality outside the OR. The writing can sparkle quietly, such as when dawn breaks on a heartbroken Alma who had cried all night: “Monday morning came and Alma was still alive.” The only other flaw this book has, outside of the ubiquitous misunderstanding, is the large number of stunning coincidences on which it hinges, but this is such a minor problem in what is after all a work of fiction, particularly in view of the many lovely moments this book offers the reader. How satisfying to find not just a surgeon of distinction, but a book of distinction as well.

Special Nurse

By Jean S. MacLeod, ©1944
Cover illustration by Paul Anna Soik 

When a woman believes herself indebted to a man, should she offer her heart as a sacrifice? Nurse Lindsey Hamilton knew that she owed to Richard Stewart Harvey, surgeon, the almost miraculous recovery of her dearly-loved brother. She knew too that she could—that she did—love Richard himself. But when, by coincidence, Richard’s own brother Douglas came to the same hospital as a patient, it seemed that she could best repay her debt to Richard by marrying Douglas. In a world where daily sacrifices were asked and made, she had this much to give. What would be her decision?

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“A man never likes to think he’s been helped on to his feet. He likes to believe he’s struggled there of his own accord!” 

REVIEW:
Dr. Richard Stewart Harvey is everything a young woman would want in a man. “He’s got that look about him—remote, yet assured,” says Nurse Lindsey Hamilton’s best friend. Guess who Lindsey’s going to tumble for! And he’s at least a decade older than her too, which makes it even better. And when for unknown reasons she’s transferred to a rehab hospital on the other side of Scotland—surprise!—he’s working there too. His brother Douglas is a patient there, as he’s a pilot who was shot down in the war. It’s not clear what exactly his injury is, as he’s able to walk for miles without even a cane, but his depression is keeping him from agreeing to the final surgery that will make him even more whole. Interestingly, Lindsey also has a brother, Norman, also trained as a surgeon, who also sustained some unnamed psychological damage during the war. “I can’t go back into surgery, I’ve lost my nerve. I’ll never operate again,” he tells Lindsey, but somehow he ends up as an assistant to the great Dr Stewart Harvey and slowly begins to bloom.

Douglas, too, starts to unbend under Lindsey’s expert care, but unfortunately this means that he decides he’s in love with her. She tries to be cool and professional, but he’s insistent in a way that is uncomfortable at best: “You’re going to get used to the idea of loving me one day,” he tells her, even throwing in that it’s what Rick wants, though it’s clear that it’s not at all what Rick wants. “I told you you belonged to me,” he adds, ratcheting things up an awkward notch. Brother Norman sees what’s going on—her feelings for Rick and Douglas’ for her—and tries hard, even if only obliquely, to keep Lindsey from doing something stupid. “You’ve never let anyone down in your life, Lindy, and I believe you would even go to the length of sacrificing your own happiness if you believed the cause justified it,” he tells her, on several occasions. The cause, in this instance, is her gratitude to Rick for his help with Norman, as Rick is increasingly giving the shell-shocked doctor more responsibility and gradually luring him back to the OR.

Lindsey and Norman become increasingly entwined with the Stewart Harveys and their home life, staying with their dad at the family home in the country and meeting the neighbors, including a young woman who is clearly in love with Douglas but is nonetheless completely gracious to Lindsey. Interestingly, pretty much every man in the book, including Douglas’ father and Norman on at least five occasions, hints to Lindsey that she should not marry Douglas, though no one comes out and actually says it, and Lindsey doesn’t seem to hear what they are telling her. Eventually Douglas is persuaded to undergo the final surgery, and Rick is in a car crash on his way to perform the op, so Norman is obliged to step in and do the job, in a scene that I, as a surgical PA, found the most thrilling of the book. Underplayed was the role that Lindsey served as Douglas’ nurse in keeping the fact that Norman was to do the surgery from Douglas (unethical as that may be), as she was as cool and professional as they were in preparing him for the operation.

Then we push through another particularly frustrating 50 pages, watching the push-pull of Douglas and Rick on Lindsey’s left fourth finger, and her crushing feeling of obligation to Rick, her bizarre belief that he is interested in another woman, and that she must marry Douglas. It’s a long time to hold your breath, and it’s frankly a bit exhausting, even if eventually it all pulls together well. Overall there’s a lovely camaraderie amongst the three families—it happens that the six young people all pair up evenly—which include three parents and a child. The writing is easy and pleasant, with rare drops of humor, so even if the book is too long and drags at a bit at the end, if you can just sit back and have faith, it’s an enjoyable outing in the Scottish countryside, without too much awkward attempt to write the accent to distract you. Author Jean MacLeod, a Scottish author who cranked out romances for more than 60 years, may not have here delivered a particularly special book, but it’s good enough for an afternoon.

Nurse with a Dream

By Norrey Ford, ©1957
Cover illustration by Chapman 

When Jacqueline Clarke came from France to nurse at a Yorkshire hospital she had never known any Englishmen except her father. Soon she was to meet two very attractive ones; her farmer-cousin Guy, who ruled over his broad acres from a centuries-old farmhouse, and the distinguished surgeon of whom nurses spoke in awed whispers as “the great Mr. Broderick.” Guy fell in love and started proposing marriage almost at once, while she wasn’t supposed even to speak to Mr. Broderick—and what a sensation there was when she did! She couldn’t presume to imagine that he would ever give her a serious thought … and yet the idea of him seemed to come persistently between her and Guy.

GRADE: A

BEST QUOTES:
“We’ll make a nurse of you some day. Even if we kill you.”

“We all condemn what we can’t understand.”

“No house is big enough for two women if they don’t agree.”

“He is a doctor, but only just, I’d say. I mean you could still see bits of eggshell and fluff on him.”

“Whoever heard of two weeks’ convalescence, when we’re short-staffed and you’re not actually dying?”

“Only twelve more operating days to Christmas, Nurse?”

“‘He showed me the Charleston. His grandma taught him.’ She rolled down her nylons and proudly displayed blue bruises. ‘Those old-timers must have been tough.’”

“Bad as January was, it rushed all too soon into February, and those nurses taking the examination went about with glazed eyes and moving lips.”

“If you understand children, you understand men, mostly.”

REVIEW:
Jacqueline Clarke is a Cinderella of a nurse. Orphaned during “the war,” she has “warm youth and vitality,” “richly curved red lips and gentian-blue eyes, fine skin as delicate and rosy as a ripe, sun-warmed peach.” Her father was English and her mother French, and she was raised in France her entire life, so though her English is perfect, she speaks with “the slightest trace of accent, just enough to make her sound enchanting to English ears.” I hate perfect heroines; what’s wrong with being a normal, flawed woman? 

Anyway, Jacqueline has returned to Yorkshire, the land of her father, to learn about his home country. She says she’s never met a young Englishman, which seems hard to believe, given that she works in a hospital. Not that it matters; “I’m not interested in men. I just want to be a nurse,” she says. Then we hear about the lion surgeon Dr. Broderick, who “doesn’t care for nurses. He’s a terror and twists their heads off, like eating shrimps.” I’m betting $100 he’s starring on the last page.

On her first weekend off, she takes a trip to the moors to see the farmhouse where her father was raised, and meets a birder named Alan who takes her on a long walk with him. She’s telling him how nice her father was to her, when suddenly she gasps, realizing that “today she had been happy and comfortable with a man who had not talked down to her, or patronised, or treated her as a pretty little woman fit only for flirting; to this man, as to her father, she was a person, with a mind and ideas of her own.” Heady stuff! They talk of love, and he insists, “my love is elsewhere”—perfect grounds for a misunderstanding, as indeed there is one about his identity, which we saw coming half the moor away.

At the farmhouse, she meets her half-cousin Guy, and his mother Connie—her father’s wicked stepmother, who indeed “looked like an earthy troll”—and he is a big, handsome Guy, who makes her pulses race, but you know there has to be someone to interpose. Actually, it’s initially more complicated than that, as, when Jacky takes a stroll on the moor, she spots a dog and is then knocked unconscious. She’s soon found by Alan, however, and carried several miles to the village. She wakes in her own hospital, but the curious twist is that she has lost her memory of the day, and when Alan shows up and chews her out for being irresponsible, as he thinks she had fallen from a steep crag he had warned her about. She is livid, and spars feistily with him, even threatening him with a water jug before he ducks out the door. “As a junior nurse, I’m less than the dust, but as me I won’t be anybody’s doormat,” she declares, winning my heart instantly. And … Alan turns out to be Dr. Broderick! Who would have guessed!?!?

Of course, she can’t believe that a mighty surgeon could like her, even though they have frequent friendly and amusing exchanges. Her confusion is manipulated by Guy’s sister Deborah, who is hankering after Dr. Broderick herself, and she convinces Jacky to agree to marry Guy, so as to avoid subjecting Dr. Broderick to idle gossip that he could be involved with such a lowly creature as herself. “It was so plainly a breach of hospital etiquette to have her life saved by its most eminent surgeon! Perhaps if he had known she was a nurse, he’d have left her lying there, and saved himself and everybody else a great deal of unpleasantness!”

For his part, Guy has been pressing her for her hand—insisting, actually, in the most unpleasant and frankly alarming way. He tells her he’d like to hold her in his hand—“Slowly, keeping his gaze on his palm, he closed his muscular hand till the fingers were pressed down tightly and his knuckles showed white.” Yikes! She valiantly resists: “You can’t just say ‘that’s for me’ as if I were a cake in a confectioner’s window,” she insists, but he does anyway. He doesn’t improve his case when he says, “As if a woman’s career mattered, when she has a chance of marrying!” (To her credit, she laughs in his face, saying, “Do men think they are the be-all and end-all of a woman’s existence? Do you think we’d throw anything over that we cared about, just to marry one of you?”) But she gets flustered when he kisses her, so she wonders, “Was this love, this pounding of the heart, this disturbance of the senses?” Eventually she figures out it’s not, but by then she believes it’s too late to get out of marrying Guy, which is a preposterous manifestation of honor, and I would say that it’s dishonorable to marry a man you don’t love, to yourself and to the gentleman in question.

Anyway, everything sorts out in the end, as you know it will, but the great fun is watching it all unfold. This book has some really lovely people in it, but tops is Jacky’s nurse friend Bridget, who fortunately has to recover from her own stomach troubles in the bed next to Jacky, so we have lots of time to appreciate her sense of humor. Bridget is the kind of pal who, looking down on her cafeteria tray, quips, “When I came off-duty I was hungry enough to eat a dead dog, but I didn’t think I’d have to.” Pretty much everything she says is equally glorious. Initially disappointed with Jacky’s looks, I was quickly won over with her spunk and her ability to stand up for herself, even when facing dragons like Dr. Broderick. I even liked Dr. Broderick, who really was mostly respectful of Jacky, and at one point he berates himself for his hand in the charade that was Jacky’s engagement to Guy in a way that felt honest: “Fool, fool, fool! He had not even tried—not raised a hand to stop her falling into Guy’s grasp. He’d shown too much darn self-sacrifice, too much nobility; in fact, he’d been a stuffed shirt.” The question of who clubbed Jacky over the head is a bit of unnecessary detour for the plot, though it’s not badly done, and I was left wondering until the end, and the reveal offered some interesting insights into minor characters. And the writing! So witty, so amusing, so enjoyable! Writing this good is rare enough that it must be celebrated, and I am happy to pop a cork for Norrey Ford and this lovely book.

Emergency Nurse

By Jane Converse (pseud. Adele Kay Maritano), ©1962 

“You don’t  belong in a hospital! If you were honest you’d operate a beauty parlor.” Nurse Diane Waycott flung these bitter words at plastic surgeon Dr. Ken Michelson the night her mother died. Maddened with grief, she believed that her fiancé was more concerned with preserving vanity than saving life. But when a young girl, victim of an auto crash, was brought to Emergency with a bloody, unrecognizable face, Diane knew that only Ken could help. Only his sensitive hands could build a new life for this tragic girl—and for the desperate boy who had ruined her beauty.

GRADE: A- 

BEST QUOTES:
“You can’t have a pretty face if there’s hate written over it.” 

“That icy-tongued perfectionist is either going to make top-flight plastic surgeons out of us, or we’ll get the chair for bludgeoning him.”

“Good management is adaptable. Why consult an expert if you’re going to overrule his opinion?”

REVIEW:
Emergency Nurse hangs on the curious premise that Emergency Room Nurse Diane Waycott, engaged to plastic surgeon Dr. Kendall Michelson, has no idea what he actually does. But for the sake of this otherwise excellent book, I ask you to overlook this minor flaw. The issue is Diane’s prejudice against plastic surgery: “Never, in all the months she had loved him, had she been able to generate a profound, nurse’s respect for him as a doctor.” And when he drives her home from the hospital on the night her mother, who has battled cancer since her retirement (and therefore been unable to enjoy any relaxation), finally dies, she’s overcome by the injustice of it all. “Maybe just one more doctor might have made the difference!” she shouts at him. “Just one more man in a laboratory, or in surgery, might have found the answer a year ago, or five years ago, or ten. You might have found it! And she wouldn’t have suffered. She’d be alive!” Instead, she adds, “you’ll probably become rich bobbing the noses for show girls or eliminating the scars from some wanted hoodlum’s face. You’ll get ahead even faster if you gain a repaution for bust reconstruction!” Well, she’s not wrong about the boob jobs, but Ken is so outraged at this slur on his profession that he slams out the door, and when she never calls him to apologize, he never calls her either, so she’s single again. 

Months after their breakup, an anonymous young car crash victim is brought in, and she and Dr. Paul Otis sew up her face, which has been badly cut. If the hospital knew who she was and whether her parents had money, they’d have called in Ken to repair the damage, but since time is a-wastin’, ED Dr. Paul Otis perfunctorily does the job. And when the bandages come off, the resulting scars are so hideous that her father, who turns out to be wealthy and powerful automotive parts magnate Harley Gilmore, screams in horror and is shoved out of the room while the young girl, Cammie, crumples into sobs. (In a later scene, Diane unprofessionally argues with Dr. Otis when he’s about to amputate three fingers of another unidentified accident victim, saying that the fingers might be saved, which gives enough time for the patient’s wife and doctor to arrive and save the hand.)

Diane’s kid brother Bud, who has been allowed to pretty much do whatever he wants after his mother died, turns out to have been driving the car involved in the accident, which Diane figures out not too slowly. Petrified that Bud’s life will be ruined by his leaving the scene of the accident—he had carried Cammie into a nearby house and called an ambulance, but then fled—she asks no questions, just hints to Bud that she’s aware of his role, and leaves him to keep skipping school. But her concern about Cammie slowly draws her into the girl’s care and life; Cammie’s widower father, a large, powerful, angry man, has refused to allow her to have any friends or even leave the house, and Diane is the only person who stands up to him, telling him that he needs to let go of his daughter if he wants to keep her.

Meanwhile, Diane starts dating stodgy Dr. Otis, who, now that Diane’s mother is dead and her brother is old enough to support himself, finds the prospect of marrying a woman with no dependents to support much more enticing. “Anticipating the question with which he would probably end the evening, Diane projected herself forward. Should a husband be chosen on the basis of flash-in-the-pan excitement, or eliminated because he didn’t convert every moment to a bell-ringing, physically tingling carnival of thrills? A marriage should be built on more solid groundwork. Paul offered a firm foundation for the future.” On the other hand, “No hour with Ken had ever been dull.” That old trope again!

Eventually Bud, eaten alive by guilt, finds his way to Ken and unburdens himself. Ken immediately tells Diane that Bud must go to the police in the morning, and Diane, disappointingly, has learned nothing from her first fight with Ken, and blames him for the ways of the world: “The day I see Bud hauled off to a cellblock, I’ll know you sent him there!” she screeches. Even after he’d just kissed away her tears of fear. So we have to wait a bit longer.

If the plot works out exactly as you know it will, it’s a most enjoyable ride. Diane and Harley Gilmore’s characters grow organically, as Diane learns more about Ken’s patients and as Cammie’s father Harley receives a few more hard truths from Diane. And the writing here is a step above the usual. There are inside jokes that pop up later, and author Jane Converse, who can be erratic, here is in top form. Of the four Emergency Nurse VNRNs in existence that I can find (see Anne Lorraine, Peggy Gaddis, and Rosamund Hunt’s mediocre offerings) this one has the best story—and arguably the best cover—of the quartet. If you have a few hours—maybe in an ED waiting room?—you could do a lot worse.

The Taming of Nurse Conway

By Nora Sanderson, ©1964

Nurse Nicky Conway already hated Dr. Peter Trenton, whom she considered responsible for her mother’s death—so that when he began to interfere with her plans for marrying Geoff Hutchinson, it was altogether too much to bear!

GRADE: D+

BEST QUOTES:
“From three till six in the morning—that’s the time a night nurse feels like sitting down and writing a last will and testament.” 

“If you keep on flying into rages like this you’ll have a frightfully interesting stroke when you’re older.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Nicola Conway is easily one of the most unpleasant heroines I’ve ever met. I’m not alone in this assessment—pretty much every other character in the book chews her out at one point or another, over her irrational obsessive persecution of Dr. Peter Trenton, who was on call the night her mother, in her 40s, had a stroke and died at home with Nicky in attendance, before Dr. Trenton could arrive. It’s been more than a year since the incident, and still Nicky cannot bring herself to forgive the man and move on, or even keep a less-than-overtly-hostile expression on her face when he’s in the room. Her excuse for her hatred is that Dr. Trenton has always readily agreed that if he’d arrived sooner, Nicky’s mother would have survived—but it’s also clear that there’s some secret that exonerates the good doctor, and that the only person in New Zealand (where the book is set) who isn’t aware of this secret is Nicky herself.

Unfortunately, the pair work in the same hospital and run into each other on a daily basis—and Nicky can’t help “giving Dr. Trenton hell—you know you have, in a cruel, clever way so that he can’t hit back at you,” says her former best friend Jane, who eventually—along with all the other nurses—gives Nicky the cold shoulder for her shoddy treatment of the man, who is much beloved by the rest of the staff, the patients, and every member of the community, who all but stop him in the street and ask for his autograph. The only mystery bigger than the one surrounding Mrs. Conway’s death is why Nicky hasn’t been fired for her constant maliciousness: “If I were Dr. Trenton I’d see that you didn’t last one more day on the nursing staff,” says another ex-friend nurse. “You’re just a spoiled, self-opinionated little brat! We’d all be glad to see you go.”

So Nicky says truly horrendous things to poor Dr. Trenton on pretty much every other page, and by mid-book we readers are also wishing she’d get sacked. Even when—as you know would happen—Nicky decides, “I’ve gone and been mad enough to fall head-over-heels in love with Dr. Trenton,” which seems essentially impossible given her unswerving hatred for the man, her behavior barely budges out of the appalling zone.

A large and fairly stupid subplot involves a childhood friend of Nicky’s, Geoff Hutchinson, who has fruitlessly been hounding Nicky to marry him—and who is a victim of an accident at work that blinds him. As the weeks roll by and Geoff’s vision does not recover, Nicky idiotically decides she will marry Geoff and be his full-time nurse, for reasons that are never entirely clear. Dr. Trenton is convinced that Geoff is faking his blindness, and Nicky is equally sure he is not—giving them fodder for many more exasperating arguments—but interestingly, Geoff himself is barely seen at all in much of the book despite his starring role in the impending ruin of Nicky’s life and in all her arguments with Dr. Trenton. The question of whether Geoff is rendered a helpless baby by his blindness is viciously argued on both sides by Nicky—a hypocrisy that the book itself never acknowledges—depending on who she’s talking to: She insists that Geoff is unable to fend for himself when she’s screaming at Dr. Trenton that she must go through with the marriage, and furious that her fellow nurses are “all so determined to thrust him back into the nursery! Losing their sight doesn’t make a child of anyone!”

Equally perplexing is the huge amount of discussion about Nicky donating one of her corneas to Geoff so he would be able to see, and Dr. Trenton’s refusing to allow it—then agreeing, thinking that Geoff would never agree to Nicky’s losing an eye if he is malingering—but never in all of the talk is the surgery ever discussed with Geoff himself, which would quickly put an end to the debate and at least one source of much arguing. (The whole fake-blindness plot is not a new one, either; we’ve met it in New Surgeon at St. Lucien’s, which was also published under the Harlequin imprint though by a different author, Elizabeth Gilzean.)

Throughout this overly long book, we are subjected to a “self-righteous and critical and downright conceited,” “bad-tempered and resentful” heroine (we are told several times that Nicky is a good nurse, but we never see her do any actual nursing, and even the patients think she’s “as polite as a tiger crouching to spring”). She is frequently and rightfully called a child and told to grow up, regularly makes ridiculous decisions and stubbornly clings to them, and nastily attacks a very kind and patient doctor to the point where I think she could be prosecuted for harassment, if not creating a hostile work environment. Her assault on the doctor—and by extension the patients, nursing staff, and even us readers—drags right through to the final pages, when the foolish mystery about Mrs. Conway’s death is cleared up and we learn that if everyone had just been honest from the outset, we could have been spared 189 pages of maddening irritation. It’s impossible to believe that anyone could love Nurse Conway, and at no point is she “tamed” that I can see—rather, I pity the fool who would spend a single minute more with her than they absolutely have to. Do not, dear readers, I implore you, be such a fool—leave this book on the shelf.

Obstetrical Nurse

By Jane Converse, ©1972
Cover illustration by Allan Kass 

“I love you, Lon. I’m never going to stop loving you!” Nurse Marguerite Lowell longed to say it to Dr. Lon Webster. Longed to kindle a response in his heart. Working so closely with him, Marguerite found her attraction to the handsome young doctor growing stronger each day. And more hopeless, for Lon made no secret of his infatuation with the hospital’s provocative blond receptionist. When Dr. Warren Leash, Chief of Obstetrics, proposed, Marguerite felt caught in an emotional trap. Warran was a man she deeply admired—but could she love him? Should she fight for the man she wanted—or settle for a sensible marriage? The turmoil in her heart grew, until a fateful event brought Marguerite winthin reach of the love she had always dreamed of …

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:
“‘Stay cool,’ she murmured. ‘It’s only a man.’” 

“While he was looking at Hallie, I was looking at you. You weren’t exactly green with envy. Just sort of a pale chartreuse.”

“Now I know what they do with the leftover ether at your hospital, Lonnie. They serve it up in highballs once a year.”

REVIEW:
Dr. Lon Webster is the object of Nurse Marguerite Lowell’s deepest desires. The problem is that Dr. Lon is handsome, but “he’s a permanent adolescent, and he’s dull. Oh, and he’s righteous. A self-centered baby,” says Marguerite’s fabulous roommate, Nurse Joan McAfee. And worst of all, “he barely knew that Marguerite existed.” Instead, he’s fawning over the beautiful but dumb 19-year-old hospital receptionist, Hallie Davis. What a prince. 

Goaded by Joan, Marguerite decides to start dating Chief of Obstetrics Dr. Warren Leash, who actually is—kiss of death—a nice guy. “One look and you knew there wasn’t a shred of dishonesty in the man. She could relax with him as easily as she relaxed with Joan McAfee and there was never any need to be anyone but herself.” Of course, this means he is fatally doomed to be uninteresting to our heroine. But after Warren kisses her for the first time, he sort of proposes, and she sort of doesn’t say no, so now everyone in the hospital takes them to be engaged. “There was no turning back now,” thinks Marguerite the dope, “yet she couldn’t honestly say that she was in love with the man she was going to marry.”

For his part, Lon is about announce his engagement to Hallie at a big hospital gala, but Lon’s brother Brian turns up, and Hallie is transfixed. And why wouldn’t she be? The man is essentially dressed like a pirate, with striped pants, a transparent black shirt with a ruffled jabot, a wide tangerine sash, and a single gold hoop earring. Hallie gets Lon to postpone the announcement, and wouldn’t you know it? On the night of a big obstetrical emergency at the hospital, Lon learns that Hallie has eloped with his brother, and the loser is so distraught that he flees the hospital, leaving Warren and Marguerite to cope with all the dropping babies single-handedly. Lon then spends pages moaning and weeping, gnashing his teeth and pulling his hair—such attractive behavoir that Marguerite finally decides she’s going to break off her engagement with Warren and go back to moping over her unrequited love for Lon. “Disgusted?” snorts Joan, when Marguerite tells her of the plan. “Not because you’re being rotten to Dr. Leash, not because your conscience hurt—oh, no! But because Lonnie Webster’s little playmate ran off with his kid brother. Wow! You can go back to making a tragic figure of yourself again. Brooding around the house, staying home every night like somebody’s old-maid aunt.” I told you Joan is terrific!

Marguerite, however, in addition to be incredibly selfish and stupid, is also nearly as conceited as Dr. Lon. When she hears that her and Joan’s landlord, Rick, has started hanging around more with Joan, she thinks, “What if he’s using her companionship as an excuse to hang around the cottage because of me?” Every man must be in love with her—every man, that is, except Lon. It’s not hard to come to the conclusion that Marguerite doesn’t deserve Warren. Lon spends his days in a melodramatic misery, always with Marguerite’s sympathetic ear—and still shows no interest in her. Warren, however, lays it out straight and tells Lon that he barely knew Hallie, they were not likely to succeed as a couple, and if his infatuation with his own “sob story” continues to interfere with his work, he’s going to be fired. “Lon needs so much understanding,” Marguerite tells Warren, inexplicably defending the big baby. “Someone’s got to make him feel secure again. He’s got to feel that someone loves him.” Who might that be?

Warren again proves how much better than Lon he is by realizing that Marguerite is in love with Lon and letting her out of the engagement. But he’s going to wait for her, “because I think you’re going to wake up some day and realize that you’re infatuated with a man who hasn’t grown up yet,” he says, but frankly I wonder why Warren doesn’t realize that a woman who could fall in love with a self-centered ass like Lon should be avoided like COVID-19. Not even Marguerite can explain it: “She saw both men clearly now, as, perhaps, she had always seen them. The trouble was that the contrast between them didn’t make any difference; common sense and love seemed to have no connection with each other.” Frankly, I don’t believe that to be true. You can be attracted to people who are not right for you, but they do have some quality that attracts you. As we are given him, Lon has absolutely none.

Nine months whiz by and Hallie turns up again very pregnant, with a sob story about how Brian dumped her after forcing her to do LSD numerous times. The most interesting part of the book is that when Hallie’s baby is born—not that we didn’t see this coming—the baby has anencephaly: “sound in body and limb. But the head looked as though a scupltor had run out of clay, leaving the top portion unenclosed and incomplete. That the tiny brain was not fully formed went without saying.” Of course, anencephaly is not caused by LSD use, it’s caused by folic acid deficiency (which is why they started putting it in bread in 1998). Curiously, it’s Lon’s self-centered wailing over this baby that finally brings Marguerite to her senses, because “I wouldn’t want to lean on a man who falls apart every time the going gets rough,” she tells Lon.

In her misery after the baby’s birth—and quick death—Hallie spills a lot of beans, including that she had left Brian for a partying crowd though he had begged her to live clean for the baby, and that she thinks Lon is “a dull, boring clod!” Hallie gets news that Brian has been drowned, but Marguerite somehow misses this bulletin, and when she goes to Warren gleaming with new-found love for him, he tells her that she’s just saying that because now Lon and Hallie are free to marry, “so here’s your second-best standby, right?” Her response is to basically yell at him for several pages—no tears, no apologies, no acknowledgement that Warren is completely right to feel suspicious. Weeks go by, and finally Lon makes a pass at Marguerite, and she tells him to grow up. She instantly reports this to Warren, who remains noncommittal, and Marguerite pitches a tantrum that seems eerily familiar—perhaps picked up as a successful technique utilized to much success by her hero Lon—slams a dish, and tells Warren, “I love you! I’m sick of apologizing because it took me so long to know it,” though we have seen her apologize not once. That’s all it takes, though, and as the curtain draws closed, Marguerite and Warren are making out on the couch.

Jane Converse has an awful habit of endowing the nurse’s friend with bad looks, and then pointing them out every time the woman enters the room. Such is Joan, a straight-shooting, funny, intelligent, “incomparable gem”—in fact, it’s not hard to like her a lot more than our heroine—but she’s described as “a frizzy-haired, pie-faced, sawed-off, roly-poly clown.” As her relationship with landlord Rick develops, we cringe for poor Joan: He repeatedly insults her, such as when “he used his free hand to swat Joan on her seat. ‘You had the flame up too high, dodo! It’s bad enough you’re not a gorgeous blonde. I can’t even teach you to cook.’” At least twice on every page, Rick is insulting her in every possible way—calling her “tubby,” “stupid,” “broad on the beam”—but that’s OK, because “behind Rick’s insults and criticisms was an underlying affection,” and Joan just smiles and giggles, Marguerite thinks it’s “good to see people so happy, so at ease with each other,” and I’m developing a stomach ache. Meanwhile, of course, Marguerite is as self-centered and stupid as the man she spends most of the book moping after, and you close the book thinking that she and Lon rather deserved each other, and feeling sorry for poor Warren. Jane Converse can write reasonably well, but here the characters are mostly such annoying one-note wonders who never stop whining, so the story does not move along as crisply as some of her stories. Honestly, there’s not much here to appreciate, so put aside this dullard and pick up one of Jane’s better titles, like the classic Surf Safari Nurse. At least that book has some life to it, and a shark attack to boot!

Nurse in Charge

By Elizabeth Gilzean, ©1959

When Jane was put temporarily in charge of Rossiter Ward, the senior surgeon thought her too young for the job, and said so. It was an irresistible challenge and Jane was determined to prove to him that—just for once—he was mistaken.

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:

“Were all men fools, or did they really enjoy being offered the obvious?”

“Jane knew her prayer was not only for Sister Meadows’ sake but for the tall surgeon who had winced when he had had to offer her a small prick …”

“I never knew my ward sister had a brain as well! I see where I’ll have to watch my step.”

REVIEW:

Jane Scott has just been promoted to staff nurse (a step up from junior nurse in the United Kingdom) when three months later, the ward sister (chief nurse) of Rossiter Ward, Sister Meadows (who unfortunately is never given a first name) is stricken with some sort of spinal tumor and Jane, at the tender age of 24, is made ward sister—something almost scandalous given her mere three years of experience. Certainly Dr. Ian Crawford, the 38-year-old surgical chief, thinks so; “You’re very young to be in charge,” he tells her condescendingly at their first meeting. Not the most vicious of put-downs, but “she still quivered with indignation at the memory of the way he had told her by look and word that she was too young for the job.” Nonetheless, just a few pages later, when resident Dr. Douglas Stievers, a bit of a cad who has been chasing Jane with an intensity that in today’s world would be called harassment, tells Jane that he’s in love with her and Ian overhears, “she had the odd sensation that his words were shutting and locking a door that had never really been open.” Don’t you worry, you silly little VNRN heroine! Never mind that he’s 14 years older and perpetually looking at you with “coldness in his face,” it’s simply meant to be!

I’m not convinced that there’s any real need to review the ensuing 160 pages of plot, but there’s a nasty nurse nemesis named Megan, who’s been kicked off the ward previously due to bad behavior—the details of which are puzzled over frequently but never revealed—who repeats a lot of gossipy lies about Jane and her platonic men friends; there’s wealthy, beautiful patient Gail who seems to be scheming to capture both Douglas and Ian; there’s Douglas persisting at virtually every page that Jane marry him and her pathetic if short-lived attempts to talk herself into marrying him given what she  believes to be her non-existent chances with Ian; there’s Ian’s increasing interest in Jane that she stupidly cannot be convinced of despite how incredibly obvious it is; there’s the ongoing obstacle of misunderstanding about Jane and Douglas’ relationship that impedes her progress with Ian. In other words, same old, same old.

The writing is easy and pleasant, with interesting characters—Jane, fortunately, a competent, efficient, admirable nurse being one of them; Ian, as per the VNRN norm, not—but more than 50 pages from the end Ian asks Jane to dinner at his house, and from then on their mutual regard is mostly assured, outside of a few pages of Jane’s quite irritating and baseless insecurities. Ian doesn’t help matters by running hot and frigid toward her for the rest of the book—perennially apologizing when hot: “Poor little Jane! Was I sounding cross again? I must watch myself,” and then doing it again five pages later. The last quarter of the book is contriving to whip up crises that quickly come to nothing and so drags not a little. Which means that if mostly easygoing and engaging, the book does creep into dull and irritating at the end. We’re spared the knowledge that Jane will be quitting her job after marriage—that decision is never discussed with us—but I can’t heartily endorse this book as anything special or a must-read. If “pleasant enough” is damning with faint praise, then damn I  must.

Jane Arden, Student Nurse

Book 1 of 7

By Kathleen Harris, ©1955

Jane Arden, student nurse, had heard a lot about Dr. Robin Crandall, but it wasn’t until a crisis arose and she was sent to assist in “Emergency” that she came face to face with the handsome young doctor—and in her first test as a nurse, and a woman, began to wonder if love and a career are an impossible combination.

GRADE: C

REVIEW:

Jane Arden, age 19, has begun nursing school at the hospital overlooking her small town, Elmwood, Ohio. At book’s open she hasn’t really told her sort-of boyfriend, David Hyatt, 23-year-old boy next door who before leaving to join the Air Force told her—essentially out of the blue—“You’re my gal” in a “blithe manner,” adding that if she looks at any other man he will “turn you over my knee and paddle you, or lock you in a dark closet and keep you there.” Apparently he takes this ownership thing very seriously. 

Eventually she breaks her treachery to him when he’s home on leave—and he tells her that if she wants to be a nurse, she must not love him the way he loves her: “A woman should be satisfied to be with the man she loves—to go where he goes, do what he wants to do.” Remarkably, his face remains unslapped, and even more remarkably for a VNRN, Jane recognizes the absurdity of his opinion. “Why should her being a woman make the difference he spoke of—why shouldn’t a woman choose what she did with her life?” she thinks, but rather than break her relationship with him off immediately, she decides that if he loves her, he will wait the three years for her to finish her training. Unfortunately she never bothers to tell him what she’s decided, so it’s unclear if David is going to play along, even though he does bring her a diamond so small “it almost took a magnifying glass to see.” Not surprisingly, the catty Jane pockets the thing when she’s at work.

So Dr. Robin Crandall, hospital heartthrob, has no idea she’s theoretically engaged when at the New Year’s gala he pulls her out to that den of iniquity, the ballroom verandah, and the two find there are fireworks exploding over Ohio. Oh, wait, that’s just their “very long kiss.”

Jane’s sister Roberta, the beautiful but cold model from New York, arrives home in an epic funk, slams the bedroom door and doesn’t come out for days. The family is too polite to inquire, but after a month of moping Roberta reveals she had inadvertently been involved with a married man whose wife finally showed up sporting a revolver to put her wise. The only thing that raises her spirits is a nasty bout of appendicitis—or, rather, that luscious Dr. Robin Crandall who is managing her care. After her two weeks in the hospital are up, she starts dating Dr. Robin. In the interim, he has pulled the classic yank-her-into-the-linen-closet maneuver to tell Jane that he’s absolutely mad about her, so she too agrees to date him, deciding that she feels “the mature kind of love only a grown woman could feel for a man. She had never felt this way toward David.”

Unfortunately the busybody nurse Millie Brooks sees them slipping disheveled out of the closet and reports Jane to the nursing supervisor, who tells Jane that unless Dr. Crandall vouches for her, she will be kicked out of the program. When she tells him this, he answers that he’d be glad to, except that it might “jeopardize my medical career”—and there’s no reason why they “should both risk our necks.” Furious, Jane breaks off what passes for a romance with him.

Fortunately for the doctor, he never stopped seeing Roberta, so he’s not completely alone—but Roberta, cold but not stupid, quickly figures out that the good doctor has done her sister wrong. Roberta surprisingly feels she owes something to her sister and flexes some muscle to get Robin to do right, at least by Jane—though naturally neither Roberta nor Robin tell her that she’s off the hook; Jane only realizes when the days pass and she isn’t called to the principal’s office. When the penny drops that her nursing career is not over, she’s only relieved “that David would never know that there had been a time when she had not been so certain. She would get out his ring and put it back on her finger. And when she did, she would have that old feeling of security again.” So here we have another VNRN that puts dull affection for the familiar ahead of passion and true love—though she certainly didn’t have the latter with Dr. Robin, either. However, there are seven more books in the Jane Arden series, so hopefully Jane will figure things out before she comes back to roost in Jane Arden’s Home-Coming.

Jane Arden Staff Nurse

Book 3 of 7

By Kathleen Harris, ©1957

Cover illustration by Victor Kalin

As staff nurse in a fast-paced university hospital, Jane Arden was sure her new job would leave her no time for men. She was also sure she’ never forget the man she’d loved all her life, and had lost in a tragic plane accident. But then she learned that time has a way of healing all wounds … and a new love a way of replacing the old.

GRADE: B

BEST QUOTES:

“He would have wanted her to make a new life for herself, as she might have done even if the jet he had been testing on a trial flight had not burst into flames.”

“There were even more of the young men studying to be doctors. They seemed, with a few exceptions, utterly indifferent to the young women; the day was not too far distant when they would be the dictators and the nurses their humble disciples.”

“If she said she was looking for John Eastman, the blonde might jump to the wrong conclusion. A nice girl did not visit a man in his room.”

“Why wouldn’t a girl have you? Of course you’re not much to look at, and you’d probably forget half the time that you had a wife, but women are funny creatures.”

“An artist could do things the average person could not, and get away with it.”

REVIEW:

Jane Arden rides again in this, the third of what I am apprehensive to tell you is a seven-part series, but I can assure you that this book is a lot better than the last one. Curiously, this book seems as eager to forget Jane Arden Registered Nurse as much as we are, for it rewrites a crucial detail—at the end of the last installment, Jane’s idiot boyfriend David had proposed, and she had accepted, though with not enough major reservations. David, however, conveniently got himself killed before Jane had to go to the trouble of growing an entirely new central nervous system, brain and spine chiefly, to realize that her betrothed was an ass and she should throw his miniscule diamond in the nearest bed pan. Here, however, we are told repeatedly that David “had confessed that he had found someone new to take her place in his heart,” so it’s “the hurt that had been dealt her pride” that is her main heartbreak and what makes her believe “she might never fall in love again”—not the tragic early death of her fiancé (in fact, that particular word is never used to describe David in this book, though another F-word certainly applied in the last one).

But facts, schmacts, here we are with Jane in a new city, rooming with her nursing school chum Clarabelle Smith, who goes out of the frying pan and into the fire by calling herself Smitty. Amazingly, Jane has wangled a position as nursing supervisor on her first job out of school! The adventure, if we’re feeling generous enough to use that word, that fills these pages is the evolution of Smitty and Jane’s friendship with lab technician John Eastman. In what I suspect is supposed to be a sort of joke, Smitty has decided to get John and Jane together, while Jane is trying to push Smitty on the same man! Ha! How will this crazy affair end?

Eventually Smitty—at the same time as she realizes that she actually is in love with John—convinces Jane that John loves her. Fortunately, author Kathleen Harris has the sense to hold this unhappy turn at bay until page 103, at which point Jane immediately sets Smitty straight and says that she doesn’t love John and so could not marry him. Oh, wait, that’s not what happens at all—even though Jane feels nothing but friendship for John, she tells Smitty, her best friend, “I won’t say yes or no” until John proposes, which will give her “time in which to get used to the idea that John was in love with her.” Now Jane has a major relapse, back into that irritating circular monologue that so plagued JARN about whether she should marry someone she doesn’t love. “Was being needed the basis for an enduring relationship?” Uh, no, but Jane has never been one to recognize a dumb idea, so we are treated to lots more of the same pointless navel-gazing. “She admired John and respected him; the deep pity he aroused in her almost demanded that she give him what she could in return,” which is a pretty astonishing statement: You are obliged to marry someone you feel sorry for? Can anyone actually believe this? 

Anyway, poor Nicky Powers, wealthy playboy-turned-serious-artist-through-his-unrequited-love-for-Jane, is hanging around the page margins, phoning now and then to tell her that his art is attracting more notice. While Jane is wrestling with her moral dilemma about whether she should ruin poor John Eastman’s life by marrying him, Nicky offers what might be construed in more barbaric times—for which the 1960s appear to qualify—as a proposal: “You must realize that someday I will have to ask you to give up your career,” says the sweet-talking fool, who in JARN was kind, understanding, and supportive, so it appears that he, too, has been rewritten for book three. Back to square one goes Jane. “Maybe she was in love with him, but being still afraid of love, she could not acknowledge it. Yet how could she be in love with Nicky and consider marrying John? The only answer to this question was that she felt John needed her more than Nicky. And if she was never to love again as she had the first time, she ought to choose the man who needed her the most; out of that need, out of her giving, surely something good would come.” Marriage being apparently akin to charity work. She should just organize a bake sale and be done with it.

AGAIN!!! Jane is saved from undergoing any actual growth as a human being when all the other characters step in to do the heavy lifting for her: (1) Smitty is injured during an attempted mugging (she beats down the mugger worse than she got, and keeps her handbag to boot) and John, in the throes of his concern for Smitty, proposes; (2) Nicky takes himself off to Paris to study under an important artist for an unspecified but surely lengthy period of time; and (3) Jane’s brother Jay is severely burned while at sea for the Navy and Jane instantly must go to him, removing herself from the scene. But I am saving the very best for last! The toy prize at the bottom of this box of Cracker Jack is that Jay needs skin grafts and only Jane can provide these—because she is his identical twin!!!! Honestly, I cannot stop laughing even as I type this. Jane should take a look in Jay’s pants to verify how identical they are.

For all the fun I’ve made of this book, up until it goes to pieces at the end, it’s actually not half bad, only about a quarter bad. I am somewhat sorry that I cannot like Smitty, who is not the quintessential wise-cracking roommate but instead something of an oaf, but she’d need to be to be friends with a self-centered loser like Jane Arden. There are some scenes at the hospital that are interesting, and Jane is only irritating at the very end. So there it is. Three down, four to go. I hope there are not a lot of nurse novel series left out there, because so far they are not convincing me of their merit.