By Peggy Gaddis, ©1962
Also
published as Future Nurse
Ann Galt had come to Blalock
Hospital to receive her nurse’s training. Then it was back to home on the
Caribbean island of Spanish Key to care for the natives who had been working
for her family for years. But Ann wanted more than to be a nurse; she set out
on a desperate admission to marry a doctor and bring him back to her beloved
ancestral island, and Dr. David Lochran, handsome, dedicated, and unmarried,
seemed the ideal choice. But was there an understanding between David and
beautiful Julia Anderson, the senior nurse who had taken Ann under her wing?
Anne’s decision was taken out of her hands when a tropical hurricane roared
across her island and opened her eyes to the meaning of love.
GRADE: C-
BEST QUOTES:
“Greater
friendship hath no man than that he should lend his cherished car to a woman
driver!”
“I
wasn’t permitted to read Oscar Wilde when I was growing up.”
“Well,
of course I’m right. I’m the doctor, Nurse—remember?”
“Well,
R.N.’s are taught they must maintain composure and move swiftly without running
and a lot of other things.”
REVIEW:
Author
Peggy Gaddis has many annoying habits. Her heroines frequently lie about their
feelings towards men, and they tend to be syrupy to the point of inducing
nausea: They are regularly wide-eyed and/or near tears; they don’t speak, they
trill; their laughter is always gay; and their interjections usually include
“Forevermore!” “Zounds!” and “Phooey!” But here on Spanish Cay, unfortunately,
Gaddis must have put a pound of sugar in her sweet tea, as she’s off the charts
with the sentiment—and to make matters worse, she’s added a nauseating dose of
racism to boot.
The
Galt family seems to own most of this small island located between Honduras and
Haiti, on which their plantation grows coffee and—fittingly—sugar cane. Ann
Galt, who is 18 when we open the book, is about to be sent to the United States
to nursing school by her 80-year-old great-grandmother (the Galt women all
appear to have been teen brides), who is called Clarita by everyone except Ann,
who leans heavily on “darling.” Ann’s wishes to remain forever on the island
must be sacrificed for nursing school because old Dr. John, who has either no
first name or no last name, is on the brink of expiring with no one in line to
step into his shoes. This tragedy the family would accept with equanimity if
they did not feel responsible for the healthcare of the island’s native
population. “They have been faithful and devoted and we are responsible for
them,” Clarita tells Ann, and plantation business manager Tad agrees, saying
that when she is a nurse Ann will be able to “look after the people who adore
you and who have made a living for the Galts for 200 years.” (When a visitor to
the Island asks if they have racial trouble, “Ann turned to stare at him,
wide-eyed and shocked. ‘Racial trouble?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘Why,
these are people, our people!’” demonstrating exactly why there might be a
problem.)
Ann’s
older brother Jerry had initially been teed up to serve as the sacrificial
lamb, and had even been just a couple of months short of finishing his
residency before returning to the island to pick up the stethoscope, “and then
he had that beastly hunting accident!” Ann stomps her foot in frustration over
the death of her apparently unloved older brother. “Oh, Clarita, it’s all so
unfair. There were others on that hunting trip who could have been spared much
easier than Jerry.” Total bummer!
So
off to nursing school she goes, and there Ann meets Julia Anderson, who is
appointed Ann’s “Big Sister,” to look after her during the brutal probie year. In
addition to studying, from the first chapter Ann has been pretty frank about
her plan to “snag some fine, upstanding young medic who’ll fall head over heels
in love with me and be willing to marry me and come down here to practice.” Julia,
who graduates when the year is up, has been dating Dr. David Lochran, who ends
his residency at the same time. Of his relationship with Julia Ann is well
aware, but that doesn’t stop her from fastening her wide eyes on the man and
inviting him to Spanish Cay when the year is up. He mentions this invitation to
Julia in Ann’s presence, so the little vixen is forced to invite Julia as well.
Darn!
The
year passes in pages, and soon the trio has landed in the Caribbean. Julia, who
is no moron, is on to Ann, and David notices “just possibly the faintest tinge
of acid in their tone” when they speak to one another. Ann even suggests to Tad
that he start flirting with Julia so that she can work her wiles upon David
without interruption. (Tad responds, “Why, you shameless, outrageous little
somebody! I ought to spank the daylights out of you, the way I used to enjoy
doing when we were kids and you’d got out of line”—spanking being one of Gaddis’s
kinkier staples.)
But
two weeks into the trip, when Ann and Julia are nourishing incipient skin
cancers on the beach, Julia mentions that doesn’t know what she is going to do
now that she is graduated, as “I can’t decide, of course, unless he does,”
because “whatever David wants is what I want.” Ann’s eyes—wait for it—widen,
and she is shocked! to learn of their relationship, and immediately chucks her
evil scheme.
Four
pages later, a hurricane of a strength never before seen on the island is upon
them, which they didn’t notice until the winds were so ferocious they nearly
knock a Jeep off the road, so it’s too late to evacuate. David and Julia hustle
down to the clinic to help Dr. John, while Ann and Tad comb the island for the
resident witch doctor, an elderly woman who has gone into hiding. Somehow, Ann
manages to swim a tempest-tossed inlet to reach the woman, who is clinging
to a cliff face, and haul her back across to safety. Once they’ve driven the
old woman back to the clinic, Ann and Tad collapse into each other’s arms.
“Then she drew a little away from him and stared up at him, her eyes wide with
a sudden realization, her tear-wet face flushed. ‘Why, Tad!’ she breathed, her
voice touched with wonder. ‘Are we in love with each other?’” Guess what the
answer is? Tad declares, “You’re staying right here, and you’re going to marry
me,” continuing the family teen-bride tradition.
After
the storm blows out, the kids head for the hacienda, which is built on high
ground, where “there were not too many signs of the hurricane,” the lights are
still on, and everyone has a hot shower and plenty of breakfast. “Everything’s
just fine and dandy,” Ann sighs. She’s sorry to tell Clarita that the village
is gone, but the matriarch responds “as though it were of no importance.”
Indifference is catching; Julia declares, “It’s been a terrific experience. Oh,
of course I’m terribly sorry about the village being washed away and all that.”
Will Clarita be disappointed that Ann isn’t going to finish her training? Naw!
“I sent you away with the very kindly intent of giving you and Tad a chance to
find out that you really loved each other,” she says. “I hoped it would happen,
but I couldn’t be sure. And if it didn’t, and you came back with her R.N.
degree then there would no harm have been done.” Which left me unconvinced that
there was only one witch on the island.
Now
we have time to catch up with the other pair of love birds: David suggests to
Julia that he take over Dr. John’s post and that Julia join him. And it’s
Julia’s turn to be disingenuous: “Of course. You would need a nurse,” she says,
and when David answers that what he needs is a wife, she pretends that he must
be talking about Ann. When that phony little misunderstanding is cleared up,
it’s their turn to act all surprised and starry-eyed when they realize they’re
in love with each other, complete news even after years of dating. “Well, I’ll
be darned!” David says dazedly.
The
worse part of it is that this insipid, dripping washout doesn’t even qualify as
a nurse novel, since the central character quits after just one year of
training; I don’t think Julia and David’s peripheral storyline moves it over
the mark. The racism is of course hugely problematic, and I’m mailing off
another check as per the White
Doctor protocol. Every single female character is cloying, and even the
aged characters, usually beloved Gaddis staples, are horrid: Dr. John is a
constantly shouting ass, and the matriarch is alarmingly Machiavellian. Gaddis
should have been given a strict limit on adjectives and altogether barred from
using adverbs; in just one page selected at random, we get “said Tad
carefully,” “said Ann hastily,” “he repeated slowly, carefully” “Ann cut in
swiftly,” “he said gently,” “Ann said quickly,” “She added quietly.” Ugh! This
book is not even of the so-bad-it’s-good variety (looking at you, Nurse
at the Fair and Harbor
Nurse); really it’s those C-range novels you have to be most cautious
of. The only thing remarkable about this novel is that in it we have a
particularly excellent example of a book that should never be read.
 |
This book was also published
under the title Future Nurse,
which is a complete lie, since
the heroine drops out of
nursing school. |
